Shooting Gallery (25 page)

Twenty minutes later—just as I was considering slipping behind a bank of voluminous ball gowns for a catnap—Teri appeared and escorted me to a large changing room decorated in melting shades of bisque, cream, and peach. I sank onto an upholstered brocade bench and glared at the eight chic dresses that lined the wall with the precision and warmth of a firing squad. I fought a sudden urge for a cigarette, which was odd since I didn't smoke.

“In for a penny, in for a hundred thousand pounds,” my grandfather used to say, so I left my comfortable clothes in a sad heap on the bench and stepped into the first dress, a black fitted number I could not get past my hips. I drop-kicked the offending garment into a corner and slipped on a sweet burgundy number with a swishy skirt. The good news was I could get the dress on. The bad news was I looked ready for a sock hop.

Go daddy-o.

Sam and Teri knocked on the louvered door.

“How's it going in there, ma'am?” Teri chirped.

“How do they look, love?”

“I haven't found the, uh, perfect thing yet,” I said, chucking the sock hop dress and struggling into a frothy purple concoction with large white polka dots.

“Try this one,” Teri said, thrusting a garment over the top of the door. “And this would be
great
with your coloring,” she added, tossing in another. I scurried around, picking up piles of froufrou fabric and ducking when Teri lobbed in a pair of high heels to try on with the dresses.

“Let's see you, love.”

I emerged, half zipped. Teri and Sam stared for a moment and returned to the Hunt without saying a word.

“Hey!” I called after them. “A little encouragement would be appreciated!”

Several demoralizing changes of clothes later I found an outfit that looked halfway decent on me. And, miracle of miracles, it seemed a little large. I could probably go a size smaller, if they had one. I slipped on the heels and tottered out of the dressing room, determined to prove to Teri and Sam that I could look hot. I finally found them huddled near the spring velvets. “What about this one?”

The women cocked their heads.

“Not bad. Not bad at all,” Samantha said, her head tilted to the right.

“It's the right style,” Teri confirmed, her head tilted to the left. “I'm not convinced it's perfect, though. And it is a little big. Oh! I know!”

She was leading us towards a clutch of disturbingly spangled gowns when I became aware of a strong odor. I looked to see if anyone else had noticed. Sam's nostrils were quivering, and Teri looked distressed.

“What
is
that?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” Teri replied, her eyes squinting and a manicured hand held up to her nose.

“Gaack.” I spied Mary rounding the corner.

“How's it going?” she called out, her face plastered in so many layers of makeup that she looked ready for Mardi Gras.

“What perfume
is
that?” I gagged as Sam coughed and took a step backwards.

“It's my
signature
scent. Whaddya think? I tried a few others first, you know, Chanel and Ralph Lauren and all the big names. I'm not sure how well they mixed with the botanicals, though.”

“What's with the clown face?” I asked.

“New chick at the Marquesa Cosmetics counter.” She grinned. “I kept telling her, ‘More, more!' until the floor manager said I was scaring the other customers and asked me to leave. Cool, huh?”

By now our overloaded olfactory systems had shut down, and Sam and I started to laugh. Teri looked appalled. Mary lingered, making snide comments about the dresses, before growing bored and wandering off.

Sometime later Sam held up a black velvet dress and announced in triumph, “I found it!”

It was sleeveless and almost backless, with a modified halter top capped by a beaded band like a choker. Radiating from the neckband were long strings of beads that pointed toward where my cleavage would be. Spaghetti straps crisscrossed in back, which would allow my skin to play peekaboo above the invisible zipper. It was very pretty. Very stylish. It just wasn't
me
.

“There's not much to it, is there?” I said.

“Teri didn't like it either. Neither of you has any imagination. Just try it on, please?”

The aroma of inadvisably mixed chemicals preceded Mary's appearance by a good ten seconds.

“Guess what!” she crowed. “I'm getting my own personal shopper!”

We stared at her.

