Shop Till You Drop (5 page)

Cal was sitting on the edge of the pool, his pale Canadian legs dangling in the water. Helen liked it that Cal wore a clean white T-shirt. Too many men in Florida proudly displayed big hairy bellies.

Peggy, in 2B, was sitting next to Cal. Peggy was wearing a black one-piece suit and a green parrot on her shoulder. A live parrot with a pretty patch of gray feathers on his breast. Peggy never went anywhere without Pete, her Quaker parrot. She even took Pete to her office. Pets were strictly forbidden at the Coronado, so when Margery was around, everyone had to pretend Pete didn’t exist. It wasn’t easy. Pete let out the most ferocious squawks.

Since Margery was not there, Helen gently stroked the bird’s soft feathers. The parrot danced back and forth on Peggy’s shoulder, flapped his wings once, and settled down. Peggy did not. She grew increasingly agitated as she talked with Cal. “Don’t blame me,” she snapped. “I didn’t vote for him.”

“That could not happen in Canada,” Cal said. “Our system of government would not permit it.”

A voice on the other side of the bougainvillea said, “If Canada is such a great place, Cal, why aren’t you there?”

Out stepped Margery, defender of America, in purple shorts and red toenails.

“Well?” she said. She folded her arms and waited for Cal’s answer. Everyone knew Cal only went home to Toronto long enough to qualify for his free national health insurance. Then he returned to Florida.

“I never said America was bad,” Cal said finally. “I said Canada did some things better.”

“Squaaak!” Pete said. Helen jumped. Everyone else politely ignored the parrot.

“Think I’ll turn in,” Cal said.

“Me, too,” Helen said. She did not like the way Margery had treated Cal.

Helen and Cal walked back to their apartments, palm trees whispering behind their backs. Helen, who could always talk to Cal, suddenly felt shy. He seemed tongue-tied, too. Finally, he said, “Want to come in? I found some Molson’s on sale.”

“No, thanks,” Helen said. “I’m tired, and I have to get up early for work tomorrow.”

She studied his face in the fading light. Cal’s lips were a little thin, and his nose was a little long to be truly handsome. But the gray eyes were intelligent. It was a strong face, she decided. Manly. His blond hair had gone to gray at the sideburns. It looked distinguished. His neck was just right, not too thick or too scrawny. His shoulders were muscular. She was afraid to consider anything lower. Helen felt too lonely. It had been a long time since she had been with a man, and her ex-husband had hurt her badly.

“Would you like to go to dinner this Saturday night?” Cal said.

Helen thought of Margery’s warning.

“Yes, I would,” she said, defiantly, as if Margery were listening. “I’d like that very much.”

“Good,” he said. “I was thinking ah-boot”—There. He’d said it again. Helen loved the way Cal pronounced that word.—“going to Cap’s Place. It’s an old Florida restaurant from the rum-running days. You can only reach it by boat.”

“But you don’t have a boat,” Helen said.

“They’ll send one to pick us up,” Cal said.

Suddenly, Helen didn’t feel tired at all. She felt like she was walking on richly scented clouds. Not all of those clouds were her neighbor Phil’s pot smoke, either.

On Friday, Helen met Christina’s boyfriend, Joe.

She’d heard Christina talking to Joe on the phone almost daily at the store. Helen cringed every time she thought of those conversations. Christina’s voice would get little-girl cute, and she’d say, “Whatever you want, Big Beary-Warey. I want what you want. No, no, you’re the important one. My opinion doesn’t matter. Now, what would you like for dinner?”

Ugh. It was pathetic, Helen thought. So 1950s. She couldn’t understand how the clever Christina could abase herself for this man. She hoped he was worth it.

Helen didn’t know much about Joe except he’d made a lot of money in real estate. Christina told her that he “owned a bunch of warehouses around Port Everglades,” the major Lauderdale shipping area.

Christina was desperate to marry Joe. Helen knew she had a condo in low-rent Sunnysea Beach, but she spent most weekends with Joe in his five-bedroom mansion in Fort Lauderdale.

