Alice in the Know

  “Yeah,” said Faith. “Alice has to spend the whole day watching women take off their clothes.”

  “Doesn’t sound so bad to me!” said Chris.

  “Well, I’m psyched,” said Molly. “I haven’t seen a good movie in months.”

  “I hope you won’t be disappointed,” Harry said.

  “Hey, it’s a night out,” said Molly. “And it’s good to see everyone.”

  Unfortunately, the movie was sold out by the time we reached the window.

  Chris turned toward Molly. “We can get in the nine forty-five show. You want to try for that, or is that getting too late?”

  “I’m good!” said Molly.

  So Chris got the tickets, and then we ambled around the mall.

  “You sure you’re up for this?” Faith asked Molly as we paused at a music store and Chris looked at CDs in the window.

  “Yeah, so far I’m holding up,” Molly said. She ran one hand through her hair, then automatically checked her fingers. “It’s nuts, I know, but I worry most about losing my hair. And the doctor says I will. Comes with the territory. I might not lose it all, he says, but … I don’t know. No hair might look better than clumps of it here and there.”

  Harry held up one finger. “Idea!” he said, and took Molly by the arm. We followed along, and he led us to a new store called Lids that sold nothing but caps. Not hats. Caps. Every kind of cap you could think of. We started to smile as we went inside.

  “Okay,” said Harry, hands on Molly’s shoulders, studying her face. “Max, what do you think?”

  “Hmmm,” said his friend. “I’d go for the blue with the silver trim.”

  “Really?” said Harry. “How about the blue with beads on the bill?”

  Chris took a black baseball cap with buttons all over it, one from every state, and set it on Molly’s head.

  “No,” said Faith, snatching it off and putting a red satin cap on her instead. “Something sexy she can wear with satin underwear.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Molly, laughing. She modeled each cap as though she were on a fashion runway, and we ended up buying two—a blue denim with signs of the zodiac embroidered all over it and a black number with red sequins.

  “Hey, thanks, you guys!” Molly said. “They’re terrific!”

  We goofed around till the next show, and then we sat at the back, whispering comments to each other about the thriller on the screen. Once you’re involved in stage stuff, I guess, you’re always the critic, and when Harry and Max started guessing who the mole was, Molly joked that she would get the manager if they didn’t let her figure it out herself.

  It had a surprise ending, though, that tricked us all, and the surprise of our evening was that when we got Molly back to her house, she looked even more energetic than she had at the start as she grinned at us from the porch, waving a cap in each hand.

  Pam and Liz and Gwen and Yolanda had an early dinner with me the next day on my break. Pamela didn’t get as long a break as I did, so the others already had a table saved for us when we met them in the food court outside Burger King.

  Liz had been reading a magazine article that supposedly analyzed your personality based on your favorite color.

  “Okay, Gwen, what’s yours?” Liz asked.

  “Oh, yellow, I suppose,” said Gwen.

  Liz ran her finger down the page till she found it. “Yellow,” she repeated. “You are idealistic, cheerful, and a good planner. What’s yours, Pamela?”

  “Purple?” said Pam.

  “Temperamental, unique, and sensitive,” Liz read.

  “What’s your favorite color, Liz?” I asked.

  “Blue.”

  “And … ?”

  She found it and made a face: “Capable, conservative, and inclined to caution.”

  “Each of these colors has exactly three attributes?” asked Gwen.

  “I guess so. I didn’t write the article,” said Liz. “Yolanda?”

  “I’ll go with black,” Yolanda said.

  “Hmmm,” said Liz. “Dignity, wit, and cleverness.”

  “Yolanda?” shrieked Gwen, and Yolanda gave her hand a slap.

  “What about you, Alice?” asked Gwen.

  “Green, of course.”

  “You are frank, stable, and persistent,” said Liz.

  “Ugh, ugh, and ugh,” I said. “Now, that’s exciting.”

  “This stuff could apply to anyone,” said Gwen. “I’ll bet at least one of those qualities from every color could apply to all of us.”

