Killer Market

It was moot anyhow. By the time I got to the housing bureau, it was closed.

No big deal, I thought. So the Radisson was filled. There were other hotels.

“You don’t have a reservation?” the clerk at the Holiday Inn asked incredulously. “In Market Week?”

The receptionist at the turquoise-and-pink Super 8 Motel suggested that I call the housing bureau. “They can usually come up with something.”

I pointed out that the housing bureau was closed for the day.

“Oh, but it’ll be open first thing tomorrow,” she assured me cheerfully as she bustled away to help guests lucky enough to have confirmed reservations.

The Atrium Inn sports faux marble frescoes, a small waterfall, and a wonderfully tacky statue of King Neptune, even though High Point is two hundred miles from the ocean. But I could have been a mermaid with starfish pasties and it wouldn’t have helped me one iota, because guess what?

“It’s Market Week,” said the manager to whom I appealed after the front desk turned me away. He spoke slowly and distinctly, as if I might be four oysters short of a peck. “You’d probably have to go forty miles to find a vacancy this week.”

I co-opted a phone book at a second-story food court down the street and carried it over to an empty table, determined to prove him wrong. Several phone calls later, I realized he’d sadly underestimated. Some of the national chains had rooms available in Durham or Charlotte, both at least seventy miles away. Nothing in Greensboro or Winston.

“They must be having a big convention or something in that area,” the 1-800 Reservations person for Embassy Suites apologized. “We’re showing full occupancy through next Wednesday.”

Now I’m not a complete ignoramus. I do know that High Point is probably the center of the state’s enormous furniture industry—that’s the main reason I took this assignment. I’ve finally decided to get a house of my own and I figured I could spend the weekend browsing stores and pick up some ideas about styles, colors and prices.

And yeah, I’d heard of the Southeastern Furniture Market before it went international and changed its name, but it didn’t affect me or anybody I knew so I never paid it much attention. I certainly had no idea it was so huge that it could take over the whole Triad.

As I slid my new flip phone back into my purse, I was beginning to have second thoughts about that sofa bed in someone’s living room. If there truly was no room at the inn for me, I’d have to scrap the idea of shopping and instead drive back home tomorrow night and see if I could talk Aunt Sister into letting me borrow her RV for the week, assuming I could get away with parking it beside the courthouse for that long.

The food court had filled up while I’d been on the phone. At the next table several women with Iowa accents were regaling each other about their lodging arrangements. From their groans and laughter, I gathered that four of the women and two male co-workers were sharing a private house that their company had rented for the week.

“—just two bathrooms. I had to wash my hair in the kitchen sink this morning while Sam was making coffee.”

“Was that Sam snoring last night? I thought I’d never get to sleep.”

“—from the Friedman chain, says they lucked out this year. Four bedrooms, three baths and only five people, but one of them—”

More of their friends arrived. My table for four was down to two chairs, and as one of the Iowans started to confiscate the remaining empty, a smaller, oddly dressed woman put out her hand to stop her.

“Excuse me,” she said in a deep gravelly voice. She wasn’t much taller than five one or five two. Her build was that of a young, sexless child, but her voice could have been Lauren Bacall’s had Lauren Bacall been born with a thick Southern accent. “I believe this is my chair?”

The words themselves were courteous enough and even ended on a polite up-tone, the sort of tone that many cultivated women use when pretending they might be mistaken in their understanding of the situation. As with such ladies, there was so much ice beneath the politeness that Iowa backed away, apologizing profusely.

“You are alone this evening, are you not?” the woman asked me, seating herself in the disputed chair and settling two canvas tote bags at her feet like one of my aunts after a hard day of shopping. This being High Point though, her bags had the logo of a large furniture company.

It was a week past Easter, the date when it becomes officially permissible in the South to wear white shoes and pastels; and this small-boned woman was dressed like a slightly disheveled Easter egg. Layers of pink, green and lavender chiffon scarves enveloped her body. Her wide-brimmed garden hat was woven from pale lavender straw and had lavender and green ribbons that tied beneath her chin. The hat itself had slipped down onto her shoulders and her wiry gray hair was barely constrained by a chignon that looked dangerously close to exploding. She wore pale blue tights and dirty pink satin ballerina slippers.

I reserved judgment because the South is full of elderly eccentric women who may look like bag ladies but who turn out to be the wealthy blue-blooded widows or spinster daughters of exceedingly prominent men.

“Mrs. Jernigan,” she said in that hoarse voice, abruptly extending the tips of her fingers. “Matilda McNeill Jernigan.”

“Judge Knott,” I replied, extending my own fingers.

She frowned. “What makes you think I would?”

It was a common error.

“That’s my name,” I explained. “Deborah Knott. I’m a district court judge.”

“Really? How fascinating. And is your husband a judge, too?”

Well, of course, she’s that generation that still defines a woman by the man in her life.

“Y’all eating?” asked the teenage busboy as he removed a cup and napkin left by a previous diner and gave the