Merriam-Webster explains the word banal with the following example:”The more banal, the more commonplace, the more predictable, the triter, the staler, the dumber, the better. —Don DeLillo, Mao II, 1991. (Emphasis added.)
That quote perfectly summarizes a strange journey that started as a pedestrian, once-a-week, trip to the store to restock the pantry.
With the well-oiled and balanced wheels of the shopping cart turning smoothly in front of me, I was somewhere between flour and tomato sauce looking for pasta, my preferred ingredient for those days when spending more than ten minutes in the kitchen is more than I care to endure.
I was deep in thoughts mulling over the fact that the store was out of molasses, the key ingredient needed to make my favourite, Turkish, bread. Wallowing in disappointment and just-stirred up hunger pangs, I landed in Aisle Six. Or was it Aisle Seven?
Whatever…
Several turns of the cart’s wheels later, my thoughts switched to a contemplation of a nice heap of steaming pasta di Gragnano presso Napoli, made by the storico pastificio Garofalo, served with tomato sauce enhanced by a fair complement of Salsa Picante for a little edge and a generous heaping of freshly shredded pecorino romano under a black cloud of just as freshly ground black pepper. All of this did nothing to lessen the hunger pangs, but at least it put a spring into my step.
That’s when She appeared, sailing through the imaginary vapours of my much-delayed if, by now, well-defined lunch, without a moment given to thoughts of a nice bottle of Chianti.
“Hi”, She said with a nice smile that brightened her pleasantly forgettable face.
“Hi”, I returned the courtesy, as the image of my soon-to-be meal quickly paled, until – poof! – it was gone.
“How are you?” The apparition-no-longer enquired.
“No complaints. How you?” I replied.
“Oh, I’m doing good”, She said, as She launched into a quick spiel about a just-opened spa, not far away from the store of our encounter, located between two instantly identifiable streets.
“Oh, how nice”, reacted my automatic pilot from the depths of civilisation’s storage of inane pleasantries.
“Oh, sure. And we’re offering a special to attract new customers. You know, the economy being what it is, advertising takes too long and it’s way too expensive to depend on a slow client build-up.”
“No kidding”, burped Auto Pilot.
“Yeah. And, so, like, we’ve decided to offer 90% off of four of our treatments to attract people who, we hope, will be our social marketers spreading the word among their friends and, you know, like, maybe, co-workers and such. Have you ever been to a spa?” – She ever-so-gently nudged me from my indifferent stupor.
“On occasion”, I lied, intrigued by her peculiar, if warmly engaging, insistence.
No, spas do not cut it for me. I am rather attached to the amenities in my own bathroom: the self-made aromatherapeutically enhanced candles. (Lavender and ylang-ylang are just two of my favourite scents. Which one is yours?) and soaps also made by moi with ingredients devoid of chemicals but with a choice of aromh-mh-mmmh-ahh… oils. The soak is followed by the lovely ritual of a self-inflicted massage using creams, lotions and potions made with yet more chemical-free goodies from my favourite supplier. The goodies’ aromatic benefits are further enhanced by the action of warm steam. But I digress…
She smiled: “Our spa offers a full range of treatments: haircut and colour, mani/pedicure and foot massage, deep full body massage, brow arching… yadda, yadda.”
(Brow arching?)
“That’s lovely”, responded I, gently prodded by Auto P.
“And, like, can you believe that the full treatment goes for $450, and we’re promoting it for just-only 49 dollars?”
I felt it would be petty of me were I to point out that 90% off $450 is $45, so I resisted the rude urge.
“Wow, that’s amazing”, I felt compelled to say.
“No kidding”, She acknowledged. Then She said something quickly in a somewhat different tone of voice which escaped my hearing powers. However, before I managed to open my mouth to ask what it was that had just eluded me, She enquired if I would be interested in taking advantage of this unique opportunity. By the end of that last sentence that was actually a somewhat longer sales pitch, She asked me, again, if I’d like to give the spa a try.
“Why not?”, I replied obligingly. “Do you have a business card to help me remember the address?”, I asked.
“Oh, sure.” She replied, as She dipped her hand into a large bag dangling off her right shoulder to bring out a 3×5 card with a purple and gold colour scheme, suggesting a très royale treatment, with a boring black and white 1×3 attached to it with a perforation. She then launched, casually and calmly, into a non-threatening, almost-monotone, brief pitch with the details of how the thing worked. As Her finger was pointing to the pictures and She spoke of this-and-that, I noticed that the B/W appendant’s markings enquired after my full name (why would they need to know if Ms, Mr., Mrs.?), address (what for?) , email and phone. I thought it strange but, again, I was distracted.
My attention was engaged by three rats that had jumped from behind the shelves stacked with sacks of flour. They were dancing rats: one was wearing a pink tutu, the second one wore an orange number, while the middle one boasted a green skirt with a silver trim along the hem and a matching sash across its chest. At the end of their pas des trois they unfurled a banner with some writing on it with animated flames, but something She said turned my attention away from the trio in tutus. Pink, orange, and…
“So that’s how it works. Do you think you’d like to give the spa a try?”, She asked again with that same gentle insistence.
