Shop Till You Drop (4 page)

Christina had told Helen that Juliana’s Brazilian women got plastic surgery done at a much earlier age than Americans. “They start in their twenties. The first thing Brazilians do is get their large breasts reduced, so they look slimmer,” Christina said approvingly. “That’s a trick American women should learn. Too often the Americans go for the biggest fake boobs, and then their clothes never look good on them.”

Bianca had had her thighs and belly liposuctioned, her nose bobbed, her eyes done, and two ribs removed so her waist looked smaller, Christina told her. Helen could see for herself that Bianca’s dark hair was streaked with expensive blonde highlights, and her teeth had been whitened.

Helen examined this monument to Brazilian body sculpting. She thought Bianca looked spooky. She’d seen chicken wings with more meat on them. Helen felt like a linebacker next to this smidgen of a woman.

Christina rushed forward to greet Bianca, lips pursed for an air kiss.

After ninety minutes of nonstop chatter, Bianca bought a wisp of a painted silk dress and two handkerchief-sized blouses for thirty-two hundred dollars.

“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.

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
snick.
Helen felt tired, too. She wanted to put up her aching feet. Her apartment was two rooms, a bedroom that opened onto a patio and a bigger room that served as living room, kitchen, and dining room. The furniture was from the 1950s. Some New York decorator would pay a fortune for the boomerang coffee table and the turquoise lamps shaped like nuclear reactors. The turquoise couch had an exuberant black triangle pattern. But the piece she loved most was a genuine Barcalounger. Lord, that monster was comfortable.

Before Helen could throw herself into it, the doorbell rang. Through the glass slats of the jalousie door, she saw her landlady, Margery Flax, with a tall glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Margery walked into the room like she owned it, which she did. “Here, drink this. You need your Vitamin C,” she said, shoving the glass into Helen’s hand.

Helen sniffed the glass. It looked like orange juice, but it smelled sort of bitter and perfume-y. There was a lime slice on the rim.

“What’s this?”

“A screwdriver,” Margery said.

“Only in South Florida do sweet old ladies fix you screwdrivers so you get your Vitamin C,” Helen said.

“I’m not sweet, I’m no lady, and I’m not old,” Margery said indignantly. “I’m only seventy-six.”

“You’re right. I was being ageist,” Helen said contritely.

“Well, I’m not that young, either,” Margery said. “But I don’t go on about it.”

Seventy-six years in the Florida sun had left Margery’s fair skin as brown and wrinkled as an old paper bag. Two packs of Marlboros a day didn’t help. Juliana’s customers would be horrified by Margery’s skin. But Helen thought Margery’s lived-in face was attractive. Margery had shrewd brown eyes and straight gray hair that curved at her chin. She painted her toenails bright red, wore a silver toe ring and sexy Italian sandals. “The legs are the last to go,” Margery said, and she showed off hers in purple shorts.

Margery was a commanding woman. After ordering Helen to drink the screwdriver, Margery now ordered her out of the apartment.

“It’s a nice night. Go on out by the pool and talk to people. Peggy’s out there.”

“What about Cal?” Helen said.

“Hah,” Margery snorted, and blew smoke out her nose like a dragon. “That tightwad. What do you see in him?”

“I like the way he says ‘ah-boot’ for ‘about.’ ”

“Now, there’s the basis for a good relationship,” Margery said.

Cal was a snowbird from Toronto. He was forty-five and divorced, with a nicely weathered face and good legs. Helen liked a well-shaped calf, and down here, where men wore shorts to almost everything but funerals, she had much to admire.

“Cal is intelligent and a good talker. I love listening to his stories about Canada.”

“Talk is cheap,” Margery said. “And so is Cal.”

“Oh, Margery, you’re so prejudiced against Canadians. They’re nice quiet people. They make good tourists. They never kill themselves by diving into swimming pools from the tenth floor, like the drunken college kids at spring break. And not all Canadians are cheap.”

“Oh, yeah?” Margery said, cigarette dangling from her lip like a movie tough. “Don’t ever go to dinner with him. Listen, sweetie, I’ve got ads in the paper to rent 2C. I’ll find you someone better than Cal.” She took Helen’s rent money and disappeared out the door in a cloud of smoke.

Helen turned on the fan to chase out the cigarette smoke. Now she would have to go sit by the pool just to breathe. She loved Margery but wished she wouldn’t go on about the cheap Canadians. South Florida residents had a love-hate relationship with their Canadian visitors, who showed up about November and went back north after Easter. The Floridians needed their tourist dollars but claimed the Canadians were cheap. Servers called them “special waters,” because so many Canadians ordered the cheapest dinner special and drank only free tap water.

Helen opened her sliding glass patio door and stepped into the warm, soft Florida night. She was immediately enveloped in a cloud of marijuana smoke from the apartment next door. Phil the invisible pothead lived next to Helen. She’d never seen him the whole time she’d lived there. In fact, she would not believe Phil existed if she didn’t smell the pungent pot wafting through his jalousie doors.

The Coronado Tropic Apartments looked glamorous in the subtropic evening light. Margery and her long-dead husband built the apartments in 1949. The two-story Art Deco building had an exuberant S-curve. The sweeping lines were somewhat spoiled by the rusty, rattling air conditioners that stuck out of the windows like rude tongues. The Coronado was painted ice-cream white with turquoise trim and built around a turquoise-tiled swimming pool.