Missing Reels (2 page)

She walked to the clock room. At the top of her card, her name was circled in red and an arrow pointed to a note: “See Lily.”

Jesus Christ, she thought. She walked back to the counter. Lily had talked a woman into buying a brooch and was ringing it up. Ceinwen slipped back behind the counter and waited. “Did you see the note?”

“Yes,” said Ceinwen. “You wanted to see me?”

“You’re damn right I wanted to see you. You’re late.”

“I’m sorry. I got a call …”

“Don’t you give me your excuses. This is the third time this week.” It was the second time this week, and the time before she had clocked in at two minutes past. Trouble was, Lily was the owner as well as the manager. You took two extra minutes, that was food Lily couldn’t eat and dates Lily couldn’t pay for. “You screw up everyone’s schedule when you come in late. Now here I am filling in for you, and everyone’s lunch hour is off. Not that you care. You seem to think because you sell a lot you can’t be fired. Well, think again. This is your warning. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” said Ceinwen, holding up a faceted bracelet, as if it were worthy of closer examination.

“Good.” Lily never got a pun or really any joke at all; she was the most humorless person Ceinwen had ever met. It even took the fun out of mocking her to her face. Lily stomped toward the entrance for a cigarette that Ceinwen could only pray would calm her down.

None of the people milling about were asking to see anything yet, and she went back to straightening. The counter was so long there were six different cases to fix. She loved arranging the jewelry, old pieces and new ones done in an old style, but Lily never liked the results. Ceinwen threw in scarves, mixed up styles and periods. Lily wanted everything by decade and designer, lined up so you could see every surface of every item. Ceinwen would get a case looking pretty, and the next morning Lily would redo everything, until it had about as much chic as a drugstore Tampax display.

Talmadge waved on his way to the men’s side, which was separated from the women’s by a wide, mirrored passage. She beckoned him over. Before she could say anything he sang out, “Ask-me-how-lunch-went.” He was so happy he didn’t need a rhetorical response: “I saw George.” George was the handyman at the discount clothing place next door. He was dark and muscular, exactly Talmadge’s type. Ceinwen preferred blonds, when she roused herself to prefer anything.

“Was his girlfriend with him?”

“Me-ow. He likes me.”

“Did he show you his supply closet?”

“Not yet.” Talmadge cast a look toward the front register. “I need to get back to my side. Not that anybody’s buying anything. Buncha joyriders today. Show me this, show me that, oh no not for me. And Lily is on the warpath.”

“Tell me about it. Listen, Talmadge—”

“Make it quick.”

“She’s out having a cigarette, I saw her go. Do you think it’s possible Miriam knew Jean Harlow?”

Too abrupt for Talmadge, who still had one eye out for Lily. “Who? Harlow? What?”

“Our neighbor. Miriam. Could she have known Jean Harlow?”

“Ceinwen, you’re obsessed.”

“I’m not. But today she wanted to talk to me about my dress.”

Talmadge was elated. “I told you that was a great dress. I told you to buy it. There you go.”

She diverted the torrent of Talmadge back to the topic. Miriam had said Harlow didn’t wear bras, or even underwear. Was it possible she had known her? Talmadge said Miriam probably just looked at that stuff in the movies more than Ceinwen did; “you made me watch
Red Dust
and even I noticed she didn’t have on underwear.” Or maybe Miriam read it somewhere. “I don’t see her in Hollywood. She’s way too New York.”

“But fifty years ago who knows what she was like?”

“There’s nothing California about her. You always forget I’m West Coast.”

“You’re from Tacoma.”

“I know what I’m talking about. There’s a whole different vibe out there. Miriam’s too proper.” The front door to the store opened and Lily stepped in, and in the time it took Ceinwen to turn her head back toward Talmadge, he had slipped away to the men’s side.

He’s wrong, she thought. I bet Miriam did know Harlow. Old Hollywood was as good a setting for Miriam as any.

Talmadge was right about the customers, though. Once they realized she was there to show things, they kept her on the hop, wanting to see everything in the case and on the shelves. Then, if they bought anything, it was those thin, jangling metal bangles the store sold three for a dollar.

