Kitabı oku: «Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes», sayfa 3

“How much?” I blurted out.

“Yes,” Elizabeth Hepburn piped up. “How much for all of these? It looks like you’ll be making at least three sales today.”

The salesgirl very coolly named prices for the Fayre that Elizabeth Hepburn had loved so much, the Parson Flat that Hillary coveted, my own beloved Ghost.

“Huh?” was all I could say, as the sticker shock of fourteen hundred dollars before tax sank in. Really, the tax probably came to more than I’d ever spent on a single pair of shoes before.

I suppose I must have realized in advance that the shoes would be expensive, but it had never occurred to me that for a few straps of leather and some fake jewels…

Elizabeth Hepburn and Hillary already had their credit cards out.

“Sure, it’s a lot of money—” Elizabeth Hepburn shrugged “—but I’ve got it. What else am I going to spend it on?”

“I’ll never find shoes that are more perfect for me,” Hillary agreed.

Easy to say, since the shoes they coveted cost less than mine. Hell, the ones Hillary wanted rang in at a measly six hundred and thirty dollars in comparison.

Reluctantly, I undid the straps and gave up the Ghost, handing them back to the salesgirl, who looked shocked.

“But you must buy these shoes,” she said, trying to hand them back to me.

“But I can’t buy those shoes,” I said, taking a defensive step back, hands up as though to ward off a vampire.

“Why ever not?” Elizabeth Hepburn asked. “Don’t you have a credit card?”

“Oh, she has a credit card,” Hillary said. Apparently, I was back to being “she” again. “But she never lets herself use it. I guess she must realize, with her obsessive nature, she’d charge herself into bankruptcy if she ever got started.”

“So what are you going to do,” Elizabeth Hepburn asked, “come back another day with cash? But what if they’re sold out?”

“You don’t happen to have layaway, do you?” Hillary turned to the salesgirl who sadly shook her head.

“I don’t have that kind of money saved anyway,” I said.

“How is that possible?” Elizabeth Hepburn asked.

“Hey, you met me when I was washing your windows, remember?” I said. “Hand-to-mouth is my way of life.”

Elizabeth Hepburn didn’t even need to think about that for a second.

“Oh, hell, Delilah,” she said, sympathy crinkling her blue eyes, “I’ll buy you the shoes.”

“No,” I said.

“Why ‘no’? I already said, I have all this money. What else am I going to use it for—monthly window washing? Leave it all to my housekeeper, Lottie, who awaits her inheritance upon my death like John Carradine playing Dracula waiting for an unbitten neck?”

“No,” I said, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “I can’t accept charity. I won’t. If I want the shoes badly enough, and I do, I’ll find a way to earn the money on my own.”

“But what if they’re not here in your size when you get back?”

“I’ll just have to take that chance.”

She must have seen that the window washer meant business because she stopped arguing.

And then she put her Jimmy Choos back.

And so did Hillary.

“Wait a second,” I protested. “Just because I can’t afford mine, doesn’t mean you have to put—”

“Oh, yes, we do,” Elizabeth Hepburn spoke with her own brand of firmness. “If you can’t get what you came for, none of us can. One for all and all for one and all that other crap Errol Flynn used to say to me.”

“Exactly,” Hillary said.

“But what if the shoes you love aren’t here in your sizes by the time I can afford to come back?” I asked.

“That’s just the chance we’ll have to take,” Elizabeth Hepburn said.

“Exactly,” Hillary said.

Lord, what fools these mortals be.

“But, Delilah?” Hillary added.

“Hmm?”

“Try to come up with a way to make the money quickly. I want those damn shoes.”

5

“No.”

“But, Dad.”

“I said no, Baby. I’m pretty sure you’re still smart enough to understand both sides of no. There’s the n and there’s the o. What’s so difficult here?”

My dad had always called me Baby, for as long back as I could remember. It was my mother, whose own name was Lila, who’d named me.

“I’m Lila,” she’d say, “you’re Delilah. It’s like Spanish. It means ‘of Lila.’”

“There’s just one problem,” I’d say right back. “We’re not Spanish. Okay, two problems. There’s that extra h at the end, which your name doesn’t have, so technically speaking—”

“Just eat your Cocoa Krispies.” She’d always cut me off right there.

My dad always claimed he called me Baby because he couldn’t stand the name Delilah. Of course, totally besotted with my mother and therefore never wanting to hurt her, despite the numerous times he’d hurt her, he only claimed that outside of my mother’s hearing.