Ever since she moved in with Joe, Christina had expected an engagement ring. She thought she’d get one for Christmas. Now her birthday was coming up. Joe said he had to be in the Keys on business, but he promised to bring Christina a birthday present from Key West. He said it would be “special” and “just what she’d always wanted.”

Joe was also stopping by that morning before he left for his trip. Christina was in a dither at this unusual honor. She’d changed into three outfits before she settled on a dramatic scoop-front, hot-pink Moschino number with purple Fendi mules. Helen thought the ensemble looked hookerish. It was the fashion mistake an unsure woman would make. Christina was not confident of her lover.

Christina kept looking out the front window until she spotted Joe’s fire-engine red car as it went down Las Olas. “It’s Joe’s Ferrari!” she said, as excited as a teenager on her first date. In South Florida, when a man made a lot of new money, he either bought a hundred-foot yacht or a Ferrari.

“It’s a Ferrari Barchetta,” Christina said, as if that should mean something. When Helen didn’t respond, she said, “There are only four hundred forty-eight in the whole world.”

“Why did he drive by? There’s valet parking right in front,” Helen said.

“He likes to use the meters,” Christina said. She sounded defensive.

A nickel squeezer, Helen thought. The guy’s driving a Ferrari and saving five bucks on parking.

Christina ran to hit the buzzer, and Joe walked through the green door, a conquering hero holding his cell phone like a scepter. Dressed in black Hugo Boss, Joe looked like the high school bully all grown up. His dark wavy hair had a small, angry bald patch on the crown. His face was square and scowling. He had beefy shoulders and an aggressive walk.

Christina seemed to grow smaller around him. She fluttered about, kissing him, patting him, hugging him.

She introduced Helen, then said to Joe, “Do you like my outfit?”

“It’s nice,” he said indifferently. “But are you getting a gut?” Helen hadn’t noticed it before, but Christina had a tiny bulge around the middle. Unfortunately, her revealing outfit showed it.

“Are you?” Helen said to Joe. She knew it was rude, but Helen couldn’t stand the hurt look in Christina’s eyes. Like a lot of powerful men in Lauderdale, Joe was overweight, but expected the women he dated to be rail-thin.

To her surprise, Joe laughed and patted his substantial stomach. “Yeah, honey, I am. Can’t help it. It’s generic.”

He means genetic, Helen thought. I can’t believe Christina wants to marry this dolt.

Joe stayed ten minutes and took three phone calls while he was there. Christina looked crestfallen when he left. “He didn’t kiss me good-bye. Why didn’t you tell me that the Moschino made me look fat?” she said to Helen.

“Because you don’t look fat,” Helen said.

But Christina would not be consoled. She weighed herself in the stockroom. “I’ve gained two pounds,” she said tragically, as if announcing she had cancer.

Christina ate one plain rice cake for lunch and drank only water. She was determined to starve the two pounds off by the time Joe came back home.

“My gut is heinous,” she said.
Heinous
was a favorite Juliana’s word, usually applied to such tragedies as a pimple or a broken fingernail.

Christina took out her anger on the women trying to get into Juliana’s. She rejected one because she had on a Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt and another because she wore gold moccasins. A third was refused for a fake Rolex, although how Christina could tell from so far away Helen did not know.

“And look at this one,” Christina said, as she buzzed in a blonde with a Juliana’s dress bag. “Melissa wants to return a dress. Guess she doesn’t know about our policy.”

Melissa was a little blonde with large implants, a small chin, and sexy, slightly popped, gray eyes. Her pale, aristocratic, oval face made her look like she’d stepped out of an eighteenth-century English painting, except the upper crust didn’t show quite so much midriff back then.

Yesterday, Melissa bought a gold Armani evening gown that bared her bony back and shoulders. A day later, Melissa was bringing it back. The long black bag with Juliana’s name in hot pink trailed behind her. Melissa’s hair was sliding out of its French roll, and the gray eyes were slightly red. She looked like she’d had a late night.

“I’m returning this dress,” Melissa said. “My boyfriend hates it.”

