Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology

by Dr. Freud Funkenstein, ed.

  Managing Creighton’s Corner had become her life, the enterprise for which she lived; and because Summerstone contained Creighton’s Corner, she went into it daily with less philosophical scrutiny than a coal miner gives his mine. Such speculation, Marilyn knew from thirty-five years on her own, was worse than useless—it imprisoned you in doubts and misapprehensions largely of your own devising. She was glad to be but a few short steps from Creighton’s, glad to feel her funk disintegrating beneath the prospect of an efficient day at work.

  “Good morning, Ms. Odau,” Jane Sidney said as she entered Creighton’s.

  “Good morning. You look nice today.”

  The girl was wearing a green-and-gold jersey, a kind of gaucho skirt of imitation leather, and suede boots. Her hair was not much longer than a military cadet’s. She always pronounced “Ms.” as a muted buzz—either out of feminist conviction or, more likely, her fear that “Miss” would betray her more-than-middle-aged superior as unmarried ... as if that were a shameful thing in one of Marilyn’s generation. Only Cissy Campbell of the three girls who worked in the boutique could address her as “Miss Odau” without looking flustered. Or maybe Marilyn imagined this. She didn’t try to plumb the personal feelings of her employees, and they in turn didn’t try to cast her in the role of a mother confessor. They liked her well enough, though. Everyone got along.

  “I’m working for Cissy until three, Ms. Odau. We’ve traded shifts. Is that all right?” Jane followed her toward her office.

  “Of course it is. What about Terri?”

  The walls were mercury-colored mirrors; there were mirrors overhead. Racks of swirl-patterned jerseys, erotically tailored jumpsuits, and flamboyant scarves were reiterated around them like the refrain of a toothpaste or cola jingle. Macrame baskets with plastic flowers and exotic bath soaps hung from the ceiling. Black- light and pop-art posters went in and out on the walls, even though they never moved—and looking up at one of them, Marilyn had a vision of Satterwhite’s during the austere days of 1942-43, when the war had begun to put money in people’s pockets for the first time since the twenties but it was unpatriotic to spend it. She remembered the Office of Price Administration and ration-stamp booklets. Because of leather shortages, you couldn’t have more than two pairs of shoes a year. . . .

  Jane was looking at her fixedly.

  “I’m sorry, Jane. I didn’t hear you.”

  “I said Terri’ll be here at twelve, but she wants to work all day tomorrow too, if that’s okay. There aren’t any Tuesday classes at City College, and she wants to get in as many hours as she can before final exams come up.” Terri was still relatively new to the boutique.

  “Of course, that’s fine. Won’t you be here too?”

  “Yes, ma’am. In the afternoon.”

  “Okay, good . . . I’ve got some order forms to look over and a letter or two to write.” She excused herself and went behind a tie- dyed curtain into an office as plain and practical as Creighton’s decor was peacockish and orgiastic. She sat down to a small metal filing cabinet with an audible moan—a moan at odds with the satisfaction she felt in getting down to work. What was wrong with her? She knew, she knew, dear God wasn’t she perfectly aware. . . . Marilyn pulled her gloves off. As her fingers went to the onion-skin order forms and bills of lading in her files, she was surprised by the deep oxblood color of her nails. Why? She had worn this polish for a week, since well before Thanksgiving. . . .

  The answer of course was Maggie Hood. During the war Marilyn and Maggie had roomed together in a clapboard house not far from Satterwhite’s, a house with two poplars in the small front yard but not a single blade of grass. Maggie had worked for the telephone company (an irony, since they had no phone in their house), and she always wore oxblood nail polish. Several months before the Axis surrender, Maggie married a 4-F telephone-company official and moved to Mobile. The little house on Greenbriar Street was torn down during the midfifties to make way for an office building. Maggie Hood and oxblood nail polish—

  Recollections that skirted the heart of the matter, Marilyn knew. She shook them off and got down to business.

