This is a challenge, Joe thought. He turned the match around. They could probably lose the slogan. Fresh-dyed hosiery didn’t have the same appeal in the age of nylon. Didn’t hear a lot of women complaining about stale-dyed stockings.

Not that I’d know, he thought, but I can’t see how that would come up in conversation. Maybe after you’re married a few years. The wife’s draping stockings over the shower rod, and muttering to herself: this dye isn’t fresh at all. Another thing you never knew. The mysteries of women.

What did they do with old unsold stockings? Put them in the day-old rack?

He’d found the matchbook at his mother’s house; he’d been pawing through a drawer looking for a screwdriver – the screen door hinge had come loose from the wood, and he’d replaced it with a larger one. It would hold for a while. That he could do; replacing the frame wasn’t his line of work, and anyway it was the front door. She used the back door most of the time now, since she didn’t leave the house as much as she used to. He wasn’t sure she left the house at all.

The matchbook looked old, but she said she’d gotten it the last time she went into town. He didn’t ask when that was; if she’d said “yesterday,” she might be thinking of Yesterday, 1927. But he’d checked the book, and the store was still there. When he’d finished fixing the door he made his mother some lunch, then checked the burners and the iron and the ashtrays and left the house. He drove to Groff’s – a small shop downtown he’d never noticed before. Never been in the market, of course. You lose a foot and suddenly you discover there’s been a wooden-limb store a few blocks away all these years.

The store was empty; a thin man in his fifties, wearing a grey suit and one of those Latin-gigolo moustaches sat in a chair, reading LOOK. Four niches in the wall, each displaying a leg – each the same size, each in the same posture, each held up by a metal rod sticking into the sole. Maybe this was the wooden-limb store, too. Beneath the niches were boxes. A cash register, a door with a curtain leading to the stockroom. Why have a separate store for lady socks? The department store carried them. The shoe stores carried them. It was like a handkerchief store for men.

“Can I help you?” said the salesman. He put the magazine in his lap but didn’t rise.

Joe nodded. He introduced himself, and said “I’m from Midwest Match.”

“Oh. A salesman.” He closed the magazine. The man’s bored, Joe thought. He’ll talk to anyone. “I’m sorry, but we have matches.”

“I know.” Joe held up the one he’d fished from his mother’s drawer. “My mom gave me this. She’s a loyal customer. It’s a nice design. Good color. But I think you could do better. I wonder who I might talk to about helping you out.”

The salesman shrugged. “Talk to me.”

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Groff?”

“My name’s Cross. Mr. Groff died several years ago.”

“I’m sorry.” Mr. Cross nodded. “And you’re the owner?”

“I run the store for Mr. Groff’s heirs.”

Damn. Heirs. They wouldn’t want to spend a penny. “Do you still have the Florida branch and the factory?”

Cross shook his head. “The other stores were sold about, oh, five years ago. I don’t know if the factory’s still around, but we don’t use them. It all comes in through a silk importer and we pack them in boxes with our name on the top. We used to use tissue paper with the Groff name, but we ran out of that a few years ago and they declined to order any more.”

“The heirs.”

“The heirs.”

“So the chance they’d want new –“

“Slim to none.”

“Well, thanks for your time.”

“Not at all. They’re not exactly breaking down the door today, as you can see.” He sighed. “What do new matches cost, anyway?”

“It depends. I’ve got a price schedule right here – there’s no budget we can’t meet.”

“We might test that boast,” Cross said. “I was thinking of something modern, you know, something with a little more . . . ping. Modern colors, certainly. Modern letters.”

“I could put together a proposal,” Joe said. “No charge to you until you buy. Here –“ he pulled out the sales card and handed it to Cross.

The salesman studied the rates, thought for a moment, then said “Let’s say ten boxes. Show me what you can do. Put the store’s address somewhere, and call it Cross’s Hosiery.”

Joe nodded and took out a pad and wrote it down. “When will you be changing the store’s name?” he asked. “I can do rush if you want, but –“

“Oh, I’m not changing it.  But I’ve been here for 12 years and everyone else is gone, and I don’t think three people in Florida who sign checks and haven’t set foot here since they were children will find out, or even care.” He smiled.

“You got it,” Joe said. “I’ll see what I can do, and I’ll drop by – say, Friday?”

“Friday is good.”

Joe thanked him and left. This felt like fraud, somehow. It probably was, but what was the harm? Besides, it was his store, more or less. Twelve years. Maybe the guy came back from the war, answered an ad, and he’s been selling silk for rich ladies’ legs ever since. Not such a bad life. Especially compared to the war. Looking at women's legs all day - well, there were worse jobs.

--

This is a challenge, Joe thought. He looked at the book again, and decided to ignore everything. Maybe an abstract leg . . . no, what the hell was an abstract leg? If it looked like a leg, it wasn’t abstract, and if it was abstract it wouldn’t tell people they could buy stockings here. And you had to show the whole leg, too – a shin, a calf, a knee, a thigh, they weren’t the sort of thing you could present out of context. Toes, yes. But they were the exception. No, he had to go with the whole gam.

Bingo:

He sketched two legs, the left draped over the right. Over the legs, the slogan:

CROSS YOUR LEGS

--

He went back to the store the next day; there was a small placard in the window with a face of a clock. The hands were arranged to show that the store would reopen at four. Joe slipped the design through the mailslot, and drove back to the office, wondering how to spend the rest of the day. I should visit the boss. It’s been a couple days.

He turned towards the hospital and drove slow. It was warm for April, and he rolled the windows down. Cross your legs. The boss would love that one.

--

The order arrived by the next day’s mail. Mr. Cross bought forty boxes.