If the man was drunk, had somebody come along and robbed him while he was helpless? Tom said his mind creaked around to the realization that maybe robbery explained everything. Then he’d looked at the face and head, and he’d seen where the bullet went, and he knew it was murder.
I didn’t blame him. How could I blame him? A man has no business lying on a dark road. We hadn’t broken any laws, any laws at all. The man was dead. There wasn’t anything we could do. We didn’t know a single thing that could help explain what had happened to him. Why should we have stayed? To answer questions with the innocent truth until our faces reddened and our tongues began to stammer. “Harkness, eh? In trouble once before, weren’t you, Harkness? Grand larceny, eh? Just happened along, you say? Well, we know how these things go. So whatja do with the gun? Whatja do with the money?”
They wouldn’t believe what we’d say. That’s what Tom thought.
We pretended to each other that we slept that night. There wasn’t anything in the morning papers, but it was there, that night. Merchant, slain, robbed...
The woman had called the police right away. The neighbor, a man named Keefer, had caught an impression of a man forcing a woman into a car, and, of course, he had seen us run away. He did not get our license number. When the patrol car got there, this Keefer had found the body and identified it. The dead man was Howard Maybee. He lived right there, in the house behind the eucalyptus hedge. The woman was locked in, terrified. When the cops told her who was lying dead in the road, she fainted. It was her husband.
Afterwards, she told them that her husband was in the habit of bringing large sums of money home from his store on Friday nights. He was always late and he had to walk from the bus. Somebody might have known this. That dark spot under the tall hedge was ideal for a hold-up.
And there I was right in the middle of the news! Mystery girl forced from scene. Blonde’s safety feared for...
It was the bizarre note that lifted the whole story out of the ordinary hit-and-rob class. Mrs. Maybee told how I’d been snatched from her doorstep by a sinister figure and dragged away, screaming. The neighbor, Mr. Keefer, had actually witnessed my kidnaping. So the papers feared for my safety.
It was ridiculous. It was also terrifying.
I didn’t think Mrs. Maybee gave the police a dangerous description of myself. Honey-blonde means whatever kind of honey you have in mind; my eyes are more green than blue, and I am an inch and a half shorter than she guessed. Of course, I wouldn’t wear my tan suit or my coral blouse ever again. And at the shop we experiment a lot. So I cut my hair in bangs.
There was one thing the papers didn’t mention. That broken bottle of purple-red stuff in the dead man’s pocket. “They’re setting a trap,” Tom said, grimly. The stain was gone from his fingers now — he’d spent half the night getting it off.
“If that stuff was all over the wallet,” I said, “maybe it’s on the money. Maybe they hope to trace the stolen money.”
We were in for it. We were hiding something now, and we’d have to go on hiding it, and the more we did to cover ourselves up the worse it grew and the guiltier we felt. Tom took all the tires off the car and put on some very old ones. He took the shoes we’d worn that night and destroyed them. It made me sick. What scared him most was that he might have left his fingerprints. He thought that if they did have his prints, they would have them identified by Monday.
In the middle of the night, Sunday night, I woke and he was sitting up in bed. He said to the ceiling shadows when I stirred, “I’ll never go through that again. Ellen — I never will!”
Oh, God, I was frightened!
But Monday came and went. All day nobody bothered us. All evening nobody came. I dreamed of purple money. Tuesday went by. Time was working on it.
But Wednesday... Wednesday, the one person in this world who had seen my face walked into Madame Elise’s Salon to get her hair done.
And I couldn’t get out. I was trapped.
I thought, she won’t know me again. It was such a brief moment. I’m not dressed as I was that night. People in any kind of uniform always look different I’ve got flat heels on. I look even shorter. And I’ve got bangs now.
That I’d seen her face only as long as she’d seen mine and knew her immediately, wasn’t significant. I’d seen her picture in the papers so many times since.
You don’t think out all the details. You just know when it’s danger...
I started to walk towards the third booth where I knew Elise would put Mrs. Smith. There were two Ellens walking in my skin. The frightened one, the real one, was lying low, watching, planning, scheming, hoping; then there was a second Ellen, a false and ordinary one, and she walked down the aisle. She had to. The sweat dried on her palms...
I knew the worst moment would come when I entered the booth and she, facing the glass, saw me behind her. I spoke before I could be seen. “Mrs. Smith? Just a shampoo, Ma’am? Or re-styling?” I stepped in and put my hands on her hair. Sure enough, her glance snapped to her own image.
Sometimes they hardly see you, these women. They come to be beautified, so they tend to look at themselves.
I whipped the covering cloth around her and pinned it around her neck quickly. I slipped out her few bobby-pins. I began to brush and manipulate. My hands were trained, and every bit of their skill was in them now. “You have nice high cheekbones,” I said, “and your skin is good. A little more severe around the temples might be stunning.”
“I’m getting old and gray,” she said.
“That isn’t so. I think an oil shampoo and a tiny rinse will bring out all those reddish lights.”
Her eyes had a little tinge of satisfaction. It was true, what I said. I couldn’t lay all this on with a shovel — it has to be just true enough. She must have been about thirty. Her hands were well-kept, unblemished, not hard-worked housewifely hands at all. Of course she was a bit dowdy. Her clothes weren’t expensive and they weren’t doing anything for her. There was something stiff about her.
I said, “Shall we go back now?” and led the way to the washing booth.
Oh, she’d seen me. Of course, she’d seen me. But she’d only used the tail of her eye. Why should she study me, anyhow? Somebody neat and clean in a white uniform, paid to fuss over her.
As I turned the water on, a feeling, beginning in the stomach, rippled up like a chill, and into my mind came all that depended on this. I worked with my head bent outside her range of vision, and with my arm crossed over her face. I lathered and scrubbed.
I made myself think about her. Funny she made an appointment under a phony name. No, it wasn’t either. She wouldn’t want to be stared at. She came to a strange, new place because she didn’t want to be criticized, either. She just wanted her hair done.
I went back to the supply room and mixed her tint. I could hear Madame Elise shouting to somebody under a dryer, and Joan’s voice in the last booth. When I went back, Mrs. Maybee had her eyes closed. I brushed and scrubbed the color in. And then I had to rinse her for the last time. Now I’d have to put her curls in. There isn’t so much for a woman to look at, while her hair goes into pin curls. Her own image isn’t very attractive.
I toweled her head lightly, tilted the chair, and we paraded back to Booth Three. Her eyes looked sleepy. I met them in the glass... and I smiled. “Shall I try drawing it back at the sides and curling it high?”
Her eyes flew to the mirror. “Not — today,” she said a little lamely.