She picked up the strip of address labels and slipped her fingernail under the corner of a label to peel it off. As she did so, the shape of the label changed from rectangular to ovoid, and the label went from being sticky to being slick and wet. It slipped from her fingers and flopped on the floor. It was a slimy little fish, opening its mouth and desperately gasping for water to breathe. Elizabeth tried to scoop it up but it squirted from between her fingers. She cried out with frustration and distress because she simply had to save that fish. The door of the mail-order department banged open and she panicked when she thought someone would catch her crawling around on the floor after the fish. She suddenly realized that she didn't have any clothes on.
"Okay, talk."
Elizabeth's eyes opened. She was intensely relieved to find herself enveloped in pajamas and covered by several layers of blankets. No fish flopped wildly around her room, although Rififi, who was weaving between her sister's ankles, could have taken care of the fish in short order.
Alice and Rififi advanced into the room. Alice closed the door behind them and planted her fists on her hips. She commanded, "Talk to me. Bob tells me you've got a magic ring. I want to know why you didn't tell me and how does it work." She transferred her gaze to the nightstand and the tone of her voice changed. "Is that it?" she asked eagerly.
Elizabeth slapped her hand over the ring and scooped it away. Alice's hand fell on the nightstand a half second too late.
Still sleepy, but waking up fast, Elizabeth fumbled for an excuse. "We've been busy cleaning up the store, and you've been out making pie."
"I think I could have spared you a minute or two to talk about a magic ring." Alice's voice dripped with sarcasm. She held out one hand. "Come on, give it over."
Rififi hopped up onto the foot of the bed and began kneading the comforter over Elizabeth's feet. She reached down and scratched him on the chin. She did not relinquish the ring. "I only found it on Halloween. It was in the pocket of the coat I wore when we went out to Belle Isle. I stuck my thumb through it accidentally when I was hiding from the police. It turned me invisible and that's how I was able to sneak off the island without getting caught. That's all it does, see?" Elizabeth put on the ring and vanished.
Alice was dumbstruck, but only for a moment. "It works? It's a real magic ring?"
"Well, obviously." She kept scratching Rififi's chin. He leaned into her invisible hand and purred mightily.
Alice bounced up and down. "It's a real magic ring. There really is such a thing as magic. I knew it! How could you not tell me? Let me try it."
Elizabeth reluctantly removed the ring and handed it to her sister. Alice immediately popped it on and vanished. Even though she knew what had been going to happen, Elizabeth twitched with surprise. Seeing someone vanish from sight was considerably more disturbing than was vanishing oneself. She felt a little more sympathy for Bob.
"This is so cool." Alice's voice moved from place to place. "It made my clothes invisible too. That's much better than if it only made your body invisible, because then you'd have to go naked to actually be invisible. If I pick up stuff does it become invisible too?" A book rose from the chaise lounge and appeared to float through the air. "I guess not. Let's see what happens if I stick it in my robe." The book vanished.
"Oh, that is cool," Elizabeth said. She sat up straight and forgot to pet the cat.
Rififi was disgusted. He leaped from the bed and ran for the door. His tail bristled like a bottle brush and the hair on his spine stood up.
The book reappeared and dropped back onto the chaise lounge. A few moments later the bedroom door opened for Rififi, who scurried out with an unappreciative yowl.
"Can I have my ring back now?" Elizabeth threw off the covers and got up from her bed.
Alice did not reply.
"This isn't funny, Alice." Elizabeth walked towards the door with arms held out in front of her as if she were trying to brush away cobwebs. "Alice? Are you still here?"
Out in the hallway, a floorboard creaked. Dirk walked past the doorway and stopped. "Hi, Elizabeth. Are you talking to someone?"
"Did you see Alice?"
"No."
"Oh, okay. I thought I heard her out in the hall." Elizabeth smiled brightly and closed the bedroom door in Dirk's puzzled face.
Forty-five minutes later, showered, caffeinated, and ready to go to work, Elizabeth still could not find her sister. She couldn't ask the boys if they had seen her, because Dirk had already left for the health club, and Bob was sound asleep on the futon and she didn't have the heart to wake him. Finally it occurred to her to look out the window and see if Alice's car was still parked in front of the house.
Sure enough, the little Honda was gone, along with Alice.
"Dammit!" Elizabeth cried, then remembered Bob asleep on the futon. She spared him a guilty glance as she picked up her coat and purse and hurried out the door. He only rolled over.
Her truck started, but only after a few tries.
"It can't be the battery this time," she muttered as she pulled away from the curb. She did not see the pearly white SUV idling at the end of the block. As she turned the corner, it pulled forward and into the space in front of the house that she had just vacated.
Elizabeth navigated her flowered truck through the morning traffic, patiently waiting her way through a jam caused by people rubbernecking at an accident in the median strip of the expressway. She had to scramble for exact change when she found that she couldn't get into the lane at the toll gate where an actual human was taking the money. By the time she reached Carytown, she was so tense that the thrill of finding a great parking space barely loosened her up. She was pleased enough, however, that she almost forgave her sister for running off with the ring and leaving the house without even telling her that they would not be carpooling today.
Elizabeth pushed open the boarded-up front door of the Why Not? bookstore and decided to greet her sister pleasantly just to screw with her mind.
It worked. Alice echoed her sister's cheery "Good morning" with hesitancy and a nervous shifting of her weight.
