Mistletoe Over Manhattan

4

Asshe sat on Santa's lap, a hot flush of humiliation climbing her face, the last thing Mallory expected to hear Santa say was "Him? Ooh. I can't blame you."

It was not a Santa-like thing to say. Mallory took a close look into his appropriately blue eyes.

"Ho, ho, ho," he boomed suddenly, then threw her off balance again by whispering, "You mentioned a problem. So what's the problem? You're a dish, he's a hunk, you're both single, I presume. And straight." He sighed.

It was not a Santa-like sigh. "I'm not a dish," Mallory said, giving him another close look.

"Please don't report me," Santa said. "I shouldn't have said 'dish.' I know better. Santa Claus is politically correct."

"Oh, think nothing of it," Mallory assured him, realizing he was a New York Santa, not a Midwestern Santa, and she should be sophisticated enough to adjust to slight differences in mannerisms. "I meant I'm not beautiful or sexy or any of the things I need to be to attract him." She crooked her neck in Carter's direction.

"Who says?" Santa's eyes got very big behind his silver-rimmed spectacles.

"I says. I mean, I know I'm not." The more whispering she and Santa did, the deeper Carter's frown became. "My boss says I'm not. He-" this time she sent her thumb in Carter's direction "-treats me like I'm not. So I'm not. I'm frumpy and dull and when he looks at me, he sees a-a law book."

"Sounds like Santa needs to give him glasses for Christmas," Santa muttered.

"No, Santa needs to give me-" she stopped and thought for a second "-a whole new image," she finally got out. "I want to turn into a sex goddess."

"By Christmas."

"That's my target date."

"This is so serendipitous," Santa breathed. "If it were in a book, nobody would believe it."

"Believe what?" He wasn't merely a New York Santa. He was truly a very odd Santa.

"That you need help and I know exactly where to send you to get it." He darted a glance at the growing crowd, and apparently motivated by Carter's thunderous expression, almost knocked Mallory off his lap with his next hearty "Ho-ho-ho." Then he dug into his pocket and pulled out a peppermint and a card. "Call this number," he whispered, then shouted enthusiastically, "Merry Christmas."

Deafened by the sound, Mallory tucked the card into the breast pocket of her jacket and slid off his padded lap. If a department store Santa Claus had just referred her to a psychiatrist, that would be absolutely the last straw.

On the way back to the hotel, Carter was unusually silent. Not that Mallory could have heard him if he'd been chatting companionably away. They'd emerged from Bloomingdale's to find the streets jammed with honking cars and the sidewalks packed with shoppers. Their Brown Bags jostled with Saks Fifth Avenue red ones, Bergdorf Goodman's handsome navy totes, Lord & Taylor white ones printed in red script, Gucci, FAO Schwartz and Sony bags.

Through narrowed eyes she caught the glances women sent toward Carter as he effortlessly cut a path through the crowd, snowflakes dusting his navy overcoat and dark hair, while Mallory struggled to keep up with him. From time to time she peeked into her own Medium Brown Bag at the gift box that held Macon's sweater. Burnt orange. Blue stripes. A shudder passed through her. While she'd inherited her mother's Nordic blondness, Macon took after their father, a symphony in browns, chestnut hair, interesting amber eyes, olive skin. The pale beige V-necked sweater would have been perfect for him. What was he going to do with a-

Save receipts at least three months. File them under Appliances, Gifts, Services and Personal. You never know when you may have to return an inappropriate gift or faulty appliance, or demand that a job done poorly be done over.

Ellen Trent again. One of her major rules for a well-run life. Until that thought popped into Mallory's mind, her first priority had been to look at the business card Santa had slipped her. Now the worry that she might have forgotten her receipt took precedence.

Surreptitiously she began to grope around in the bag. When Carter cast a glance in her direction, she suspended her search, then resumed it when he wasn't looking. She didn't want him to know she was obsessing over a receipt, didn't want him to know she'd been rattled enough to buy a sweater she was already thinking of returning.

