Mitchell Smith

by Daydreams

  Ellie, walking down the center aisle, paused for a moment at a stand of long tweed overcoats with wide, draped sleeves. She looked at a light gray, stroked the material, which was heavy and soft as warm water, and checked the size … price tag. It was very expensive.

  At the end of that long aisle, where a number of women stood alongside two counters of cosmetics lit from above by gold-filtered light-displaying toilet water, perfumes and lipsticks in gold containers, gold-flecked bottles, pornanders, compacts, and powders, all in boxes of gold-Ellie went down three steps to a lower level, and saw Rebecca’s display in the center of the floor.

  It was beautiful. A small carousel—a real one, turning slowly, the little horses real merry-go-round horses-and on each a perfect mannequin, a lovely woman dressed for autumn in tawny colors, thick, soft, warm fabrics in slacks and skirts, jackets and suits, boots (sheepskin, maroon leather and black), sweaters, mufflers, berets, fedoras and tarns. The mannequins were riding into the new season, gliding gently up and down as they swept slowly around through a scattering of falling leaves, each leaf red and gold and brown-these hanging on long black silk threads, blowing gently here and there as the carousel turned. Above, at the carousel’s peak, turning with it, a huge cornucopia lay on its side, spilling out more flaming leaves, great jewels of glass and gilt, small, fat pumpkins, and huge cartwheel wooden coins painted gold. A long, carved, white wooden sign hung from brass chains above the display. Rushing the Season it said, in crimson paint.

  “Not bad … ?” Rebecca said, behind her.

  “No. It’s better than not bad, Rebecca. It’s beautiful.”

  Ellie slowly turned to face her. ‘-I was looking for You-where’ve you been?” Rebecca was wearing a dark green dress. Her black hair was drawn back into a soft French knot, held with a silver clip. She wore silver earrings.

  “I had a bite in the cafeteria. -I was down in the shop all morning, and I have a feeling I’m going to be there all afternoon, too. They have a carpenter down there must be as bad at his job as Jesus. I’ve been trying to get a simple window display out of him-you know, sunny window, curtains, grass and flowers on a backboard? It’s for a kitchen faucet. You’d think I was asking the asshole to build me a house in Connecticut.” She looked over Ellie’s left shoulder at the display.

  ‘-But this thing’s pretty good.”

  “Better than good.”

  “Well … not bad, not bad. You notice I used that

  “Rushing the Season’ thing.”

  “It’s just right.

  “You see anything you’d want to wear? -You know, they just moved all this shit down here, last few weeks.

  They’re always turning the fucking store upside down.”

  “There was a nice coat back there.

  “Oh, yeah-they have some good ones. Tweed-right?”

  “A light gray .

  “Umm-hmm … but you need something with a little more color, honey.

  You’re too pale to wear light gray you’ll look like Dracula’s daughter.

  Medium gray at least.

  Go for medium. -If you fell in love back there, I’ll pick it up for you, employee price. What the hell-figure Christmas came early, . It still isn’t going to be cheap.”

  “Rebecca … I need to talk to you.”

  “O.K.-So, come on down to the shop with me. I have to get going, anyway, or he’ll make me a toilet seat instead of my window.”

  “I need to see you privately, Rebecca.”

  “We’ll be in the basement. -How private do you need?”

  They walked to the escalator, and stepped on behind a tall blond woman with three small children. The children clung to her, hung on her arms-and one of them, behind his mother’s back, kicked another in the leg.

  “There’re some things,” Rebecca said, watching, “-I don’t regret. . She cocked her head, looked sideways at Ellie. “-I’m sorry I never warmed up to that partner of yours. Is it killing you-what happened?”

  Elbe didn’t say anything.

  “O.K.-It’s killing you. I’m sorry. What was it-a friendship? Not just a partner, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I’m sorry-even though he treated me like shit, the times we met.”

  “Rebecca . . .” They stepped off the escalator, the blond woman towing her children away to the right.

  “All right, don’t be angry. I’m sorry the guy was killed.

  He was a man, anyway-not like the caterpillars around here.

  They walked back toward the next escalator through an aisle of furs.

