until the river of people unloaded her into some kind of children’s theater room with a Punch and Judy show. She managed to get through that room pretty much on her own, but the crowd got her again as she passed through the door into a room filled with tuxedos for babies.
Departments that made no sense were strung together in a series of large and small rooms. Every offshoot led to something weirder, and nothing appeared to be an exit. There was always just more. She went from a room displaying colorful kitchen appliances into a room entirely filled with pianos. From there, she was swept up by the crowd into a room of exotic pet supplies. Then a room devoted solely to women’s accessories, but only ones colored light blue—purses, silk scarves, wallets, shoes. Even the walls were light blue. The crowd snagged her again—now she was in a bookstore—now back on the Egyptian escalator.
She rode all the way down and stepped off into some kind of food palace that stretched on for room after massive room devoted to every kind of food, organized as an ever-Mary Poppin-izing array of displays, great arches of peacock-patterned stained glass and sparkling brass. Decorative carts stacked with pyramids of perfect fruit. Marble counters loaded down with bricks of chocolate.
Her eyes started to water. The voices around her thrummed in her head. The bolt of energy she’d gotten on the street had been rubbed away by all the people, burned out by all the colors. She found herself fantasizing about all the places she could rest. Under the fake wagon that held the parmesan cheese display. On the floor next to the shelves full of cocoa. Maybe here, right in the middle of everything. Maybe people would just step over her.
She managed to pull out of the crowd and get to a chocolate counter. A young woman with a short and taut blond ponytail came over to her.
“Excuse me,” Ginny said, “could you call Mr. Murphy?”
“Who?” the woman asked.
“Richard Murphy?”
The woman looked highly skeptical, but she still politely took out what looked like a thousand pages of names and numbers and systematically flipped through them.
“Charles Murphy in special orders?”
“Richard Murphy.”
Several hundred more pages. Ginny felt herself gripping the counter.
“Ah…here he is. Richard Murphy. And what is it I need to tell him?”
“Can you tell him it’s Ginny?” she said. “Can you tell him that I need to go?”
The small alarm clock read 8:06. She was in bed, still in her clothes. It was cool, and the sky outside was a pearly gray.
She vaguely recalled Richard putting her in one of those black cabs in front of Harrods. Arriving at his house. Fumbling with keys and what seemed like six locks on the door. Getting up the stairs. Falling onto the quilt fully dressed, with her ankles hanging off the side so that her sneakers didn’t get on it.
She kicked her feet. They were still hanging there off the edge of the bed.
She looked around the room. It was strange to be waking up here—not only in a different country (different country…everyone an entire ocean away…she was not going to panic). No, it wasn’t just that. This room really felt like a moment from her past, like Aunt Peg had just walked through the room, covered in blotches of paint, humming under her breath. (Aunt Peg hummed a lot. It was kind of annoying.)
When she emerged into the hallway and peered into the kitchen, she found that Richard had changed his clothes. Now he was wearing running pants and a T-shirt.
“Morning,” he said.
This made no sense.
“Morning?” she repeated.
“It’s morning,” he said. “You must have been exhausted. Jet lag. I shouldn’t have dragged you off to Harrods yesterday, not when you were so tired.”
Yesterday. Now her brain was catching up. Eight a.m. She’d lost an entire day.
“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m really sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. Bath’s all yours.”
She went back to the bedroom and gathered up her things. Though the letter had told her not to bring any guidebooks, it didn’t say she couldn’t look at them before she left. So she had, and she’d packed exactly the way they told her to pack. Her bag was full of “neutral basics” that didn’t require ironing, could be layered, and wouldn’t offend anyone, anywhere. Jeans. Cargo shorts. Practical shoes. One black skirt that she didn’t like. She picked out a pair of jeans and a shirt.
Once she had filled her arms with all the necessary items, Ginny suddenly felt self-conscious about being seen going into the bathroom. She poked her head out of the bedroom and, seeing that Richard had his back turned, dashed across the hall and quickly shut the door.
It was in the bathroom that Ginny fully realized that she was in a guy’s house. A man’s house. A kind of messy English man’s house. At home, the bathrooms were crammed full of country-crafty wicker wall ornaments, and seashells, and potpourri that smelled like the Hallmark store. This room was stark blue with blue carpet and dark blue towels. No decorations. Just a little shelf full of shaving cream (unknown brand in a vaguely futuristic-looking container), a razor, a few men’s Body Shop items (all tan or amber colored and serious looking—she could tell they all smelled like tree or something suitably manly).
All of her toiletries were carefully sealed up in a plastic bag, which she set on the carpet. (Wall-to-wall—plush but worn flat. Who carpeted a bathroom?) Her stuff was all pink—had she meant to buy so much pink? Pink soap, pink miniature shampoo bottle, little pink razor. Why? Why was she so pink?
She took a second to close the blind on the large bathroom window. Then she turned to the tub. She looked at the wall, then up at the ceiling.
There was no showerhead. That must be what Richard meant by “the bath” was all hers, which she had thought was just some Britishism. But it was all too real. There was a Y-shaped rubber tube. There were open suction cups on each tip of the Y part, and there was a handle on the end of the stem that looked a lot like a phone. After examining the tub and this device, Ginny determined that the Y tips were supposed to go over the two spigots, and water would come out of the phone, and some shower-like action would result.
She gave this a try.
Water shot up toward the ceiling. She quickly pointed the shower phone into the tub and jumped in. But it proved impossible to try to wash herself and juggle the shower phone, and she gave up and filled the tub. She hadn’t taken a bath since she was little and felt a little stupid sitting in the water. Also, the bath was amazingly loud—every movement produced a sloshing noise that echoed embarrassingly. She tried to make her movements as conservative as possible as she washed up, but the effort was lost as soon as she had to submerge herself to wash her hair. She was pretty sure that ocean liners could be lowered into the sea and make less noise than she did.
When the drama of the bath was over, she realized that she had another, totally unexpected problem. Her