At last she thrust her hand all the way down to the bottom of the bag where her gloved fingertips snagged a loose corner of paper and tugged on it.

The receipt. She glanced at it, gasped and came to a dead halt at the corner of Fifty-ninth Street. The crowd rear-ended her, righted itself, then divided like the Red Sea, casting nasty looks at her as they swarmed around her. Carter, who'd been turning the coiner, cut himself out of the pack and fought his way back in her direction.

"What happened? Whoa. Where are you going?" he said as she whirled.

"Back to Bloomingdale's," she said.

He contemplated her for a moment. "You have a thing for Santa Claus, huh?"

The snowflakes that whirled through the air swarmed on her eyelashes, and she blinked hard to clear them. When she saw his gaze riveted on them, she batted them again, more deliberately this time. "Maybe," she said.

His jaw tightened. "I'll see you back at the hotel."

"You may have gone out with Athena by the time I get back, so-"

"Who? Oh. Athena."

"So we should decide now on a time to meet in the morning."

"We're due at Phoebe Angell's office at nine. What about going down to breakfast at seven-thirty." It wasn't a question.

"I'll be ready. You'll be home by then?" she said, and it was a question.

He gazed at her for a moment before he said, "Maybe," and with a slight wave, joined the lemmings swimming east toward the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue.

Jostled by the annoyed shoppers who stepped around her, she watched him go, standing tall in the crowd, the wind rustling his crisp, dark hair, his step sure and purposeful. No wonder she'd just paid $425-plus tax, when she could have saved the tax by having it shipped-for the ugliest sweater in the universe. Proximity to Carter made it difficult to remember anything, even how to spend money wisely.

Everyone should have a budget and stick to it. Financial worries reduce one's efficiency and-

"Shut up, Mother," Mallory muttered, and charged through the crowd toward Bloomie's.

"My faith in mankind is restored," said the clerk when she returned the sweater. She watched him pluck it up with two fingers and put it aside, a look of distaste on his face. "Good decision." Stepping out of the men's department, her pace slowed. She really didn't want to go back to the suite. Listening through a closed door to Carter getting ready for his date with Athena would be depressing. Pretending to get ready for an imaginary date of her own would be even more depressing.

Slowly she pulled the card Santa had given her out of her pocket. "M. Ewing," it said. "ImageMakers." Below that, in both quotes and italics, it said, "A new you in no time flat."

Mallory drew her brows together. The words were engraved on heavy, expensive card stock. The address was one on the Upper East Side, a high-rent district. "A new you in no time flat" was a jarring addition to the otherwise elegant presentation of the card. "Be the person you want to be," maybe, or "Realize your personal potential." Something like that would have sounded more appropriate.

Still, this person claimed to be an imagemaker and came personally recommended by Santa Claus himself. Mallory knew what an imagemaker did. Was that what she needed? Somebody to help her show the world outside she was a woman-a passionate woman?

Forget the world outside. Her sights were fixed on one person in the world. She had her target date and her target victim. Damn straight an overnight imagemaker was what she needed. If M. Ewing turned out to be a charlatan, she'd be out-what? A few hundred dollars? Which she'd just saved by returning the sweater. Without another minute's consideration, she darted into a small nook devoted to a display of Chanel handbags in their leathery, unaffordable splendor. Ignoring the scornful gaze of the woman behind the counter-an armed guard, probably, given the cost of these handbags-she dialed the number listed on the card.

"ImageMakers," purred a smooth male voice. "Richard Gifford speaking. May I help you?"

The voice went with the card. The address went with the card. The only thing that didn't go with the card was that "A new you in no time flat."

"I'd like an appointment." Mallory's tone matched this Richard person's in cool professionalism. "That is, if Mr. or Ms. Ewing sees clients in the evenings, because I'm only available then."

