‘Assuming we go ahead and recruit a gang,’ I said to Dick, ‘I’m not about to bring them up here for strategy meetings and arguments on how to divide the loot. I don’t want them to know who I am, either. I don’t want them to come looking for me after we desert them.’
‘Understood,’ Dick said. ‘But even if we set up another place to meet, and you operate under a phony name, what if you meet one of them accidentally on the street after this is all over?’
‘That means not only a change of name,’ 1 said, ‘but a complete change of identity, of appearance. So complete that even if they meet me accidentally later, when I’ve become Jannie Shean again, they won’t recognize me.’
‘Can’t be done,’ Dick said firmly.
‘Sure it can. Change of hair color with a wig. A new makeup job. A different wardrobe. Even a different way of walking and talking.’
‘Playing a role?’ he said dubiously. ‘You’re not an actress, Jannie.’
‘The hell I’m not!’ I said. ‘All women are actresses. How else do you think we’ve been able to survive in a man’s world? Tell you what — I’ll go ahead and create the new woman. You take a look, and if you say it won’t work, I’ll forget it and we’ll try something else.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Now what about this business of another apartment, a new home for the new woman?’
‘Let’s take it step by step. First, the new appearance, then the new name, identity, background, apartment, and so forth.’
‘Jannie,’ he groaned, ‘it’s going to cost a whole lot of money.’
‘Not so much,’ I said. ‘Besides, it’s all deductible as a business expense: research for my new novel.’ ‘I’d love to be there,’ he said, ‘when you try to convince the IRS.’
I found a lingerie shop on Sixth Avenue that apparently catered to the wives and girlfriends of underwear fetishists and sex maniacs. In the window I saw brassieres with holes cut out round the nipples, panties with open crotches, and negligees embroidered with obscene suggestions.
‘Good morning,’ I mumbled to a saleslady. ‘Do you have anything that will make me, uh, look bigger — up here?’
‘Sure, dearie,’ she said promptly. ‘Single, double, or triple pads?’
‘Uh, single, I guess.’
‘What size are you now?’
‘About 34-B.’
‘Take the double,’ she said firmly. She craned around to inspect my derriere. ‘You could use some fanny, pads too. Come back to the dressing room; I’ll make a new woman out of you.’
She did too. A triumph of engineering.
I bought a lot of freaky stuff in that place. Including red babydoll pajamas that had, embroidered on the crotch, the legend ‘All hope abandon ye who enter here.’
Elsewhere, I purchased two pairs of sexy sandals with three-inch heels. I could hardly stand in them, but the clerk assured me I’d soon learn to walk gracefully.
‘They make you look like a queen,’ he gushed.
I was about to tell him that he was way ahead of me, but thought better of it.
I bought sweaters too tight, blouses too small, skirts too short.
In the Times Square Wig-o-Rama I bought a metallic-blond wig, shoulder length, and one so black it was almost purple, came halfway down my back. Both wigs had the texture of steel wool and smelled faintly of Clorox. I figured a perfumed hair spray would remedy that.
Finally I bought two berets and a lined trenchcoat in red poplin. The salesgirl said the ‘in’ way to wear it was with the belt casually knotted and the collar up in back. When I came out of the store, I passed a hooker wearing a T-shirt that said: ‘The customer always comes first.’
I gave her a friendly nod. Sisters.
The only things left to buy were makeup and perfumes, and for these I went to Woolworth’s, where the prices were reasonable, the selections enormous, and where I let an enthusiastic salesman show me how to apply false eyelashes that looked like a picket fence, paint on green shadow, and apply a small black beauty mark. You just licked it and stuck it on your chin.
‘Makes me look like a skinny Madame Du Barry,’ I told the clerk.
‘Precisely,’ he beamed.
This shopping spree lasted a week. At home, at night, with the door locked and chained, and the shades drawn, I practiced walking my three-inch heels, stuffing the cotton pancakes in my bra, and applying just enough eyeshadow so I wouldn’t look like a victim of malnutrition. I started out giggling, but after a while I really worked at it, and rehearsed a voice change too, striving for a husky, sex-inflicted Marilyn Monroe whisper.
I was fascinated by what I saw in my cheval glass. Not only was my appearance utterly different, but I fell different. I looked like a floozy. I was a floozy. The falsies gave me a pair of knockers that came into the room three seconds before I did. My padded behind bulged provocatively. The ersatz eyelashes batted, the carmined lips moued, the long, long legs wobbled suggestively on the spike heels. When I added a cocked beret and tightly cinched trenchcoat, I could have seduced the United Nations. More than that, I felt seductive. Also, cheap, hard, available, and willing, willing, willing.
After a week of practice that included going out at night to learn how to negotiate steps and curbs in those hookers’ heels (I received four propositions during those trial runs), I decided it was time for the final test.
I called Dick and asked him to come right over to discuss something important. I then went downstairs and sailed by the doorman, who knew me but didn’t give me a second glance, being too busy with the first. I figured he didn’t recognize me.
I took up station in the dim doorway of a Third Avenue store I knew Dick would pass. I lighted a cigarette, let it dangle from my lips. I stuck my hands deep in the trenchcoat pockets. I tried to jut my fake chest.
Along came Dick, walking fast. I blew out a plume of smoke from the corner of my mouth just before he came abreast of me. I stepped out into the illumination of a street lamp.
‘Wanna have a little fun?’
He looked at me. I mean, he didn’t just glance, he looked.
‘Not tonight, thank you,’ he said primly and continued walking.
He took about three more steps, then stopped so suddenly he almost fell on his face. A classic double-take. He turned and came back. He stood in front of me, staring.
‘Change your mind, buster?’ I murmured.
He shook his head in disbelief.
‘All right, Jannie,’ he said. ‘You win.’