Transparent things

5

After breakfast they found a suitable-looking shop. Confections. Notre vente triomphale de soldes. Our windfall triumphantly sold, translated his father, and was corrected by Hugh with tired contempt. A basket with folded shirts stood on an iron tripod outside the window, unprotected from the rain that had now increased. There came a roll of thunder. Let's pop in here, nervously said Dr. Person, whose fear of electric storms was yet another source of irritation to his son.

That morning, lrma, a weary and worried shopgirl, happened to be alone in charge of the shabby garment store into which Hugh reluctantly followed his father. Her two co-workers, a married couple, had just been hospitalized after a fire in their little apartment, the boss was away on business, and more people were dropping in than habitually would on a Thursday. At present she was in the act of helping three elderly women (part of a busload from London) to make up their minds and at the same time directing another person, a German blonde in black, to a place for passport pictures. Each old woman in turn spread the same flower-patterned dress against her bosom, and Dr. Person eagerly translated their cockney cackle into bad French.

The girl in mourning came back for a parcel she had forgotten. More dresses were spread-eagled, more price tags squinted at. Yet another customer entered with two little girls. In between Dr. Person asked for a pair of slacks. He was given a few pairs to try on in an adjacent cubicle; and Hugh slipped out of the shop.

He strolled aimlessly, keeping in the shelter of various architectural projections, for it was in vain that the daily paper of that rainy town kept clamoring for arcades to be built in its shopping district. Hugh examined the items in a souvenir store. He found rather fetching the green figurine of a female skier made of a substance he could not identify through the show glass (it was "alabasterette," imitation aragonite, carved and colored in the Grumbel jail by a homosexual convict, rugged Armand Rave, who had strangled his boyfriend's incestuous sister). And what about that comb in a real-leather etui, what about, what about it – oh, it would get fouled up in no time and it would take an hour of work to remove the grime from between its tight teeth by using one of the smaller blades of that penknife there, bristling in a display of insolent innards. Cute wrist watch, with picture of doggy adorning its face, for only twenty-two francs. Or should one buy (for one's college roommate) that wooden plate with a central white cross surrounded by all twenty-two cantons? Hugh, too, was twenty-two and had always been harrowed by coincident symbols.

A dingdong bell and a blinking red light at the grade crossing announced an impending event: inexorably the slow barrier came down.

Its brown curtain was only half drawn, disclosing the elegant legs, clad in transparent black, of a female seated inside. We are in a terrific hurry to recapture that moment! The curtain of a sidewalk booth with a kind of piano stool, for the short or tall, and a slot machine enabling one to take one's own snapshot for passport or sport. Hugh eyed the legs and then the sign on the booth. The masculine ending and the absence of an acute accent flawed the unintentional pun:

HOTOS

3 Poses

As he, still a virgin, imagined those daring attitudes a double event happened: the thunder of a nonstop train crashed by, and magnesium lightning flashed from the booth. The blonde in black, far from being electrocuted, came out closing her handbag. Whatever funeral she had wished to commemorate with the image of fair beauty craped for the occasion, it had nothing to do with a third simultaneous event next door.

One should follow her, it would be a good lesson – follow her instead of going to gape at a waterfall: good lesson for the old man. With an oath and a sigh Hugh retraced his steps, which was once a trim metaphor, and went back to the shop. Irma told neighbors later that she had been sure the gentleman had left with his son for at first she could not make out what the latter was saying despite his fluent French. When she did, she laughed at her stupidity, swiftly led Hugh to the fitting room and, still laughing heartily, drew the green, not brown, curtain open with what became in retrospect a dramatic gesture. Spatial disarrangement and dislocation have always their droll side, and few things are funnier than three pairs of trousers tangling in a frozen dance on the floor – brown slacks, blue jeans, old pants of gray flannel. Awkward Person Senior had been struggling to push a shod foot through the zigzag of a narrow trouser leg when he felt a roaring redness fill his head. He died before reaching the floor, as if falling from some great height, and now lay on his back, one arm outstretched, umbrella and hat out of reach in the tall looking glass.