“That’s the guy I used to work for, Max Cherry. What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know,” Melanie said. “Is he a cross-dresser? Ask him.”
“He’s married, he could be here with his wife,” Louis said, and remembered that Max didn’t live with his wife, they were separated. Or he was here with his girlfriend, that could be. Louis glanced toward Melanie. She was gone, walking toward the fitting room. He looked at Max again, about fifty feet away, Max strolling off too, over to the Anne Klein section. Dressed up in a suit and tie, he had to be with some woman. Louis stepped to one end of the Michi Moon display. Melanie was already in the fitting room.
“That’s cute. What’s the top, cotton?”
“Linen,” Jackie said. “The skirt’s sand-washed silk.”
“It’s nice, and I don’t usually go for a full skirt.”
“This’s the look,” Jackie said, “fluid and swingy.”
“It’s okay on you. How much?”
“Five fifty for the jacket . . .”
“Christ.”
“Two sixty-eight for the skirt.”
“I guess you can afford it,” Melanie said, handing Jackie her shopping bag. “We could’ve worked this. You know that, don’t you? You would’ve made out a lot better than you’re going to, believe me.”
Jackie pushed open the louvered door to a dressing room, went in with Melanie’s shopping bag, and came out with her own.
“That’s the same one,” Melanie said, “the same towel? Are you putting me on or what?”
Jackie’s hand went inside the bag, dug beneath the towels, and came out with a packet of hundred-dollar bills she held in Melanie’s face, letting her stare for a moment before shoving the money down in the bag again. Jackie did-n’t say a word.
Neither did Melanie. She took the bag and left.
In the dressing room again with the door closed, Jackie transferred the five hundred thousand from her flight bag to the shopping bag Melanie had brought. Packed her uniform in the flight bag. Put on the nifty black silk. . . . She’d have to pass on the Zang Toi with the off-center slit; no time to try it on. Pay for the suit and the Isani separates, which she’d take with her. But ask to leave her flight bag at the cashier’s counter, pick it up later.
Okay, then as she’s walking out say to Frieda, “Oh. Someone left a shopping bag in there. Looks like beach towels.” She exits. A minute or so later Max enters, he’s looking for a shopping bag his wife thinks she left in a dressing room. Beach towels in it.
Once she was out on the floor in plain sight she would have to appear anxious, helpless, and run off looking for Nicolet,
Melanie had come out of the fitting room and moved through racks of clothes heading for the aisle. She caught a glimpse of Louis still at the Michi Moon display. He saw her and she saw him cutting across the floor now past Dana Buchman to head her off. They met in the aisle at Donna Karan New York.
“What’re you doing?”
He said it with kind of a strung-out, spacy look that scared her for a moment.
“I’m getting out of here. What do you think?”
“Lemme have the bag.”
“Fuck you. I can carry it.”
She tried to push past him and he caught her by the arm to pull her around.
“Goddamn it, gimme the bag.”
“What’re you gonna do, hit me?”
“If I have to.”
He was ready, his fist cocked close to his shoulder. He grabbed the open edge of the bag and when she tried to pull it away, holding on to the loop handles, the bag started to tear open at the seam—not much, but enough that she let go saying, “Okay, okay, take it, Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”
He said, “I’m carrying it.”
She said, “All right. You’ve got it. What’d you think I was gonna do, run off with it?”
He said, “If you had half a chance,” holding the bag in his arm now, all that money crushed against his cheap sport coat. He turned and walked off. She followed him down the down escalator staring at his hair, at his scalp beginning to show through at the crown; followed him off on the main floor past girls offering perfume samples and out into the mall. Louis stopped.
Melanie said, “Remember where we came in?”
He looked up at palm trees, at turquoise structural beams and the skylight ceiling way up there. He started off in the direction of Sears.
Melanie said, “The other way, Louis,” and he stopped. “We came in through Burdine’s, remember? Where you do your shopping?”
Louis didn’t say anything. He wasn’t strung out; maybe hung over. Definitely scared, Melanie decided, out of his element, the ex-con in a crowd of civilians he didn’t know or trust, holding the shopping bag against his body.
She said, “Let’s try to act like we’re just plain folks, Louis. What do you say? Turn around. That’s it, now put one foot in front of the other and we’ll stroll down to Burdine’s. Pick up a snappy straw hat to go with your snappy jacket. Would you like that?”
Max watched the fitting room from the Anne Klein display. He saw a woman who had to be Melanie, a lot of hair and a big can, duck in and come out again, gone, as he concentrated on the fitting room. The salesclerk went in, stayed a few minutes, and came out to the cashier’s counter with clothes over her arm. No sign of Jackie yet. The clerk was ringing up the sale now, folding the clothes in boxes, two of them, and slipping the boxes into a shopping bag. There she was, finally. Jackie in a neat, short-sleeved black suit. With her flight bag. She placed it on the floor behind the counter, came up, and began looking around then, going into her act: agitated, distracted as she spoke to the clerk, paid for the clothes with cash and took the shopping bag from the counter. Max had spotted a young woman earlier who seemed to be hanging around and could be working surveillance, but didn’t see her now; and none of the women shoppers poking through the racks would qualify for law enforcement. Jackie was walking away now, still looking around, anxious, the clerk saying something after her. Jackie kept going. Max watched her until she was out of sight down the aisle, heading for the mall. He waited. No one followed her. The salesclerk was alone now by the cashier’s counter.
It was Max’s turn.
Nineteen years dealing with people who took incredible risks. If he walked over to that counter he’d find out what it was like.
After, he was to go home and wait for Jackie’s call. She’d come to the house or he’d meet her somewhere. Or he might not hear from her right away. Nicolet could be into it and she’d have to face him, tell her story, and stick to it. She said, “If you come through, I can handle it.” And after that they would sort of drift away, disappear.
Apart or together. She didn’t say and he did-n’t ask. And then what? She said, “Let’s see what happens.”
The one thing Max was sure of, standing by Anne Klein designs, he was in love with her and wanted to be with her, and if he had to suspend his judgment to do it, he would, with his eyes wide open. If he saw she was using him . . . He didn’t think so, but if she was . . . Well, he would have to handle that, wouldn’t he?
At the moment, walking away from Anne Klein toward the salesclerk at the cashier’s counter, he was changing his life for good.
“You don’t want a snappy straw? Hey, a pair of jams. Or what about a Hawaiian shirt? Louis, look.”
Driving him nuts.
Melanie right behind him all the way through Burdine’s poking at his arm, telling him to look at hats, shirts, bathing suits. He pushed through the door and was outside, for a few moments with a sense of relief, facing the