"Ms. Ewing sees clients at their convenience." A pause ensued. Richard was obviously consulting a schedule. "Her next evening appointment is on February 9. Shall I-"

Why had she assumed she could mosey on over to become a new her in no time flat, like, right now? "I'm sorry," she said, "but I'm visiting here and-"

"Who referred you to us?" The man's interest seemed to have picked up.

It burst out of her mouth. "Santa Claus."

"Right. Ms. Ewing has had a sudden cancellation. She can see you this evening. As in now. When shall we expect you?"

Mallory felt dazed, and possibly conned. But she felt committed to an image change and she wasn't going to let herself cop out.

"How fortunate," she said. "I'll be there-" She glanced at her watch. The afternoon had flown. "I'll be there at seven."

It wasn't far. Ten minutes ought to do it.

She was committed. Wondering if she should just commit herself to some kindly healing institution instead, she started out of the store, then screeched to a halt, spun and sped back to the men's department. A few minutes later she had paid $165 for a dark-blue-and-white-striped shirt in a very large size.

She'd also used seven of her ten minutes. Punctuality is key to your success in life. Arrive when you say you'll arrive, and give yourself some leeway for the odd traffic jam, something you can't control-

"Mother," Mallory muttered to herself as she tossed her credit card into any old corner of her purse it chose to land in, "I already told you. Bug off. I'm in over your head."

While she knew that Sixty-seventh Street just off Fifth Avenue would be an area of nice houses, she wasn't prepared for a Beaux Arts mansion. Typical of Manhattan residences, it was small as mansions went.

Mallory clutched her black cashmere coat more tightly around herself and went up to the huge double doors.

There was no box of buttons and buzzers, no list of doctors or dentists or psychiatrists who had made this once-proud single-family residence their professional home. There seemed no alternative but to knock, which one did by grasping a long, pendulous brass thing and banging it against the two brass spheres beneath it. Mallory did a double take, and was having second thoughts about the wisdom of this project when the door opened and a glorious figure of a man said, "Like the knocker? I picked it out myself." Without waiting for an answer, he added, "Come in. Ms. Ewing will see you at once."

"But I-"

"I'll take your coat."

"Thank you. I-"

"Follow me, please."

Giving up, she followed him through a massive foyer, across a marble floor, under a sparkling chandelier and past a sweeping staircase and a few pieces of furniture that looked as if they should be sporting Don't Touch signs. Richard swept open both halves of a tall, curtained French door, said, "Ms. Trent to see you," and steered Mallory ahead of him and into the room.

"Hey, hon," said a voice. "Come on in and set yourself down."

One look at the woman behind the desk and Mallory knew she was in the wrong place. She turned to flee, but Richard blocked her path. She turned back. "You know," she said in a quavering voice, "maybe this isn't the right thing for me to do just now at such an extremely busy point in my life."

"Au contraire," Ms. Ewing said, drawling the words out to their legal limit. "Looks to me like y'all got here in the nick of time."

Dragging her feet, Mallory headed for the chair opposite the desk. It was an ordinary chair, and she felt slightly better sitting down. The desk, on the other hand, was an alarming concoction of branches and horns, or antlers maybe, topped by a slab of stone that looked as if it should have crushed the desk to mulch and bone meal upon installation. But the desk, at least, had the good grace not to speak. If it had spoken, it would probably have mooed. Even that would have been better than listening to Ms. Ewing's exaggerated country-music star accent.

She was a tiny woman with an enormous head of teased, gelled and sprayed blond hair. Half woman, half hair. Her face was thin and sharp-featured. Her eyes, huge and blue, surprised Mallory with their gleam of intelligence. And her mouth, a narrow hot-pink slash across her tanned, weather-beaten face, quirked up at the corners. She could be fifty, she could be ninety. It was that hard to tell.

This is a house of prostitution and I've just met my first madam.

Or I'm being interviewed for a rodeo.