The gown had been worn. Helen could see sweat stains under the armpits and makeup on the neckline. Melissa was trying an old retailing scam: you wore an expensive dress to some event, then returned it the next day.

“We have a one-return, no-return policy,” Christina said.

“What’s that mean?” Melissa said, with an imperious tone to match her aristocratic looks.

“You can return a dress once, but then you can never return.”

Melissa looked shocked. Her pale oval face went a shade whiter. She had to make a quick decision. An Armani gown was major money. Melissa would either lose several thousand dollars now or her entrée to Juliana’s forever.

“I . . . I think I could persuade him to change his mind,” Melissa said. The aristocrat, suddenly humbled, picked the bag off the counter.

“A smart woman knows how to tell a man what to think,” Christina said.

Then why did Joe think you were fat? Helen wondered.

As soon as Melissa left, Christina began agonizing again about her weight. “Do I look fat in this outfit, Helen? Is it just my gut that’s fat, or am I putting weight on my butt, too? Is that cellulite on my thighs? Do you see any cellulite? Tell me the truth, now.” When Helen couldn’t take any more, she fled to the back room, saying she had to make a personal phone call.

Helen rummaged in her unfashionably large purse until she found her Filofax and looked up Sarah’s home phone number. Helen had rented Sarah’s old apartment at the Coronado. They’d met when she was shown the apartment and hit it off instantly. Sarah had left her a meal in the fridge on moving day, a gesture Helen appreciated. They’d promised to get together but never did. Now she owed Sarah an apology for not opening the green door yesterday.

Helen left a message on Sarah’s machine and hoped she would call back.

Thank God, two favorites came in that afternoon to distract Christina: Brittney and Tiffany. There were no other customers for almost an hour. The women lounged on the black loveseats, talking like girls at a pajama party about clothes and boyfriends. Juliana’s women always had boyfriends, never lovers.

Brittney, the woman who could not frown, wore an ice-blue pantsuit that made her sapphire-blue eyes hypnotic. Her matching sapphire-studded Rolex was pretty hypnotic, too.

Tiffany was the woman with the bad eye job. She did look permanently startled, Helen thought, but it was cute on her. Tiffany reminded Helen of Bambi caught in the headlights. She wore a candy-pink pants outfit with frothy ruffles down the front and around the hips. Her platinum hair looked like spun sugar and her lips were cherry red. Her implants bulged out of her blouse. Tiffany’s elderly boyfriend had paid for her D cups, she’d told Helen last week, because “he liked to get his hands on his money.”

“You look just like Jayne Mansfield,” Helen said.

“Whoth that?” Tiffany said, looking adorably blank.

“A movie star,” Helen said.

“Thath nithe,” Tiffany said, looking pleased. “What movieth hath thee been in?”

“None any more,” Christina said. “She’s dead. And why are you lisping?”

“Juth had my tongue pierthed,” Tiffany said, and stuck out her tongue to reveal a gold stud. “I thould talk fine in a day or two.”

Helen was repulsed. “Why would you want your tongue pierced?” she said.

Brittney snorted Evian water through her nose. Christina rolled her eyes. Helen knew she’d said something hopelessly Midwestern. Only Tiffany took her question seriously.

“The oral thex ith fantathtic,” she said, and giggled.

“What?” Helen said.

“She says the oral sex is fantastic,” Brittney said.

Tiffany giggled again. “No, my boyfriend thayth that.”

Then they all shrieked with laughter like schoolgirls. Helen was actually wiping tears from her eyes. It felt good to laugh this hard. She loved this store. She had to be wrong about Christina skimming money. She had to be.

“Speaking of boyfriends, how’s Joe?” Brittney said in that soft, sighing voice, and Helen could feel the mood shift.

“He won’t be in town for my birthday. He has to go to the Keys. But we’re going clubbing when he gets back.”

“Which ones?” Brittney said. “Kiss? Tantra? Rain? I hope he takes you to Mynt. It’s the prettiest. They pipe scents like sage and mint through the air conditioner. Did I tell you I saw Queen Latifah there one night? And the Back-street Boys? Of course Bash is reopening. That might be fun. I partied there one night with Sean Penn.”