  “I had a dream once where everything was purple,” Yolanda said.

  “You dream in Technicolor?” asked Pamela. “I think all my dreams are in black and white.”

  I’d never thought much about color in my dreams and tried to remember. “Last night,” I told them, “I dreamed that Sylvia had a baby. And she’s had a hysterectomy. How’s that for drama?”

  “Maybe you want a little sister,” said Liz. “I never wanted a sibling till Nathan was born, and now I wouldn’t mind having another one.”

  Yolanda was frowning, though. “It may not be as happy a dream as you think, Alice,” she said. “You know what they say: If you dream about death, it means there will be a birth. But if you dream about a birth, it means that someone you know is going to die.”

  Gwen doesn’t have much patience with superstitions. “Oh, come on, girl! Of course someone she knows will die! Everybody’s going to die, so what else is new?”

  Yolanda shrugged. Gwen was right, of course. But something like that stays with you whether you want it to or not. All I could think of was Molly.

  Pamela changed the subject.

  “Dad said maybe he’d take me to the ocean before school starts,” she said. “He’s suddenly being very nice to me these days. I think it has something to do with Meredith.”

  “The nurse?” I asked. “The girlfriend?”

  “Yeah.” Pamela picked up a piece of cheese and popped it into her mouth. “She was in the bathroom when I got up this morning, by the way.”

  We looked at Pamela.

  “That means … ?” said Liz.

  “Yeah. That she was there all night. With Dad, I mean. I got up to pee about five, and she was just coming out, dressed in her hospital scrubs. I think she was embarrassed I saw her.”

  “What does she expect? It’s your bathroom!” I said.

  “What did you say?” asked Elizabeth.

  “Nothing. I was hardly awake. I just went inside and shut the door,” said Pamela.

  “What did she say?” asked Gwen.

  “I’m not sure. ‘Excuse me,’ maybe. It was so weird. Now I wonder how many other times she’s stayed overnight and left early and I didn’t even know she was there. I think she works the three to eleven shift.” She picked up a piece of onion and stuffed that in her mouth too. “I don’t know why I had to be born into that family.”

  “So did your dad say anything to you?” asked Yolanda.

  “Not a word. Maybe he doesn’t know I saw her. I’m positive he doesn’t want Mom to know. She’d spaz.”

  “But the divorce went through!” I said. “It’s final!”

  “I don’t think you ever get divorced emotionally, though,” Pamela said. “So now I’ve got this big secret I have to keep from her. It’s crazy.”

  “Not as crazy as my dad,” said Yolanda. “His girlfriend’s been living with us for three years, and I’m supposed to call her ‘Mom’ and tell everyone they’re married. Yeah, right.”

  What exactly makes a family? I wondered. A bunch of people living under the same roof? A bunch of related individuals under separate roofs? Same race? Same nationality? Or can a family be as mixed up and unique as the people in it?

  After I’d said good-bye to my friends and was heading back inside Hecht’s, I saw Tracy coming out.

  “Tracy!” I said.

  “Well! Alice!” she said. “I kept my eye out for you but didn’t know where you’d be working.”

  “I
’m in misses’ sportswear now,” I said. “You shopping?”

  “Trying to. I’ve got a special occasion coming up and need a dress. Can’t decide on a color.”

  My mind took her words in like a computer, sifting and sorting and lining them up. Her birthday. Did she sense this was going to be special, I wondered? That Lester was going to propose? Les liked her in bright colors, I knew that much.

  “I’d go with red or yellow,” I said. “You look good in both.”

  She laughed. “You ever try to find a red dress in the summertime? But I’ll keep looking. Hecht’s didn’t have anything I really want.”

