The Mattress Salesman

A Short Story

“My bottom sheet keeps coming off,” she said.

It was perhaps the most random thing a woman had ever said to me, but it was not without context. I was spending my days at the dubiously lucrative job of selling mattresses for a major firm that I suspected was nothing more than a money laundering front. Still, we usually didn’t get a lot of questions about sheets, as we didn’t sell them.

“I have seen these straps you can attach to your sheets to keep them on the mattress,” she continued. “They look like garters, if you’re old enough to remember what those are.” She held my gaze for a half-second beyond comfortable when she said this.

“I’m plenty old enough,” I replied, holding her gaze. “I’m even old enough to remember that my 8-track tape of Creedence Clearwater Live in Europe cut “Proud Mary” in half when it jumped from track three to track four.”

She smiled at this.

“I love 8-tracks,” she said dreamily. “Almost as much as vinyl, but not as much as garters. A shame they went out of fashion, don’t you think?”

“A shame indeed,” I replied. “They add a touch of class.” I decided to take it one step further. “And it’s so much fun taking them off.”

“If you know how,” she said, not missing a beat.

“I do.”

“A man of many talents,” she said. “But do you know what’s more fun than taking them off?”

“Putting them on?” I ventured.

“Leaving them on.”

Thirty minutes later I had sold the woman, whose name was Jane Austen — no shit, it was on her driver’s license — the most expensive mattress in the place, probably laundering a small drug or arms deal in the process. Our banter had continued much like it began, the most memorable of her comments coming when I told her that I personally thought the mattress was too expensive.

“Not for the amount of time I spend on it,” she had replied, and then winked at me.

By the time I finished writing up the invoice I was certain that one of my jackass friends had put her up to the whole encounter just to fuck with me, and that at the last minute she would need to run to her car for her…

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