Elizabeth rubbed her fingers together and watched the strands of adhesive stretch between them. For the last three hours she had been sticking address labels on catalogs. For the first twenty minutes it had been pleasant to do something different from data entry, but that feeling had faded pretty fast. She strained her ears to catch the sound of the music that Miss Price played in the store, but no more than a faint murmur reached her in the storeroom.
Wishing she had brought her portable CD player, she stood and stretched before going downstairs to borrow one of the clock radios that constantly blinked 12:00 a.m. in Miss Price's office. Alice was in her usual place at the register, nibbling on a sandwich and reading a children's picture book. She was, as she had said she would, wearing her boots with a doublet and breeches, but she had replaced the plumed hat with Miss Price's cat ears. She had also drawn some whiskers on her face with eyeliner.
She grinned at her sister and flashed the cover of the picture book. "Puss in Boots. Isn't this cool? I was afraid we were going to have to be boring musketeers, or something. I'm Puss in Boots, Dirk is the king, you're the princess, and Bob is the miller's son who inherits me and benefits from my trickery. I change an ogre into a mouse and eat him up so Bob gets his castle and can marry you. Too bad we don't have an ogre too."
The bell over the door tinkled and a menacing shape stood in the doorway. Cracking her gum and snuffling, the Goth girl from the Drastic Steps shoe store sloped into the bookstore.
"Hello, Drucilla," Alice said.
"The name's Becky." She glared at Alice through her lumpy, brown, white girl dreadlocks.
"Oh, sorry. I guess Drucilla was last week's name."
Becky blew a large black bubble which stuck in her hair. She spat her gum into her hand and carefully picked the hair out, then popped the gum back in her mouth. "Where you keep your tarot decks?"
"Behind the counter, like we always have."
Becky walked up slowly over and leaned on the counter with her hands flat on the glass. When she moved them she left a sticky trail of gum.
Elizabeth's skin crawled and she resolved to find some solvent so she could clean the adhesive off her own hands immediately. When she went back up to her storeroom with a dusty radio and a bottle of nail polish remover she had taken from her sister's purse, Becky was still shopping, or rather, complaining about the selection of tarot decks.
"Don't you have the Death deck? All you have are these wussy ones: the peace deck, the earth deck, the tree of life deck. Like you can tell the future with that life-affirming shit." She rolled her eyes and slapped at the cards. They stuck to her hands.
Alice could not contain herself. "Eeuuw! How are we supposed to sell those if you mess them up?"
"Who'd buy 'em?"
"Ladies." Miss Price appeared beside them. "People are shopping here. Let's not disturb them." Her eyes glinted fiercely. A sixty cycle hum buzzed under the soothing music that murmured from discreetly placed speakers.
Becky snuffled and opened her mouth as if she were going to say something snotty, but she backed down in the face of Miss Price's pointy smile and slunk out of the shop.
"Wear the cat ears." Alice sneezed and blew her nose.
"I'm not wearing the cat ears." Elizabeth turned around in front of the cheval mirror in Alice's room. Her little black dress was a little threadbare. A lot threadbare. She sighed and twisted around to examine the seam in the back, which was looking like it might give way the next time she sat down.
"Then wear this." Alice went to her closet and pulled out a black crochet minidress. She tossed it to her sister and returned to her bed where she was constructing a giant cat's tail from wire and a black feather boa. Rififi sprawled beside her and occasionally roused himself to grab at the end of the boa as it tumbled this way and that.
Elizabeth pulled off her dress and wriggled her sister's dress on over her head. She pulled it down as far as it would go (not very) and made a few adjustments to her foundation garments before looking in the mirror. "I look like a slut!" she wailed.
"Guys like that."
The doorbell chimed. They heard Dirk's footsteps in the downstairs hall.
"Oh no, he's here already." Elizabeth reached for her own dress, but Alice whisked it away.
"Elizabeth," Dirk called upstairs. "You have a gentleman caller."
"Better run along," Alice advised her. "You don't have time to change again. And wear the cat ears." She threw them at Elizabeth, who ducked, stepped into her shoes, and ran out the door.
"Slow down. You don't want to look quite that eager." Penrose was beside her.
"Don't tell me what I want," she whispered. "I shouldn't keep him waiting."
"Why not? It is your prerogative." He stepped into her path and faced her as if he would repeat his earlier warnings about her date.
She stopped, her body a bare inch from his. The burning cold radiating from him chilled her skin. She tilted her head back and met his considering gaze until she shivered. Since she could not look through him, she fixed her eyes at a point beyond his shoulder. "Remember what you said about not wasting my time with advice?"
"Very true." He moved to one side.
She walked quickly by him and down the stairs without looking back.
Dirk and Trip were chatting by the door. Hands behind his back, Dirk was leaning against the wall and looking rather slutty himself, in a tight T-shirt and a pair of denim cutoffs that were precisely snug enough to show how nice his behind really was, without being as trashy as Daisy Duke's. Trip didn't appear to appreciate the effort that had clearly been made for him, and his pleasure at seeing Elizabeth was heavily tinged with relief.
Homophobe, she thought.
"Wow, you look great," he said.
"Thanks." She put on her coat and he ushered her out the door.
"You two kids have fun, now," Dirk called after them.
Trip opened the car door for her and saw her settled in the buttery soft seat before he closed it.
As he started up the car and pulled into the street, he said, "We don't have time to get a good dinner before the ballet, so I thought we could get something light now and a real dinner afterwards. Is that all right?"
