LITMIR.BIZ

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Palace, Hyde Park) to the minor (his dentist, “a really good Thai takeaway”). His words were dribbling into the ebbing sensory mess that surrounded her. British voices swirled around her head. Her eyes flicked over the advertisements that ran along the top of the car. Though the language was the same, the meaning of many of the posters was lost on her. It seemed like every one of them was some kind of inside joke.

      “You look a lot like Peg,” he said, catching her attention.

      This was somewhat true. They had similar hair, at least—long and deep chocolate brown. Aunt Peg was shorter. She had a slender build and a regal bearing that made strangers assume she was a dancer. Her features were very delicate. Ginny was taller, curvier. Bigger, generally. Less delicate.

      “I guess,” she said.

      “No. You really do. It’s extraordinary…” He was hanging on to an overhead strap and looking down at her with an intense stare. Something about his look managed to penetrate Ginny’s exhaustion, and she found herself staring back with equal intensity. This move startled them both, and they looked away at the same time. Richard didn’t speak again until they reached the next stop and informed Ginny that this was Knightsbridge. This was their stop.

      They emerged onto a pulsing London street. The road was completely jammed with red buses, black cabs, tiny cars, motorcycles… The sidewalks were crammed to capacity. Though her brain was still cloudy, Ginny felt a shock of energy run through her body at the sight of it all.

      Richard directed her around a corner to a building that seemed to stretch on forever. It was a solid wall of golden red brick, with decorative cornices and a dome on the roof. Green awnings stretched above dozens of huge windows, each opulently displaying clothes, perfume, cosmetics, stuffed animals, even a car. Each one of these awnings was printed with the word Harrods in a mustard-gold script. Richard led Ginny past the windows, past the front doors and the doorman, and around to an unobtrusive nook by a large trash bin.

      “This is it,” Richard said, indicating the side of the building and a door marked STAFF ONLY. “We’re going in through a side entrance. It gets a bit mad in here. Harrods is a big tourist destination. We get thousands and thousands of people a day.”

      They entered a stark white hallway with a bank of elevators. A sign on the wall next to the door listed various departments and floors. Ginny wondered if she was misreading them: Air Harrods helicopter services, Air Harrods jet aircraft, tennis racquet restringing, piano tuning, saddlery, dog coat fitting…

      “I just have to take care of a few things,” he said. “Maybe you can walk around, have a look at the store, and meet me here in an hour or so? That door leads to the ground floor. Plenty of things to look at in Harrods.”

      Ginny was still stuck on “dog coat fitting.”

      “If you get lost,” he said, “have someone call Special Services and ask for me, all right? My last name’s Murphy, by the way. Ask for Mr. Murphy.”

      “Okay.”

      He punched a code into a small number pad and the door clicked open.

      “It’s good to have you here,” he said, smiling widely. “See you in an hour.”

      Ginny poked her head through the doorway. A display case there featured a miniature speedboat, only big enough for a small child. It was colored olive green and had the name Harrods printed over the bow. The sign said: FULLY OPERATIONAL. £20,000.

      And then there were people. Massive, scary throngs of people pouring in through the doors, lining up at the display cases. She stepped tentatively into the crowd and was immediately absorbed into the flow of humanity, which sucked her along. She was pushed past the cigarette lighter repair desk, through a Princess Diana memorial, into a Starbucks, and then dropped on an escalator entirely decorated in Egyptian artifacts (or really good copies, anyway).

      She went up through the hieroglyphics and the statues until the river of people unloaded her into some kind of children’s theater room with a Punch and Judy show. She managed to get through that room pretty much on her own, but the crowd got her again as she passed through the door into a room filled with tuxedos for babies.

      Departments that made no sense were strung together in a series of large and small rooms. Every offshoot led to something weirder, and nothing appeared to be an exit. There was always just more. She went from a room displaying colorful kitchen appliances into a room entirely filled with pianos. From there, she was swept up by the crowd into a room of exotic pet supplies. Then a room devoted solely to women’s accessories, but only ones colored light blue—purses, silk scarves, wallets, shoes. Even the walls were light blue. The crowd snagged her again—now she was in a bookstore—now back on the Egyptian escalator.

      She rode all the way down and stepped off into some kind of food palace that stretched on for room after massive room devoted to every kind of food, organized as an ever-Mary Poppin-izing array of displays, great arches of peacock-patterned stained glass and sparkling brass. Decorative carts stacked with pyramids of perfect fruit. Marble counters loaded down with bricks of chocolate.

      Her eyes started to water. The voices around her thrummed in her head. The bolt of energy she’d gotten on the street had been rubbed away by all the people, burned out by all the colors. She found herself fantasizing about all the places she could rest. Under the fake wagon that held the parmesan cheese display. On the floor next to the shelves full of cocoa. Maybe here, right in the middle of everything. Maybe people would just step over her.

      She managed to pull out of the crowd and get to a chocolate counter. A young woman with a short and taut blond ponytail came over to her.

      “Excuse me,” Ginny said, “could you call Mr. Murphy?”

      “Who?” the woman asked.

      “Richard Murphy?”

      The woman looked highly skeptical, but she still politely took out what looked like a thousand pages of names and numbers and systematically flipped through them.

      “Charles Murphy in special orders?”

      “Richard Murphy.”

      Several hundred more pages. Ginny felt herself gripping the counter.

      “Ah…here he is. Richard Murphy. And what is it I need to tell him?”

      “Can you tell him it’s Ginny?” she said. “Can you tell him that I need to go?”

       Good Morning, England

      The small alarm clock read 8:06. She was in bed, still in her clothes. It was cool, and the sky outside was a pearly gray.

      She vaguely recalled Richard putting her in one of those black cabs in front of Harrods. Arriving at his house. Fumbling with keys and what seemed like six locks on the door. Getting up the stairs. Falling onto the quilt fully dressed, with her ankles hanging off the side so that her sneakers didn’t get on it.

      She kicked her feet. They were still hanging there off the edge of the bed.

      She looked around the room. It was strange to be waking up here—not only in a different country (different country…everyone an entire ocean away…she was not going to panic). No, it wasn’t just that. This room really felt like a moment from her past, like Aunt Peg had just walked through the room, covered in blotches of paint, humming under her breath. (Aunt Peg hummed a lot. It was kind of annoying.)

      When she emerged into the hallway and peered into the kitchen, she found that Richard had changed his clothes. Now he was wearing running pants and a T-shirt.

      “Morning,” he said.

      This made no sense.

      “Morning?” she repeated.

      “It’s morning,” he said. “You must have been exhausted. Jet lag. I shouldn’t have dragged

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