雙語·摸彩：雪莉·杰克遜短篇小說選 跟我來 6

Come Along with Me 6

Well, I don't want you to think that Mrs. Faun and I came right out and quarreled all the time. We kind of sharpened our nails on each other, that was all, and most of the time we finished off our arguments laughing together over a cup of tea, although I must say I was surprised when I began getting a weekly bill from Mrs. Faun, in addition to the rent for the room, for “tea, cookies, etc.”

“I thought you invited me,” I said to her the first week.

“It won't hurt you,” she said. “I get what I can.”

I started following people after a day or so in the city; one thing is certain, you can't find your way around a strange city without someone to show you where to go, and when all you know is a Mrs. Faun who won't step out of her front parlor for a bomb explosion on the street outside, you pretty well have to get the way from strangers. The first person I followed was an old fellow I picked up outside a restaurant; he had been eating caviar, and I like to follow someone who is good and full of caviar, although I don't care for it myself; it seemed that he might lead me to a far more interesting place than any I might find by myself, and, in a sense, he did; “Why are you following me?” he asked, turning suddenly on me at a street corner; I was not as good at following people then as I became later.

“Because you were eating caviar,” I said. Sometimes the truth doesn't hurt.

“I like caviar.”

“I don't.”

“Where did you plan to follow me?” He was still bewildered, but I thought amused; I am not very terrifying to look at, I believe. In any case, he was clearly a man without a guilty conscience, or at least no kind of conscience that being followed by me might bother. Perhaps being followed by a lovely young nineteen-year-old boy might have bothered him some.

“Come and have tea with me,” he said. I swear, he took out a cardcase and handed me a card; I don't think I have ever known anyone to do that before. “I'd like to,” I told him, “it will save me money with Mrs. Faun.”

There was the day I tried my hand at shoplifting; it was particularly important because of the weather; it was one of those winter days which suddenly dreams of spring, when the sky is blue and soft and clear, and the wind has dropped its voice and whispers instead of screaming, and the sun is out and the trees look surprised, and over everything there is the faintest, palest tint of green; weather entertains me.

“I'm trying my hand at shoplifting,” I told the salesgirl, and we both laughed.

I went to the biggest department store; I had not been there before, but one big department store is much like another. This one was one I might have been in a hundred times before; I knew where things were, and recognized the heavily scented air, so rich after the clean air outside. Sometimes I like big stores, with softness underfoot and pressing against the sides of your head; I like long counters with soft highlights and seductively tumbled scarves and vacant mannequins and the dirty gloves of shoppers; I like everything about big department stores except shopping in them. I do not like salesgirls and their manners, and having to buy my dresses in a special behemoths department, and I do not like the stupid mockery of people who enjoy keeping you waiting; I do not like credit offices, but I enjoy quarreling over a bill. Hughie used to be all lost, really frightened, when I got into a fight with a department store because I never really felt I was fighting with people, and so it was not necessary to observe any of the small delicate graces you use automatically when you are fighting with people; even with the electric company I always knew I was fighting with people, but never with department stores, and of course not with the telephone company. We paid our bills—I don't mean to sound as if I fought with any of them because I wanted to save money—but I could always enjoy a good fight over something. I loved being in a department store, and I am only surprised that I had not thought of shoplifting long before. “Shoplifting,” I explained to the salesgirl, and touched the little box gently with one finger, and we both laughed.

I had really no good idea how you went about stealing something from a department store, but I thought I could make it up as I went along; that is, you will observe, my way with almost everything. I have always been quite successful at making things up as I went along, and very often surprised at where I led myself. I never thought along the way that I might end up in jail, or hurt, or even embarrassed, because that is simply not the kind of thing that happens to the kind of person I am; I am not above the law, but somehow I make the law, which so many other people do not. This is not arrogance; I first became aware of this when I was a child and always got everything I wanted. Before God, I thought I wanted Hughie. But this is not shoplifting.

For reasons which amused me considerably, and which I do not care to discuss here, I had decided that what I most wanted to steal was an ornamental candle. I knew that there would probably be a department which sold candles and candlesticks and elaborate boxes of matches, and I thought to steal a candle and take it back to Mrs. Faun to put in the center of her appalling mantelpiece. Moreover, a candle is not too valuable, although perhaps not always easy to hide. Poor Hughie, and he was such a lousy painter.

In any case, I stepped onto the escalator—such a sense of power, such a sense of being carried, of permitting this small service underfoot—and, looking down at the store, let myself be taken to the second floor, where I paused briefly at lingerie; I do like lace; and then on to the third floor and the fourth, where I found a gift shop and, just beyond, the candles I was looking for. Perhaps a black candle for Mrs. Faun's next black mass, perhaps a candle that told time—although I do think that's too much of a good thing; the nicest part of a candle is its inaccuracy—or perhaps a candle topped with flowers, or a candle looking like a cabbage, or a house, or a poodle. I like things made to look like something else, although I draw the line at food. I once had a recipe for imitation potato pancakes made out of ground cauliflower, and they were just as vile as they sound. But an ordinary everyday plain camouflage is quite all right with me.

I saw a candle made of a thousand different colors, and it was very lovely; I quite wanted it. But wanting it and stealing it were two different things; if I started stealing just because I wanted a colored candle the whole point would be lost, and I had already decided that I could not buy it. So, reluctantly, I passed by the lovely candle and found quite a hideous one; it looked rather like Mrs. Faun, I thought, and I put it in my pocket. Then I turned and saw the salesgirl looking at me with an air of complete joy; she had seen me, of course, and she took a step forward and said, “Can I help you?” and waited to see what I would do.

Naturally, I took the candle out of my pocket and said, “No, just trying my hand at shoplifting,” and we both laughed. I set the candle back on the counter and turned away, my candle-stealing days over forever. She could have cried, that salesgirl; perhaps she had been waiting all her working life to catch a shoplifter in action; perhaps her big moment tonight at dinner was now hopelessly ruined. After all, “I caught a shoplifter today,” is a much more sensational beginning to a story than just a “I had the craziest old lady in my department today.” She must have waited on a good many crazy old ladies, and, understand, I'm not saying I'm old. She just looked like she'd tell it that way. So I had to shoplift something else. I won't go into the number of things I took and had to put back; I don't seem really cut out for the most efficient stealing; but I did manage to pick up a box of birth announcements (“I'm a girl, I'm a girl, I'm a girl”) which I though might suit Mrs. Faun. No one seemed to care about those. One of the things I had to put back was a bottle of perfume called Svelte, which was fair anyway since I really wanted that.

Well, I'm not boasting. Some of the things that come to me work out well, and some do not. The seance was pretty good, but I will be the very first to admit that I am not light-fingered.