Your eyes do not deceive.
That is the 3.1 Phillip Lim doctor bag in blue, sitting in my apartment.
*
After finishing at Anthropologie I sat down in one of their fancy armchairs and called Jeremy’s. I hadn’t come up with a plan for how to acquire the bag. I figured I’d just confirm that it was available and figure something out on the way over. So I rang up and first asked when they closed.
– we just closed.
– Oh, well when do you open tomorrow? (as if I could go before work)
– We open at 11
– Oh, but I guess your 40% off accessories sale just ended
– Yeah, it ended today.
And so the bag was gone. Without the 40% off there was absolutely no way I could afford it. I felt like Cinderella – at the stroke of 6pm the magic disappeared and reality was laid bare.
Come Monday morning I received the usual weekly email from Jeremy’s, announcing… the extension of the sale! This was my chance! Except, I had sobered up while I slept and the next day knew that, it was not possible. In addition to “it’s not in the budget” I developed a second mantra “there will be other bags.” There will be other bags.
Wednesday evening my brother arrived in town, paying me a visit for my birthday. He had already sent me a birthday present in the mail – a Hammacher Schlemmer alarm clock that could wake you up with sounds of nature, aromatic oils, or a simulated sunrise! Before I received it he warned me that it might be something I didn’t want and that he didn’t at all mind if I wanted to return it, which turned out to be the case. Chilling out and catching up over a glass of wine at my apartment, he asked me if there was anything else I wanted for my birthday. Well, I said. There is this bag… Unfortunately it‘s $275 and so totally out of my budget, but it might be out of yours too. Well, he said. It could be a joint Christmas-birthday present.
!
I could not believe my ears. Thursday there was no time to go, so Friday was it. Somewhere in between an all day wine tasting in Napa and hosting a bake-off at my place in the evening, we made it to Jeremy’s. I was a little bit worried that it wouldn’t be there. Nearly five whole business days had passed, and certainly I wasn’t the only one who recognized the awesomeness of the bag?! But it was there. A big, blue, beacon, broadcasting its availability from behind the glass display case. I saw another customer hovering nearby and no saleslady in sight, so I mentally prepared myself to stake my claim and fight her for it if need be. But there was no need – she was actually just looking at the jewelry nearby. When she finally arrived, the saleslady cooed over the bag as she pulled it out of the display case and I was elated that it would finally be mine.
And so it was that my brother came, deus ex machina*, pleasantly shattering my reality and procuring the bag which haunted me for a week, but which I could never acquire on my own.
Deus ex machina wikipedia entry
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