  “Good luck!” I told her, and smiled to myself. It’s hard to pretend you don’t know anything when the whole scenario is playing out in your head: Lester in a sport coat, Tracy in a red or yellow dress, the dinner, the proposal, the ring …

  At the moment our department was between sales, so we were virtually empty over the dinner hour. Things didn’t pick up later, either, and I had to look for things to keep me busy. Juanita had just gone on break when I saw three customers over in designer jeans. One was a fiftyish man and the others were younger women, one white, one black. I thought of the time Liz and Gwen and I were shopping together and the store detective had singled out Gwen and followed her around.

  I smiled at the black woman, and she smiled back as they browsed. You’re lucky I’m working tonight, I was thinking. You’re going to get the same respect I’d give anyone.

  I straightened a rack of shirts and helped another customer find a top. I glanced again at the customers over in designer jeans and saw only the man this time, studying a label. I picked up an armful of empty hangers that had collected behind the counter and took them back to the box in the fitting rooms. The two women I’d seen earlier weren’t there, either.

  As I came out onto the floor again, I swerved and made a detour around knit tops to collect a stray hanger at the end of a rack. I passed one of the aisles and caught a glimpse of the two women stooping low over a shopping bag, and as I walked on toward the counter, I suddenly realized what I had seen.

  The more I thought about it, the more sure I was. The fiftyish man was their lookout. One woman had been holding open a huge shopping bag, and the other was shoving armfuls of designer jeans inside it. Booster bag.

  My tongue seemed stuck to my teeth and my pulse raced. I glanced around for Juanita but knew she was still on her break. A trickle of sweat ran down my back.

  I picked up the phone and punched in the security code, trying to remember the code word for “theft in progress.”

  “Security,” came a voice at the other end, but before I could make a sound, a large hand clamped down over mine and lowered the phone to its cradle. The steel gray eyes of the middle-aged man bore into mine.

  All I could think of right then was Yolanda’s warning that someone I knew was going to die. Me, who else? He didn’t let go, just stood there pressing my hand down hard on the telephone, while the women’s heads bobbed up again. With lightning speed, they emptied another shelf into a second shopping bag, and then they separated, one going toward the south exit, the other toward the east.

  I desperately scanned the area—infants and toddlers across the way, women’s shoes farther down—but saw only one other clerk with her back toward me.

  Suddenly the man let go of my hand and, without a word, walked quickly, but still casually, out of my department and disappeared. Seconds later the store detective came sprinting up, and I was still hyperventilating.

  “A man … about fifty… . He was with two women. One went that way and one the other. They’ve got two shopping bags full of designer jeans,” I panted. “I think the man went toward the escalator … I’m not sure.”

  The detective used his walkie-talkie and directed security personnel to cover the parking lots. I gave him the best descriptions I could before he took off again, but my knees were still shaking when Juanita came back.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Shoplifters,” I told her. “Right after you left.”

  “Wouldn’t you know!” she said. “Chances are they checked out this department in advance. They knew who was on duty and when we took our breaks.”

  “But I wasn’t even able to say what was happening when I called security,” I said. “The man pushed the phone back down and held it there. How did the detective know where to come?”

  “Security can tell which extension you’re on, and they send the store detective to your area if you don’t respond,” she said. “Did he actually touch the phone? They might want to dust it for prints.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “Hey!” said Juanita. “Looks like they’ve got someone.”

  I turned toward the escalators, and sure enough, the detective was escorting the man, his hands locked behind him.

  “This the man?” the detective asked.

  The steel gray eyes fixed themselves on me, and I felt he would have strangled me on the spot if I spoke. I nodded.

  “If this is who we think he is, we’ve been looking for this trio for a looooong time,” the detective said.

  The store manager came hurrying over. “They get the other two?”

  The detective was listening on his walkie-talkie. “The county police are out there now, and they’ve got the exits blocked,” he said.

  Juanita looked at me. “Alice, let’s sit down,” she said. “You look like you don’t have a drop of blood in your body.”

  I didn’t even want her to use my name. I didn’t want the man with the gray eyes to know anything about me. We walked over to the two chairs next to the fitting rooms, and I sat down.