“Do you know whom she named you after, Baby?” he’d ask, as if he hadn’t asked me the same question at least a hundred times. “She named you after the girl in that Tom Jones song! Your mother was a huge Tom Jones fan! I swear, if I hadn’t been sitting right there beside her at his concerts, she’d have thrown up her panties right there on the stage. What, I ask you, kind of name is that to give to a baby? Delilah in the song drives her man crazy, then she cheats on him, and then she gets killed for it.”

“But, Dad,” I tried again now.

“No, Baby. If I taught you how to play blackjack, Lila would roll over in her grave, and then where would I be?”

“Where you are right now,” I could have answered, “alone.”

Where my dad was right now, physically speaking, was a one-bedroom apartment in a section of Danbury just a cut above where Conchita and Rivera lived. As a professional gambler, Black Jack Sampson had enjoyed his good years (we’d once lived in a five-bedroom house even though we’d only needed two of them) and his bad years (like the last one). And, if we’re being totally honest here, he was right: my mother wouldn’t approve of his teaching me how to play blackjack. But, oh, did I want those Jimmy Choos…

“Your mother might even come back to life just to kill me if I taught you how to play blackjack,” he said.

He was probably right about that, too.

I studied my dad, a man whose personality was too big to be contained by his present tiny circumstances.

Black Jack Sampson had just turned seventy but had only just begun to look even close to sixty, his neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper hair and mustache, tall frame and lean body, combined with the fact that he always wore a suit even in summer, making him look more like he belonged on a riverboat in the middle of an Elvis Presley movie rather than with the polyester bus crew going off to play the slots at Atlantic City. Black Jack had met my mother, a schoolteacher who loved her work almost as much as she loved him, at a voting rights rally back in 1965—Lila was rallying while Black Jack made book on the side on whether the act would pass—and it had been love at first sight. He was thirty at the time and she was twenty-eight, but it had been twelve long infertile years before they’d been able to conceive a baby, me, hence the huge age difference between me and my parents, and there had been no more babies afterward, try as they might. True, these days having first-time parents in their forties wasn’t a rarity, but, when I was little, my mother looked more like a grandmother by comparison to my friends’ mothers.

Not that I’d minded.

Growing up, I thought my mother was the greatest lady who ever lived, a belief I’d maintained until the day she’d died ten years ago. And my mother, in turn, had thought my dad was the greatest man who’d ever lived…except for his gambling.

“Blackjack killed your mother,” he said.

We’d had this conversation enough times over the years for me to know he wasn’t referring to himself when he said, “Blackjack killed your mother;” he was referring to the card game.

“Blackjack did not kill Mom,” I said.

How I missed my mother! She was the steady parent, the one who didn’t suffer obsessions that worked against her. In her absence, I’d become Daddy’s Girl. But what a daddy! From my dad, I’d learned to be the kind of woman who could sit with men while they watched sporting events but nothing about what it was like to be the kind of woman men would want to do more romantic things with. I’m not complaining here, by the way, just stating.

“Blackjack did not kill Mom,” I said again. “Mom died of cancer.”

“Same difference,” he sniffed.

“Not really.”

“There was a time, when you were just a little baby, Baby, that I dreamed of you growing up to one day follow in my footsteps.”

I had a mental flash of a younger version of my dad, holding baby me in his arms and crooning, “Lullaby, and good night, when the dealer has busted…”

“We would have made quite a team,” I said. “And we still could,” I added, thinking about what becoming great at blackjack could achieve for me: a pair of Jimmy Choos.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “I promised your mom right before she died that I’d make sure you lived a better life than we’d lived, one free of the addictions that had destroyed the two of us.”

Clearly, the man didn’t know his own daughter. Me, free of addictions? Some days, I thought I’d never be free of them.

“Mom was an addict, too?” I was shocked. “What was Mom addicted to?”

He studied his wing tips, his cheeks coloring a bit.

“Me,” he answered. “Lila was addicted to me.”

“That’s not true, Dad. She wasn’t addicted. She just plain loved you.”

“Same difference.” He straightened his shoulders. “And she’d hate it if I passed the blackjack compulsion on to you.”

I thought he was making too much of this. My parents had had a happy marriage. I knew they’d been happy.

“C’mon, Dad,” I wheedled. “Wouldn’t it be great to have someone really follow in your footsteps. ‘Lullabye, and good night, when the dealer has busted’—”

“Who taught you that song?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I thought I just made it up.”

