“Could be broken,” Kevin says.
“You hold him in front of you,” the lady says, putting the frog into Kevin’s hands. He holds the frog in front of his chest.
“Is he housebroken?” Nancy asks.
“You just close your eyes, dear,” the woman says. She puts her hand behind Nancy’s head, pushes it down a little. Her other hand slips under the frog and lifts it to Nancy’s lips.
“Kiss the frog, girlie,” she says.
Nancy, her signs showing embarrassment, does so.
“Keep your eyes closed now, and raise them.”
Nancy lifts her head. I can see what’s coming, and there’s no way any advertising sequence could ever get away with this stuff.
“Okay, now look at your prince,” she says. Nancy opens her eyes and flushes a little, looking at Kevin with slight embarrassment. Kevin rolls his eyes a little, pats the woman on the shoulder.
“Very nice,” he says. He and Nancy exchange glances. Their signs show they think the woman’s a nut. But they are reluctant to just walk away.
“Um, how much is the frog?” Kevin finally asks.
“For you two, um, seven dollars.”
I could have blown them a brand new frog of high quality permanent ceramic for that much. My records show that the new price of that item was around nine dollars. But Kevin just pulls out his small-cash card and buys the frog.
They walk off the swap meet parking lot, working their way up to a spot-mat for lunch. Kevin holds the frog, shifting it from one hand to the other. Looking at the eye.
“Kind of feel sorry for that old lady,” he says.
“Why? She probably makes a fortune off people like us.”
“I think she believes her own talk now, though. Maybe she really did lose her prince,” he says.
“Maybe she loses one every week,” Nancy says, but she’s laughing now. They don’t snipe at each other for the rest of the day.
My couple lives in an apartment decorated from the Dar Saat line of knickknacks. The piece on the entertainment center was blown to meet Nancy’s need for transcendence in figures and Kevin’s appreciation of primary colors. When they get home, they look around the living room, Kevin holding the frog.
“Maybe we should just toss this,” he says.
“No, let’s try it for a while,” Nancy says. She takes the figure off the entertainment center and tosses it in the disposal. I have the coding if she wants another copy, of course.
“Cool,” he says, putting the frog on top of the entertainment center.
I let them keep the frog for a couple of days. Then, of course, I use the home-environmental spot controls to set up thermal stresses in the frog. It shatters.