Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 6. Whole No. 766, June 2005

I glue my eye to the viewfinder, tracking her. I’m loaded with Kodachrome — none of that digital stuff for me — one camera with a 24-millimeter lens, the other with a 150-millimeter.

I jump up and run ahead of her, weaving around pedestrians, stepping on and off the sidewalk, winding the camera strap around my left wrist in case I have to dodge a taxi. I turn, cock the shutter, and fire.

She passes into the shadow of the skyscrapers. I switch to the Nikon. No time to add a filter or change the lens. Shoot! Shoot!

Where’d she go? I lower the camera to look. There she is in front of Saks. I’ve got time for adjustments. I set the lens to f 8. I estimate the depth of field. Shafts of sun break between the buildings. God, she looks great!

Damn, she’s going in.

I follow through the revolving door, careful so that my cameras don’t bang against the glass. She meanders up an aisle. I step behind a mannequin to pull my light meter out of my breast pocket. I check for fluorescent light. A lady shopper who looks like Laura Bush gives me the evil eye: She thinks I’m looking up the mannequin’s dress. I lick its leg. She walks off in a huff.

Step back, adjust, level, check light, shoot. Nothing clumsy. I am as methodical as a surgeon sewing up a bullet wound.

As she left squealing-crashing-honking Fifth Avenue and stepped inside Saks, the gentlest of artificial breezes greeted her.

Dressed in a simple sleeveless smock, hair in a scarf, she pulled off her windshield sunglasses and wandered down an aisle of glistening glass shelves. She stopped to admire the crystal-cut perfume bottles. As if she were a secretary on her lunch hour without intention or means to make a purchase, she guiltily sprayed the tester sample. Lavender filled the air, Provence lavender, lavender warmed from the midday sun. She moved on before memories overwhelmed her.

She passed by blue-and-white porcelains and soft leather purses the colors of exotic hardwoods. She passed by cascading silk scarves — trefoil and fleur-de-lis, posies and primroses, lions and unicorns, blue, gold, and red — artfully arranged so as not to seem cluttered. Her eyes drank in the beauty. With each step into the lair of treasures, she forgot herself, growing lighter, taller, anonymous.

The saleswomen smiled at her pleasantly, their eyes sparkling with recognition, yet saying nothing, careful not to frighten her off. She gave them a nod to show she appreciated their discretion, but moved on, seeking to buy something that stirred her soul.

An experienced shopper, she saw in a nanosecond that there was nothing of interest here, yet her eyes lingered on the money clips. She stood motionless and remembered buying one from Tiffany’s, in silver, her first major purchase for a man, shivering with excitement as her world began to spin faster and faster — Was it the right thing to do? Marrying a politician? — presenting it to him on her wedding day, wanting him to like it, because it was understated and perfect, yet also teasing him, because he refused to carry money.

She also remembered — because bad follows good — placing it in his coffin, clipped over a hundred-dollar bill to pay for his passage across the river Styx, bending the fingers of his left hand around it, amazed how they sprang open like rubber. Even in death, he refused to carry money.

Something lodged in her chest above her sternum, an ice cube, her panic building, crushing her chest. She couldn’t breathe. Give me one day without thinking about him! She shook off the image as she had learned to do — Open your eyes. Look. What do you see now? What do you smell now? — ordering herself to the present. But her discipline failed, her thoughts sliding back into dangerous territory, like how the display cases were nearly the size of coffins, or how jewelry outlived us all.

Was there no escape? Passing back through time was so exhausting. Perhaps, she thought, it was time for another vacation (although she had yet to unpack from her recent trip to Buenos Aires), perhaps to someplace she’d never been, which would be hard because she’d been nearly everywhere that had a decent hotel.

Someplace — anyplace — where I can be anonymous.

As she wondered where such a place might be — a remote island, Bali, Antarctica — she jumped with inspiration. She did need something, a case for her oversized sunglasses, because she had begun to realize that the only way to overcome her anxiety was to take off her glasses and look at the world with naked eyes.

She moved to a case filled with sunglasses from Paris, Milan, and London, lenses from amber to turquoise, frames of tortoiseshell and titanium, displayed naughtily, earpieces spread wide. The salesgirl pulled out a tray of cases, her manicured fingers trembling as she snapped open one in black crocodile skin. In her confusion as to how to address the woman, the salesgirl trembled with excitement, her words barely audible — “These are just in from Milan, designed by Bartolomeo Vivarini” — her voice sticking in her throat as she explained the handmade dyes the designer used, the Indian thread of spun gold, the gossamer feathers of Tibetan parakeets. “These are very chic, very classy,” she said, immediately overcome with embarrassment: Who was she to tell Her what was chic and classy?

Suddenly the woman saw a quick furtive movement out of the corner of her eye. Pop, pop, pop! Bolts of lightning exploded off the mirrors, blinding her, burning her optic nerve. Oh my God, no!

In an instant, she was back at the rally, the hot sun shooting off windshields and office windows like broken glass, deafening rifle blasts bouncing off buildings. No!

She turned and saw the Cyclops crouching near the escalator, mouth open, drooling, his lens pointed at her, his round black eye, silver-lidded, unblinking. He fired.

She panicked. She crammed on her sunglasses and rushed to the revolving door. Suddenly everyone seemed to recognize her, pointing, as if spotting a comet. “Look! Look!” — “There she is!” — “Over there!”

She smelled his sweat and his whiskey breath, heard his sneakers squeaking behind her on the marble floors — Don’t go! Wait! — heard the camera lens and extra film rattling in his pockets.

She twirled out the revolving door into the chaos of Fifth Avenue and sprinted across the street, fleeing blindly, her eyes throbbing from his flash. She heard him following, puffing, calling her name. She ran for her life, all the way up the avenue until she reached Central Park and dashed into it like a gazelle across the savanna, her hair flying, her athletic arms swinging: chop, chop, chop.

Always the Cyclops followed her, pursuing her like a guilty conscience, beckoning her, his legs akimbo, pelvis tucked as he steadied his lens — “Look here! Look at me!”

Fleeing the past, evading the present, frightened of the future, could she ever run fast enough?

We have a history, she and I. She’s been mine from the very beginning.

From the time I first saw her at her coming-out party, sweeping down the front staircase like Scarlett O’Hara, pinching her cheeks to make them pink, fluffing her skirts, pirouetting, her arms lifted like a ballet dancer taking a curtain call.

Then at her wedding, looking around with this plastic smile on her face, eyes dazed as if she didn’t know what she was signing on for — didn’t know the deal.

You marry a rich politician, I own you, baby.

I followed her down to Barbados. Got some of those happy honeymoon pictures to sell to the tabloids, but the real gems I kept for myself. Pulling on her bathing suit under a towel. She gave me this haughty look like she’s got a right to some privacy. Ha! Not on your life, sweetheart. It’s open season and you’re fair game.