Cristina’s voice called from the kitchen: “It’s eight-thirty, do you want me to make supper now or wait until later?” Onia didn’t answer her, she was suddenly feeling extremely curious. She knew the shop space very well — it was tiny and there was no other exit. The sales clerk had turned out the lights and was preparing to leave, alone, peering at herself in the window. Cristina walked into the dining room to ask the question again. “I’ll have supper later,” Onia said distractedly. But then she turned to the girl and asked, “Could you do me a small favor, dear? Would you go down to Tot Cashmere and see if there is a woman with a black braid inside? Go quickly because the sales clerk is closing up.” Cristina, who immediately imagined a dozen motives for such a strange request, hurried down the stairs two-by-two, crossed the Passatge as fast as she could, and reached the store just as the sales clerk began lowering the metal security grille. Onia saw the two women talking, and the clerk immediately raised the grille again, opened the door, and they both went into the store. Ten minutes later, the two of them came back out and closed up the shop.
“There was nobody inside,” Cristina said.
“Then how did you convince her to open the door again after she had already closed it?” Onia asked.
“We used to greet each other when I was working in the café next to the store... so I told her that I needed a green sweater to match a purple skirt with green trim to wear to a party tonight where I’ll see some old school friends—”
Onia interrupted her: “You could simply have told her that I asked you to check something for me, you didn’t have to go into so much detail.”
“But it isn’t true, I don’t have a purple skirt with green trim or anything like it, I just thought it would be more believable than if I told her that you had asked me to go running down and stick my nose into her business.”
Onia grew impatient: “Did you check to see if there was another door? Maybe they remodeled the interior...”
“I checked everything,” Cristina said. “I didn’t see a single door. Why?”
Onia took a deep breath and told her the truth: “A woman went in two hours ago and never came out.”
Cristina’s face went blank. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think your imagination is playing tricks on you,” she said. Onia didn’t take it the wrong way. But neither did she take it well. She’d clearly never had an imagination. Her sight or her memory could trick her, yes... she was seventy-eight years old. But no doctor had ever mentioned any such problem, and since nobody had ever mentioned one, she couldn’t imagine there being one. The next day she continued watching the store and she saw two more disappearances. After a few more days, she was absolutely sure there were some people who had walked into the store and never walked out.
“What do you know about the sales clerk in Tot Cashmere?” she asked Cristina.
“Not very much. I know she works during the day, and then in the evening she takes care of her son who is in a wheelchair and who doesn’t like to leave the house. She came from Mexico years ago and began working in the store when she finally got her papers. The son is seventeen, I think. He didn’t come around very often when I worked in the café. She complained often about having problems paying her bills.”
Onia didn’t know what to think. She didn’t have the resources to judge the story: she never went to see thrillers or read mystery novels. She never read science fiction, didn’t believe in ghosts, and had never been interested in people who disappeared, except for the real cases she heard on the news. It was still very hard for her to believe what she had seen. So one afternoon she grabbed a paper and penciclass="underline" she counted the people going in, and when they came out she crossed them off the list. By evening she realized that there was something still stranger yet: not only did some of the people who went in never come back out, but some of the people who came out had never entered in the first place. Contrary to what she had suspected, more shoppers had come out than had gone in.
Since she had no fictional references to help her unravel the strings of the story, the next day she decided to go see the sales clerk herself and ask questions point-blank. She went straight into the store and without beating around the bush declared: “I am an old woman who is overwhelmed with curiosity.”
The store attendant said: “What do you need?”
Onia explained everything she had seen through the window, and for reasons she couldn’t quite understand, the clerk was effusively kind and attentive in a way that seemed entirely out of place.
Finally, she responded: “I know you will keep my secret.”
And Onia answered: “You can be sure of it. I am as silent as a grave.” The young woman pushed the wheelchair to a spot behind a stack of pashminas. Onia could see into the dressing room through a tear in the curtain. Not even a minute later, she heard the happy sound of a door opening and her heart began to beat quickly.
A middle-aged woman with red hair asked for a cobaltblue cashmere sweater. The clerk went straight to the shelf and took down a very large green garment.
The customer said: “I think it’s too small.” The clerk looked her straight in the eyes and said: “No.”
But the woman responded: “Don’t you know that the customer is always right?”
Then the clerk grabbed a cobalt-blue sweater from another shelf. It was very silky, with a high neck, and was as ample as the first one. The woman brought it to the dressing room while the clerk locked the front door. Through the tear, Onia saw her arms search out the sleeves with a little difficulty, and for a minute that felt like an eternity, she watched as the woman appeared to be choking inside the sweater. From behind the pashminas, Onia could hear her breathing hard and saw that her head still hadn’t appeared through the collar. So that’s it. They suffocate to death inside the clothing. But then what happens? she thought.
Finally, a shock of red hair shot through the wool neck. The hair was dry and discolored. Then a piece of yellowed parchment emerged, which turned out to be an ear. Suddenly the whole head emerged, an aged head, followed by a second one. Two heads. And two bodies. Twins. Old twins.
The two women finished removing the sweater and smiled at the clerk. One of them approached the cash register and signed a check. The clerk put the check in the register but kept the sweater. Onia watched as one old woman put her checkbook away, while her twin left the store, moving aside for a young man coming in to buy a scarf. When the young man exited the store, Onia came out of her hiding place.
The clerk took her time explaining to Onia that she had a son who never left their house. “His whole life revolves around looking out at the sea and the pine trees from the rooftop terrace... But a year ago, they put the land in front of the house up for sale to build an apartment building. I’ve been afraid of this happening for years. Moving to another house would be his death. I felt helpless, desperate... Then one Christmas an angel visited me. A stranger came into the store and asked me for a blue sweater. I had a cobalt-blue cashmere sweater that was two sizes too big, but she took it anyway. She came back the next day. ‘It’s not my size.’ ‘I told you it was too big for you.’ ‘You’re wrong. It’s too small. Lately, everything is too small for me,’ she said. I must have had a puzzled look on my face, because she followed with, ‘Yes, it’s true, don’t look at me with that expression on your face: the customer is always right.’ I processed her return and she left. That very afternoon, another woman came in and asked for a cobaltblue sweater. When I showed it to her, she said: ‘It’s too small for me.’ I argued with her until she finally said: ‘Don’t insist: the customer is always right.’ I thought it was so strange, but what came next was far stranger. I saw three heads coming out through the neck of the sweater, each one about twenty years older than the girl who had pulled it over her head... While signing a check, one of the triplets said: ‘Am I the first customer who is always right?’ ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘The first person to come here to split?’ I nodded my head yes, then I asked: ‘What... what does that mean?’ ‘It’s something they offer on board,’ she said, as the other customer put the sweater back on the shelf. And that’s all. I think nearly all the customers come from luxury cruises. They offer to exchange the average number of years that one has left to live in a linear life into multiple lives, two or three or whatever. Like a road that forks... all you have to do is pass through the sweater.”