  -Coyote, Ellie thought. The jackets were deep, frosted gray, a soft wall close on either side of them.

  Rebecca took a right turn past the jackets.

  “These coyote?”

  “Yeah,” Rebecca said. “Everybody loves wolves nobody gives a shit about coyotes. -What’s new on Sally Gaither?”

  “I just saw Susan, Rebecca.” Rebecca stepped onto the escalator, Ellie behind her. Four Indian women mothers and daughters, apparently-stood a few steps below them wrapped in brilliant silk, pearls in their ears.

  “Saris,” Rebecca said. “That’s quality clothing-not like the crap those French faggots peddle over here….

  So, what did Susan have to say for herself?”

  Ellie was tired of pretending. It seemed more and more unfair. They were slowly sinking toward the second floor-bright, light, and spacious.

  Here, below cream white walls, cream-white pillars, lay a shallow lake of woolen dresses, and polyester blends almost as fine as wool, and an acre—more than an acre-of wool slacks, designer jeans, corduroy trousers, corduroy knickers, artful windbreakers with their style names sewn across their breasts, and, here and there, bright showcases of patternknit clutches and shoulder bags, fight leather gloves, striped oolen mittens, and stands of English wool driving caps, Irish tweed hats, American watch-caps, and baseball caps in black and blue felts.

  “She’s under arrest,” Ellie said.

  “That’ll be the day.”

  :‘It is the day,” Ellie said. “I mean it.”

  “Under arrest for fucking what?” said Rebecca. ‘-You’re heading for a lawsuit for false arrest, is what it sounds like.” She looked at Ellie with black eyes bright as a crow’s. ‘-Not the Gaither thing?”

  ,That’s right. She stole some money over there. -That’s what happened to Sally. Robbed.”

  Rebecca stepped off the escalator, Ellie beside her, and they turned right, then right again, to walk toward the next escalator down-past yards of bras and panties, chemises, panty hose, and a few lacy garter belts (white, pink, and black) framing clear plastic groins on stands along the counters.

  “Bullshit!” Rebecca said after a moment, walking faster.

  You people have to be desperate … ! I thought you had some brains. I thought you were a smart cop. -Susan Margolies couldn’t kill a cockroach! -And anyway, I don’t think Sally had any money!” Rebecca stopped walking, and reached over a countertop to straighten -a bra strap on a plastic torso. “You know,” she said to the clerk, an elderly woman with an elaborately curled hairdo, “-you know, Annie, it wouldn’t break your hand to straighten UP stuff on your displays.” Annie had nothing to say, and Rebecca walked on. “Did you catch that wig?” she said.

  “That old bag has been here for forty years. And just guess who Susan’s going to blame for getting her into this? -Three guesses, first two don’t count…. Unless you’re kidding me. Because if you are, Officer, it isn’t funny.

  “I’m not kidding you,” Ellie said. They stepped onto the escalator.

  “-And I don’t think Susan killed -a Sally. I think it was you, Rebecca.”

  “I want you to tell me something,” Rebecca said. “I want you to please tell me why I should take this shit from you. -You think some lunches buy you the right to say stuff like this to me? Because if you think so, ladyyou are dead wrong.”

  They were sinking toward a world of glittering glass, the perf
ume counters reaching away before them to the distant stairs from the mezzanine down to the last department, then the doors out to Lexington.

  “You shouldn’t have lied to me about being friends with Sally. , . .

  We have a case. Solid against Susan-and I think she’ll tell us about you.”

  “Oh? -You do?” Rebecca smiled and glanced at Ellie in a friendly way.

  “Yes. -I think you stayed behind after Susan left, and YOU had Sally there, in the bedroom or the bathroom, tied up with wire hangers. You used hangers on your little boy, didn’t you? -I don’t think you could stop yourself, once you had Sally like that. Helpless. I don’t think you could stop yourself if you had anyone like that … and you must have resented her, hated her all those years … buying lunches for you … making all that money. She probably bought you a lot more lunches than I have.”

  “I’ve heard of horse-pecocky,” Rebecca said, “-but this takes the cake.”

  They stepped off the escalator together, and walked side by side along a counter of bright green glass under soft green lights.