  “What do they do with all the stuff they walked out with?” I asked her.

  “Sell it to mom-and-pop stores in New York. There’re a dozen different ways to cash in on it.”

  They caught the white woman a half hour later trying to leave the parking lot on foot, then the black woman hiding in the man’s van. It was packed with loot they’d stolen from other shopping malls, the police said.

  It took me some time to breathe normally and process what had happened. What if I hadn’t come out of the fitting rooms when I had and seen what was going on? What if I hadn’t made that detour to get that hanger? And then, more important, why hadn’t I guessed? In the training session they’d warned us about thieves traveling in groups. What was the man doing in women’s designer jeans in the first place? Why hadn’t I gone over to check?

  “Thieves come in all shapes and sizes and colors,” Sergeant Camfield had told us. But I had been so eager to be fair that I forgot.

  8

  Utter Humiliation

  At last I had something exciting to tell the family at dinner. Dad and Sylvia had held off eating until I got home, and the incident disturbed them more than I’d thought.

  “I don’t like the idea of your being left in a department by yourself at night,” Dad said. “They should have a person trained in emergency procedures on duty all the time.”

  “It’s not possible, Dad!” I told him. “Even the most experienced salespeople have to take breaks sometime.”

  “Do you think you’ll be called as a witness?” Sylvia wanted to know.

  I shook my head. “They found the two women with the jeans in their bags. That should be evidence enough.”

  “What about the man?” asked Dad.

  “The police said that the three of them have been working as a team, and they’ve left a trail from Ohio to Maryland. Stores have their pictures on security cameras.”

  “Well, I’m glad they’re caught,” said Dad. “That kind of excitement I can do without.”

  Les hadn’t come by, though, so I called him later. “You missed one of the most exciting episodes of my life,” I said. “Why weren’t you here for dinner?”

  “Al, I’ve been eating there more than I have in my own apartment,” he said. “Sylvia’s going to start charging if I don’t quit mooching off
them. Why? What happened at dinner? You swallow your braces or something?”

  “I was responsible for catching a gang of thieves at Hecht’s, Lester!” I said.

  “You’re joking.”

  “No! Shoplifters!” At last I had his attention. “And when the ringleader realized I was calling store security, he grabbed me and ordered me to stop.”

  “What?”

  “Well, actually, he grabbed my arm … my hand, anyway … well, the telephone, and he made me hang up.”

  “And then?” Lester prodded.

  “Security could tell where the call had come from and sent the store detective to check. And they caught all three of them—one man and two women!”

  “And you did all that without passing out or throwing up? Way to go, Al!” Lester said.

  Of course I had to e-mail everyone I knew. The next afternoon I even phoned Rosalind, my old friend from grade school over in Takoma Park. I found that we both had a day off. I told her about all the excitement.

  “They give you a raise?” she asked.

  “Hardly.”

  “Well, let’s celebrate!” said Rosalind. She’s always in the mood to celebrate something. “What do you want to do? See a movie? Throw a Frisbee? Take a walk?”

  “A walk sounds good,” I said. “I haven’t done much running this week. Let’s go to the park.”

  “Okay. I’ve got an errand to run for Mom, and then I’ll drive over,” she told me.

  “Take your time,” I said. It’s always good to see Rosalind. We go to different schools, have different friends, but we still see each other now and then.

  I sat down at my computer and tried to think if there was anyone else I wanted to tell about the shoplifting incident. I’d wait to tell Molly when I saw her again. Give us something new to talk about. Then I decided to check my in-box while I waited for Rosalind.

  One e-mail telling me I’d won seventy thousand dollars in a lottery. Yeah, right. Delete. One selling medicines online and another address I didn’t recognize. The subject line read: Your future love life predicted here.

  I grinned. I love those quizzes that are supposed to tell you all kinds of stuff about yourself. About as reliable as tea leaves in a cup, but who wouldn’t want to know her future, especially in the sex department? I clicked on Start and read the first paragraph on the page I linked to: