Mistletoe Over Manhattan

Her face was thin and sharp-featured. Her eyes, huge and blue, surprised Mallory with their gleam of intelligence. And her mouth, a narrow hot-pink slash across her tanned, weather-beaten face, quirked up at the corners. She could be fifty, she could be ninety. It was that hard to tell.

This is a house of prostitution and I've just met my first madam.

Or I'm being interviewed for a rodeo.

As if her legs had springs, Mallory tensed herself for action. But first, she had to distract the woman from her true intention, which was to flee. 'What an interesting desk, Ms. Ewing,' she said, leaning forward, getting her Soft 'N' Comfy pumps in position to push off the Oriental rug.

'Maybelle, hon, jes' call me Maybelle, and for goodness' sake, relax. Y'all look like you're about to run.'

Caught like a shoplifter with a mascara up her sleeve, Mallory tried to look less obvious. Still staring at Maybelle, she had to admit that the woman's simple black jacket looked expensive. All she could see of the blouse beneath it was the neckline of something in a snakeskin print. Nothing alarming about that.

'And don't worry about them horns. Some of 'em fell off the critters natural-like and the other ones got what they deserved. Want some coffee?'

Mallory hesitated. At least Maybelle hadn't offered her a controlled substance. 'Do you have decaffeinated?'

Maybelle sighed. 'Another one of them. Honest to gosh, you young folks,' she said, then screamed, 'Dickie!' Mallory levitated straight up out of her chair, but Maybelle went on in her normal nasal twang. 'Y'all stay up all night, but you're scared to death of caffeine.'

Richard reappeared. 'You rang?' he said eloquently.

'Got another one of them decaf drinkers. Perk us up a pot, will ya, sugar?'

'It's already brewing,' Richard, or Dickie, replied. He gave Mallory a look that said, 'Isn't she something?' over the top of Maybelle's head. 'Maybelle, I told you she wouldn't want your fully leaded stuff.'

Maybelle looked discontentedly after him as he vanished, his big frame silent as a cat's. 'Nobody wants real coffee anymore,' she said. 'The kind that's perked on the stove and reheated 'til it's like axle grease. Now that's coffee you can sink your teeth into.'

Mallory began to worry again. Her good manners told her she had to stay long enough for the cup of coffee she'd just custom-ordered, but no longer than that, and there were a couple of things she had to get straight before she revealed anything about herself to this supposed imagemaker, who looked and sounded as if she could use one of her own. 'What do you charge for your services?'

'We don' need to tawk about that jes' yet,' Maybelle said with a wave of a diamond-studded hand.

Mallory heard a loud throat-clearing sound, then Richard reappeared, positioning himself behind Maybelle like a bodyguard. 'Ms. Ewing charges one hundred dollars an hour and prefers to see new clients daily for the first week, tapering off in subsequent weeks,' he intoned, sounding like a recording. 'She'll see you each evening at seven and at four on weekends until further notice. A typical client can expect a fee of about two thousand dollars. Cream and sugar?' he added, circling the desk with the silver tray he'd been holding while he did his piece.

'Black, thanks.'

Maybelle smiled. 'Way-ell, there's some hope for ya.'

Mallory frowned back. There was one more thing she had to know. 'What sort of training did you have for this business?' she said, trying hard to say it nicely, as if she were merely interested in Maybelle's background.

'Training?' Maybelle cackled. 'No need to worry yourself about that, hon. I got me plenty of trainin' in all kinds of things. Look at them diplomas.' She cocked a thumb over her shoulder as Richard drifted out of the room.

Mallory gripped the handle of an exquisite bone china teacup as if it were the only piece of debris at hand after a shipwreck, and she directed her gaze to the wall behind Maybelle. It was papered with diplomas in gilded frames.

She narrowed her eyes. Diplomas could easily be faked. She had a strong feeling that the woman behind the desk wouldn't hesitate to buy diplomas by the square foot.

'And besides,' Maybelle was saying, 'look at me.' She stood up.

That was the problem. Mallory was looking at her. The woman topped out at five feet, and below the elegant black jacket Mallory saw pressed light blue jeans and a pair of heeled boots that upped the definition of cowboy boots by a quantum leap. They were black, tooled in yellow and purple pansies.

Mallory blinked, hesitated, left her saucer on the edge of the desk and stood, still holding the cup by its delicate handle. She carefully walked around the desk, narrowly avoiding being gored by a protruding horn, to join Maybelle at the wall.

Many of the diplomas were from correspondence schools and announced Maybelle's successful completion of courses in an amazing variety of fields, from mathematics to pottery-making. 'Don't pay them no mind,' Maybelle said, dismissing them with a wave. The enormous diamonds in her rings sent rainbows across the high ceiling of the room. 'I took them courses to inner-tain and edgy-cate myself after Hadley died. My husband,' she explained.

'I'm sorry,' Mallory said.

'I was, too,' Maybelle said, 'and real bored without him around to fight with.' She moved on down the wall and so did Mallory.

Here there were diplomas written in Chinese characters and a diploma from the Parsons School of Design. 'You were an interior designer?' Mallory said, casting a glance back at the desk.

'Oh, my, yeah,' Maybelle said. 'That was the most fun I ever had.'

'And lucrative,' Mallory murmured, trying to imagine a house this woman had had a hand in decorating, trying to imagine her on the loose in China. She couldn't even speak English.

'Way-ell, no.' Maybelle looked reflective. 'The money never interested me very much. But I do get bored real easy, so next I got me a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology-'

The coffee sloshed onto Mallory's only pair of black trousers.

'-then an MBA, so's I'd know what y'all young folks was up against in the business world. What line of work did you say you was in?'

The psychology degree was from Johns Hopkins and the MBA from New YorkUniversity. 'I'm a lawyer,' Mallory said, feeling humbled.

'I may get me one of them degrees next,' Maybelle declared. 'Dickie's significant other? He's involved in this lawsuit with a whole bunch of other people, and I want to tell you, that lawyer's gonna make out good.'

Mallory tensed up. 'Ah, what kind of lawsuit?'

Maybelle stepped toward her desk and Mallory followed. 'The craziest thing happened,' Maybelle said as she settled herself down. 'He's got the show biz bug, and he was going to audition for this part where they wanted a redhead-'

It couldn't be. It just couldn't.

'Now that we've gotten to know each other, mind if I take off this jacket?' Maybelle interrupted herself, taking it off without waiting for Mallory to answer.

'Of course-' she looked down at the T-shirt beneath the jacket '-not.' The T-shirt wasn't your customary snakeskin print. It depicted a python wrapped around Maybelle's skinny body, its head curling down over one shoulder.

'-and the stuff dyed his hair green.'

'No!' Mallory said, breaking eye contact with the python as she realized she had something worse than snakes to worry about.

'Oh, yes,' Maybelle said, misunderstanding Mallory's explosive response. 'And he's real thorough about his character development, y'know? So he didn't just dye the hair on his head, nosirree. He dyed everything, if y'all get my drift.'

Mallory, perched at the very edge of her chair, said, 'You mean-'

'I mean for a while there even his little tallywhacker was green,' Maybelle said. 'And I want to tell y'all he was mighty put out.' She paused for a moment. 'They have an apartment here in the house. The tawk gets kindly personal sometimes.'

'Maybelle, there's something I have to tell you,' Mallory began. How could Maybelle help her if she had a conflict of interests?

Maybelle leaned forward. 'Well, of course you do, and here I am chattering on about stuff. Y'all came here for help. Help gettin' your man, a little bird told me. Sounds to me like a real intrestin' project.'