Still dazed, “Oh, why not”, I replied with my brain on “idle”.
Again, the hand dipped into Her plain bag of an undefinable colour. I could not help but notice that the gesture accompanied a genuinely warm, even slightly victorious, smile, so different from her earlier smiles that seemed almost perfunctory by comparison. Inexplicably, it made me think, again, of the Dancing Trio. What the hell was on that banner? I couldn’t help but wonder.
Her hand emerged from the bag with what looked like a hand-held calculator with a tape.
That’s when it hit me. “So you want me to pay you the full price of the 90% off now?”
“Oh, like, yeah, for sure. You just fill out this card”, she pointed to the dull, black and white, tear-off part of the otherwise colourful card, “and call us whenever you’d like to make an appointment”.
Just then I recalled what the vibrant red flames spelled on that banner: “Remember!”
I did. I remembered the burning, red-hot fury and anguish that followed the two separate occasions when I got the letters, one from my now ex-bank, the other from a previous employer, informing me that I was one of a few thousand victims of their enterprising, now ex-employees who had expropriated our personal information. Since that experience nothing will compel me to part with my particulars unless absolutely necessary. As in dire emergency. And that Emergency had better be wearing an ID badge.
This was not an emergency. The occasion did not have a badge, not even a name tag. In fact, no name was ever offered.
I delved deep into my repertoire of mea culpas, selected a medium-to-richly profound one, and told Her that having had been previously slammed with ID theft, I do not part with my personal info unless…
She was visibly upset. I started to feel bad.
She rested the “calculator” on top of my just-bought Rosarita Vegetarian Beans-Frijoles Refritos (just the thing for a supper on a moi seul evening), then dipped Her arm into the spacious bag one more time. This time at the end of Her extremity dangled a wallet. She opened the wallet. In it was a stack of receipts. Each one with the sole figure of $49 on each bill. She pointed to a horizontal line of several asterisks ending in four digits.
“Oh, we don’t keep your credit card number”, She said with growing anxiety in her voice. Now I started to feel really guilty.
“See, we just save the last four digits”. Really? She has never heard of ID theft? Or was I being played?
The Rats in their compelling colourful dancing attire flew atop the flour sacks, again. This time with Harvey as their solo artist. Their short act ended with a flourish in the form a rats-on-rabbit pyramid, all extending their arms in a final “Ta-dah!”. It got no reaction from Her. She would spare not even a quick glance at the sight of the pink-white Rabbit holding up the Trio of Rodents in tutus.
At this time, the haze of the bizarre encounter started to fade.
“So you want me to pay the $49, here and now?”, I asked, again.
“Oh, sure”. She said, with the faintest glimmer of hope fleeting across her face.
“And you want my full name, marital status, phone AND email address?”
“Oh, yeah. Like, for sure”.
“I’m sorry”, I said with polite insincerity for good manners. “I don’t give out this kind of information to anyone, unless I absolutely have to. I’m really sorry.”
I couldn’t bear to part with Her on a sour note, though. “Could I have the card, anyway? Why don’t you put your name on it to secure your commission and I get to take advantage of the offer? It would also be helpful to let me remember all the enticing stuff you have just told me about and maybe I could get some of my friends interested.”
The eager to please look on Her face started to fade. In a last-ditch tone and effort, tinged with desperate sadness that once again tripped my guilty feelings, She told me that this was a one-time, one-day offer only.
“I’m sorry”, I lied. “I don’t do spontaneous decisions that involve credit cards. Call me paranoid. Ha-ha”, I lied some more.
The Trio and Harvey popped the cork off a pint-sized magnum of champagne and tipped their glasses in my direction. As their last act, they floated off, stage-right, between the sacks of flour and rice, on the tips of the points of their tiny ballet slippers colour-coordinated with their tutus, circling their sparkling champagne glasses above their heads, without taking a final bow. Weird. I was so ready to reward them with enthusiastic applause to get a hoped-for encore.
She and I were done with our encounter. I expressed my phony regrets and wished Her well, as she packed Her act: the wallet, the “calculator” and the card. No, she would not let me have the card. Strange… Nowhere, I suddenly recalled, did the card show the 90% off price. Another thought flashed through my mind recalling how skillfully She had avoided letting me take the card for a closer look.
That’s when I realised how banal the entire show was (excluding The Rabbit et Rodent Act). Her pitch – so well delivered, the script so well-timed in its anticipation of the predictable responses, the masterful manipulation of my emotions and social conditioning. I almost fell for it. Well, the “almost” part got its first nudge with the way-too-good-to-be-true line of 90% off.
As I wheeled the well-maintained cart across the parking lot towards the car, I considered just how skillfully I had been guilt-tripped into submitting to the many opportunities created by Her script to hand over my credit card.
Once home, as I waited for the pasta to attain that elusive al dente quality, I plugged the name of the spa into a search engine. Yup. The name checked out. The establishment is indeed located between the streets that She had mentioned. It is, however, a hair and nails emporium. Not a spa. It is not new. According to the website it has been at that address for more than a few years. Not that it makes one whit of difference. The years, not the absence of the spa part.
Caveat emptor, anyone?
©2011