  “I think you had some fun with her,” Ellie said, “-with the bananas. I don’t know where you got that rubber ball you gagged her with…. Maybe you’ve used something like that before, and brought it along, just in case. -Maybe Susan was lucky she got out when she did.”

  Rebecca didn’t seem very interested. She strolled along at Ellie’s side, watching the shoppers, looking over the displays.

  “You decided to put Sally on the chair under the shower after a while, after you’d had some fun. I suppose you “knew she’d call the police, then. It had gone too far.

  “Don’t use any of this stuff. Rebecca indicated the ranks of green glass, their contained scents, deodorants, and sprays. ‘-It smells exactly, but exactly, like a wet dog. -And that’s a good one, by the way, that ‘fun with bananas’ bit. You’re the dyke, honey, not me. Did you think you were fooling anybody all this time?” sure as hell hope you don’t think you were fooling anybody.

  Susan called me when you first went over there. ‘Your pretty friend must have had her head in it last night, Rebecca. . . .” She smelled that other perfume all over you.” Rebecca stuck her tongue out and wiggled it.

  ,-Who’s the lucky girl?”

  “You wiped everything down very well,” Ellie said.

  “But you missed one of Susan’s prints in the bathroom. -The toilet handle. She was nervous, I suppose, and had to pee. And you wound up with at least sixty thousand dollars in your purse. Hundred-dollar bills and thousand-dollar bills. I’d guess you divided the cash right there, before Susan left. I don’t think you trusted each other. . . .”

  They were passing the Chanel counters, then. White boxes, white-gold perfume in clear square-cut glass, white powder in boxes with white-gold accents.

  “Quality tells,” Rebecca said, and nodded her approval of these displays. “That old bag knew her business. -I met her, you know. She came here on a trip a long time ago. Little ugly wrinkled old lady. I mean tiny.

  I was a kid-what the hell did I know? I thought I was shaking hands with God. -You know, honey, I can understand you’re all excited, you think you -made your case and so forth. People are strange … people are odd.

  Here I am, you’re calling me a killer, you’re all set to arrest me and everything-and I’m sorry to have to pop your balloon. Isn’t that weird?

  You tell me people aren’t weird. -You remember Evening In Paris?”

  “Yes,” Ellie said. “-My mother said that was her first perfume.

  “I used to buy that in the drugstore when I was a little, little kid.

  Midnight-blue bottle with a tassel. -And not bad, either. Better than some of this shit a hundred times the price. -And I want to say something else to you, too.

  I shouldn’t have made that remark about you being a dyke. Somebody gets lonely enough, they’ll fuck a card table.” She cocked her head, stared at Ellie with polished black eyes, the left pupil showing a tiny wedge of yellow.

  “-You forgive me

  “Yes.”

  “O.K. -Look at that. Poursuivre. They try to make the bottles look like dicks. . . . Well, what I was going to say is that poor Susan’s got Alzheimer’s. -Didn’t you notice? Poor lady. She doesn’t have many patients left-a few old-timers. -Their names, she can remember. Now, if this ever does get serious-if you really want to make a fool of yourself-I have to tell you that by the time my lawyer lets this get to trial-months, at least-poor Susan won’t even know her fingers from her toes. She got the diagnosis at St. Luke’s beginning of the year.

  Rebecca stopped walking, stepped into a small-alcove beside the Lanvin display, a counter away from the mezzanine stairs, and looked into Ellie’s face, smiling. “I don’t want to embarrass you,” she said.

  “-And, as far as Sally Gaither goes-O.K., I knew her. She let me hang around the same way you let me hang around. She was a very selfish person. -You know what her idea of a loan was? -Five hundred bucks.

  She thought that was a big deal, five hundred bucks sometimes. You know the most money she ever gave me? I’ll tell you. Seven hundred and fifty to have some penodontal. That’s exactly three fucks. Four fucks, tops. Big deal-right?”

  “I’m arresting you, Rebecca,” Ellie said. “-I’m going to read you your rights.” She looked for the card in her purse.

  “Will you cut this shit out? I told you-you don’t have a case!”

