My father passed away two weeks ago today. I'm still grief-stricken, still wondering how I'll move through tomorrow. This is the first of two stories I want to post in his memory. This first one isn't about him, but I think of my dad when I greet this neighbor...

"Hello? Is this Birdie? Avon?"

He pronounced my name funny, with the accent on the second syllable. His voice was young, Spanish, nervous, almost furtive.

"Yeah? This is Birdie. May I help you?" I grabbed a pen off my desk and got ready to write.

"Um. I found your brochure?" He waited. He breathed heavily into the phone.

"Yes? Would you like to place an order?" I tried to sound helpful, motherly, wanted to guide him through the obviously uncharted rigors of ordering beauty products.

"Yes. I think so. I need to smell like a Marine."

"Well, if you want to smell like a Marine, you should probably do some jumping jacks and run a few miles!" I laughed, but the man didn't think my words were funny.

"No, that's not what I mean. I need to smell like I could be a Marine."

I recommended the Wild Country cologne spray and matching Wild Country Hair and Body Wash. He said to put him down for two of each.

I wanted to ask him, Why in the world do you want to smell like a Marine?!?!? But I wrote out his order instead, took his name and address, and told him I would deliver next week.

"I guarantee you'll smell manly and rugged, just like a Marine." I gave a delicate cough, waited for him to spill the beans, but he thanked me and hung up the phone.

My New Mexican town forgot it once breathed, once promised railroad riches and mission salvation. I peddle Avon door-to-door in my usual utility kilt and T-shirt, scuffed boots against pavement. Back in California people weren't sure whether I was poor or eccentric. They didn't know I was both. Here my outfits don't breach protocol, don't broadcast silent messages. Everyone here is poor, is colorful, eccentric, so alive.

The house across my street houses six young cowboys. They rope lead-pipe steer in the street for practice, their lean bodies framing a block fence marred with teenaged graffiti. They don't care, don't notice the spray paint. I want to offer to cover it for them, dip brush into can and send a mural of horses and antelope and deep open sky across the cement, but I'm too poor to buy the colors.

I packed Marine Man's two bottles of Avon Wild Country cologne and two tubes of Wild Country Hair and Body Wash. I stuffed a Mens Catalogue in his crisp white bag and tossed in a handful of samples. I grabbed a few extra books and samples, too, and handed them to the cowboys in the road. They tipped baseball caps, waved me goodbye as I sauntered toward my customer's home.

Marine Man lives two blocks away, in a decaying Victorian partly covered in cheap gray vinyl siding. I can see the pointed attic of his home from my bedroom window. His front yard looks like mine - lifeless, a camouflage yard of gold and brown deep in drought. I stood for a minute before I crossed the property, peered into my delivery bag to be sure it contained everything. He opened the door as I calculated and motioned me to join him on the porch. I stepped on pieces of chipped flagstone arranged in a crooked walk and met him at the stairs.

"Hey! I'm Birdie! Nice to meet ya!" I extended my hand in greeting, and he took it, shook it with strength and warmth.

The man looked much older than I expected, perhaps thirty-five, maybe forty but his voice sounded impossibly young, frozen.

"Hi. I'm Dante." He pulled a leather wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and opened it. "How much?"

I sputtered the amount and tried to think of a way to stall him, to get invited inside for a story or a snack. His hands were soft and delicate, not the hands of the local ranchers. He wore a faded navy blue polo shirt layered over a long-sleeved T-shirt. I took his money, thanked him, turned to leave, but I couldn't.

"Sorry!"

Dante looked at me with a quizzical expression. He reached one hand behind his head and scratched his coarse black hair.

"Yes?"

"Why? Dante, why? Why smell like a Marine?"

His lips turned up in smile, but my heart hurt a little to see it, a weary smile of some kind of aching regret. I cursed my big mouth.

"Nevermind, sorry! None of my beeswax!" I turned to run, wanted to jump over his house, over the two neighbors between us, fly home, sit on my stoop and watch the cowboys. But Dante cleared his throat, gave me an answer, something I didn't expect.

"It's OK. I should have expected you to wonder. I did ask you a strange question. I'm missing my father. He was a Marine. He died years ago, when I was a little kid. Died on duty. Some days I can barely remember what he looks like. I look at photographs but they don't make sense to me. It's like looking at someone else's relative. They don't look how I remember him. But I remember his smell, can't get it out of my head. I know he used Avon. Somehow that's all I have left of him. A few pictures. Knowing that he used Avon. He smelled spicy. Like a father. Like a Marine. You know?"

I nodded my head. Dante nodded, too, took his Avon memory inside his home, closed the door. His song-like accent followed me home, made me wonder why I tease my customers, let them be teased when I tell their stories. I opened a Wild Country cologne sample as I sat on my front stairs. The cowboys whooped and hollered, their tiny Latina girlfriends cheering from the back of a pickup truck. I rubbed the sample on my arm and breathed the scent into my lungs.

Birdie shares her real-life stories at Beauty Dish: True Underground Adventures of an Avon Lady