Julia continued. “Three days later, I received this reply: It pleases me that you think about such issues. I don’t normally receive messages from girls like you! You pose an interesting question, one that I’m not sure I can answer. One woman covers her body, while the other exposes herself. You could think of it as two sides of the same coin. Thanks for writing to me!”
Julia folded the paper and slipped it back into her tool belt. Hearing her read the words of Plum-as-Kitty made me self-conscious.
“I knew this message was not written by Kitty. I had no expectation that she would reply personally, of course, but it was immediately clear that this message was not written by the regular sort of person Kitty would hire, one of the beauty bots who make up her staff. I wanted to find out who had written this message, which wasn’t difficult. I called her assistant, Eladio, who blabbed all in a matter of minutes. Once I knew who you were, and that you worked from home, I sent Leeta to learn about you. She’s my intern. I lured her away from Glamour Bride last fall.”
Leeta. At last, she had a name. “She doesn’t strike me as the Glamour Bride type,” I said, envisioning the combat boots and scary makeup.
“She has no interest in glamour or brides, I can assure you. Her internship there was purely a means to an end.”
“Is she here?” I hoped that she wasn’t. She knew too much about me. She had seen.
“Leeta had to go out of town unexpectedly. Now, let me take this opportunity to apologize for her behavior. Yes, I sent her to follow you, but you must understand that the work I do here is highly sensitive. I wanted Leeta to scope you out, to get an idea of your daily routine, to see if she could tell what kind of person you are. I can’t trust just anybody, and I wanted Leeta to see if you’d be friendly to our cause.”
“What cause?”
“My point is that after speaking with Leeta and reading the journal she kept, I fear that she might have behaved inappropriately, that she might have intruded upon your life and . . . unsettled you.” Julia reached deep into her tool belt and withdrew the red spiral notebook that Leeta always wrote in while she was following me.
“Let me see that,” I said, grabbing for the notebook, but Julia put it back in her tool belt.
Rebuffed, I said: “I could have called the police.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
I had no good answer.
“Again, I’m sorry for what happened,” she said. “You weren’t supposed to notice Leeta.”
“But sending her to spy is okay?”
“She was not spying. She was getting to know you.”
“Without my knowledge?”
“In the beginning, yes.”
I wondered if I was the victim of a practical joke. If so, Julia was quite an actor. “Why did she give me Verena Baptist’s book?”
“Leeta took it upon herself to do that. She grew fond of you and wanted to reach out. She thought you might appreciate the message of the book.”
“Do you know Verena?”
The doorbell rang. Julia was startled and slid back her chair, hitting the shelf behind her; tubes of lipsticks rained on her head and spilled all over the floor. “Shit,” she said. “Come with me.” Julia ran in a trot toward the entrance, as fast as she could in the heels. Someone was banging on the door. “It’s Tamryn Suarez-O’Brien,” a woman shouted. “Is anyone in there? Open this door!”
“She’s a producer on Lingerie Live,” Julia whispered to me.
Tamryn Suarez-O’Brien teetered into the closet on purple snakeskin heels, drumming the fingers of her right hand on her enormous pregnant belly. “What took you so long? You know I can’t stand up for very long,” she said to Julia, but she was looking at me.
“Who are you?” Tamryn rolled her eyes over me.
“She works for Kitty,” Julia said. “She came down to get some lipstick.”
“Yeah, well, I hate to pull rank, but I need some perfume and I can’t wait. All morning I’ve smelled something horrible. You know, BO. I was wondering who it was that smelled so bad, then I realized it was me.”
Julia led Tamryn to the perfumes, leaving me alone. I picked up the clipboard hanging at the end of the Lips aisle: