by Elaine Viets
Helen didn’t have a phone in Lauderdale. She didn’t want to be traced. She’d bought this one in Kansas City and mailed her sister Kathy a thousand dollars to pay the monthly phone bills. Helen hoped that would cover them for a long time. If anyone found out about the phone, it was registered to a false name and purchased in Kansas. She hoped that would be enough to confuse any pursuers.
Helen braced herself, and dialed her mother’s number in St. Louis. “I will not get angry,” she told herself. “I will not shout. Mom belongs to a different generation. She doesn’t understand.”
“Hello, Mom,” she said. Her mother burst into tears. Actually, it was more like a whining wail. It always set Helen’s teeth on edge.
The phone call went exactly as Helen expected. Her mother cried and begged Helen to come home and be a good wife to her bad husband. “Think of your immortal soul,” her mother sobbed. “The Pope says divorce is wrong.”
“So let the Pope live with him,” Helen said, then regretted her outburst. She had hurt her mother’s feelings again.
“We could get a lawyer and work out the other problem, Helen honey, if you’d just get back with your husband.”
The other problem. Helen could not talk about that. She brought out the piece of pink cellophane. It was her escape. She crinkled the cellophane and said, “What’s that, Mom? I can’t hear you. I have to go now. You’re breaking up. I’ll call again on your birthday. Bye, Mom.”
Helen hung up the phone. The short conversation left her emotionally drained, as tired as if she’d been digging ditches. At least the call to her sister would be easier. Kathy was the only person from her old life who knew where Helen was and how to reach her in an emergency.
Kathy lived in the near-perfect St. Louis suburb of Webster Groves. She and Tom had a new baby, Allison, and ten-year-old Tommy Junior. They also had a big old house that needed paint and new plumbing. Tom’s salary was frozen at 1999 levels, and Kathy worked part-time as a checker at Target. But she rarely talked about their money problems.
“Helen, you sound tired,” Kathy said, when she answered the phone.
“I’ve been talking to Mom,” Helen said.
“Was it awful?”
“No worse than usual.”
“Seriously, Sis, how are you doing?” Kathy asked.
“I’m fine. I like my new life. I like the weather here. I wasted too much time sitting inside in the St. Louis winters. I hate winter. I feel like I got half my life back.”
Helen realized, once she said it, that it was true. If she could just find another job and figure out what to do about Christina, her new life would be good. She didn’t miss her old life or her old job. Only her old paycheck.
“You know if you’re ever in trouble, you can call me,” Kathy said. “I’ll send you money or come get you. I’ll hire a lawyer. I’ll post bail if you’re arrested. Whatever you want.”
“I know,” Helen said. She also knew she’d never call her sister for help. Kathy had enough problems with her active family.
They spent the rest of the time talking about Tom and the kids. Good things. Everyday things. And if Helen were truly honest, things she never wanted.
“That’s the baby crying. I’ve got to run. Good night, Sis. I love you,” Kathy said.
“I love you, too,” Helen said, feeling better, and lonelier, too. She switched off the phone and buried it in the suitcase.
Chapter 13
Helen made her first executive decision at 10:02 Wednesday morning. She was in charge at Juliana’s. She had the power to keep out any woman in the world. The more she refused, the more she built the store’s reputation.
The doorbell chimed. Tara said, “I’m not sure we should let this woman in.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Helen said.
“She’s wearing cheap shoes,” Tara said. She sounded as if they were contagious. Helen looked. The woman was dressed in real Gucci, but her shoes were third-rate Prada knockoffs.
“Let her in,” Helen ruled. It felt good to say that.
“But Christina never lets in anyone with cheap shoes.”
“Christina isn’t here,” Helen said. “I’m manager this week.” She buzzed in the woman, to Tara’s silent disapproval. Helen felt triumphant when Ms. Cheap Shoes bought an expensive dress.
There was no question about admitting the next woman. She was a professional beauty with artfully tossed long hair. She had dark hypnotic eyes in a pale heart-shaped face. Her white silk shirt looked casual in the way only thousand-dollar shirts can. Her jeans fit like a second skin. Her white calfskin boots made her legs look even longer and slimmer.
