Buy!

'Buy the appliance and your life will never be the same,' the salesman said as he drove his pitch to its climax. Pretty corny. But even though the guy had a steely edge, I was hooked. 'I really do need to slice my vegetables a whole new way,' I thought, '…and two for the price of one, no less!' I looked in my wallet and found nothing but dry cleaning slips. Then I noticed it almost 5 o'clock. 'Damn, gotta go,' I sighed thinking of all the potatoes I wasn't going to crinkle cut.

I walked next to the salesman's platform on the way out and looked up at him again. There was something dark in the corner of his mouth. 'That's gross,' I thought, 'What the hell is that?'

It was blood.

Somewhere during his spiel he'd bitten his lip or burst a vein or some such. Whatever it was or however much it hurt, he didn't stop. 'This sales thing is a primal business,' I thought as I waited for the bus. I changed my mind and decided to walk by the stables on on my way to Time Square.

'That's the world, man, you gotta sell or die.'