  Tasteful rock was playing in the boutique, something from Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life — Jane had flipped the music on. Through it, Marilyn could hear the morning herds passing along the concourses and interior bridges of Summerstone. Sometimes it seemed that half the population of the state was out there. Twice the previous Christmas season the structural vibrations had become so worrisome that security guards were ordered to keep new shoppers out until enough people had left to avert the danger of collapse. That was the rumor, anyway, and Marilyn almost believed it. Summerstone’s several owners, on the other hand, claimed that the doors had been locked simply to minimize crowding. But how many times did sane business people turn away customers solely to “minimize crowding”?

  Marilyn helped Jane wait on shoppers until noon. Then Terri Bready arrived, and she went back to her office. Instead of eating she checked outstanding accounts and sought to square away records. She kept her mind wholly occupied with the minutiae of running her business for its semiretired owners, Charlie and Agnes Creighton. It didn’t bother her at all that they were ten years younger than she, absentee landlords with a condominium apartment on the Gulf Coast. She did a good job for them, working evenings as well as lunch hours, and the Creightons were smart enough to realize her worth. They trusted her completely and paid her well.

  * * *

  At one o’clock Terri Bready stepped through Marilyn’s curtain and made an apologetic noise in her throat.

  “Hey, Terri. What is it?”

  “There’s a salesman out here who’d like to see you.” Bending a business card between her thumb and forefinger, the girl gave an odd baritone chuckle. Tawny-haired and lean, she was a freshman drama major who made the most fashionable clothes look like off- the-racks from a Salvation Army outlet. But she was sweet—so sweet that Marilyn had been embarrassed to hear her discussing with Cissy Campbell the boy she was living with.

  “Is he someone we regularly buy from, Terri?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know who we buy from.”

  “Is that his card?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Why don’t you let me see it, then?”

  “Oh. Okay. Sorry, Ms. Odau. Here.” Trying to hand it over, the girl popped the card out of her fingers; it struck Marilyn’s chest and fluttered into her lap. “Sorry again. Sheesh, I really am.” Terri chuckled her baritone chuckle, and Marilyn, smiling briefly, retrieved the card.

  It said: Nicholas Anson / Products Consultant & Sales Representative / Latter-Day Novelties / Los Angeles, California. Also on the card were two telephone numbers and a zip code.

  Terri Bready wet her lips with her tongue. “He’s a hunk, Ms. Odau, I’m not kidding you — he’s as pretty as a naked Swede.”

  “Is that right? How old?”

  “Oh, he’s too old for me. He’s got to be in his thirties at least.” “The poor decrepit dear.”

  “Oh, he’s not decrepit, any. But I’m out of the market. You know.”

  “Off the auction block?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Yeah.”

  “What’s he selling? We don’t often work through independent dealers — the Creightons don’t, that is — and I’ve never heard of this firm.”

  “Jane says she thinks he’s been hitting the stores up and down the mall for the last couple of days. Don’t know what he’s pushing. He’s got a samples case, though — and really the most incredible kiss-me eyes.”

  “If he’s been here two days, I’m surprised he hasn’t already sold those.”

  “Do you want me to send him back? He’s too polite to burst in. He’s been calling Jane and me Ms. Sidney and Ms. Bready, like that.”

  “Don’t send him back yet.” Marilyn had a premonition, almost a fear. “Let me take a look at him first.”

  Terri Bready barked a laugh and had to cover her mouth. “Hey, Ms
. Odau, I wouldn’t talk him up like Robert Redford and then send you a bald frog. I mean, why would I?”

  “Go on, Terri. I’ll talk to him in a couple of minutes.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” The girl was quickly gone, and at the curtain’s edge Marilyn looked out. Jane was waiting on a heavy-set woman in a fire-engine-red pantsuit, and just inside the boutique’s open threshold the man named Nicholas Anson was watching the crowds and countercrowds work through each other like grim armies.