“It just sounded so familiar there for a second.”

“But wouldn’t it be great to have me follow in your footsteps?” I tried again.

“What about poker?” he said suddenly. “Everyone’s playing poker these days. At least if you started to gamble at poker, your mother might get confused when she comes back to haunt me since poker’s not blackjack.”

I considered what he was suggesting.

Even I was aware that poker was the current “in” game and it was a game that I had some familiarity with. Back in my junior-high days, my best girlfriend and I had started a poker ring while serving an in-school suspension for getting our classmates drunk during the science fair. We’d charged a dollar a game to play and even a couple of teachers, miffed that my best girlfriend and I had taken the fall when so many others had been involved, had stopped by to play a few hands while on their coffee breaks. I think we were all vaguely aware that they could have been fired for their complicit behavior, but it was a private school—this had been one of Black Jack Sampson’s better years for winning—and we were thrilled to take their money. Besides, once the weeklong in-house suspension had ended, life at school had gone back to normal and we’d folded up the gaming table with my best girlfriend and I each about fifty dollars richer. Of course, I’d never told my parents any of this because Lila would have been too mortified while Black Jack would have been too proud, thereby increasing Lila’s mortification.

“Nah,” I finally concluded. “Sure, poker’s a trend right now, but any trend can end at any minute. Blackjack, on the other hand, is a classic. It’s eternal. And, hey, I’m Black Jack Sampson’s daughter, aren’t I? I’m certainly not Poker Sampson’s daughter. C’mon, Dad. It’ll be great. It’ll be like having the son you always dreamed of.”

It was a cheap shot to take, and I knew it even as I said it. Black Jack had always wanted a son; anyone could see that every time he tried to teach me how to hit a baseball only to have the bat twirl me around in such a big circle that I wound up dizzy on the lawn or every time he tried to teach me how football was played, keeping in mind the importance of covering the spread, only to have me yawn myself to sleep. But it was the one card I had to play, the only card that would get me what I wanted.

“C’mon, Dad. It’ll be fun.”

He ran one hand through his hair.

“You have to promise not to tell your mother about this,” he warned.

I raised my right hand. “Scout’s honor.”

“‘O, I am fortune’s fool.’”

See where I got it from? Black Jack and Lila were always quoting Shakespeare at me.

He walked out to the kitchen and I heard a drawer slide open and shut. When he returned, he had a fresh deck of red-and-white Bicycle cards in his hand. He tore off the cellophane wrapper and as he did so, he looked me dead in the eye, giving me the answer I’d come there for in a single word.

“Yes.”

6

“Those are some whack shoes, chica,” Rivera said.

I’d been using the sheet of paper with the pictures of Jimmy Choos on it that I’d copied out of Hillary’s computer as a bookmark and Rivera was studying the lovely lines of the Asha as it peeked out from the top of the latest Chick Lit book I was reading, Still Life with Stiletto, by Bonita Sanchez.

“Is whack good?” I asked. I honestly had no idea.

“Whack is beyond good,” she said, then she reflected for a moment. “And whack is beyond bad.” Further reflection, shrug. “Whack is whack.”

“Ah.” Well, that was illuminating. I wasn’t sure if she was playing with me or not.

“Whack can mean bad or crazy,” she elaborated. “If I say the shoes are whack, it could mean they’re really ugly or really cool. If I say some guy is whack, it could mean stay away from him or that he’s doing something unbelievable, like saying ‘Shaq is whack.’ Get it? Shaq’s so good it’s unbelievable.”

“Wow,” I said, “a linguistic paradox.” Then I remembered something from TV. “What about that pop star who says ‘crack is whack’?”

“She means it’s bad for you.”

“Huh. And here I thought she meant ‘I love crack! Give me more!’”

Rivera favored me with a rare smile before looking back at the picture of the shoes. “I think I’m going to get me a pair,” she said. “How much?”

While visiting the store in Manhattan, before leaving I’d asked the salesgirl the price of a few more pairs of shoes that interested me. You know, just for fun. Then I’d committed the prices to memory.

“Unless I’m mistaken, those shoes go for one thousand and one hundred and fifty dollars a pair.”

“For real?”

“Yup,” I said. “You get both for that price.”

“That’s insanity!”

“Mmm-hmm,” I agreed, “but look at these.” I showed her the Ghost.