  “I think I’ll have the money, Rebecca. You have those hundred-dollar bills. The thousands. And you know something? -You did a great job wiping Sally’s apartment, but I’ll bet you never thought to wipe the money … every single bill, front and back. If you didn’t, Ws got Sally’s prints all over it. -I think I’ll have that money.

  It wasn’t in your locker-“

  “Great-it wasn’t in my locker .

  “You’re too smart to put it in a bank-“

  “I’m too smart to put it in a bank , . .”

  “And you wouldn’t leave it in your apartment. You know we’d search it.”

  “Oh, right. That’s absolutely right.”

  “-And I don’t think you have a friend, Rebecca, that you could trust with sixty thousand dollars.”

  Rebecca laughed. ‘-Except for you,” she said. “Otherwise, you got that one right.”

  “It’s in the store. -You hid it here.”

  “Find it, then,” Rebecca said, “-or kiss my ass.”

  Ellie got out her Miranda card, and read Rebecca her rights, keeping her voice down. Rebecca listened, nodding. When Ellie was finished, she put the card away and took Rebecca by the arm.

  “Come on-we’ll go out the front.”

  Rebecca pulled her arm away.

  “Don’t cause trouble in here, now, Rebecca. Ellie took her arm again.

  “Let go of me,” Rebecca said. “-Just don’t put your hand on me and you’ll be all right.” She reached up and pulled Ellie’s hand away.

  “Don’t make me cuff you.”

  “Try it, and watch what happens.”

  Two women standing by the’ Lanvin counter were looking at them.

  Ellie opened her purse, reached in for her cuffs, and Rebecca hit her in the face-then shoved her, hard, with both hands. Ellie stumbled back, her left shoe came off, and she fell down on one knee against the opposite counter, knocked a quart bottle of perfume off the countertop and broke it. -She kept her hand on the cuffs, and pulled them out of the purse.

  Rebecca was shouting, “-You don’t know who you’re dealing with!-You don’t know who you’re dealing with … P She lifted up a small decorative lamp from the Lanvin counter, raised it high over her head, and smashed it down into the glass countertop. A woman screamed softly, almost in inquiry, at the end of the aisle.

  Ellie got up, pulled off her other shoe, and went for Rebecca barefoot, the cuffs clutched in her right handgot a grip on Rebecca’s dress with her left hand and tried to hold her, but Rebecca kicked out at her and hurt her hi
p-kicked again as Ellie tried to get close-fished down into the broken glass of the countertop until she found what she wanted, and turned to face Ellie with a footlong splinter of break-frosted glass gripped in both hands.

  Her fingers were running red.

  “-You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” she said, not shouting any longer, and came at Ellie fast, hacking at her face, grunting with effort as she swung.

  Ellie ducked down and put up her left arm, embarrassed by what was happening, and Rebecca struck down with the glass and Ellie felt a sudden slicing intimacy, that realest thing of all, as she was cut. Now she wished she had the purse and gun, and as Rebecca came at her again, imagined the woman failing, shot to pieces.

  Rebecca was making an odd face, as if she could barely keep from laughing-as if this was a joke, and ske didn’t 7 realize she’d cut Ellie on the arm, was going to carve her face if she kept on. She rushed in and swung twice, hard as she could, and Ellie jumped back each time-falling to all fours, the last-then scrambling up to back away some more, into a chorus of screams (now rich, full-throated), the bright silver sounds of breaking glass as displays toppled over.

  Women shoppers stampeded away as Ellie staggered, holding up her arm so that Rebecca would cut that again instead of slashing her face wide open so her teeth showed through a split, spurting cheek. Trapped behind their counters, the clerks stood still, eyes wide as painted dolls’, mouths wider still, adding their sopranos to all the others.

  Rebecca, hunched, stalking over smashed glass through fumes of many gardens, face red from not laughing, hands dripping bright drizzle on the moss-green carpet, came more slowly, tired of trying for the face-and, grunting with effort, swung her long, lovely glass knife around and up to get it into Ellie’s stomach.

  Ellie jumped just barely aside, and hit Rebecca with the handcuffs.

  -Then, it having felt so right to have done that, clenched her fist still harder through the double steel bracelet, drew back her arm, and hit Rebecca in the mouth, just as hard as she could.