Free Interference by Michelle Berry Page B

and purses his lips. Trish notes his lips are dry, cracked, scaly. White spittle stuck in the corners. She recoils slightly.
    â€œYou don’t have to be rude.”
    â€œMe?” Trish shouts this a little. She can’t help herself. “I’m obviously busy —”
    â€œBusy hiding?”
    â€œI am obviously not wanting to be disturbed —”
    â€œYes, but —”
    â€œAnd you come pounding at my door —”
    â€œI knocked politely. I even said, ‘Knock knock.’”
    â€œTalking about my children —”
    â€œNot
your
children, just children in general. You see, they aren’t safe —”
    â€œExcuse me? Excuse me?” Trish is shrill. But this is what you get when you disturb someone after she has finally had her hour, put her mind back together, formed herself afresh. Frank often says not to mess with her before she’s had her coffee, but this, this is even worse. Trish tries to shut the door but the little man has his shiny shoe stuck in the doorway and no matter how many times she jams it with the door, he doesn’t move. In fact, he shouts, “Ouch, ouch,” but doesn’t pull his foot back. He’s a sucker for punishment.
    â€œGet your foot out of my door.”
    â€œBut I have to tell you about the children.” The little man looks down at his foot as if he’s checking to see if it’s still there. “I don’t like Mondays,” he says, as an aside.
    â€œBut it’s Tuesday.” Trish pushes a little more at the door, at his foot, but it’s wedged inside tight. He’s not moving it.
    â€œHere, just take this.” A pamphlet comes towards her. She takes it. A natural thing, she thinks later, when going over this scene in her mind. Her hand reaches out automatically. Trish figures she can take the pamphlet and shut the door and go upstairs to her sewing room and make her bears. But first she will need to give herself another hour — perhaps drink another coffee, fiddle with the curtains, maybe have some dark chocolate — in order to put her world back in order. The man looks sad, crestfallen. He looks like he’s going to cry. Trish is a sucker for criers, but this man is not melting her heart.
    â€œWhat?” Trish says. “I took your pamphlet.” She shakes it at him. “I’m not into this religious stuff. What more do you want?”
    And then he does cry. He starts to sob. His foot stuck in her door, his brown suit dull, his sad, bald little head. He sniffs loudly. “But think of the children.”
    â€œOh, for god’s sake.” And, against her better judgment, Trish opens the door a little wider.
    The man stops crying immediately and steps in, one shiny foot in front of the other.
    Sitting in the living room Trish and the little man stare each other down. Trish still has the pamphlet in her hand but she hasn’t looked at it. The whole situation is absurd. Trish has four bears to do this week and that includes delivery. One of the bear owners lives an hour’s drive away. Where will she find the time? She’s being harassed by Build-Your-Bear™ and she needs to get things done in case they come at her. She needs to get her bills settled, deliver her goods. Even before they started threatening her, there was always the worry that Build-Your-Bear™ would take her business away from her. With their fancy bear-stuffing machines and their mall location and their fake bear doctors, who are really just teenage kids wearing medical garb, pretending to fix your bear’s boo-boos. How can Trish compete against this bear extravaganza? And it might seem silly to someone on the outside looking in but, to Trish, it’s her work. It’s her sanity. It’s the only thing she has for herself.
    Trish looks at where she was hiding behind the sofa and now that she’s been up close to it, she knows exactly where the cereal/muffin