“Now those shoes I would pay one thousand and one hundred and fifty dollars for,” she said. “Those shoes are beyond whack.”

“That’s nice,” I said, “except those shoes will set you back one thousand and four hundred dollars.”

“Insanity!” she said.

“Beyond insanity,” I agreed.

“So how come you’re carrying around a picture of them like they’re a prayer card from church?”

“Because I really want them,” I admitted, “more than I can ever remember wanting anything.”

“Wanting and getting are two different things, chica. How do you think you’ll ever be able to pay for something like that?”

“I’m working on it,” I said. “As Shakespeare says, ‘To do a great right, do a little wrong.’”

“Fuck Shakespeare. You think Stella is just going to give you a raise? Even if she gave you like a dollar an hour raise—and do you think Stella’s going to ever part with another dollar, let alone forty of them a week?—it’d take you half a year to save that much money at that rate. By then those shoes’d be long gone.”

“Hey,” I said, ignoring her last sentence, “your math skills are whack.”

“What I should do is whack you,” Stella said to Rivera, surprising us. “What are you trying to say, that I’m cheap?”

“No way, boss.” Rivera took a step backward, hands raised in self-defense. “You are an all-American entrepreneur and you are very, very smart.”

“She’s right, boss,” Conchita said. She was suddenly there, too. “You’re just a very smart entrepreneur. No exploitation going on here.”

Stella stared at them both closely, as if trying to judge if they were each pulling a leg. She must have been satisfied with what she saw, for she turned to me next.

“If I’m not going to give you a raise—and I’m not, because you know times are tough and the economy is rocky—then where are you ever going to get the money for those Choos?”

“You know Choos?” I was surprised.

“Of course I know Choos.” Stella fluffed her hair. “I’m an all-American entrepreneur, aren’t I?”

The way I figured it, Conchita and Rivera were stroking her ego enough. Certainly, I didn’t need to do that, so instead I merely told them of my plan, the one Hillary and I had devised the night before.

“I’m going to Foxwoods Casino,” I said, “this Saturday night.”

Conchita’s eyes grew big. “You mean the one run by the Mashantucket Pequots?”

“Is there any other?” I replied.

“You’re just going with your roommate?” Stella asked now.

“That’s what I had planned on,” I said.

“What are you planning on wearing?” Conchita demanded.

“I hadn’t thought about it.” I shrugged.

“Hadn’t thought about it?” Rivera whacked me in the head, lightly, but it was still a whack. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I figured I’d just wear some shorts, maybe a T-shirt. It’s been so hot lately.”

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” she snapped, raising her hand.

“Don’t hit me again!” I said, moving my arms up to protect the coconut, meaning my head.

“She’s right,” Conchita said, hitting me from the other side. “You can’t go to a place like Foxwoods Casino, especially not on a Saturday night, looking like you’re just going off to McDonald’s for a Big Mac.”

“If you want to be a winner, you need to dress like one,” Rivera said.

“Saturday morning, we’re taking you to the Nail Euphorium,” Conchita said.

“How do you know about the Nail Euphorium?” I asked. It was the place Hillary always went to.

“Who do you think we are—” Conchita hands-on-hipsed me “—you?”

Hey, I resented that. Every time someone said that to me, I resented it.

Then they all started talking about me, as if I wasn’t even there, so much talk that the sounds started swirling together until it all sounded like, “Delilah, Delilah, Delilah.” That’s what it all sounded like, exactly…

“Never bet more than you can afford to lose,” Black Jack had told me.

“Always start with a stake you can afford,” Black Jack had told me.

“Set a goal on how much you want to win,” Black Jack had told me, “and if you reach it, walk away.”

“When you start to lose, walk away,” Black Jack had told me. “If you lose your whole stake, definitely walk away.”

Then he’d handed me a hundred-dollar bill.

“What’s this?” I’d asked.

“It’s your stake,” he’d said. “Whatever you do, don’t lose it.”

Then I distinctly heard Stella say, “Of course I’m going to go, too.” Her words when they came were spoken in a huff. “You don’t think I’m going to be the only one left behind, do you?”

“I don’t know, boss.” Rivera shrugged, awkward. “It would just be way too weird—you know?—partying with the boss.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “No one ever said anything about partying. And, anyway, what are you all talking about? You’re not all coming with me.”

“Oh, uh-huh, yeah, we are,” Conchita said.

“When was this decided?”