As if her legs had springs, Mallory tensed herself for action. But first, she had to distract the woman from her true intention, which was to flee. "What an interesting desk, Ms. Ewing," she said, leaning forward, getting her Soft 'N' Comfy pumps in position to push off the Oriental rug.

"Maybelle, hon, jes' call me Maybelle, and for goodness' sake, relax. Y'all look like you're about to run."

Caught like a shoplifter with a mascara up her sleeve, Mallory tried to look less obvious. Still staring at Maybelle, she had to admit that the woman's simple black jacket looked expensive. All she could see of the blouse beneath it was the neckline of something in a snakeskin print. Nothing alarming about that.

"And don't worry about them horns. Some of 'em fell off the critters natural-like and the other ones got what they deserved. Want some coffee?"

Mallory hesitated. At least Maybelle hadn't offered her a controlled substance. "Do you have decaffeinated?"

Maybelle sighed. "Another one of them. Honest to gosh, you young folks," she said, then screamed, "Dickie!" Mallory levitated straight up out of her chair, but Maybelle went on in her normal nasal twang. "Y'all stay up all night, but you're scared to death of caffeine."

Richard reappeared. "You rang?" he said eloquently.

"Got another one of them decaf drinkers. Perk us up a pot, will ya, sugar?"

"It's already brewing," Richard, or Dickie, replied. He gave Mallory a look that said, "Isn't she something?" over the top of Maybelle's head. "Maybelle, I told you she wouldn't want your fully leaded stuff."

Maybelle looked discontentedly after him as he vanished, his big frame silent as a cat's. "Nobody wants real coffee anymore," she said. "The kind that's perked on the stove and reheated 'til it's like axle grease. Now that's coffee you can sink your teeth into."

Mallory began to worry again. Her good manners told her she had to stay long enough for the cup of coffee she'd just custom-ordered, but no longer than that, and there were a couple of things she had to get straight before she revealed anything about herself to this supposed imagemaker, who looked and sounded as if she could use one of her own. "What do you charge for your services?"

"We don' need to tawk about that jes' yet," Maybelle said with a wave of a diamond-studded hand.

Mallory heard a loud throat-clearing sound, then Richard reappeared, positioning himself behind Maybelle like a bodyguard. "Ms. Ewing charges one hundred dollars an hour and prefers to see new clients daily for the first week, tapering off in subsequent weeks," he intoned, sounding like a recording. "She'll see you each evening at seven and at four on weekends until further notice. A typical client can expect a fee of about two thousand dollars. Cream and sugar?" he added, circling the desk with the silver tray he'd been holding while he did his piece.

"Black, thanks."

Maybelle smiled. "Way-ell, there's some hope for ya."

Mallory frowned back. There was one more thing she had to know. "What sort of training did you have for this business?" she said, trying hard to say it nicely, as if she were merely interested in Maybelle's background.

"Training?" Maybelle cackled. "No need to worry yourself about that, hon. I got me plenty of trainin' in all kinds of things. Look at them diplomas." She cocked a thumb over her shoulder as Richard drifted out of the room.

Mallory gripped the handle of an exquisite bone china teacup as if it were the only piece of debris at hand after a shipwreck, and she directed her gaze to the wall behind Maybelle. It was papered with diplomas in gilded frames.

She narrowed her eyes. Diplomas could easily be faked. She had a strong feeling that the woman behind the desk wouldn't hesitate to buy diplomas by the square foot.

"And besides," Maybelle was saying, "look at me." She stood up.

That was the problem. Mallory was looking at her. The woman topped out at five feet, and below the elegant black jacket Mallory saw pressed light blue jeans and a pair of heeled boots that upped the definition of cowboy boots by a quantum leap. They were black, tooled in yellow and purple pansies.

Mallory blinked, hesitated, left her saucer on the edge of the desk and stood, still holding the cup by its delicate handle. She carefully walked around the desk, narrowly avoiding being gored by a protruding horn, to join Maybelle at the wall.

Many of the diplomas were from correspondence schools and announced Maybelle's successful completion of courses in an amazing variety of fields, from mathematics to pottery-making. "Don't pay them no mind," Maybelle said, dismissing them with a wave. The enormous diamonds in her rings sent rainbows across the high ceiling of the room. "I took them courses to inner-tain and edgy-cate myself after Hadley died. My husband," she explained.

"I'm sorry," Mallory said.

"I was, too," Maybelle said, "and real bored without him around to fight with." She moved on down the wall and so did Mallory.

Here there were diplomas written in Chinese characters and a diploma from the Parsons School of Design. "You were an interior designer?" Mallory said, casting a glance back at the desk.

"Oh, my, yeah," Maybelle said. "That was the most fun I ever had."

"And lucrative," Mallory murmured, trying to imagine a house this woman had had a hand in decorating, trying to imagine her on the loose in China. She couldn't even speak English.

"Way-ell, no." Maybelle looked reflective. "The money never interested me very much. But I do get bored real easy, so next I got me a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology-"

The coffee sloshed onto Mallory's only pair of black trousers.

"-then an MBA, so's I'd know what y'all young folks was up against in the business world. What line of work did you say you was in?"

The psychology degree was from Johns Hopkins and the MBA from New YorkUniversity. "I'm a lawyer," Mallory said, feeling humbled.

"I may get me one of them degrees next," Maybelle declared. "Dickie's significant other? He's involved in this lawsuit with a whole bunch of other people, and I want to tell you, that lawyer's gonna make out good."

Mallory tensed up. "Ah, what kind of lawsuit?"

Maybelle stepped toward her desk and Mallory followed. "The craziest thing happened," Maybelle said as she settled herself down. "He's got the show biz bug, and he was going to audition for this part where they wanted a redhead-"

It couldn't be. It just couldn't.

"Now that we've gotten to know each other, mind if I take off this jacket?" Maybelle interrupted herself, taking it off without waiting for Mallory to answer.

"Of course-" she looked down at the T-shirt beneath the jacket "-not." The T-shirt wasn't your customary snakeskin print. It depicted a python wrapped around Maybelle's skinny body, its head curling down over one shoulder.

"-and the stuff dyed his hair green."

"No!" Mallory said, breaking eye contact with the python as she realized she had something worse than snakes to worry about.

"Oh, yes," Maybelle said, misunderstanding Mallory's explosive response. "And he's real thorough about his character development, y'know? So he didn't just dye the hair on his head, nosirree. He dyed everything, if y'all get my drift."

Mallory, perched at the very edge of her chair, said, "You mean-"

"I mean for a while there even his little tallywhacker was green," Maybelle said. "And I want to tell y'all he was mighty put out." She paused for a moment. "They have an apartment here in the house. The tawk gets kindly personal sometimes."

"Maybelle, there's something I have to tell you," Mallory began. How could Maybelle help her if she had a conflict of interests?

Maybelle leaned forward. "Well, of course you do, and here I am chattering on about stuff. Y'all came here for help. Help gettin' your man, a little bird told me. Sounds to me like a real intrestin' project."

Silently Mallory weighed her choices. This woman might be crazy as a cat on uppers, but she did have all those degrees and all those diamonds, and she did have intelligent eyes. Why did she have to know that Mallory was on the opposite side of her housemate's lawsuit? Only because Mallory felt morally obligated to tell her. But why? If Maybelle herself were involved in the case, that would be different, but-

While her mind went around in circles, Maybelle rattled on. "I don't know what you're so worried about. You're purty. You seem smart. Whatcha want to change?"

Locations? Go back to the hotel and remember this experience as nothing more than a very interesting evening? The conclusion she came to, after weighing all the evidence, was that in the course of one momentous day she'd sat on Santa's lap, she'd made herself come here, she'd faced up to a doorknocker that looked like Andre the Giant naked and she hadn't run away. She might never have this much courage again. It's now or never. "Me," Mallory whispered. "I want to change me, from the inside out."