Benny straightens her back and head and lifts her chin, peering off into the distance through the tiny holes behind the eyes in her costume, her stance inspired by the calendar on her kitchen wall where a clan of meerkats stand in a cluster, scanning the horizon for threats. Each slender creature would be an easy mouthful for a predator but they know that their strength lies in banding together.
When the manager at Manny’s Electronics first saw her, he said he’d never hired her type to do the job before, meaning, presumably, female or of color or both, but he said that Benny was getting the job because of her height and heft, and she has tried to make that work for her. No matter that she is cloaked in twenty-five pounds of velvet-covered foam rubber for the precise purpose of hawking electronics, even after the fuss over the printer at the call center. Anyway, it’s not that Benny doesn’t appreciate electronics, it’s just that she feels they should last much longer.
“On the lookout for bargain prices, you know?” Benny-as-Manny says to the man who has taken a pamphlet.
“Uh, okay,” the man says, and walks away, leaving a slightly woody scent in his wake. Then he stops and turns back and Benny is hopeful that he will ask more about the forty-percent-off electronics sale. She wants him to put off heading for his car, put off pressing the little button on his key that will make his car blink and chirp like a small animal, put off going home with the one small plastic bag that he is holding in his other hand. A small bag, not sacks full of groceries. Probably not a family man, Benny thinks. Possibly single.
Benny hopes the man will end up inside the store, waving the discount-price flyer, evidence that Benny, as Manny the Meerkat, has been doing a good job of luring shoppers, even though there’s talk of another recession on the way. Instead, the man frowns and says, “Shouldn’t there be, like, a bunch of you? Don’t meerkats do that thing where they all kinda huddle together?” He flexes the meat of his arms and shoulders in a way that calls to mind the curved backs of a football team, rather than the straight-necked crowding together of small, shiny-eyed animals.
Benny is beginning to feel sweaty inside the meerkat costume and she can feel her period coming on, that slight achy-flu-ey feeling. And still two hours to go. She reminds herself that each hour brings her closer to paying the month’s expenses. The money her mother left Benny in her will must go toward her business plan and nothing else.
“Oh, look, it’s Sid from Ice Age,” Benny hears a little boy say. She can feel a small hand pulling on the flank of her costume.
“That’s not Sid,” the child’s mother says. “Sid is a sloth, not a chipmunk.” The child backs away now where Benny can see him. Benny sees that the woman is more likely to be the child’s nanny than his mother. The child’s hair is so blond it’s almost white and the nanny has Byron’s complexion. Benny notices the woman has a Caribbean accent of some kind, and she is dressed flawlessly, like a plainclothes cop or one of those religious people who stand on street corners handing out booklets.
There’s a good likelihood this woman is the employee of a well-heeled television executive or lawyer or financial analyst, something like that. Someone who wires part of her earnings back to the island. After which, she still might have more money left over at the end of the month than the extra bit of cash Benny earns by doing things like dressing up like a meerkat, taking other people’s dogs for walks, and making the occasional one-of-a-kind, decorated cakes for clients who are wealthy enough and busy enough to appreciate that sort of thing.
One of Benny’s sketches might earn her more than some people get in a month, but art does not guarantee an income, while taking someone else’s dog out to pee does.
“He’s not a chipmunk,” says the man. Benny is surprised to see he’s still hanging around. “He’s a meerkat.” Benny notes the man has a lot of hair on his forearms. Practically a carpet of the stuff. Blondish-reddish. It isn’t so common these days to see that, what with everyone running off to get waxed here and there. He is as tall as she is, this red bear of a man.
“You saw meerkats at the zoo, remember?” the nanny says, touching the boy lightly on his shoulder.
“Oh, I know those,” the kid says. “They stand around in little gangs and look like this,” the boy says, doing an impressive imitation of a meerkat on the lookout. That child should have Benny’s job. The woman smiles and tousles his hair. Benny as Manny continues to extend her arm here and there, handing flyers to people who pass by and take them without looking at her.