“She’s gorgeous,” Helen said.
“Her name is Sharmayne. She used to be a model,” Tara said. “She is Christina’s only failure.”
Before Tara could explain, Sharmayne strode in with that look-at-me model’s walk and demanded, “Where’s Christina?”
“She’s on vacation,” Helen said.
“Then you’ll have to do,” she said, imperiously.
Sharmayne pointed to the shirts, skirts, tops, and dresses she wanted to try on. Tara and Helen staggered back to the dressing room under loads of clothes. Five minutes later, Sharmayne stuck her head out the door. “There’s no belt on the bottle-green D&G,” she said.
“I’ll get it,” Helen said. She found the belt in the stockroom, knocked once on Sharmayne’s door, and opened it. The former model was sitting naked in the silk chair. Helen froze. She had her first female flasher.
Christina had warned her about them. Catching sight of bare breasts and buns was an occupational hazard for the sales associates at Juliana’s. The customers had beautiful bodies, and they were used to exhibiting them. Tan lines were rare. Most women didn’t cover up when Helen brought in more clothes, even though she always knocked on the door and waited for them to say, “Come in.” But there was a kind of naivete to their nudity.
A female flasher didn’t show off her perfect breasts or trim thighs. She’d sit in the silk chair with her legs spread like a Hustler centerfold, daring the salesperson to stare.
Helen had asked Christina if these flashers were lesbians. “It’s not about sex. It’s about power,” Christina told her. “Flasher women are treating you like a servant, a nothing. They know you can’t complain. Do you think Mr. Roget cares if a clerk is harassed by a big spender?”
“So what do I do if I get one?” Helen had asked.
“Pretend she’s dressed. It pisses her off.”
Helen steeled herself for her first confrontation with a female flasher. Sharmayne is dressed, she told herself. She’s dressed in a jumpsuit. She’s . . . not sitting quite like a flasher. Her legs are closed. And what’s on her thighs? Some kind of weird stocking?
Helen couldn’t stop herself. She stared at Sharmayne’s thighs. They were ruined by rippling trenches and craters. The skin over the indentations sagged like an old woman’s. Worse, it was flaky-dry and blotchy.
A botched liposuction. Helen had seen those telltale ripple scars before, but never this bad.
“A former model,” Tara had called Sharmayne. With those scars, she was banished from the catwalk forever. She could never do anything but the dreariest catalog and department store work. When she saw the pity in Helen’s face, she turned defiant. “Admiring your boss’s handiwork?” she said.
Helen was speechless.
“Christina recommended the doctor for this liposuction. Said he never made a mistake. Except that day, he did. Turned out the good doctor had a little alcohol and pill problem. I was his wake-up call. He got treatment, and he settled out of court. I had to promise to never mention his name, but thanks to my lawyer, I can afford to shop here for the rest of my life.”
Helen could tell that wasn’t enough. Sharmayne fed on admiration. Once anyone saw her scars, it was gone. She was a starving rich woman.
“I make Christina wait on me,” she said. “Just to remind her. I don’t think I want anything today.�
�
Helen closed the dressing room door.
It took Helen and Tara half an hour to hang up all Sharmayne’s clothes. Tara was no bigger than a twelve-year-old girl, but she worked like a dockhand, hauling the heaviest loads. She had quit flipping and touching her long hair. She was too busy.
Tara knew how to sell clothes to Juliana’s customers, perhaps because she dressed like them. Helen would never have dared wear those snakeskin low-rise jeans or the matching top that bared her midsection. Helen would look like a hooker. Tara looked cute.
Tara admitted the sales job was harder than it looked. “I’m so tired at night I fall straight into bed, and Paulie has to massage my feet.” She held up one platformed foot with its shell-pink nails.
Then Tara picked up another blouse and buttoned it on a padded hanger. “Helen, when I’m a regular customer again, I promise I will put everything back on the hangers.”
In the quiet times between customers, Helen and Tara talked. Tara had been a Juliana’s regular for six years. She knew everything about everyone, even where Brittney got her endless supply of money.
