Morris Sees a Furrier: A Love Story

Morris Pete earned ten dollars an hour to wave a flag. While the other guys worked on one side of a blocked city road, he stood on the hashed yellow line, telling oncoming drivers when they could go and when they had to stop. He even had a bright orange sign that said stop, if he chose to use it. Most of the time he used the flag. It didn’t weigh as much.

Because he controlled drivers’ destinies with signs and flags, he was subjected to the finest behavior of Dirtbound, Louisiana, residents. He was pelted with paper cups, quashed cigarette butts, crumpled napkins, loogies, and chewing gum. Strangers yelled “Asshole!” from their open windows at least once a day and at least three times a day, someone gave him the finger.

“Some astronaut,” he’d mutter to himself, because as a kid, that’s what he wanted to be when he grew up.

Every two weeks, Morris brought his check to the First National Bank. He deposited most of it into a checking account he shared with his wife Carla, but he put fifteen bucks aside religiously for a second account that she didn’t know about—one that he’d opened on February 5, 1999, and called “The Pink Panther.” The account remained untouched until January 22, 2007, when Morris depleted the funds, stuffed the wad of cash into his pocket, and drove to Houston for an appointment with a furrier.

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Carla Pete loved Peter Sellers. Had she not married Morris, she would have married Peter. That’s what she thinks, anyway, but she doesn’t really believe it, since Peter was a Hollywood star and she was a barren cocktail waitress. Where she came from, folks went mud-riding and had beer guts that bellowed over their waistbands. When she thought about Dirtbound, she thought: It ain’t Hollywood.

Carla first fell in love with Peter Sellers because of the Pink Panther movies. The inspector made her laugh, and laughing, unlike most things, made her happy.

When she saw The Pink Panther Strikes Again in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart on February 4, 1999, she took it home and watched it with Morris because he’d never seen a Pink Panther movie. He’d never seen many movies at all, actually.

Carla didn’t just love Peter Sellers. She also loved his co-star Lesley-Anne Downe. Not in that way, of course, but in the way that Lesley-Anne represented the complete opposite of Carla. Lesley-Anne was sexy, with delicate movements, while Carla spent her days reaching over dirty plates to refill sugar shakers.

When Lesley-Anne Downe slipped out of her bed in the nude and put on a long fur coat to have a smoke, Carla sighed, turned to Morris, and said, “I’ll never have a coat like that, will I?” Because she knew she was nothing but a waitress and her husband was nothing but a flag-waver.