Carriage Trade by Stephen Birmingham Page B

going to end up having to hire former cleaning ladies from Tuckahoe.
    â€œThat’s reason number one. Reason number two is that thirty percent of our clients are visitors from foreign countries. Is the wife of a Japanese businessman going to go to White Plains to shop? No way. Another thirty-five percent of our clients live in other parts of the country. Is a woman who’s in town from San Francisco going to get on a bus and go to New Jersey to buy a dress?”
    â€œBut more and more of the city’s money is moving to the suburbs,” Tommy insisted, and he had charts and graphs and demographic studies to back him up, and Si decided to go along with him. Tarkington’s would take Scarsdale and Morristown by storm. The suburban stores would each add a new department, called “Country Living,” featuring more casual designer apparel.
    Well, it hadn’t worked, for the very reasons Smitty outlined, and after a while both suburban branches closed. Smitty had been right, and Lord knows how much money Si lost in that experiment. And the day the suburban closings were announced—meeting Tommy Bonham in the hall—she hadn’t been able to resist saying sweetly, “I told you so!”
    He had given her a look of purest hatred. Tommy the hagfish.
    Prettyboy Bonham didn’t like being told he was wrong. He liked it even less when that person was a mere buyer. He liked it less and less when that person was someone ten years younger than he, and even less than that when that person happened to be a woman.
    She twists the ring slowly on her finger. A diamond of that size and importance looked smart when worn facing the palm of the hand. It would also look smart knotted in a scarf.
    Suddenly, she is swept with an almost sexual longing for this stone. The feeling seizes at her very innards. She must have this stone and no other. It is hers. It was promised to her, and promises cannot be broken, can they? “A man is as good as his word.” Si was always saying that, and so it must be hers, and now is the time to claim it. That’s what she’s doing: not stealing it, claiming it. Claiming her rightful property. She extends her left hand to the light. This stone excels in all four C’s of gemology: color, clarity, cutting, and carat weight. It is ice blue. In the sunlight it will throw off prismatic flashes of red and lavender. In terms of clarity, it has been rated flawless. It has been cut in the full glory of fifty-eight facets, thirty-three above the girdle and twenty-five below. In the quaint language of gemology, this stone would be classified Extra River, from the early days of African mining when the finest diamonds were found in the alluvial wash of riverbeds. Yes, it is hers, it is hers.
    She could write it up as a sale. There is a client in Venezuela whose husband’s bank pays all her charges. No bill has ever been challenged.
    â€œNice-looking ring, Miss Smith.” It is Oliver, moving silently across the thick carpet, making his rounds, a witness.
    She tries not to appear startled. “Yes, isn’t it?” she says easily. “I have a client, in town from Caracas. I’m thinking of taking this over to her hotel and showing it to her.”
    â€œCaracas. Is that in Ohio?”
    â€œVenezuela. South America.” Her alibi.
    Larceny, she thinks. Grand theft. Zip to ten years in the state pen. Prettyboy Bonham would like to see her in jail. Next to seeing her dead, he would like to see her in jail.
    And yet, she thinks as Oliver moves away, would she ever feel the same about this ring as she would if he had actually slipped it on her finger, the way he had promised to do? That would always be missing, that one final gesture. Missing that final gesture means a lot. The promise cannot be real without that final gesture. And, worst of all, worse than knowing that the final gesture never came, will never come, is knowing that it was her own damn