"That sounds great." She snuggled deeper into her seat and inhaled the scents of leather, expensive cologne, and a faint trace of cigar smoke. The engine purred and hidden fans silently kissed her feet with warm air. She blinked dreamily at the lights on the dashboard, glowing like a European runway, and pretended she was gliding in to Paris on the Concorde. She wanted to ask him if he really had been engaged to a girl named "Sue me", but could not work up the nerve. She also remembered what Penrose said about dark alleys when Trip was parking his car prior to the ballet. Instead of parking on Grace or one of the numbered streets, or in one of the parking decks, he eased his car into a crack between two looming buildings and squeezed into a tiny private lot off the street.
The ballet was not, as Trip had speculated before, an adaptation of The Omen, or even chicks in tutus, as he wondered aloud when they were examining their programs before it started. During the exquisite discord of the orchestra tuning up, the chorus entered from the wings and filed out to either side of the pit and the conductor's head popped up over the edge of the orchestra pit. From her front row seat, Elizabeth had to restrain herself from patting his head. Oblivious to his near escape, the conductor brought down his baton and dancers flew onto the stage.
Afterwards she bubbled, "It's like we were in the orchestra, and the chorus. And did you see those leaps?"
He smiled indulgently and helped himself to a long kiss when they returned to the car. As she continued to peruse her program, with both the Latin and an English translation of the libretto, he good-humoredly discussed morphology and vestigial Latin syntax in English, although his Latin, like hers, only extended to such terms as habeus corpus and caveat emptor. Her effusions finally slowed under the influence of wine and a first course of prosciutto-wrapped melon. Their conversation turned to other topics.
Trip talked shop.
She rolled the stem of her wineglass between her fingers and listened with interest to his story of an intricate contract dispute. As he wound up his description of the litigation with a blow by blow account of the court room dramatics, the word "title" occurred frequently and she remembered Penrose and his papers.
"Do you know about real estate law?" she asked when he paused to sip his wine.
"I know some, but that's really my sister's specialty."
"I have a couple questions I'd like to ask, if it's all right. I mean this is your work and you shouldn't have to work when you're out at dinner after all."
He made a generous not-at-all kind of gesture and popped a large piece of steak in his mouth.
She plunged in. "If somebody mounts a title challenge against a house, how does that work? Like, what is the title anyway?"
He took another sip of wine. "Basically, the title is what says that it's your house. Whoever has the title owns the property. For example, when you buy a house, you need to make sure you get the title and title insurance, to cover your legal expenses if somebody tries to claim title to your property."
"When could somebody try to claim title to your house?"
"There are a lot of different situations. In our neighborhood, where there are a lot of delinquent properties, the city can foreclose on the house if the owner doesn't pay taxes and has dropped out of sight. You can buy the title, and the house, from the city. But if the original owner turns up again, he can try and get the title back. Or if you bought a house from somebody who didn't have the title, the rightful owner could come and claim title to your house even if you had paid for it. Why the sudden interest?" he asked. "Are you thinking of buying a property in the neighborhood?"
"No. I heard that someone is mounting a title challenge to our house, and I just wondered what that meant. Do you think we'll all get evicted?" She looked up at him with her eyes wide and worried.
"A trust owns the house, right? I'm sure they have things in order," he said reassuringly.
"If somebody else does get title and we get evicted, then what happens to all the stuff in the house?" Like a certain portrait.
"You tenants will all get to keep your own property. The trust must own the furniture and so on. What they do with it is anyone's guess. Probably auction it off to save the expense of storing it." He chewed thoughtfully. "That might be a great opportunity to pick up some antiques. Anyway, you probably have nothing to worry about."
Elizabeth smiled and nodded. She wasn't worried for herself. The worst thing that could happen to her was that she might have to move in with her parents. But Penrose would face an uncertain future. She imagined the portrait, purchased by a museum and hung in an echoing gallery somewhere, or maybe forgotten in a storeroom by an unappreciative curator. He would be even more alone than he already was, unless the other portraits held ensorcelled spirits. Now that she came to think of it, life or, more precisely, existence in a museum might be one big, never-ending party.
She pushed her wineglass away. She had obviously had too much if she was getting teary eyed over the fate of an interfering non-mortal. Elizabeth managed to push all thoughts of Penrose, except for the thought that she was not thinking of him, from her mind for the remainder of the evening. It was rather like not thinking of an elephant.
Their late night dinner closed with a dense confection of chocolate and raspberries for Elizabeth, and a slice of cheesecake for Trip. As she sipped her coffee and nibbled at her torte, she was concerned that she might not ever get to sleep again, but with her first taste of the torte she decided that sleep was really overrated.
During their kiss goodnight on the front porch of the house, she decided that going back to her own room was overrated as well, until a tapping on the glass panes of the front door caught her attention. She opened her eyes and rolled them over towards the door where she saw Penrose standing with one hand raised and a disapproving expression on his face. If he'd had a wristwatch on, she was certain that he would have been tapping it too.
She closed her eyes and focused on the ongoing kiss, but the rapping started again and Trip broke his lip lock.
"What's that noise?" he murmured with his mouth against her hair.
"Nothing, just a rat." She unwound his arms from around her and groped in her handbag for her keys.
They parted with promises to call and some soppy glances. Trip ran down the porch steps and up the stairs to his house next door. Elizabeth unlocked the door and stepped into the hall to be greeted by Penrose.