Chapter Twelve

Monday, October 16, 8:57 a.m.

Free had slept with the Nike bag on the pillow next to her, and she woke up with her left arm curled around it. During the night, her entire arm had gone numb, and now she massaged it in an effort to get the blood flowing. Bruises were still flowering on her legs. After taking a long shower, she stuffed Lydia’s purse, Doreen’s muumuu and the things from Fred Meyer into Jamie’s bag and then locked it up again. She had begun to think of herself as different, as if she had already become Lydia, but the mirror put the lie to that. Her head and feet, her buzz cut and Birkenstocks, looked like they still belonged to some hippie chick. In the middle, the combination of a man’s sweatshirt and pants and the beginning bulge of pregnancy made Free look like the kind of suburban matron who shopped at Walmart.

Professional woman seeks same. Free rubbed her hand over her smooth head. If she really were Lydia Watkins, the woman running the ad would surely rent to her. But not to Free, not to Free with her bald head and cheap sweatsuit. Taking out the nose ring hadn’t made much of a difference. If she were going to start on a new life, the life that Lydia might have lived, then she needed to look more like Lydia had.

She ate breakfast at a nearby McDonalds, savoring every bite of the Egg McMuffin and the crisp disk of hashbrowns, still hot from the fryer. Back on the street, Free eyed her reflection in the large window of a beauty salon, then focused on what was behind it. Next to a pyramid of sculpting gel jars was a display made out of a foot-square piece of black velvet. Piercing the velvet were thirty plastic flesh-colored index fingers. Crooked downward, each nail displayed a different color of nail polish. The effect was macabre, like looking at the souvenirs of a serial killer. Free was about to walk on when she noticed the second to the last item on a sign listing services offered by the salon -- Erica Young wigs.

Thirty minutes and one hundred and forty-nine dollars later, Free emerged from the salon wearing what the saleslady had called the Maui model. Made from human hair about the same shade as Lydia’s had been, the wig came pretty close to Lydia’s style, too. Now Free had a dark brown bob. The bangs hid the cut on her forehead, and the ends turned under in a line even with her chin. Each time Free turned her head, strands brushed against her neck. The unexpected touch made her flinch. Even though her new hair didn’t quite go with her sweat suit, Free noticed immediately that it did cut down on the number of stares she got.

She had one more stop to make before she would be a reasonable facsimile of “professional woman seeks same.” It was definitely time to go shopping. Although she was in a part of the city that offered a dozen clothing stores, many of them were small boutiques where she was sure to be the center of attention. That was the last thing she wanted. She kept scanning the people on the sidewalk, alert for the mysterious Don, who would probably do anything to get his money back. The sooner she looked like someone else, the better. Then no one would be able to connect her to the girl who had picked up Jamie’s money.

Up ahead, Free spotted a Whitchers. The chain had an outpost in Medford, and from the time or two she had ventured in (seldom with any money to spend - Diane had been proud that she “mooched” most of their clothes), Free had found it far less intimidating and much more jumbled than most clothing stores. It catered to everyone from the just plain cheap, to the bargain-loving crowd, to the people who could afford something – anything – prominently displaying a designer’s logo.

Once she walked through the doors, she automatically headed for the stuff she normally wore - short dresses, embroidered jeans, crop tops. Then she remembered. She wasn’t 19-year-old Free. She was 23-year-old Lydia now. A widow. A woman who probably had a job at an office. A woman who wore serious, grown-up clothes.

After consulting the directory, Free went to the fourth floor. Here she found what were described as career clothes. It was all stuff that one day at Petorium would have left snagged and permanently stained. There wasn’t a single serviceable drip-dry multicolor polyester item in sight. Instead there were matching skirts and jackets made of the finest wool gabardine. Silk blouses that slipped through Free’s fingers when she caressed the cloth. Cashmere twin sets as soft as clouds. It was only when she pressed a silk shirtdress up against herself, trying to gauge what size she should take to the dressing room, that Free remembered that with all her money, she still couldn’t have any of these clothes.

She was pregnant. Which meant that none of these outfits would fit for more than a month or two, at the most. And most of them probably wouldn’t fit right now.

