Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

And the next time, taking it slowly. The long silence in Iz’s apartment, deepened by the murmur of cars below, an occasional horn. The murmur of his voice: “It’s a long time since I just lay in someone’s arms. I needed that.” Her feet growing warmer against his feet. “Look! We’re on television.” Katherine opened her eyes; dimly reflected on the pale tube beside the bed, gray bodies and limbs glistened on a gray sheet, intertwined. Like scenes from the faded print of a French art film, anonymous shadowed faces: L’Homme Barbu et La Femme. “Mmm,” she murmured, shutting her eyes again. “That was so good.”

“But you didn’t come.”

“Yes I did,” she whispered defensively. “I mean, that’s how it always is for me. I don’t come very hard.”

“Don’t worry,” Iz said aloud. “You will. It’s in you.”

Katherine took off the sunglasses and tried on another pair. These had white rims, and the lenses were paler, purplish blue. Instantly the racks of shampoos and vitamins and paperback books were tinged mauve and azure; the neon tubes above glowed with a blue light. It was pretty; better than the reality.

Two days ago. The television set had been turned away, the covers thrown onto the floor; it was very hot outside. “Trust me,” Iz was whispering. “Do you hear what I’m saying? You don’t have to prove anything. Just trust me.” Hands slowly joined by sweat, and then bodies. And then an amazing thing happened: a well of desire opened inside her, as if a huge washing machine had been turned on, with steaming water and suds foaming, splashing, thrashing, faster and faster. “What will he think of me?” she wondered, but could not hold on to that or any thought. She shut her eyes and flung herself into it.

The salesclerk was hovering again. Katherine changed the blue sunglasses for some brown harlequin ones. The store flashed out in a coarse confusion of real colors for a moment, and then became deeply suntanned. In the slice of mirror at the top of the rack her face was reflected, brown with great dark slanted eyes. Very aware now that the clerk was watching officiously, she tried on several pairs of glasses in rapid succession. Different strange faces appeared in the mirror: green, blue, and ochre faces with eyes round, square, and oblong, some edged with glittering stones. Why didn’t the man go away? Did he think she was going to break something, or steal from the store? She glared at him coldly.

“Yes?” The tone was pushingly familiar.

“I’ll take these.” She held out the brown sunglasses.

“Yeah; they look fine on you. But you have to pay at the checkout stand, over there.” Katherine began to walk away. “Say,” he added. “I haven’t seen you in here before. You just moved out here?”

Embarrassed by this inquisitiveness, Katherine shook her head, smiled very slightly at the clerk, and made a polite negative noise as she continued towards the front of the store.

“Aw, don’t run off like that,” he said. “Stay and talk to me.”

Katherine turned her head and focused on the sales clerk for the first time. She saw him to be a well-constructed young man with rather long shiny hair and a knowing expression. Then the conventional response clicked into place—she gave him a routine cold stare, and walked away.

“Well!” he called after her. “Don’t trip, Lady Jane.”

What a strange city this was, Katherine thought as she walked along the suntanned sidewalk, and how oddly people here behaved. Men had tried to pick her up back East, but not very often, and never so boldly—certainly no one working in a store would have ventured to do so. But everything was strange here. Look at the women on the street: instead of the summer suits people wore when they went shopping in Boston or New York, most of them had on costumes out of a chorus line or a comic book. They wore high-heeled sandals, tight pants in metallic colors or fluorescent pastels, and brief tops which often left a strip of skin bare around the waist. Their hair was teased and puffed like heaps of cotton candy, or slicked up into varnished cones.

At the corner of Wilshire and Beverly Boulevards, a billboard stood on top of a row of shops. It portrayed a glowing and steaming cup of coffee twenty feet across. A cardboard figure of a woman, about life size, was climbing up to the brim of the cup on a cardboard ladder, smiling. A brand name was written below; above, in huge red letters, appeared the simple message, “Indulge Yourself.”

The shop Iz had recommended was odd-looking, even for Los Angeles: situated on a wedge-shaped corner, it was also wedge-shaped and painted dead black. The interior was even odder: an immensely high irregular room, centered about a huge rectangular white pillar, indirectly lit and hung with long mirror and gray plush curtains two stories high, it resembled a stage-set by Gordon Craig. This was where Glory bought most of her clothes.

According to Susy Skinner, what Katherine needed for the Nutting barbecue was a “Capri set”—fancy slacks and a matching top. She went through a rack of clothes of strange materials and cut, taking out a few things. Then she looked round for a saleswoman and a place to try on. But nobody came forward—the room was empty except for two girls in black stretch pants and sandals sitting talking in the far corner. They wore an extreme version of beat make-up and looked like actresses or dancers. In that drugstore there was too much service, Katherine thought, and here there isn’t any.

Carrying a pile of clothes, she crossed the room towards the dancers. “Excuse me; but do you know where the salesclerk is?”

“You want to try some things on?” The girl who said this had a dark tan and long shiny black hair hanging to below her shoulders. “You can take ’em in there, behind the curtain.”

In the dim dressing room Katherine struggled out of her dress and pumps and into navy blue slacks and a sailor shirt. She put her shoes back on, which looked terrible, so she took them off—the carpet seemed fairly clean—and went out to find a mirror. The salesgirls, if they were salesgirls, glanced up.

“Uh-uh,” the blackhaired one said, shaking her head. “That’s no good for you. It looks draggy.”

“The color’s all wrong,” said the other, who was small, pale, and extremely thin, with a cloud of frizzy hair and immense eyes. “You should have some light, bright color, like maybe pink or yellow.”

“She could wear that set of yours with the pink leaves.” The girl got up. “What’s your size? About a ten?”

Katherine nodded slightly. She would have liked to be sure that these girls really worked here and were not merely making fun of her.

“Here. Try this on.”

Katherine considered refusing politely, but after all, what did it matter? She retreated to the dressing room and put on pale yellow pants, very tight, and a matching top appliqued with baroque designs in pink.

“Yeah! I like that. It really swings,” the dark girl exclaimed as she came out again. “What do you think, Dominique?”

“It’s right,” Dominique said approvingly.

“She designed that,” the other girl explained. “She makes a lot of our clothes. ... See if you dig it yourself. The mirror’s over there.”

As Katherine crossed the room, the shop door opened and a group of other customers entered. Suddenly embarrassed by her bare feet and the costume she was wearing, she averted her eyes and took a detour between two racks of bathing suits and around behind the central pillar. But one of the customers seemed to be moving in that direction too, she noticed, walking directly towards her across the carpet with a determined expression. She was a sophisticated-looking girl in her twenties, a very Hollywood type, in dark glasses and yellow slacks, with shiny pale brown hair pulled tight back—Suddenly Katherine knew who she was. She raised her hand, half waving and half warding off; her reflection did the same.