Sorry for the delay. I was overcome with a case of selective writer's block!
For maritahouse---come back to us, mon ami
Hello, my name is Woody Fisher.
House cringed at the name tag. He could already visualize this man's kids getting the "swirly" in day care—and that was just after he took a good look at sperm donor number 289.
The man bouncing on his heels to his direction is short—House estimated that 289's height is five foot nothing. The height was compensated by good looks, House would give him that much, but the smile aimed at him made him feel like the little man was going to bite him any second now. Was it company policy to smile like Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective?
"Hiandgoodmorning!" the man called out with machine-gun rapidity. "Welcome to Sweeney's! In the market for a sofa? Well you've come to the right place!"
"Yeah, kinda—" House began, but the little man continued like House didn't make a peep.
"Well, you've come to the right place and to the right guy, yessiree!" he spewed—fine specks of spit were flying right out of the man's mouth—as he gestured for House to walk ahead of him. House made a big show of extracting a large handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his face to remove the spit that wasn't there. Not surprisingly, Woody Fisher didn't notice the hidden sarcasm of the gesture.
Woody led House to a handsome, chestnut-colored leather sofa.
"This, sir," Woody began in a well-practiced TV shopping network kind of voice, "just came in from the manufacturer today. Feel the leather—there ya go!—have you ever touched such buttery-soft leather? This is guaranteed to last a long, long time! You can the let kiddies of all shapes and sizes jump on it—it'll bounce 'em like they're on a trampoline, see?"
With that, the little salesman suddenly jumped on the sofa and bounced on it for half a minute. House wondered what kind of "pick-me-up" Woody took before he came in to report for work.
"I don't have kids, Noogie," House called out to the salesman.
"It's Woody, sir!" he piped back as he jumped down from the sofa. He wasn't even out of breath. "Notice that even after I jumped the hell out of it, it fluffs back to normal!"
House snorted inwardly.
"Fine, how much are you selling this overstuffed, fluffy trampoline?" House asked. He'd had enough—the annoying pitch of the little man's voice was getting on his nerves—and he popped in a couple of Vicodin to ease both his nerves and the pain in his leg.
House tilted his head back in order to swallow the pills dry. When he cocked his head back, he narrowed his blue gaze on the frozen expression on Woody's face.
"What?!" House barked irritably.
The short salesman made some circular motions in the air, as though he was trying to physically roll up some nerve out of the suffocating atmosphere of Sweeney's Upholstered Paradise. He looked at House's face, then at the bottle of Vicodin—which House pocketed back into his jacket—before lowering his gaze to House's bum leg.
"Ah—pardon me for saying this, sir, but I couldn't help noticing your leg and that you popped two pills in your mouth," Woody said softly. He just used a tone reserved by waiters in fancy restaurants when a particularly irritating patron was making a scene in the establishment.
"My, what sharp eyes you have, Doogie!" House trilled in a sharply sarcastic tone. Heads began to turn.
"Well," Woody continued, oblivious to House's sarcasm, "it seems to me like you are in need of intervention." Woody emphasized the last word by raising his hands and making the universal gesture for quotation marks.
"Doogie, it's none of your business, but I don't need intervention, I need relief from pain," House caustically replied, bending over and locking his cyan eyes with doe-brown eyes of the much shorter man. "The pills I popped are, unlike you, doing the job just fine. Thanks for nothing."
House straightened up and turned to go. He barely raised his good leg forward when the salesman suddenly grabbed him by the elbow of his jacket.
Wilson was inspecting an LG television showcase when a yowl of pain in the opposite end of the store shocked him out of his reverie. The saleswoman who stood next to him disappeared as she ran towards the source of the yelp as best as her two-inch heels were able to let her.
He turned around, looking at the direction of the commotion.
"Now what, House?" Wilson groaned.
Forty minutes later…
Wilson became the less-than proud owner of a handsome, chestnut-colored leather sofa, courtesy of Dr. Gregory House, whose silence in the entire fiasco was bought with a 75 per cent discount on the sofa's price bestowed upon him by the apologetic owner of the furniture store, Bartholomew S. Sweeney.
Wilson personally inspected the sofa's seat, making sure that the jagged, 6-inch rip on it was nicely sewn up before the moving men hauled it up into their truck.
In the background, House did his very best to look the part of the thoroughly insulted customer as Bartholomew S. Sweeney raged at his manic, obsessive-compulsive employee.
"I'M TAKING THE PRICE CUT OUT OF YOUR SALARY, FISHER!" Sweeney boomed in an impressive baritone, making Woody shake in his faux-snakeskin shoes. "THANK YOUR CRAZY VOODOO, HOODOO STARS DR. HOUSE ISN'T GOING TO SUE US FOR ATTACKING HIM!!!"
"But sir," piped Woody in a pitiful whine, "he's an addict! He needs intervention—he has to be shown that drugs are not the answer!"
House's cerulean eyes widened in pretend outrage.
"An addict—me?" he butted in with a convincing degree of outrage. "I think someone's been snorting way too much leather polish—I'm not the one who tackled a disabled customer on a product in a desperate attempt to lure him to the Dark Side!"
"It's not the Dark Side!" Woody snapped. "It's a religious organization established to help people live better lives!"
"ENOUGH!!!" Sweeney screeched.
Eventually, House and Wilson left Sweeney's Upholstered Emporium. When they reached the Corvette, House looked at his friend over the roof of the car and stared straight into the younger man's dark brown eyes.
Wilson managed to keep a straight face for about ten seconds before he finally gave in and burst into a fit of mad chuckling.
"I knew you enjoyed that," House murmured before he opened the vehicle and awkwardly let himself in.
And the next contestant is...TBC!