The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [96]
Before Rose had to summon up the courage to open the door, Cordy flung it wide. “Who talks within there? ho, open the door!” she cackled.
“Oh, we were wondering who was creeping around in the hallway like that,” Bean said, glancing over her shoulder at Rose, and then returning, disinterested, to the pile of clothing on the bed. Rose suppressed a sigh at the sight of the room. It looked not unlike Bean had opened every box and bag she had brought with her—and she had fit an impressive number into that tiny compact, like a clown car—and sprayed their contents around the room. Cordy was clomping around in a mismatched pair of stiletto heels, pants, a skirt, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a pashmina draped around her head as though she were expecting to be picked up for a ride in a convertible. In 1952.
“I was hardly creeping,” Rose said. “What in God’s name are you doing in here?”
Cordy paused, cocked her hip and waggled a critical finger at Rose. “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, dahling,” she said. “It’s so gauche.” She flipped the edge of the shawl back over her shoulder and pranced off in another direction.
“I’m cleaning. And Rita Hayworth here is helping. Or so she claims,” Bean said, waving her fingers at Cordy.
Rose walked over to the bed, leaning her thighs against it, and fingered some of the fabric splayed across it. “You have a lot of clothes,” she said.
“I know.”
Questioning, Rose flipped up the sleeve of a rose-pink jacket, silk shantung. “This one still has the tags on it.”
In the corner, Cordy retrieved a bright green leather handbag from a box and clomped back across the room, skidding slightly in her heels. Bean has always had the biggest feet of the three of us. Cordy paused halfway in her circuit, blew Rose a kiss, and then continued her runway sashay.
“I know,” Bean said again, her voice shy with regret. God, how many of these did still have their tags on? So much of it had been the will to possess, to own, to open the tiny broom cupboard of her closet and see the spoils of war bursting forth. And then there was fashion, of course, the fickle courtesan who changed her mind seemingly in the time it took to order a drink, leaving her stranded with last night’s shoes or this morning’s hair.
“Do you really need all of these?” Rose asked.
Bean looked up sharply, her eyes narrowing defensively.
“No, I’m not being mean. I was just wondering. Because you could take them to a consignment shop in the city. Sell them.”
Bean’s hands moved quickly, folding, sorting, shaking out the lines of a suit. She paused, hands on a gray pencil skirt, a matching jacket. Bad luck. This was the suit she had worn when they had fired her; she could still remember herself tugging the hemline down to an acceptable length as she sat. She tossed the piece aside, shaking her hands afterward. Did other people feel that kind of voodoo about their clothes? Certainly there were lucky socks, favorite items, but Bean felt the opposite, too, that if something bad happened when she was wearing a specific item of clothing, she would never wear it again. This certainly counted.
But if she sold them, she could be rid of that memory altogether. Or closer to it, at least.
“You’d make a crapload,” Cordy said. She hopped up on the bed, Bean’s heels dropping off her feet with a clatter, and obediently lifted up her hip so Bean could pull out the clothes she was sitting on. Cordy opened the purse she had claimed and began to go through the pockets, pulling out tissues, a half-eaten roll of mints, and far too many pennies.
“Well, I owe a crapload, so it’s all fair,” Bean said. She had furrowed her brow in a way she might once have tried to wipe away, already considering cosmetic surgery.
After her breakdown in the woods, when Bean had told us her story, we had stood in awe of the amount of money she owed, and the impossibility of raising it, but we had not counted on Bean’s couture. Rose, who neither knew nor cared about what was in vogue in Paris this season, peeked at a label, her eyes widening.