Carriage Trade by Stephen Birmingham

but then remembers where she is. She is here, in Si’s store, where there is a no smoking policy. She closes the purse. She is not even entirely sure why she came here. What was it? Oh, yes. To check her department. To say goodbye to it, perhaps. Because, the way things stand now, this may be her last time inside these doors. Who knows, when Tommy Bonham takes over—as he surely will—what will become of her? She staggers forward, reaching out to steady herself against a display counter. Did I take two of those dreamy little pills or one? I can’t remember .
    Oliver, the security guard on duty tonight, nods to her. “Evening, Miss Smith.”
    â€œGood evening”— his name? —“Oliver.”
    â€œSad day for all of us, ain’t it, Miss Smith?”
    â€œIt surely is.”
    â€œSay, you feeling all right, Miss Smith? You look a little—shaky, sort of. A bit off your feed. Green around the gills, like the fella says.”
    â€œI’m fine. I’m just a little—upset. As we all are, Oliver.”
    Oliver nods again and continues on his rounds.
    At the Hermès boutique, she pauses and lifts a sample flask of Equipage and sprays it behind her ears, on the backs of her wrists, in the cleavage of her breasts. Equipage is Diana Smith’s signature fragrance, and the scent makes her feel more like herself. “I love the way you always smell,” he used to say to her.
    â€œWhen a woman finds a scent that suits her, she should always stick to it,” she told him. He used to give her bottles.
    She makes her way slowly down the center aisle, under the Baccarat chandeliers, toward the back of the store to where, under an archway of polished walnut, her own department is situated. There, in locked glass cases, her merchandise is displayed. On the store’s books, this merchandise is valued at four million dollars, but she knows enough about retailing to know that the value of a store’s inventory has little relationship to its real value, which is always considerably less. She moves slowly from case to case, earrings in one, rings in another, necklaces and bracelets in a third, pins and brooches and jeweled buttons in a fourth. Now she remembers why she came here tonight. She wanted to think about precious stones, and not about other things.
    She has always had a special feeling for gems, and it is really only the precious ones that interest her. She has never been able to have much enthusiasm for semiprecious stones: the garnets, the tourmalines, the amethysts, turquoises, moonstones, opals, and the rest. But precious gemstones are quite another matter, and the sight of a nearly flawless, fiery diamond can induce in her an almost narcotic rush, a kind of adrenaline high.
    Each stone—to her, at least—has its own distinct personality. An emerald, for instance, she sees as a man’s stone. Rubies and diamonds look cheap and vulgar on a man, and there is a reason why Tiffany has never offered a man’s diamond ring for sale. Tarkington’s doesn’t go quite that far, but when a man comes into the store looking for a diamond ring—or diamond studs or cuff links—Smitty’s salespeople try, as politely as they can, to discourage him, to steer him toward emeralds or some lesser green stone such as aquamarine or malachite: masculine stones.
    Rubies are tarts’ stones, Smitty’s least favorite of the big four. She’s never met a woman wearing a ruby ring—or necklace, or ear clips—that she didn’t instantly dislike and consider a tart. Tarkington’s has its share of tart customers, of course—high-class tarts, to be sure, expensive tarts, but tarts just the same, or kept women. And when she sees such a woman sashay into her department, she will wink at her salesperson and slyly whisper, “Bring out the T.C.”—the Tart Collection.
    When a woman asks to look at emeralds, Smitty tends to