“Send the bill to my husband, of course,” Bianca said. “And, Christina, would you be a dear and ship the clothes to my house in Rio, Federal Express? I want to wear the dress Monday night.”
“Delighted,” Christina said. “But you know shipping is cash in advance. Your husband can pay the taxes and duty on arrival. Let me check the rate.” She ran a manicured fingernail down a rate chart behind the cash register and named a hefty sum.
Bianca didn’t blink. She pulled a big wad of bills out of her tiny purse and paid.
But the amount made Helen raise her eyebrows. She knew how to crunch numbers, and Bianca’s whole purchase, including the box, wouldn’t weigh four pounds, max. Christina had overcharged the woman by at least three hundred dollars.
Was Juliana’s head saleswoman skimming the extra cash? Did she make more than three hundred dollars from Bianca and another thousand from Lauren that morning?
Helen began to wonder about Christina.
Chapter 3
The rent was due today.
Margery, her landlady, would be knocking on the door in half an hour. Fear cold as cemetery fog settled in on Helen. She didn’t have enough money for the rent. She was short by forty-one dollars. Panic seized her stomach, and she felt sick and dizzy. Helen didn’t take uncertainty well. She was meant to get a fat weekly paycheck with pension and benefits, not live from hand to mouth.
She remembered her old life in St. Louis with its careless luxuries. Helen never thought twice about the manicures, massages, and hundred-dollar haircuts. She used to pass out twenty-dollar tips like business cards.
But that was before she came home from work and found Rob kissing their neighbor Sandy. Their liplock was so passionate, Helen couldn’t have pried them apart with a crowbar. And she had a crowbar right there, next to Rob’s electric screwdriver. Helen still remembered how it felt when she picked up the crowbar and swung it as hard as she could—and heard that satisfying crunch. The rest of her memory seemed to come back in flashes: the horrible scene in court, her hurried flight from St. Louis, her long zigzag drive across the country to throw off any pursuers.
And now, the long, slow days in South Florida. Days that were pleasant and sunny, at least most of the time. January in Florida was as close to heaven as Helen was likely to get. Even today’s rain beat January in St. Louis. Back home, Helen would have been scraping ice off her windshield and sliding to work on slippery roads. She’d be shivering in a heavy wool coat and damp smelly boots. Now, after work, she kicked off her suit and heels and put on her cutoffs and sandals.
If Helen was being really honest, the only thing she missed about her old job was the money. Pensions and benefits bored her silly. She was glad she’d escaped that. But when she ran from St. Louis, she condemned herself to the prison of low-paying, dead-end jobs. She couldn’t take a decent job. She couldn’t have credit cards or a bank account. She would be too easy to trace.
So Helen went from making more than a hundred thousand a year to two hundred sixty-eight dollars a week at Juliana’s. After she paid her rent, there wasn’t much left for food and electricity and other necessities. And that worried her. All the time.
Helen threw herself wearily on the bed, and the old springs creaked. The lumpy pillows and turquoise chenille spread smelled slightly of the ever-present Florida mold and heat. She liked it. It was a vacation smell. Helen didn’t turn on the window air conditioner until half an hour before bedtime, to cut down her electric bill.
She picked up Chocolate, the fat brown teddy bear on her bed, unzipped his back, and felt inside. Choc was a stuffed bear all right. He was stuffed with all her available cash. She counted out the rent money for the tenth time. The bear had not grown fatter overnight. Helen was still forty-one dollars short. She checked her purse. Two dollars and seventy-eight cents. There wasn’t a stray penny in the sofa cushions.
It was worse than she thought.
Where did her money go? She’d bought pantyhose on Tuesday. She got a run in her Donna Karan control tops, and nail polish did not stop it. Twelve dollars for new ones. Helen had to have the only job in South Florida that required stockings, and tall women could not buy cheap pantyhose. They weren’t long enough. The dry cleaning for her black suit was another job expense. And one night, when she was really feeling wild, she ordered a pepperoni pizza.
Helen had another week until payday. She’d have to dip into her stash.
She patted Chocolate on the back like a burped baby, then pulled down the miniblinds, double-locked the door, and opened the utility closet. Wedged between the water heater and the wall was the old Samsonite suitcase she got for her high school trip to Washington D.C. Inside was a mound of shabby old-lady underwear she bought at a yard sale for twenty-five cents. Helen figured no burglar would touch the cotton circle-stitched bras, snagged support hose, and enormous flower-sprigged panties. Under that graying cotton and stretched elastic was all the money she had in the world: seven thousand three hundred and twenty-four dollars. Minus, after today, another forty-one bucks.
She counted out the money, promised herself that she would replace it this paycheck, and knew she would not.
Helen had arrived in Florida a month ago with ten thousand dollars in cash. It was a shock to learn that landlords here demanded a security deposit plus first and last month’s rent. That ate up nineteen hundred fifty dollars. Her worthless car needed eight hundred dollars in repairs, and Helen didn’t want to spend the money to fix it. She walked to work and hitched rides to the supermarket with folks at the Coronado apartments. But there were times when her pride wouldn’t let her mooch any more, and she took a cab. She’d needed a root canal three weeks ago. That was five hundred dollars, and the pain prescription was thirty-eight dollars. She had no medical insurance, either.
Helen had thought she was lucky when she landed a job at the diner the day she arrived in Fort Lauderdale, within walking distance of where she was staying. The owner was a flabby Greek in a stained white apron who had a mustache like a dead mouse. The man beamed when Helen asked to be paid in cash. His English was uncertain, but “off the books” were three words he understood. Helen made decent money in tips, too. Also off the books.
On the third day, she dropped a trayful of glassware in the kitchen. “I’m so sorry,” Helen said.
“Dat’s OK. We find a way to make it up,” the flabby Greek said, and he put his sweaty hands right on her breasts and rubbed his gross gut against her belly.
Helen reached behind her, found a meat mallet, and hit the randy Greek on his head. Then she walked out the diner door without collecting her pay.
She pounded the pavement for another ten days before she found the job at Juliana’s, and that was sheer luck. Sherry, the previous sales associate, did not show up for work one Monday. Her phone was disconnected, and her landlord said Sherry had moved out in the middle of the night, owing back rent. That happened a lot in South Florida.
Christina had been running the shop by herself for almost a week when Helen walked in looking for work. She was hired on the spot. The money wasn’t as good as at the diner, but every time Helen thought of looking for something better, she remembered the Greek gripping her breasts with hands like hairy suction cups.
The suitcase snapped shut with a tired