She had no time to consider her imaginary Miriam biography until her lunch hour, which didn’t happen until five. Lily prized her arbitrary lunch-dismissal authority. Breaks were timed according to whether or not Lily liked you at the moment, how many customers were in the store, and whether Lily herself was on a diet and therefore jealous of anyone else’s eating. That made three strikes today, so Ceinwen counted herself lucky to be getting a lunch hour at all. She devoured scrambled eggs at the coffee shop and sucked down a couple of cigarettes to keep her brain going. Miriam had been Jean Harlow’s assistant. Miriam dated someone who dated Jean Harlow. Miriam was childhood friends with Harlow—though that would mean Miriam was from Kansas City, and if it was hard to picture Miriam in California, Kansas City was impossible.

All right, she’d been an actress and she was in a movie with Harlow. Then why had Ceinwen never heard of her? I, she thought, have heard of everyone. And I’ve seen everything of Harlow’s. I’ve even seen
Saratoga
. Wait, could that be it?
Saratoga
! What was the name of that lady who stood in for Harlow when she died during filming? The one hiding her face behind binoculars and hats.

She couldn’t remember the name, but in any case that didn’t work. Harlow was tiny, Miriam was tall.

Lily was in such a bad mood that Ceinwen came back five minutes early just to be safe. But Lily wasn’t going to like it when she counted out the register and saw how low the day’s take had been. It was after eight and the sales probably weren’t going to get any higher.

She dreaded the looks of the couple poring over the low-slung case at the end. The woman was wearing a tight leopard-print dress, and leopard-print clothing was a sure sign of a mean disposition. The man was wearing a rumpled, untucked linen shirt that looked expensive but was all wrong for September. But when the woman gave a snappy little wave—I’m not a cab, thought Ceinwen—there was no choice.

“I want to see that,” said the woman, tapping one brown-polished nail against the top of the counter. Oh goody, a glass tapper.

“Earrings? Bracelet? Necklace? Pin?” She forced a smile.

“The earrings,” said the woman, in some sort of accent. “No, not those.” Tap, tap. “Those. No, in the back. The back.”

“The blue ones,” said the man.

She whipped out the velvet tray and set the earrings down. The woman picked up an earring, said something to the man in whatever language she spoke, and put it down. “No, I don’t like those at all. They look cheap.”

“Maybe,” said Ceinwen, “if you told me what you’re looking for, I could suggest something.”

“I’m going back to Italy tomorrow,” said the woman. “I’m going to a party this week and I want something new.”

La. Dee. Da. “That sounds wonderful. Where in Italy?”

“Modena.” Spoken in a slow, bored drawl that meant, of course, you’ve never heard of it. This was basically a dare.

“Oh, just like Mary of Modena.”

The man took his eyes away from the case and looked at Ceinwen. The woman said, “Who?”

“James II’s wife. He was king of England. Mary was a princess from Modena.”

“I know James II.” She sounded irritated. “I don’t know his personal life.”

“She was Catholic,” said the man, “just like James.” He had an accent too, British from the sound of it. “Bedwarmer affair. Mary helped get him chucked out.” Definitely English. He was looking at Ceinwen in that annoyingly surprised way English people always did when an American said something intelligent.

“The English,” said the woman, suddenly flirtatious. “Always persecuting the Catholics. Even the English Catholics.”

“Oh yes. We’ve suffered.”

Oh please. The man kept glancing at her, maybe wondering if an American who’d heard of Mary of Modena should be a museum exhibit, so she couldn’t check her watch to see how much longer she had to suffer along with the downtrodden Catholics. “Let’s move down here and see what we’ve got.”

Another case, more tapping, more picking up and discarding, more Italian, more opinions—too old-woman, too flimsy, too heavy. One more case and one more set of taps. “Those.”

“She needs a little more info, love,” he said softly. Maybe he was trying to be nice. Longish hair and some lines on his face. Probably too much sun. English people were bad about that.

“I’m pointing at them.” If nice was the idea, what was he doing with this woman? She was tapping at the back of the case. Ceinwen’s eyes followed the nail. Oh no. Not those. Please not those.

“Which color?”

“The silver, with the enamel.” Those. Goddamnit. She had put them on hold two weeks ago, waiting until she had the money, and in two more weeks they could have been hers. Lily had put them back in the case, and she’d been running around so much, she hadn’t noticed.

“They’re a hundred.” They were more expensive than most of the other jewelry, and sometimes people recoiled from paying that much in a store that sold old clothes.