Elizabeth went upstairs to her mail-order department and began slapping labels on catalogs. This was clearly the source of her morning dream but she could not figure out where the fish entered into things. While she worked, she schemed how to retrieve the ring from her sister. She knew that Alice would not give it up without a struggle so she decided to take the path of treachery. Alice would either have the ring in her purse or in a pocket, and the catsuit that she was wearing today had no pockets. Unless Alice had it down in her bra, in which case Elizabeth could not retrieve it without Alice noticing (although maybe she could trick Officer Joe into getting it for her), the ring had to be in the purse, and the purse would be in the office. All she had to do was get hold of the purse when Alice was occupied with a customer and Miss Price was busy in the store.
A good opportunity did not arise until mid-afternoon when a small rush of uniformed girls from St. Gertrude's was crowded around the register for the group purchase of a birthday card. Alice was leaning forward, deep in conversation with the girls, and did not notice Elizabeth when she came back into the store after dropping off another batch of catalogs at the post office.
After determining Miss Price's whereabouts (in the second room of the bookstore with her nose deep in a volume of Austen), Elizabeth ducked into the empty office. Alice's purse was where she knew it would be, tucked into the large bottom drawer of the desk. She pulled out the weighty leather bag and unzipped it. If she knew Alice, and she did, the ring would not be jumbled among the various cosmetics, calculators, tiny notebooks, and packets of herbs and crystals in the main compartment, but would be placed safely in a hidden pocket somewhere. She unceremoniously dumped the contents of the main compartment into a plastic bag she had brought in her pocket for that very purpose, and then pressed the sides of the bag between her fingers to try to discern the form of the ring.
Out in the shop, the bell of the register chimed, followed by the tinkle of the bells over the door. She heard Alice's footsteps as her sister moved from behind the counter. At that moment, she discovered the ring and in a single motion that she could not have duplicated in any amount of time, she unzipped the side pocket, pulled out the ring, closed the pocket, and returned the contents of the main compartment to their original location, although in a more scrambled state.
As Elizabeth was closing the desk drawer on the purse, Alice walked into the office to make herself a cup of tea. "Want some?"
"Yes, please." Elizabeth swiveled the desk chair around to face her sister after she had hidden the ring safely in the pocket of her jeans. She was tempted to put it on and screw with her sister some more, but refrained.
The bell on the door chimed again and Elizabeth went out of the office to see whether it was a customer. Instead, it was the mail carrier who handed her a big stack of envelopes and catalogs. Miss Price came out from the second room to examine her mail. Accepting a cup of tea from Alice, she quickly sorted out the bills, which she piled onto her own desk, and a few mail order envelopes that she handed to Elizabeth. The catalogs and junk mail she dropped into the trash can and was left holding a long narrow envelope of heavy paper bearing the imprint of a local law firm. From her pencil cup, Miss Price withdrew a letter opener shaped like a small dagger and slit open the envelope, slicing the letter in the process.
She held up the pieces of the letter and peered at them through the bottom halves of her bifocals. "There must be some kind of mistake. This is simply not true." She dropped the letter on the desk and picked up the phone. "Would you girls mind giving me a moment of privacy?"
The frost in her voice discouraged them from asking why. Alice quickly went back onto the shop floor, but Elizabeth followed her a little more slowly. She stole a glance at the letter while she picked up her tea. She didn't have a chance to read much with Miss Price shoving her out of the office, but the phrase "nonpayment of rent" caught her eyes.
When she joined her sister at the counter, Alice asked, "What do you think that was about?"
"That letter said she didn't pay the rent. I bet that the landlord is trying to break the lease."
Alice said, "That has to be a lie. Miss Price always pays the rent. Marla must be behind it. Miss Price said that she was asking about the lease."
Elizabeth nodded. "Yes, and this nonpayment of rent business sounds a lot like the nonpayment of taxes thing that's happening with the house. Marla could be behind that too."
"We've got to stop her. I'm seeing Joe tonight, I'll ask him what we should do. We need proof, though."
"I can get it," said Elizabeth. She pulled the ring from her pocket and flourished it in Alice's face. "I'll just go and see what Morticia has hidden in her office."
Alice's eyes widened and she made a futile grab at the ring. Elizabeth grinned wickedly and skipped backwards, still waving the ring. She knocked over a cardboard display of pulpy legal thrillers.
Alice cried, "I wasn't done with that. And you have no right to go rooting through my purse either. And you can't go spying in Marla's office. You're the 'good' sister. I'm the evil twin, remember?" She lunged for her sister.
Elizabeth ducked and slipped the ring onto her thumb. "I'll be back in a minute. You have to stay here anyway, I don't know how to run the register."
Fuming, Alice looked wildly around and made another lunge at where she thought Elizabeth was. She stamped her feet in frustration when the shop door appeared to open by itself.
As Elizabeth left, her hand brushed the plywood fastened over the door, the glass of which had been smashed out by the vandal. A big splinter lodged itself in her fingertip and she tried to pull it out, but was hampered by her inability to see either her finger or the splinter. She stuck her finger in her mouth and tried to bite it out. Through the plate glass window of the bookstore she saw her sister wind down her temper tantrum and put the display to rights. Nowhere near the end of her hissy fit, Alice thumped the books back into the display with considerable energy and was careless of whether the covers were upright or facing outward.
Elizabeth sidestepped an oncoming group of pedestrians and walked over in front of the shoe store. She looked in the window. Becky, Marla, and two men were in the shop, so Elizabeth couldn't hope to open the door herself without someone noticing the door moving by itself. She would have to wait until one of them left, or another customer went into the shop. Given that the shoes looked like medieval torture devices, it might be awhile before an individual with the appropriate set of fetishes turned up.