“Weren’t you paying any attention to us at all?” Rivera demanded.

“It was decided,” Stella said, “while you were busy daydreaming. But, don’t worry, we’ve got it all figured out…Golden Squeegee.” Then she picked up my bucket and thrust it at me. “Now get back to work!”

“Wait just one second,” I said. “You’re all coming with me, with me and Hillary to Foxwoods—is that what I’m hearing?”

“Pretty much,” Stella said.

“Then one other person is coming, too,” I said, “Elizabeth Hepburn.”

“My customer?” Stella said.

I nodded firmly.

“You’ve been talking to my customer?” Stella said.

I nodded meekly.

“She won’t want to go,” she scorned.

“Oh, yes, she will.” I nodded enthusiastically, knowing the answer instinctively. “She’ll be the balls of the operation.”

“The…?” Stella could barely mouth the words.

“Wait just one more second,” I said. “You, me, Hillary, Conchita, Rivera, Elizabeth Hepburn—” I did the math in my head “—there’ll be six of us. How will we all fit into something to get us there?” I eyed the Squeaky Qlean van, the only vehicle any of us owned that would be big enough. “I’m not going off to win my fortune in that thing.”

“Thanks a lot,” Stella said. “I’ll have you know—”

“Don’t worry about it, chicas,” Rivera said, putting one arm around Stella and the other around me. “Me and Conchita will work all of that stuff out. Delilah, you just be up early Saturday morning. Really, we’ve got all your bases covered.”

Which was how I found myself, up brighter and earlier than usual on Saturday morning, surrounded by my helpful elves.

Of course, my elves were all taller than me and their help was probably going to wind up killing me, so there was that, too.

“If they just shape them so that they actually have some shape, it’ll be an improvement,” Hillary said when we got to Nail Euphorium. “Maybe a little clear polish for gloss.”

“She should get a full set of acrylics,” Conchita said, “painted red.”

“Who do you want her to look like, you?” Rivera demanded.

It was nice at least to hear someone else get asked that question for a change.

“She should get the acrylics,” Rivera said, “but then she should get a French mani, pedi, too.”

“She’ll look like Jackie Kennedy Onassis,” Conchita objected.

“And this is bad?” Rivera said. “May she wind up with a mansion and a yacht.”

“Wait a second,” I said, which had apparently become my new favorite thing to say. “I can’t afford this. If I get a French manicure and…and…and a…pedi—” the word was so foreign to me “—half my stake money will be gone…and that’s if I don’t leave a tip!”

“I’ve got you covered on this one,” Hillary said, waving her Amex gold card in the air.

All I had was a regular Amex card, no gold for me, and as I’d shown when we went to Manhattan, I never used the damn thing, not even to buy something I wanted as much as the Ghost. For an addictive personality like me, that way, the credit card way, madness lay.

“I already told you when we were in New York,” I told her. “I won’t accept charity.”

“It’s not charity,” she said. “It’s my birthday present to you.”

“My birthday’s not for another five months. It’s in January, remember?”

“So? Just don’t expect anything else on January 10.”

It was the same at Now We’re Styling!, the salon where Conchita and Rivera regularly got their hair done. Hillary had suggested The Queen’s Coif, where she got her own hair done, but had been outvoted. Still, she paid.

“Christmas present,” she said, surrendering her Amex card again.

“Christmas isn’t for another four months,” I pointed out.

“So?” she said. “Don’t expect anything on December 25.”

“She looks sooo…not like her,” Stella said when the hairdresser was done and we were all admiring the new me in the mirror.

It was weird because my hair didn’t look radically different than it usually did. It was the same short, dark hair, kind of spiky. But whatever magic the stylist had performed on it, using paste artfully as well as a razor to create tiny little jagged wisps all around my face, well, it made me look like I was styling.

“You’ll need to get your makeup done, too, of course,” Stella said. “You can’t have hair like that with no makeup.” Sighing, she extracted her own Amex gold card from her purse.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“It’s your early Halloween bonus,” she muttered. “You can get it done here. They do makeup, too.”

“Boss has got a he-art! Boss has got a he-art!” Conchita and Rivera singsonged.

“Ohh…shut up,” Stella said.

“She still needs the right clothes,” Rivera said.

“We still need to get a car big enough,” Conchita said.

“I’ll get the clothes,” Rivera said.

“I’ll get the car,” Conchita said.

The clothes turned out to be items from Rivera’s own closet.

