It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. I mean, the deals weren’t even all that spectacular. You see, Oprah had mentioned piano lessons as a hot gift on her list this year as part of “giving a child the gift of music.” So, just for fun, Watson and Son’s Pianos decided to have its first-ever Black Friday sale.
We had no idea the fervor that promotion would create. We only marked stuff down, like maybe one percent more than our Back-to-School Sale, and we struggled to sell two Grandies that week! In fact, we had so much downtime during that sale that Mike Jr. was sent home early – twice! Oh, God. Poor Junior. I talked to the medic and she told me he should eventually regain the feeling in his reattached fingers. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
It isn’t easy when you’re not the “Son” in Watson and Son’s Pianos. I’m not even family. So getting Big Mike to agree to do something different this year took some convincing. I promised him it would be funny. We’d write “DOORBUSTERS!” real big on the outside of the window in red paint the way car dealerships do. It would be an excuse to get out of shopping with our wives and just drink coffee and play cards.
We watched in horror through the giant O’s in that window as the parking lot filled to the brim with cars. Big Mike tried to reassure us that it was most likely just overflow for the Target next door and their 4K TV deal, but he was wrong. So, so wrong.
I admit we started to panic at this point. Junior went to check the lock on the door as Big Mike turned off the lights, but that just seemed to enrage the crowd. The line that had formed started shoving each other and pounding against the glass, smearing our paint as it covered their hands and faces. They no longer looked human. Eventually, the window couldn’t take the strain of those many upper-middle-class bodies pressed against it. I can still hear the tinkling notes of thousands of little glass shards raining down when I close my eyes. So many B sharps and C flats playing a tune off the showroom floor.
Big Mike had brought one of those portable grill thingies to make bacon so we could all have breakfast sandwiches. Big, thick apple-smoked cuts “from my guy,” he kept telling us as he cooked them up. That bacon grease seemed to float in the air in slow motion when the lady wearing the bright orange parka flipped his desk.
The sizzling pop of super-heated grease raining down on the young couple trying to take the oversized red claim tag off of the Steinway mere feet away… I may never eat meat again. I swear I tried moving to help them, but I was dropped after being hit from behind with my own ergonomic desk chair by a hulk of a man who jumped over their writhing bodies to get the claim tag for himself.
I got clear, thanks to Mike Jr. He grabbed a box of loose foot pedals and took an offensive position behind the pre-owned Clavinova, whipping them into the crowd like baseballs at anything with a head until his supply ran out. I swear the way that father-of-four hip-checked Junior to get past him, you can’t tell me he doesn’t have NHL experience! Little Mike just looked like a rag doll.
Movies and cartoons make it look really comical when someone takes a header into a piano and it closes on them, but I assure you it is not. Do you know what’s in a piano? Piano wire. The same stuff hitmen use in spy novels to cut throats in assassinations. Well, that satin walnut Kimball sure did its job on Mike Jr. And that son of a bitch music teacher had the nerve to ask if it was still available for sale after I pulled Junior out and we discovered his left ring and pinkie fingers were missing.
So, you understand why I had to clock that guy with a metronome, right? No pun intended. You just don’t say something like that while a man is severely injured. I’ll pay for his glasses, by the way.
You know the story from there since that’s when you and the rest of the cops showed up to pull Big Mike out from against the wall where the mob had him pinned with the two-seater bench. Thanks for that. So if I’m free to go, I’d like to get back inside the store and look for Junior’s wedding ring. Maybe he can at wear it around his neck for a few months until the swelling goes down.
Oh hey, really quick, Officer, before you leave could I maybe interest you in one of our “Scratch and Dent” models?
