And all seemed amenable to a last night out on the town. Vanity and I still had one or two things to buy. Because who knew when we would get the chance again?
But since sensible people (girls) like to, you know, actually look at what we are buying and actually make informed decisions, it was driving certain not-so-sensible people (boys) slowly crazy, especially since they were standing around in tuxedoes I hadn't paid for yet.
So Colin and Victor wandered off to look at something else, or maybe I ordered them to find a clerk and find out where the checkout was. I don't remember. It just seemed natural at the time.
Quentin went with them.
We were going back into the dress department when Vanity's cell phone played the theme from the William Tell overture in electronic cricket chirps. That is what phones do in America instead of ringing.
Vanity was giggling, and her emerald eyes were dancing with light, and her cheeks turned ever-so-pink (her light complexion lends itself quite easily to blushing) and she was holding the little gizmo-phone in both hands, so that she could cover her mouth with her fingers to hide the giddy smile---
Okay, I am not an idiot. It was not Victor or Colin calling her, see?
Vanity, blushing red as a beet, snapped shut the little phone and, looking only at my chin or ear, said she had something else she had to do right now, and did I mind? She could put in a call to Victor and Colin, and have them come here from wherever part of this vast store into which they had wandered, so I would not be left alone.
"I need to go look at something over by the jewelry counter," she said.
My first thought, of course, was that Quentin was going to pick out a wedding ring. When else do men look at jewelry? But maybe she just wanted him aside to herself for a little snogging practice.
I did not want to be left alone, but, just at that moment, I saw something shining so brightly, so useful, even through the intervening walls and floors, that I knew I had to get it.
That little voice people are supposed to hear when they are in deep need of common sense spoke now in my ear. It told me to go back and get Victor and Colin, because I should not be alone. This shop filled up most of a long city block. It was bigger than Abertwyi village. The fact that Archer could walk up to me in the dressing room showed that across the shop was too far away.
I did not tell my little common sense voice to shut up- I would never do that-but I told it to talk a little quieter. Just a little. Only for a minute.
Because at that very moment, I was looking out across a wide countryside of modern musical instruments. There, bright beneath the neon lights, alone in an almost empty store, I saw it.
There it was, perfect and perfectly tasteless.
It was a guitar. An American guitar. Just like the ones the rock stars use, all those loud and unkempt boys Colin had watched so avidly on the telly during our crossing on the Queen Elizabeth II.
It was black and sleek and metallic and shiny, and had a weird-looking triangular sound-box instead of the normal hourglass shape. It looked like an alien rocket ship poised for takeoff.
My eye fell on that guitar, and I fell in love with it. I had to have it, to get it for Colin, and it had to be a surprise.
My thought: Colin didn't hate music. He only hated good music. Classical music, Brahms and Bach and Beethoven. Music in four voices, point and counterpoint, grace notes and floating glissandos.
Ah, but rock and roll was a different matter, wasn't it? Drumming backbeat, screaming guitar, banshee-shrieks of sound, all mangled and compressed together into thundering avalanches of pure noise! It had Colin written all over it. It was perfect for him. Perfect!
So I went off alone. The clerk, or maybe he was the manager, was a bent, balding man with a sunburned scalp and white puffs for eyebrows. He unlocked the display case and took the guitar out and showed it to me. "What type of amplifier does your friend have?"
"How do you know I am not buying it for myself?"
He smiled a bit into his mustache, and nodded and looked shy, but did not answer the question.
Maybe I was holding it in a way that showed I knew nothing about guitars.
The price he asked was more than I wanted to spend. On the other hand, we were about to leave civilization forever, and the money would be of no earthly use to me hereafter.
I was not very good at haggling, higgling, or chaffering, but I admitted it was a gift for a friend, and that I did not have very much money.
He could probably see that my upbringing had burdened me with ideas of polite behavior and ladylike refinement that, I am sure, have no place among the brash businesswomen of America.
The old man cut the price, just a bit, perhaps as a reward for the fact that I at least tried to get into the dickering spirit.
I could not afford any cords or amplifiers; the thing was worthless without them, but I had a vague notion that Victor could cobble something together.
I bought the thing anyway. The final thought that weakened my resolve to hold out for a reasonable price was this: Everything we bought on the cruise ship, either Victor or Vanity had bought (since they had been holding the envelope at that time), and I was not present during the Paris shopping spree. Come to think of it, hadn't Colin picked up the tab when we ate out our last night ashore? And Quentin bought the coats and stuff from the Isle of Man? I had not spent a single pound-note of the money yet.
So the bad news was that it was expensive. The good news Was that I had just enough.
It must have happened the moment he rang up the cash register and handed me the receipt.
I was riding back up to the ground-floor level on an empty escalator, the sleek black guitar in its case in one hand, my purse in the other, into which I was still (with one or two fingers not being used) trying to stuff the folded bills of my change while, at the same time, performing the not-quite-topologically-impossible act of trying to stuff the slender purse into the rather voluminous pocket of my leather jacket... when my radio phone chirruped the opening to the
"Moonlight" sonata in electronic cricket-beeps.
Okay. Enough was enough. Granted, I was in a store, and there might have been security cameras, but, on the other hand, no one was around me at that moment. No one was looking.