On a street near the river there was, and sometimes still is, a haberdashery shop.
It has no online store. It's windows are dusty and remote. The door is painted a lumpy green and creaks horribly. Inside it smells like a small town grocery store, with undernotes of lilac vegetal. There's a large dull gray metal plate screwed into the middle of the tired wooden floor.
Behind the counter drifts a mustache attached to a man. He works on the mustache when no customers are around, peering intently into a mirror while trimming with small silver scissors and applying macassar oil. He wears a bright brass badge that reads: 'Cuthbert Tobble.' The man, though, has never admitted to anyone that Cuthbert Tobble is his name. He tells everyone who comes in: "Just call me Benchley."
One day a neat little man wearing rimless glasses came in to ask: "Have you cambric handkerchiefs, that have been calendered?"
"Right this way" replied Cuthbert, or Benchley.
The display case was an antique,with Russian isinglass windows. In it were bandannas, pocket squares, chamba rumbals, and plain white kerchiefs. But as the man approached the case he suddenly sprang back in revulsion.
The case was black with crawling, vibrating flies.
"I've changed my mind" the man said hoarsely, then walked swiftly out the door.
Cuthbert, or Benchley, was nonplussed. He'd never seen so much as a single fly in the store before.
He pulled out the fly swatter and went to work. But since flies have such a high flicker fusion rate, he failed in making a significant dent in their numbers.
Using a powerful electric fan, he blew the flies off the case and out a nearby window.
By then it was time to close the store.
At home he listened to the mantel clock tick until it ran down, then went to bed.
Where he wondered how Steve Harvey got to be so popular.
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