Mirror by Graham Masterton Page B

custom-made sneakers, purple and white and natural suede, perched on the counter like exhibits unto themselves. He was dark, shock-headed, with multiple-jointed arms and legs, and one of those ugly spread-nosed Latino faces that you couldn’t help liking. His breakfast was a giant chili dog, with everything on it, and a bottle of lime-flavored Perrier.
    ‘Hey, Martin!’ he cried, waving one of his spidery arms.
    Martin came over and leaned tightly against the counter, close to the cash register.
    ‘Allure, Ramone,’ he greeted him. Saying ‘allure’ instead of ‘hello’ had been kind of a private joke between them ever since they had gone downtown together one evening to watch a Brazilian art movie, in which everybody had said ‘allure’.
    ‘
Allure, Juanita
.’
    ‘
Allure, Gaspar
.’
    Ramone said, ‘That ginger-headed girl was in here, yessday afternoon, asking about you.’
    ‘Yeah?’ said Martin. ‘That ginger-headed girl’ was a student from his Monday evening tele-writing class, Norma, who had considered his
A-Team
rewrites ‘miraculous’; and had wanted to take him to bed to ‘you know, transfuse the talent’.
    The Reel Thing was more than a store: it was a shrine. Anything and everything that was important to movie buffs was assembled here. Shirley Temple dolls in sailor suits and cowboy outfits and Scottish plaids. Buck Rogers disintegrator guns and rocket ships. Tom Mix pocket knives and six-shooters. And box after box after box of signed studio glossies – Joan Crawford and Adolphe Menjou and Robert Redford and Dorothy Dell.
    The whole store smelled of forty-year-old movie programs and dust and old clothes and stale cigarette smoke from a thousand long-forgotten parties. But anybody who cared for movies could spend hours in here, touching with reverence the gowns of Garbo; or the white Stetsons of William Boyd; or the short-sleeved shirts of Mickey Rooney. The artifacts were nothing at all. It was what they conjured up that made them valuable.
    Martin picked up a yellowed copy of
Silver Screen
with the enticing headline ‘What It Takes to Be a 1939 Girl’.
    ‘Did you look at the stuff?’ Ramone asked him, scooping up chili and pickle with his fingers.
    Martin dropped the magazine back into its rack. ‘Oh yes, I looked at the stuff, all right.’
    ‘No good?’ asked Ramone.
    ‘Depends what you mean by no good.’
    Ramone’s tabby cat, Lugosi, was resting on a stack of
Screenlands
, his paws tucked in, his eyes slitted against the sunlight that came in through the window.
    Martin stroked him under his chin, but Lugosi opened his eyes and stared back at him in irritation, his vexation emphasized by the way one pointed tooth was caught on his lip. Lugosi was definitely a one-man cat.
    Ramone said, with his mouth full, ‘It was genuine Boofuls stuff, I saw the paperwork. It was auctioned by M-G-M along with a whole lot of Shirley Temple properties.’
    ‘I bought the mirror,’ said Martin. Then, ‘Listen Ramone, can you get some time off? I have to talk this over with
some
body.’
    Ramone wiped his hands on a paper napkin, rolled it up, and tossed it with perfect accuracy into a basket. ‘I was going out to Westwood, anyway. Kelly can take care of the store. Kelly!
Dónde está usted?
’
    A small girl with owlish designer spectacles and a long blond braid down the middle of her back came into the store from the back. She wore a loose white T-shirt with the slogan ‘Of All the T-shirts in All the World I Had to Pick This One’.
    ‘
Hasta luego
, Kelly,’ said Ramone, picking up his car keys. ‘I’m going down to Westwood with Fartin’ Martin here to look at that stuff in Westwood.’
    ‘Kay,’ said Kelly in a nasal Valley accent, and began to shuffle movie programs. Ramone whistled to his cat Lugosi and Lugosi jumped down straightaway and followed them out of the store.
    The ‘stuff in Westwood’ proved to be disappointing. Two crushed and faded cocktail gowns that were