  Anson’s hair was modishly long, and he reminded Marilyn a bit of the man who had grimaced at her on the off-ramp. Then, however, the sun had been ricocheting off windshields, grilles, and hood ornaments, and any real identification of the man in the Le Mans with this composed sales representative was impossible, if not downright pointless. A person in an automobile was not the same person you met on common ground. . . . Now Terri was approaching this Anson fellow, and he was turning toward the girl.

  Marilyn Odau felt her fingers tighten on the curtain. Already she had taken in the man’s navy-blue leisure jacket and, beneath it, his silky shirt the color and pattern of a cumulus-filled sky. Already she had noted the length and the sun-flecked blondness of his hair, the etched-out quality of his profile. . . . But when he turned, the only thing apparent to her was Anson’s resemblance to a dead marine named Jordan Burk, even though he was older than Jordan had lived to be. Ten or twelve years older, at the very least. Jordan Burk had died at twenty-four taking an amphibious tractor ashore at Betio, a tiny island near Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Nicholas Anson, however, had crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes and glints of silver in his sideburns. These things didn’t matter much — the resemblance was still a heartbreaking one, and Marilyn found that she was staring at Anson like a star-struck teenager. She let the curtain fall.

  This has happened before, she told herself. In a world of four billion people, over a period of thirty-five years, it isn’t surprising that you should encounter two or more young men who look like each other. For God’s sake, Odau, don’t go to pieces over the sight of still another man who reminds you of Jordan — a stranger from Los Angeles who in just a couple of years is going to be old enough to be the father of your forever-twenty-four Jordan darling.

  It’s the season, Marilyn protested, answering her relentlessly rational self. It’s especially cruel that this should happen now.

  It happens all the time. You’re just more susceptible at this time of year. Odau, you haven’t outgrown what amounts to a basically childish syndrome, and it’s beginning to look as if you never will.

  Old enough in just a couple of years to be Jordan’s father? He’s old enough right now to be Jordan’s and my child. Our child.

  Marilyn could feel tears welling up from some ancient spring; susceptible, she had an unexpected mental glimpse of the upstairs bedroom in her Brookmist townhouse, the bedroom next to hers, the bedroom she had made a sort of shrine. In its corner, a white wicker bassinet—

  That’s enough, Odau!

  “That’s enough!” she said aloud, clenching a fist at her throat.

  The curtain drew back, and she was again face to face with Terri Bready. “I’m sorry, Ms. Odau. You talkin’ to me?”

  “No, Terri. To myself.”

  “He’s a neat fella, really. Says he played drums for a rock band in Haight-Ashbury once upon a time. Says he was one of the original hippies. He’s been straight since Nixon resigned, he says—his faith was restored— Whyn’t you talk to him, Ms. Odau? Even if you don’t place an order with him, he’s an interesting person to talk to. Really. He says he’s heard good things about you from the other managers on the mall. He thinks our place is just the sort of place to handle one of his products.”

  “I bet he does. You certainly got a lot out of him in the short time he’s been here.”

  “Yeah. All my doing, too. I thought maybe, being from Los Angeles, he knew somebody in Hollywood. I sorta told him I was a drama major. You know. . . . Let me send him back, okay?”

  “All right. Send him back.”

  * * *

  Marilyn sat down at her desk. Almost immediately Nicholas Anson came through the curtain with his samples case. They exchanged polite greetings, and she was struck again by his resemblance to Jordan. Seeing him at close range didn’t dispel the illusion of an older Jordan Burk, but intensified it. This was the reverse of the way it usually happened, and when he put his case on her desk, she had to resist a real urge to reach out and touch his hand.

  No wonder Terri had been snowed. Anson’s presence was a mature and amiable one, faintly sexual in its undertones. Haight-Ashbury? No, that was wrong. Marilyn couldn’t imagine this man among Jesus freaks and flower children, begging small change, the ankles of his grubby blue jeans frayed above a pair of falling-to- pieces sandals. Altogether wrong. Thank God, he had found his calling. He seemed born to move gracefully among boutiques and front-line department stores, making recommendations, giving of his smile. Was it possible that he had once turned his gaunt young face upward to the beacon of a strobe and howled his heart out to the rhythms of his own acid drumming? Probably. A great many things had changed since the sixties. . . .

