table a quick swipe with his cloth. He pointedly straightened a small placard that read, “Please be mindful of others during Market Week and vacate this table when you’ve finished eating.”
Actually, food was beginning to sound like a good idea. I glanced around at the various kiosks. The choices ranged from pan pizzas and fried chicken to alfalfa salads and yogurt.
I glanced inquiringly at my tablemate. “Could I get you something while I’m up?”
“Why, thank you,” she said, and inclined her small head so graciously that I realized she thought I had invited her to be my guest. “I do like a little something to take the edge off my appetite before the parties. Perhaps turkey salad on a croissant and hot tea with lemon? Wine will flow, I fear, and a lady should not risk the danger of an empty stomach.”
Turkey salad and hot tea sounded as good a choice as any and quicker than waiting on lines at separate stands.
When I returned with two of everything, I found Matilda McNeill Jernigan absorbed by the yellow pages that still lay open on the table.
She lifted the thick book in her little hands and held it out of the way while I set down our tray. I returned it to the telephone stand, and as I got back to the table, Mrs. Jernigan took out a tiny coin purse, carefully extracted two pills, one a green-and-white capsule, the other a white tablet, and laid them beside her plate.
Seeing her pills reminded me that I was due for a pill of my own. I’d had a throat that was raw as freshly ground hamburger last week and the doctor had prescribed ten days of antibiotics—one tablet three times a day. They were supposed to be evenly spaced, but I kept forgetting and instead of one tablet every eight hours, it was apt to be ten hours for one and six hours for the next till I was back on schedule. How on earth people with chronic conditions manage to keep it all straight, I can’t begin to imagine. I swallowed the tablet and was thankful that I had only one more day to go.
Between nibbled bites of her croissant, Mrs. Jernigan gave me a concerned look and said, “I could not help but notice that you were calling hotels. Please do not tell me you have no place to stay?”
“Afraid so,” I admitted.
She made a duckling sound of sympathy. “In Market Week, too.”
“I had no idea that Market was this big a deal,” I said ruefully. “There must be ten thousand people here from all over the country.”
“Try seventy thousand.“ Her tone was dry. ”From all over the globe. And it
With a sweep of chiffon, she gestured toward the big windowless buildings that could be seen from our table overlooking Main Street. “Seven million square feet of showrooms in a hundred and fifty places around the area and all the buildings are dark and silent for three hundred days of the year. Then we have a month of hustle—tearing out walls, putting in new ones, laying carpets, painting, hanging wallpaper, installing the furniture—just to get ready for nine days of buyers. Retailers come from all over the world to order the chairs and couches and case goods that will wind up in Mediterranean villas and Manhattan penthouses. Japanese decorators will buy outrageously expensive bibelots to grace a chain of hotels from Nagasaki to Sapporo. And those polyvinyl chaises that a newly famous Hollywood star will buy for her first swimming pool next fall? Someone will sell the line to a California distributor this week.”
The Midwesterners at the next table were raising their eyebrows at each other, but Mrs. Jernigan was oblivious. Her voice became throatier, her dark eyes flashed and I abruptly downgraded her age from late sixties to mid-fifties at most. The gray hair had fooled me.
This was no little old dowager.
“Think of the great couturiers who show their spring and fall fashions,” she said. “High Point is Paris! New York! The Milano of the furniture industry!”
“No wonder I couldn’t find a room.” Half-jokingly, I added, “I don’t suppose you have a spare couch you could rent me for the night?”
Mrs. Jernigan drew back so sharply that all her layers of pastel chiffon swayed and quivered as if tossed by the wind. “Stay with me? Oh, no, that would not do at all. No, no, no. That is totally out of the question.”
Her hat bumped the back of her chair and more wisps of wiry gray hair escaped from her chignon. She was becoming so agitated that I quit feeling offended and urged her to take a sip of tea while it was still hot.
She held the plastic cup to her lips with both hands and took several swallows. When she was calm again, she said, “I cannot extend you hospitality, but perhaps I do know someone who can help. However, she will not be there until later. Would you like to go to a party or two first? Experience the Market for yourself?”
“Sure,” I said. What the hell?
Matilda McNeill Jernigan finished her turkey salad croissant, fished around in one of her tote bags and came out with a plastic badge holder which she pinned to a green chiffon scarf on her shoulder. The name on the badge was Louisa Ferncliff, representing Quality Interiors of Seattle, Washington.
She tilted her head closer to mine and I smelled rose cologne and a faint hint of that ubiquitous almond-scented liquid hand soap one finds in most public restrooms these days. Her husky voice dropped to a more confidential level. “Press badges are better.”
She eyed the badge on a raincoat that someone at the next table had draped over the back of a chair next to mine and I wondered if I were about to see a minor felony committed. “Press badges get you into any showroom without people trying to sell you a truckload of coffee tables, but a buyer’s will do fine too. A word to the wise thought—do not try to get into a showroom while wearing an exhibitor’s badge. They will think you are a spy.”
She fished around in her bag again and frowned. “They all seem to be males and—Ah! Have you a black pen?”
I handed over my favorite Pentel and watched as she artistically changed
“Should anyone notice, just flirt your eyes and say that they always misspell your name,” she said, adjusting her scarves before gathering up her bags to go.