The woman rolled her eyes, said something in Italian, and then, “We don’t care about the price.” Ceinwen took the earrings out slowly and set them on the counter. No velvet. Maybe they’d look worse that way. And they wouldn’t look good on this woman, either, not with that olive skin and long narrow face.

“Now those I like,” said the Englishman, and Ceinwen was back to hating him.

“Miss.” There was a pair of women at the other end of the counter. “Can we see that?” One was pointing at the back wall. She checked her watch as she walked over. 8:25. They wanted to see a hat, the black one with the net veil. Hats were a pain in the neck. People tried them on, giggled a lot, and never bought them. She took it down. Yes, it was wonderful that people used to wear hats. No, nobody knew how to wear them anymore. This one looks better if you tilt it forward a bit …

A hand closed on her elbow. Once again Lily was dragging her away, so that all parties could pretend that this exchange wouldn’t be noticed. “What are you doing?”

“I’m showing a hat.”

“Not them.” Lily jerked Ceinwen’s elbow so she turned to face the couple. “Them.” The woman had put on the earrings and was absorbed in her reflection in the countertop mirror, angling her face this way and that. “What’s happening there?”

“She’s trying on the earrings.” The Englishman was standing back, observing his girlfriend’s varied pouts. Maybe he’d have the grace not to listen in.

“I know that. I see that. They’re pierced. Pierced earrings.” Her voice was rising. Answering Lily’s questions was always like this. She got mad if you said nothing, because the answer was in front of your face, and she got mad if you responded, because you were stating the obvious.

“I was helping those ladies with the hats.”

“And did you not tell her before you handed them over? Did you mention that there’s a regulation, a fucking health regulation that says she can’t try on the pierced earrings?”

The Englishman had turned and was easing closer. Yeah, your girlfriend got me yelled at. Now drop dead.

“Who are we supposed to sell them to now? Do we even have any peroxide or anything back there? I don’t know what is going on with you, but what I do know—”

“Excuse me.” The Englishman was in front of them.

“We’ll be with you in a moment, sir.” Back to Ceinwen. “You are in charge of what goes on behind this counter, and I should be able to trust—”

“I’m sorry, but it seems there’s a misunderstanding.” He wasn’t going away.

“If you just give us a minute sir—”

“I wanted,” he interrupted again—kind of nice to have someone interrupt Lily for a change—“to explain about the earrings. You see Seen When said—”

“What?”

“Seen When,” he said, affably, “isn’t that the name on her tag?”

Ceinwen hated her name tag for that very reason. “It’s KINE-wen,” she said.

A chuckle. “Sorry. Ceinwen.” Awfully glad you think my name’s funny, old bean. The woman hadn’t glanced their way once. She was still at the other end of the counter, checking out the way the earrings laid against her neck. He lowered his voice. “Ceinwen did in fact tell my girlfriend she couldn’t try on the earrings.”

Lily rounded on Ceinwen and demanded to know why she hadn’t explained. “I was trying to,” said Ceinwen. Before Lily could go into why Ceinwen needed to try harder, the Englishman leaned in and spoke lower still. “Anna’s Italian,” he said, with an apologetic little grimace. “Bit of a language barrier. And when I tried to tell her, she said I must be wrong because she couldn’t see how they looked without trying them on.” This, she thought, is one smooth liar. “Anyway, no harm done. I think Anna’s going to take them.”

Ah-nuh, he pronounced it. She even hated his vowels.

“All right then,” said Lily. “We’re always glad when people find what they need. Ceinwen will ring you up.” She walked past Anna and paused to check out the earrings. “Those are lovely. Art Nouveau. Very Mucha.”

You bitch, thought Ceinwen helplessly, as Lily left to harass the men’s side. She ran his credit card and gave the earrings a last pat as she put them in a box. Anna was still browsing the case, but the Englishman was watching Ceinwen as she twisted the tissue paper around the box and handed over the bag.

“Have a good evening.” She couldn’t bring herself to say thank you.

“You too,” he said, then, lower, “and good luck.” Ceinwen twitched her mouth into a half-smile and turned her back as they walked out.

Granana would have made her say thank you. The longer she stayed in New York, the worse her manners got. Then again, he’d stood right there while his girlfriend hadn’t bothered to say thank you or please or anything else. Maybe in Mississippi she’d have been grateful. In Manhattan she’d had it with people who could act like that and worse, buy her earrings at full price.