“They have this service where you tell them the sorts of things you like, they take your measurements, and when you need something, you call her up and she selects stuff for you. My personal shopper is LaTanya. Can you beat that? She's great. She's a Pisces, which is just perfect for me. . . .” She drifted off again.

Sam waved the dress at me. “Well?”

“Okay, I'll try it on.” I returned to the dressing room and closed the door, but continued talking. “You'll have to find some kind of wrap to go with it, though, because I can't be hanging out all over the place. Not with this guy.”

“Ooh, do tell,” I heard Teri squeal. “Who
is
he?”

“He's one of
those
guys. You know the kind. Gorgeous, funny, interesting, smart. Gracious when he wants to be.”

“And the problem is?” Sam asked.

“He's also a jerk. Totally unreliable. Probably has hundreds of girlfriends.”

“But sexy,” Teri said.

“Incredibly.”

“So if he's such a jerk, why are you seeing him?” Trust Sam to get to the point.

“Well, I—”

“Because he's
paying
her, that's why,” Mary's voice chirped. “Annie's his
escort
. We're gonna open up an escort service. Isn't that
awesome
?”

“We just lost Teri,” Sam said with a muffled chuckle.

“I'm gonna go meet with LaTanya so she can take my measurements,” Mary said.

“Girl, how in the world did you convince Neiman Marcus to give you a personal shopper?” Sam asked.

“I told them I was Francis Ford Coppola's niece. You know, Nicolas Cage's younger sister? They live around here. It's plausible.”

I opened the door.

“Now,
that
is a
fabulous
dress,” Mary said. Mary seldom offered compliments—she claimed it was a Norwegian thing, but I think it was more a Midwestern thing—which made it all the more meaningful when she did.

“Oh, honey,” Sam added. “You look incredible.”

I evaluated myself in a three-way mirror, twisting and turning to get the full effect. I did look good, though my back was mostly bare and my modest cleavage was on display. “You're sure I don't look like a stuffed sausage?”

“You look good enough to eat,” Mary agreed. “What? Edible's good, right?”

“If you want to keep this guy's hands off you tonight, this might be the wrong dress.” Sam commented. “Try this on.”

She handed me a short, stretchy black jacket covered in tiny black jet beads. It appeared to be made from some NASA miracle fabric, probably one of those things that helped the Apollo 13 astronauts get home. The jacket hugged my shoulders and breasts, and fell away becomingly, hinting at my now-famous butt.

“I believe our work here is done,” Sam announced.

I nodded. “Now for the moment of truth.”

I looked at the price tags and winced. The dress and jacket together cost half a month's rent.
Oh well
, I thought as I waited for the shock wave to subside. It was Michael's money, after all. No doubt he was accustomed to spending exorbitant amounts on women's clothing.

The loudspeaker, which had been emitting only intermittent bings and boops, suddenly squawked. “Security, report to Personal Shopping. Security to Personal Shopping. Code four.”

Sam and I exchanged a look. “Best get a move on, love.”

We hailed Teri, who rang up my purchases as Mary stomped past accompanied by two highly pumped security guards. An unpleasant aroma followed in her wake.

“What will they do with her?” I asked Teri. Before I spent a fortune on evening clothes I wanted to be sure I wouldn't need the money for Mary's bail.

“They'll just escort her outside. Kids these days,” she said, shaking her head. Teri must have been all of twenty-five years old herself.

I swallowed hard at the total—I'd forgotten to include the astronomical local sales tax in my mental calculations—and handed over a fistful of hundred-dollar bills. Teri looked surprised and a bit disapproving, and I imagined the cash transaction added to my reputation as a call girl.

As Teri hung the dress and jacket on hangars and swaddled them in plastic it occurred to me that unless I really was going into the escort business I wouldn't have much use for the outfit after tonight. I wondered if it would be ethical to return the clothes in the morning. If I were careful not to spill anything on them, no one would be the wiser.

After all, what could possibly happen at a Hillsborough cocktail party?

—Unnamed “deep background” source, “Fabulous
Fakes: An Epidemic of Forgery Rocks the Art
World,”
New York Times

 

“Was that totally random, or what?” Mary grinned as we joined her on the sidewalk. She glared at the gawking tourists, one of whom snapped her photograph to share with the folks back home. “You guys so
totally
freaked when I walked past with those Wide World of Wrestling rejects. I nearly lost it.”

“So did we.” Sam grimaced.

We trooped back to the truck and jammed ourselves in. Mary's signature fragrance filled the small cab despite the open windows, and by the time we reached the DeBenton Building even Mary was looking a bit green. Gravel spurted as I roared into a spot, yanked up the parking brake, and threw open the door. The three of us tumbled out.

“Whooo-eeee!” Mary yelled at the top of her lungs and stomped around the parking lot, shaking her head and flapping her arms. Sam and I stood hunched over like a couple of winos, hands on our knees, gasping for breath. Frank emerged from his office, sipping a bottle of sparkling water and eyeing us with a curious expression on his face. I straightened up and wondered if it was possible for me to look more foolish around the man.

“There was a little accident at the perfume counter,” I explained. Mary snorted.

“How are you, Frank?” Sam asked, showing a great deal more poise. Frank smiled at her while Mary and I slunk up the stairs. I disarmed the alarm, hung my purchases in the oak armoire, and hit Play on the answering machine.

“Stop asking questions,”
a sinister voice hissed.
“Or suffer the consequences.”

“What the hell was
that
?” Mary demanded.

“Just some creep making crank phone calls,” I said, erasing the nasty message. “It happens all the time.”

“No, it doesn't. What's going on, Annie? Are you involved in something again?” For someone who had spent a summer picking up trash from the side of the highway as punishment for “borrowing” a car without the owner's permission, Mary was remarkably disapproving of my forays into the seamier side of life.

“It's
nothing
, Mary.”

Sam stuck her head in the door. “Annie, love, when will you be going home? I have an idea for some earrings that will be perfect with your new outfit.”

“Probably around four, four thirty.”

“Are you going to tell her?” Mary demanded, her arms crossed.

“Tell me what?” Sam asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Mary's blowing something way out of proportion.”

“‘Nothing' my ass,” Mary said. “Annie got a threatening phone call.”

“What?”
Sam turned to me, a cut-the-crap-this-instant look on her face.

“It's no big deal,” I dissembled. Loving, caring, insightful friends could be such a pain sometimes. “Threatening phone calls are rarely followed with threatening behavior.” I had heard that on a talk show once.

“ ‘Calls'?” Sam said. “How many threats have you gotten?”

“Listen you two, I appreciate your concern. I do. But I've got everything under control.”

My friends glared at me.

“Really.”

“Annie, you're a grown woman, you've made your decision, and I have to respect that,” Sam said. “But if anything happens to you, I want you to know that I will hunt you down and I will kill you.”

“And I'll desecrate your body,” Mary added, glowering at me.

Sam went to her studio, and Mary and I settled in to work. A well-funded local charity was sponsoring an interdenominational holiday festival at a children's center and had hired me to create the displays. We'd finished crafting the menorahs and were concentrating today on gilding the winged plaster cherubs I had carved and poured last week. I did make an occasional foray into the three-dimensional world of sculpture. I forayed into just about anything that meant getting paid for making art.

Classical water gilding technique calls for covering an object with a thin layer of earth-red clay called bole and floating tissue-thin sheets of real metal on top. Done properly, it yields a stunning—and expensive—finish. Real gold gilt was too pricey for today's project, so we cut corners by painting our cherubs with a red oxide acrylic base and applying composition gold and silver leaf with a water-based glue called sizing. When the sizing was dry we lightly sanded select portions to allow the red base color to show through, and aged the objects with a coat of burnt umber glaze. The glaze pooled in the pockets and recesses of the carvings, mimicking the grime that would accumulate over time. Next we spattered the cherubs with dark gray paint and sealed the finish with a coat of amber shellac.