I am afraid of my furniture. Let me explain; it’s a little long, but bear with me.
As some of you know, Mr. Seawitch and I recently moved to a larger apartment. One reason we did that was to get a normal-sized bedroom. Since the move, it has become painfully obvious that we need a new bedroom set. I have a quasi-functional Ikea dresser, there is no bed frame, and Mr. Seawitch owns a horrible dresser that looks like something you’d see under a freeway overpass. Our nightstands are milk crates.
So we start pricing a bedroom set. Nothing extravagant; one large dresser, two nightstands, and a bedframe. In our price range we have been able to find: nothing. Well, that godawful pressboard that looks like wood if you’re blindfolded and the lights are out, but I refuse to get that. I want actual wood furniture. Everything we saw was $2200 and up.
So we did what any logical people in our part of the country would do; we took a drive to Tiajuana (actually Rosarito, 30 miles or so south) to get cheaper furniture.
We looked at a number of overpriced places, then spotted a man at the side of the road with a few nice pieces in front of his workshop. Workshack, actually. When I asked the price of a dresser I liked, he said it was $220. Since that was good to start with, and all prices in Mexico are subject to haggling, I knew we had found our man.
I speak about 25 words of Spanish. Mr. Seawitch speaks even less, in spite of the fact that his surname is Garcia. Juan, our furniture man, spoke no English at all. What followed was a very “Helen Keller buys a bed” round of ordering and negotiation; Juan, you see, keeps no stock on hand, but makes all his furniture as custom orders. Pantomiming “bed” was pretty easy. “Dresser” I could point to. “Nightstand” was a bit more of a challenge, with much handwaving and a number of crude drawings of little boxes with lamps on them. We finally got everything settled, at a total price of $650.
Then things began to go awry. Juan asked us what we wanted carved on the headboard. It had never crossed my mind that I could have carving at that price, so I stared blankly at him. It must have seemed to Juan that I was suffering an artistic crisis, because he began making suggestions - in rapid-fire Spanish.
“Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah?” he asked, accompanied by wild gesturing. I do know one useful phrase, and I used it here. “Please speak slower, sir. I speak very little Spanish.”
Juan looked at me with affection and patience, the way one looks at a beloved though brain-damaged child or a paying customer who has not thought to bring an interpreter. He said it again, very slowly. “Blah… blah… blah…blah …blah?”
I still understand not one flurkin’ word. Juan assumes I have vetoed the suggestion, and makes another one. “Blah blah blah…” I get nothing. We go on like this for five or six suggestions. Juan is beginning to run out of ideas. Since all our paper had been used up sketching nightstands, the situation was grim.
Finally Juan spouts an amazingly long paragraph, ending with “blah blah blah blah y sol y luna”. Wait! I understood two words! He suggested the sun and the moon! Yes! Okay! Good! Carve that!
Juan makes some notes on the receipt, with lots of nudging and winking at Mr. Seawitch. Some comments about the bed design being good for the heart, or encouraging romance… I didn’t really get all of it. He asks us how big the bed itself is. Nobody knows, but we make some guesses. Juan’s assistant writes down the measurements, takes a $200 deposit, and gives us a receipt. Juan points out the phone number, and we head home.
While we’re waiting to cross back over the border, a slow process, Mr. Seawitch asks me a question. “So what else did he say he was carving?” I, of course, have no clue. Granted, Juan ended the sentence with “and the sun and the moon”, but what came before that first “and”? Neither one of us knows.
It was a long suggestion. For all I know, we asked Juan to carve a man having sexual congress with a number of goats, next to a relief map of Argentina, and the sun and the moon overhead. We begin to worry. To make things worse, when we finally get home 3 hours later, we measure the bed and discover that Juan’s measurements are a foot too big in each direction.
We try for the next 48 hours to call Juan. It seems that area codes have changed recently, and the number on the receipt is short by one digit. Which digit is beyond me.
Mr. Seawitch decides it is time for desperate measures. He takes off early from work on a Tuesday afternoon, and drives by my office on his way south. While waiting for him, I’ve found somebody fluent in Spanish, and had a carefully crafted note written. It gives the correct measurements, asks for the new area code, and asks what the hell will be on the headboard. He flies through traffic, breaking all speed records, and in a mad rush, arrives just as Juan closes for the night. My hero!
He jumps out of the truck, and runs over to Juan, proudly waving the letter.
It is at this moment that we learn that Juan can’t read.
He at least understood the change in measurements, but two weeks from now, we’ll go pick up a headboard that has god knows what painstakingly carved.
And I am afraid.