Masks

Going to a gift show is kind of like going to Las Vegas. For maybe 8 hours you wander around delighted and amused by the pretty colors, by the endless inventiveness of humankind, the infinite variety of kitsch - wow! so many adorable ceramic roosters - and then it hits. Bam! The hollow mirror.

Fortunately a day trip makes for easy in and out. A lot of driving though. Two hours into Oakland and then another hour on BART to the Moscone center. BART on weekends is the desperado highway, a lot of people with stringy unwashed hair, scratching and furtively mumbling to themselves.

I've lived long enough away from the Bay Area so that the freeways and cross streets are no longer second nature to me. Got off 880 at Fruitvale, tried to find the BART station and got lost. Getting lost took me within 2 blocks of my old East Oakland cottage, only guess what? I couldn't remember what the cross street was.

Turn-out at the gift show was surprisingly low leading me to believe that the economy is not recovering quite so robustly as the various talking heads on CNN market watch would have us believe. When people are turning their wallets inside out for gas money, there's very little left over for ceramic roosters. I was wandering by a booth swathed with bolts of blue and white French provincial fabric, heard a half-familiar voice dissing the sales rep good-humoredly - “Well, yeah, it's gorgeous but the price point is way too high. I'd have to sell this for - what? $22 a yard? It would be on the shelf for a year.”

Paul. From Guatemala.

Hesitantly, I reintroduced myself.

“Well, of course, I remember you. That was - what? Two years ago?”

“Almost three,” I said. I knew he was lying.

“What are you doing here?”

“I have a store in Monterey.”

“What do you sell?”

“Hot sauce. And kitsch.”

“Hot sauce and kitsch,” he grinned.

I'd had a rather long discussion with Paul in San Marcos del Laguna about entrepreneurship. I doubt that he remembered. But it had made an impression on me. Paul is my model for a successful entrepreneur. He has a store in Oakland called Poppy Fabrics that is just a fabulous place to lose yourself for an hour or so, filled with lovely things to touch and see and with helpful yet discreet salespeople who leave you alone until you need help.

“Didn't you ever think of turning it into a chain?” I'd asked him then, and he'd replied, “Why would I want to do that? I make enough to live very comfortably with a lot of free time left over. I'm not greedy enough to want the hassle of managing a chain. Or maybe I'm too greedy. I like my leisure.”

Not a handsome man but a very attractive man. Probably looked a lot like Woody Allen when he was younger.

“So what about the literary pursuits?” he asked.

“Oh, I'm still doing those,” I said. “But you know, starting a business is a creative project too.”

“Oh absolutely. Absolutely it is. You look just the same. You know, I do remember you. It was just the context that eluded me.”

“Right,” I said.

“The problem with getting older,” he said and laughed.

“Right! You only have a finite number of brain cells and if you started remembering every person you meet, you'd have to erase backloads of seventies hits from your frontal lobes. And that would be wrong.”

“That's it. That's it exactly.”

“G-L-O-R-I-A - Gloria,” I said.

And he laughed, knowing he would not remember me the next time if we happened to run into each other again.

I loaded up on the usual chili-themed kitsch - salsa dishes, spreaders, cutesy refrigerator magnets, barbecue books and posters.

Then as I was leaving, I saw a small, unprepossessing booth decorated with the most extraordinarily beautiful masks I had ever seen in my life. Masks from Venice. Carnivale masks. I bought $300 worth. I shot my wad. No one will ever buy them - the store is absolutely the wrong venue for merchandise like this, they belong in an art gallery - but I had to have them, I had to own them.

The man selling them was one of those Venetian Italians with the big dark eyes and small mournful mouths.

He barely spoke English. He perked up when he saw my name.

“Parlo Italiano, Patrizia?” he murmured.

“Un poco,” I said. But I was lying too.