“That’s such a sad story,” Tara said. She leaned forward, her long hair forming a dark veil. “She was engaged to this rich millionaire named Steve. . . .”
In Lauderdale, there were poor millionaires, who were mortgaged to the hilt, and those who were solvent. They were the rich millionaires.
“Brittney was supposed to marry Steve. She really loved him. They were going to be married at the Biltmore. A big wedding with a sit-down dinner. We were all invited. I had the cutest hot pink dress with these little spaghetti straps. I couldn’t bring myself to wear it after what happened.”
Tara looked sad, but Helen didn’t know if it was because of Brittney’s tragic loss or her own.
“What happened?” Helen prompted.
“Steve committed suicide right before the wedding. No one knew why. Brittney said that he’d been really down, but Steve would not tell her what was wrong. He didn’t leave a suicide note. He’d been drinking more than usual. They found his body in a canal near the Seventeenth Street Bridge. He left Brittney everything in his will: a two-million-dollar house in Bridge Harbour, stocks, bonds, and a lot of money.”
“If she has lots of money, why did she date a mobster like Vinnie?” Helen said.
Tara looked surprised that Helen would ask. “You have to have a boyfriend,” she said.
“What about the Golden Beach guy?” Helen said, remembering Brittney’s timely thank-you gift to Christina.
“Brittney didn’t fit in with his stuffy old friends,” Tara said. “His wife made a terrible fuss. Most wives know their husbands date, and they’re grateful they don’t have to . . . you know . . . but not this one.”
Helen knew, but she was still amazed by Tara’s priggishness. She couldn’t even bring herself to say something like “sleep with their husbands.”
Helen also noticed that Brittney’s Golden Beach boyfriend was married, and so was her mobster, Vinnie. Brittney liked other women’s men.
Helen enjoyed Tara’s stories. They made Juliana’s sound like a soap opera. This week was almost like a vacation for her, too. Helen could not forget Christina’s skimming, drug dealing, maybe even murder for hire. She’d closed her eyes to that once before, and now Desiree Easlee was dead. But she had only two days before Christine returned. She had to face that ugly reality.
When Helen came back from lunch, she found Tara staring at herself in the triple mirror.
“I need to perk up my tits,” Tara said. Her breasts looked plenty perky to Helen, and she said so.
“Do you really think so? I think they are a little droopy. Paulie has a plastic surgeon friend who says he’ll work on me for free. He wouldn’t make me any bigger, just put a little on top to tip them up again.”
“Tara, you’re perfect,” Helen said. “You saw what happened to Sharmayne. Why would you do that to yourself?”
Tara shrugged. “Everyone gets boob jobs. They’re like a visit to the gynecologist or something. Besides, I don’t want to lose Paulie.”
“Paulie is crazy about you,” Helen said. “And even if you did lose him, which you wouldn’t, there are other men.”
Helen didn’t add “other better men, who don’t talk about your breasts and buns in public,” but Tara heard her unspoken words.
“You think Paulie’s kinda crude, don’t you?”
Helen hesitated, choosing her words carefully. She waited too long. Tara said, “I’m running out of options, Helen. I got refused at a South Beach club. That’s never happened.”
“What do you mean, refused?” Helen said.
“I had to wait in line with the tourists and the nobodies, with the people saying, ‘I’m the owner’s personal trainer.’ ‘I’m his photographer.’ It was humiliating.
“I always get in. I wear the right clothes. I never wear cheap shoes. This time, the bouncers made me wait. That’s never happened before. Not in New York or LA. But it happened in South Beach. I’m losing it, Helen. I have to hang onto Paulie. He has money, and he cares about me.”
“Do you care about him?” Helen said.
“I care about surviving,” Tara said.
Helen felt sorry for Tara. That’s what all this high-risk surgery and dieting was about. Survival. Tara felt she only had one commodity to offer, her looks, and she feared they were fading.
“I came so close to making it,” she told Helen. “So close I could almost touch it. Then it all slipped away. It was because of September eleventh. I never told you what September eleventh did to me. I lost so much. I cried and cried until I couldn’t cry any more.”
“Did you lose family members or friends?” Helen said.
