When I turned back toward the thrift shop, the dog and the director and Annamaria were no longer watching me through the doors. I had not imagined them, and although Boo and Mr. Hitchcock could dematerialize at will, the pregnant lady with eyes as dark as espresso could not evaporate like a spirit.
I stepped out of the rain, into the warmth of the store, seeking Annamaria, and found something I could never have anticipated.
Fifteen
THE SPACIOUS STORE OFFERED AISLES OF WELL-MENDED secondhand clothing, paintings and an array of decorative items for the home, costume jewelry, an entertainment aisle with CDs and DVDs, shelves of used books, old toys fully restored, and much more.
Among the expected merchandise were fanciful items that were intriguing or puzzling, and which might have been amusing if I had not been cold, wet, and freaked out by recent events. A pair of five-foot carved-wood hand-painted blue heron had been adapted as lamps and held lightbulbs in their fierce beaks. A pygmy hippopotamus as large as a Shetland pony, preserved by an expert taxidermist, stood on a stone base that bore an engraved silver plaque with the words PEACHES/BELOVED COMPANION/IN MY HEART FOREVER.
Shoes squishing, dripping and splashing, making more of a mess than Peaches had probably ever done, I prowled the aisles, looking for Mr. Hitchcock and Boo but primarily for Annamaria. The customers, who had arrived under the protection of umbrellas, regarded me mostly with sympathy. But perhaps my eyes were wild and my demeanor fevered, because a few seemed to see in me a waterlogged lout, and they were quick to get out of my way, grimacing with disdain. Others went pale with fear as if I were the equivalent of Jacob Marley, from A Christmas Carol, back from the dead, wrapped not in symbolic chains but in the waters of some river in which I had drowned.
Because I had not come here to shop but instead to find two ghosts and a pregnant enigma, my hurried passage from department to department and my befuddled look caught the attention of a clerk in a Salvation Army uniform. She approached me with evident concern and a buoyant manner in excess of what I had seen in employees of other stores. Judging by the look of me, perhaps she might have expected that, in addition to directing me to recycled kitchen utensils or manufacturer’s-surplus dental-care products, she would also have a chance to save my soul.
In her early forties, with hair the color of brandied cherries, skin as pale as powdered sugar and as smooth as buttercream, freckles the precise shade of cinnamon, and a smile as winning as that of a ponytailed little girl in a current TV commercial for ice cream, she looked sweet, and she was. “Oh, dear, dear, dear, the day hasn’t been good to you, has it? You look chilled to the bone. How can I help?”
There was no point in asking if she’d seen the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock or a ghost dog, and it seemed inappropriate to stagger into a Salvation Army facility and boldly announce that I was looking for a girl.
And so with my usual aplomb, I said, “Well, through the window, I thought I saw an old friend. I don’t mean really old like elderly. I have an elderly friend in the car outside. She’s eighty-six, but she doesn’t look it, though she screams when she looks in a mirror. The friend in the car, I mean, not the friend I thought I saw in here. The friend I thought I saw, Annamaria, she’s a girl. Not a little girl. Like eighteen. Dark eyes and hair, petite, with this smile that makes you feel everything will be all right even on the worst day. Don’t get the wrong idea, ma’am. I’m not stalking her. She didn’t jilt me. She’s not my ex-girlfriend or girlfriend or anything. I only have one girlfriend, and she’s forever. I don’t mean Mrs. Fischer, the elderly lady in the car. Mrs. Fischer’s just a friend. She thinks she’s my employer. But I’m not a chauffeur. I’m a fry-cook. Although not recently, what with one crazy thing after the other.”
When I finally wound down, the clerk said, “You must be Thomas.”
For a moment, I seemed to have exhausted my supply of words, and then I found a few. “Yes, ma’am. How did you know?”
“Your sister purchased some things for you.”
“My sister?”
“She said you’d be along in a while. She’s a very self-possessed young woman. Very impressive. With such a graceful and kind way about her.”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s her, all right. What did she purchase?”
“Just what she knew you’d need. Come with me.”
As she led me toward the back of the store, I said, “Did she purchase Peaches, the stuffed pygmy hippo?”
The clerk’s laugh was musical. “You’re teasing me.”
“Did she?”