I ordered the sofa cover as soon as we adopted our new cat, Felix.
The sofa in the little apartment my husband, Peter, and I rent in Mexico has seen better days, but we didn't want to be responsible for ushering it into an early retirement due to cat scratches. So I bought a beautiful turquoise handloomed bedspread from a woman across the street to use as a throw. And the job would have been done right then and there if I'd kept my mouth shut.
Instead, I asked the woman if she knew anyone who could hem the cover to the appropriate size, and she said she had just the man for me. Her husband told me to follow him down the street, and we stopped at a tiny grocery store and met Estefan.
Estefan is an older gentleman with a broad smile, and he was sitting at a sewing machine improbably parked in a tiny spot behind the beverage cooler. Estefan said he would be delighted to sew a sofa cover for us. He came to look at the sofa. He borrowed a tape measure from Peter, and he wrote a lot of numbers down on a pad of paper. Then he left with Peter's pen in his pocket.
A couple of days later, Estefan returned. He needed more measurements. And he returned Peter's pen. At this point, the fabric had some cuts in it, but he measured some more and left. We didn't see him for a week.
'How is the sofa cover coming?' I asked one day as he was minding the store.
'I need more measurements,' he told me in Spanish. I would have liked more details, but Estefan does not speak a word of English, and I know very few sewing terms in Spanish.
When Estefan returned, he brought two pin cushions and the cover, which now had some stitching on it. Then he began to pull out stitches and pin pieces together. I honestly could not tell what he was doing, but there were obviously some problems. Then he was gone for a long time.
'Is the sofa cover ready?' I asked.
'It is a very big job,' he told me.
Two weeks went by, and I saw him on the street.
'How is the sofa cover?' I asked.
'Oh, good, good!' In the meantime, we learned that Felix had no interest in scratching the sofa and, more surprisingly, he didn't mind having his nails trimmed with the fancy clipper I had ordered while we were waiting for Estefan.
A month passed. 'How's the sofa cover?' I asked every time I came into his store.
'It will be ready soon!'
More weeks passed, and Estefan came a couple more times. Each time, he brought the fabric and took more measurements.
'We will never see that sofa cover,' Peter predicted.
Then I got sick. One day, I felt so bad I stayed in bed, and I heard Peter talking to someone at the door. When I got up, I saw we had the sofa cover — almost two months exactly from when we ordered it. Estefan had run out of fabric for the back and sewed on some gray-and-red plaid, which showed a little. It is quirky, like the rest of the apartment, and I love it.
'You were sick!' Estefan said when I was well enough to make it back to his store. He sounded very concerned.
'I am better now,' I told him. 'And the sofa cover is fabulous!'
Estefan smiled. It was worth waiting for.
Till next time, Carrie
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