“I wore these black slacks the night Flavia fell in love with me,” she said, holding up a pair of black capris.

“Flavia?” I asked.

“Long gone.” She shrugged. “And don’t worry about the length. I’ve got Hollywood tape in my bag, works like a charm.”

She pulled a silver lamé tank top out of her bag.

“And I wore this,” she said, “the night Emmanuella fell in love with me.”

“Emmanuella?” I asked.

She shrugged again. “I think she’s with Flavia now. We can use the Hollywood tape to tuck up the hem of the tank, too.”

As I put on the clothes, I tried not to think about the fact that I was being clothed wholly in garments that had loved and lost a lot of girl-on-girl love.

In the beginning I’d felt resistant to their efforts. Why, I felt, bother trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse? But, and here was the strange thing, as the day wore on, a feeling welled in me, the same Cinderella feeling I’d had when I’d slipped the Ghosts on at Jimmy Choo’s in New York. Here were all these women—Hillary, Stella, Conchita, Rivera—doing everything in their power to help me achieve my moment. I was like the real Cinderella, with the Fairy Godmother and all the creatures in the house helping her get ready for the ball. I felt magical. There was still one thing missing, though…

“Who would have guessed you could look so good?” Rivera admired her own handiwork when I was done dressing, when she was done taping me. “But shoes—” she put her finger to her lips “—that’s the big problem.”

“That’s how this all started,” I pointed out. “Remember? Once I get those Jimmy Choos, I’ll have great shoes.”

“Right,” she said, all business, “but you don’t have them now.” She looked in my closet. “All you’ve got right now are a pair of flip-flops, some winter boots and those stupid Nikes you’re always wearing.”

“Stupid—?”

“I know,” she said, cocking an ear. Yup, the shower was still running. “While your roommate’s in the shower, we’ll raid her closet.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “No, no, no, no, no. I’m sure she won’t like—”

“Come on.” Rivera yanked on my arm.

I was right: Hillary didn’t like it…At All.

“Those are my New Year’s Eve shoes!” she shrieked, towel still wrapped around her head, another around her body, when she glimpsed my twinkle toes five minutes later.

“I know,” I said.

They were her New Year’s Eve shoes, the same shoes she’d worn every New Year’s Eve for as long as I’d known her. Shaped like a simple high-heeled pump, they were covered in glittery silver, kind of like Dorothy’s red slippers, only a different color and without the bow but with a big heel. Hillary claimed they were good luck and that wearing them on that one night, and only that one night, ensured her a great year ahead.

“You look great in those towels.” Rivera winked at her.

“Shut up,” Hillary said. “My shoes! But wait a second. Your feet are much smaller than mine.”

This was true.

Extracting one foot from one shoe—really, that expensive pedi was wasted inside a closed-toe shoe—I revealed Rivera’s handiwork: wadded tissue paper. Honestly, it was hard to feel like a glam winner when there was Kleenex cuddling my piggies before going to market.

“But it’s such a good cause, Hillary Clinton,” Rivera said sweetly, enunciating each word of my roommate’s name silkily as though she were trying to sell rich cordovan leather. “And it’s not like it’s as bad as it could be, like if her feet were bigger than yours and there was a danger she might stretch them out. And you really do look great in those towels.”

“Ohh…what…ever,” Hillary conceded with poor grace, going off to dry her hair.

“Where the hell did you get that thing?” I shouted down to Conchita from the balcony of the South Park condo.

A minute before, a white stretch limo had pulled into the parking lot and Conchita had emerged from the driver’s seat, opening one of the passenger doors from which emerged Elizabeth Hepburn. Seeing the four of us out on the balcony, Elizabeth Hepburn did a little red-carpet curtsy.

Conchita smiled up at me, shielding her eyes against the blaze of sun going down behind us. “You don’t want to know, chica.”

“Ready to roll?” Elizabeth Hepburn asked. “You know, John Wayne used to always say that to me. Count Basie, too, come to think of it.”

“But wait a second,” I said. “Don’t you all need to get dressed?”

I looked at the five of them. It wasn’t that they were shabbily dressed. Indeed, they all looked better than I looked most days, but they were still all relatively casual, in summer slacks, light blouses and sandals. Really, I was the only one who looked like she might be going out on a Saturday night to a casino that had nightclubs in it.

“Oh, no,” Elizabeth Hepburn said softly. “This is your big night.”