Reluctantly, Free went up a floor to the maternity clothes. The clothes here were a cruel contrast to those on the fourth floor. Everything seemed to be either pink, decorated with ribbons and ruffles, patterned with tiny flowers, or all three. She didn't want to look like a kindergartner who'd accidentally gotten herself knocked-up. The first sales clerk she saw took one look at her cheap sweat suit and heavy bag and gave her a wide berth. The second, a woman who looked nearly seventy and barely came to Free’s shoulder, bustled over with a smile on her face.

“May I help you find something?” Osteoporosis had pushed the woman’s shoulders into a permanent curve, making her head jut forward like a turtle’s.

“Do you have anything more - dressy? I’m looking for something, um, like a professional woman would wear.”

If the salesclerk thought this an odd request coming from a woman wearing poly-cotton sweats and Birkenstocks, she didn’t let on. “To work? Like a skirted suit?”

When Free nodded, the woman darted unhesitatingly from rack to rack. She came back with a black suit with French cuffs, a cream-colored twin set, a pair of black pants, and a burgundy colored dress with a sweetheart neckline. “What would you like to try on?”

“All of it!” Free’s spirits were rising. She’d never owned a jacket with lapels or a dress that had to be worn with nylons.

As the clerk hung Free’s clothes in a dressing room, she told Free that she would wait to see if Free needed different sizes. Part of Free wondered if the older woman was really afraid that she was going to steal something. Maybe she was listening for the telltale sound of someone trying to pry apart the plastic anti-theft device that dangled from each garment.

After pulling on the twin set and black pants, Free hesitantly stepped out of the dressing room to look in the three-way mirror. The clerk tilted her head to one side, looking even more like a bird.

“Are you wearing a maternity bra?”

Free shook her head, knowing it was pretty clear she wasn’t wearing any bra at all. “Do you sell any?” She had never known there were such things, but she had seen more than enough of Diane’s boobs to know that a little support might not be a bad thing.

In answer, the woman came back with several white bras. Free studied the hang tag of one before trying it on. It promised to grow right along with her - the pregnant woman’s version of a training bra.

By the time Free and her helper - Helen - were through, she had selected two bras, seven pairs of maternity underwear, a nightgown, three pairs of maternity stockings and nine different outfits – including all the clothes Helen had originally chosen for her. The older woman even hunted down items from other departments, coming back with shoes, socks, stockings, and even a strand of pearls and matching earrings. And after asking if she might make a suggestion, Helen went down four floors and came back with a tube of red lipstick. The bright slash of color lit up Free’s whole face.

Free realized she needed something to haul everything off in, so Helen even went up to the luggage department and came back with a black Samonsite suitcase on wheels. She and Free had taken to bursting into giggles for no reason.

“Can I wear one of the outfits out of the store?”

“Certainly. Do you want to keep your old clothes?”

The sweat suit had cost twenty-four dollars, and she had worn it only one day. Feeling more than a little bit daring, Free shook her head. She took the black pants and the twin set back into the dressing room with her, along with the maternity underwear, knee-high stockings and the black flats. While she dressed, Free added the total up in her head. It was pretty clear she would have to dip into Jamie’s bag to pay for everything.

#

“Look at that, Joe.” The younger of the two security guards nudged his partner.

They had both long since gotten over the thrill of seeing nude strangers, especially since very few of them bore any resemblance to a Penthouse Pet. And the store always made sure to assign two of them to the dark room the size of a walk-in closet and lined with video monitors. Unstated was the reasoning that having company meant there was less chance of a security officer treating the room like his own private peep show and taking matters into his own hands, so to speak.

They were there to watch for theft, and they saw that a lot, but they also saw interesting things all the time that didn’t fall under their purview. Men dressed as women, women dressed as men, men who wore women’s panties under their staid suits, women who hid their stick-thin bodies with voluptuously padded undergarments. Once or twice they had witnessed a daring couple sneak a tryst in an isolated dressing room. The tapes for those rare events got passed around the various shifts, sometimes even sold.

By the time Joe turned, there wasn’t much to see but a girl with brown hair and a nice body, even if she seemed a little bit pregnant. Insisting he had seen something, the first guard rewound the tape a bit and played it back. And there it was – underneath some other stuff inside a zippered gym bag, there was a flash of what looked like stacks of money.

They rewound it and watched it again. Then Joe shrugged his shoulders and hit the rewind button, so that the tape would be used again. There were there to catch people stealing, that was all. If some woman wanted to carry a lot of cash in a gym bag, well, that was her business. He just hoped she had the good sense to keep a tight hold of the bag.