  “You’re quite far afield,” Marilyn said, to be saying something. “I’ve never heard of Latter-Day Novelties.”

  “It’s a consortium of independent business people and manufacturers,” Anson responded. “We’re trying to expand our markets, go nationwide. I’m not really used to acting as — what does it say on my card? — a sales representative. My first job — my real love — is being a products consultant. If your company is a novelties company, it has to have novelties, products that are new and appealing and unusual. Prior to coming East on this trip, my principal responsibility was making product suggestions. That seems to be my forte, and that’s what I really like to do.”

  “Well, I think you’ll be an able enough sales representative too." “Thank you, Miss Odau. Still, I always feel a little hesitation opening this case and going to bat for what it contains. There’s an element of egotism in going out and pushing your own brainchildren on the world.”

  “There’s an element of egotism in almost every human enterprise. I don’t think you need to worry.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Why don’t you show me what you have?”

  Nicholas Anson undid the catches on his case. “I’ve only brought you a single product. It was my judgment you wouldn’t be interested in celebrity T-shirts, cartoon-character paperweights—products of that nature. Have I judged fairly, Miss Odau?”

  “We’ve sold novelty T-shirts and jerseys, Mr. Anson, but the others sound like gift-shop gimcracks and we don’t ordinarily stock that sort of thing. Clothing, cosmetics, toiletries, a few handicraft or decorator items if they correlate well with the Creightons’ image of their franchise.”

  “Okay.” Anson removed a glossy cardboard package from his case and handed it across the desk to Marilyn. The kit was blue and white, with two triangular windows in the cardboard. Elegant longhand lettering on the package spelled out the words Liquid Sheers. Through one of the triangular windows she could see a bottle of mahogany-colored liquid, a small foil tray, and a short- bristled brush with a grip on its back; through the other window was visible an array of colored pencils.

  ‘“Liquid Sheers’?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The idea struck me only about a month ago, I drew up a marketing prospectus, and the Latter-Day consortium rushed the concept into production so quickly that the product’s already selling quite well in a number of West Coast boutiques. Speed is one of the keynotes of our company’s early success. By cutting down the elapsed time between concept-visualization and actual manufacture of the product, we’ve been able to stay ahead of most of our California competitors. ... If you like Liquid Sheers, we have the means to keep you in a good supply.”

  Marilyn was reading the instructions on the kit. Her attention refused to stay fixed on the words, and they kept slipp
ing away from her. Anson’s matter-of-fact monologue about his company’s business practices didn’t help her concentration. She gave up and set the package down.

  “But what are they? These Liquid Sheers?”

  “They’re a novel substitute — a decorator substitute — for pantyhose or nylons, Miss Odau. A woman mixes a small amount of the Liquid Sheer solution with water and rubs or paints it on her legs. The pencils can be used to draw on seams or color in some of the applicator designs we’ve included with the kit - butterflies, flowers, that sort of thing. Placement’s up to the individual. . . . We have kits for dark- as well as light-complexioned women, and the application process takes much less time than you might expect. It’s fun too, some of our products-testers have told us. Several boutiques have even reported increased sales of shorts, abbreviated skirts, and short culotte outfits once they began stocking Liquid Sheers. This, I ought to add, right here at the beginning of winter.” Anson stopped, his spiel dutifully completed and his smile expectant.

  “They’re bottled stockings,” Marilyn said.

  “Yes, ma’am. I suppose you could phrase it that way.”

  “We sold something very like this at Satterwhite’s during the war,” Marilyn went on, careful not to look at Anson. “Without the design doodads and the different colored pencils, at any rate. Women painted on their stockings and set the seams with mascara pencils.”