“Worse. It was personal,” Tara said. “Paulie and I were supposed to stay with this movie producer in LA. He was giving a big party with movie stars and everything. Then the attacks happened, and we couldn’t go. All the flights to LA were canceled for days. The producer was supposed to give me an audition. Paulie was going to put up some money for his movie.”
Helen thought she was missing some connection here. Why didn’t Tara fly out later for the audition? “Was the producer on one of the hijacked planes? Or was he killed some other way?” she said.
“At the box office,” Tara said. “His film had just been released. It was about these terrorists who attack New York, but they used old-fashioned bombs and stuff, and nobody wanted to watch it. He lost all his money. Nobody wanted to see that movie, even on cable. My one big chance, ruined by a bunch of Arabs. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.”
“You must be scarred for life,” Helen said.
Tara missed the sarcasm. She was back in front of the triple mirror.
“Maybe it’s this top,” she said. “It’s heinous. It makes me look fat. Do you think it makes me look fat? Paulie bought it for my birthday. The pants fit like a dream, but the minute I put on the top, I thought, ‘This makes me look fat.’ ”
“You don’t look fat,” Helen said. “What do you weigh? Ninety-eight pounds?”
“Ninety-six,” Tara said. “See? I am fat. I’ve gained two pounds. You can see it, too.”
“Tara, I never said that.”
But Tara would not be consoled. She was getting on Helen’s nerves. Helen wished there were customers to distract them. It was five-forty-five, and a last-minute rush was unlikely.
Even Tara could see that Helen was eager to leave Juliana’s. “You go ahead,” Tara said. “I’ll lock up.” Helen left gratefully, never dreaming what would happen next.
Chapter 14
“This wine is not bad,” Peggy the parrot lady said. “What month is it?”
Peggy and Helen were out by the pool after work, sipping wine and slapping mosquitoes. The sort of wine they could afford did not have a vintage year.
“Not sure,” said Helen. “I got it in a box at the drug store. I think it has an expiration date, though.”
Pete the parr
ot had his usual perch on Peggy’s shoulder. Helen reached out to pet Pete’s soft feathers with one finger, and he nuzzled her.
“He’s a love bird,” Helen said.
“Speaking of love, there he is,” Peggy said. “Wouldn’t you love to go out with the divine Daniel?”
Daniel Dayson looked even better the second time around. He seemed built on a different scale from ordinary men. His legs were strong as cypress trees. His arms were ropes of muscle. His long black hair rippled past his broad shoulders. Helen did not want to run her fingers through his hair. She wanted to grab it and hold on tight while he . . .
“Hello, Helen,” Daniel said. His dark blue eyes seemed to bore holes into her. She could feel her will power slowly leaking away.
“Hi,” Helen said. It was the most coherent thing she’d managed to say to Daniel since he’d moved in. What was the matter with her? She was too old to be acting this way.
“Would you like a glass of wine, Daniel?” Peggy said. “It’s a fresh box.”
“No, thanks, Peggy. Some other time I’d love to, but I have a date.” Daniel waved good-bye and walked back to his room. Helen watched his massive glutes move under the thin red fabric of his tiny gym shorts.
“He has a date every night,” Peggy said. “Same lucky girl. They usually wind up in his room. I should know. I live right next to him. I never hear a sound except his bedsprings—and the moans. My lord, the way that woman carries on. He leaves a satisfied customer.”
“Is that why you offered him a fresh box?” Helen said.
“Helen!” Peggy said.
Peggy and Helen started giggling and couldn’t stop. They were laughing so hard, they didn’t hear Cal come up behind them. It was the first time Helen had seen him since the disastrous Catfish Dewey’s date. Now Helen wondered what she could have seen in Cal. He seemed old and wizened, compared to the magnificent Daniel. She’d never noticed before that Cal’s chest was narrow. His legs, which she’d once admired, now seemed too skinny. And was he getting a bit of a dowager’s hump at his neck—or a permanent slouch?
“I was in the laundry room. Your boyfriend’s laundry is done, girls,” Cal said, nastily. “Who wants to fold his underwear?”