Dreaming in Technicolor (17 page)

“This was not how I planned to spend my first day in London,” I whined to Mary Jo as we rode the Underground back into the city.

“I know. But stuff happens.” She took a deep breath. “So let's go shopping and get you some clothes.”

I stared at her. “You hate to shop.”

She grimaced. “I know. But what's the alternative?”

The alternative was for history-buff Mary Jo to visit the British Museum while I shopped. We'd meet back up at the hotel in two hours and start our first official day of sightseeing together.

“Are you sure, Pheebs?” She tried not to look too excited.

“It will be a sacrifice. Missing all those Egyptian artifacts and old rocks and stuff in favor of racks and racks of brand-new clothes. But it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the good of our vacation.”

An hour later, I stood in line at a Debenham's register with three pairs of pants, some cute T-shirts, a kicky little jean jacket, two sweaters, a classic black turtleneck—that fit—and a gorgeous scarlet silk blouse.

Just wait 'til Alex sees me tonight in my smart trousers, silk blouse,
leather jacket, and Manolos. It will be like when Rick first sees Ilsa. He'll
only have eyes for me . . .
The “As Times Goes By” melody began to play in my head.

A clipped English voice snapped me from my
Casablanca
fantasy. “Sorry. Your card has been declined.”

“Excuse me?”

She repeated, “Your card has been declined.”

The blood rushed to my face. Behind me in line, someone tapped her foot.

“Sorry.” Cheeks flaming, I fumbled in my wallet. “I gave you the wrong card.” I yanked out my Visa and handed it to the salesclerk with an apologetic smile. Then I pretended an absorbed interest in a scarf display off to one side.

“This one's been rejected too.”

“Do you take ATM?”
Please God.

“Of course.”

I punched in my pin number and studied my French manicure. “Declined” flashed across the pin pad. I hit clear and tried again, flashing another apologetic smile to the women lined up behind me. “Sorry, I think I typed in the wrong number. Won't be a minute.”

“Declined” flashed again.

“Perhaps you'd prefer to pay cash?” the clipped voice said.

Cash?
I did some quick mental calculations. MJ and I had withdrawn forty pounds apiece from the airport ATM. With dinner, the tube, candy, the Internet café . . . I may be hopeless at math, but even I could figure out that the twenty-odd pounds remaining wasn't enough.

“Uh, no, that's okay.” I slunk out of the store.

What is wrong with my ATM? It worked fine last night. I know my
balance was getting low, but my paycheck was deposited today.

Or was it?

A sick feeling washed over me. Before I'd left on vacation, I'd finally gotten around to closing out my Cleveland checking account and opening a new account in nearby Lodi. And I'd filled out the paperwork to have my
Bulletin
paycheck deposited directly into my new bank. I'd planned to drop off the paperwork at the bank before I left. But in the rush of the trip, I now realized, I'd forgotten to do it. In my mind's eye I could see the bank envelope still on the right-hand corner of my desk at work.

Idiot. Stupid, irresponsible idiot.

Feeling lightheaded, I ducked into a Wimpy's restroom and checked my money belt, hidden beneath Mary Jo's turtleneck: twenty-seven pounds and some change.

I asked the pockmarked teen behind the counter for directions to the nearest Internet café, where I shot off an urgent appeal to Gordon to rush my paperwork to the bank—“without telling Mom, please.”

Wouldn't want to worry her. She already thinks I'm scatterbrained, always
going around with my head in the clouds and—

So did Mary Jo.

MJ! What am I going to tell her?

Tell her the truth
, my reasonable self urged.
You goofed up. She's your
friend. She'll understand. Goes with the whole spiritual-giant territory . . .

Nope. Too humiliating,
my embarrassed spiritual-loser self argued. I won't say anything. Won't need to. By tomorrow, Lord willing, my cash-flow problems should be solved.

Just need to make it through today.

But at this point, Phil's big-bucks job offer was looking awfully tempting. If I took it, I wouldn't be living paycheck to paycheck and finding myself in this kind of predicament.

Once I had paid for my Internet time, I was down to less than twenty-five pounds. And still with nothing to wear tonight. No way was I going to meet Alex in Mary Jo's baggy yellow turtleneck. Not after all this time.

I gazing longingly in dazzling store window after store window. And as I continued to wander in an abject daze, all of a sudden a smaller, much-less-dazzling window hove into view.

A charity shop?

I peered inside the thrift store window and saw racks of clothing. Not exactly my normal shopping territory, but it would have to do.

Before MJ and I set off sightseeing, we put our heads together and agreed to forego the bunch of men in white wigs in Parliament and visit Westminster Abbey instead.

I'd seen the Abbey before on TV—who could forget Princess Diana's funeral, with the heartrending white envelope on the royal casket that simply said “Mummy”? But television couldn't prepare me for the wonder and majesty of the real thing.

The gorgeous stained glass absolutely took my breath away, but it was the floor that really captured my interest. “Check out all these dead people we're walking on, MJ.” A former
obit writer, I was fascinated by the wealth of material at my Manolo-shod feet. We walked over and around—with me being especially careful in my skinny heels—the graves of such notables as Oliver Cromwell, Charles Darwin, and David Livingstone of Stanley and Livingstone fame.

Then we made our way to Poet's Corner, where I was brought up short to see all the great writers memorialized there: Charles Dickens, T. S. Eliot, Lewis Carroll, Jane Austen, and the Brontë sisters. Even Wordsworth, my daffodil poet!

“I'll bet none of them wrote about emus or investment portfolios,”

I whispered to MJ, who was walking around in a daze. “Such exalted company—makes me want to rush right back to our hotel room and start working on the great American novel.”

Or at least one little story, which could later be the basis for the great American novel.

Mary Jo fidgeted. “Can you hold that thought for a while, Ms. Novelist Wannabe? I really need to find a bathroom.”

“You mean loo.”

“Loo, schmoo. I don't care what they call it as long as they have one.”

They didn't. We searched and searched and finally asked a guide, who informed us, “The Abbey is an ancient building, so there are no public lavatories inside.”

She did, however, direct us to a public lavatory across the street where MJ could take care of business. We emerged from the loo ready to resume our sightseeing—except now it was pouring down rain, and neither one of us had brought an umbrella.

There was no help for it; we would have to hail one of the cool black London taxis that look like a holdover from some thirties black-and- white movie. With any luck, we'd get a driver who looked like Cary Grant or Peter O'Toole. Or maybe Clive Owen.

What we got was Simon Cowell with a cockney accent. And without the wit.

Once the acerbic cabbie dropped us off at Trafalgar Square, I dragged Mary Jo to the National Gallery, where I feasted on Renoirs, Monets, and Van Goghs. But my fidgeting friend wanted to feast on something that would stick to her physical ribs a bit more—and my feet were beginning to throb again. So after an hour, I sighed. “All right, you Philistine, let's go get some lunch.” One of the gallery guards recommended the nearby café in the Crypt below a church called St. Martin's in the Field.

“Lunch in a crypt?” MJ said. “That's a bit macabre.”

“I see dead people,” I parroted Haley Joel Osment.

But tonight at long last I'm going to see one of my favorite live ones.

I tore into my sandwich with lip-smacking relish.

MJ looked at me in surprise that evening as we got dressed for the big surprise. I kept my same pair of black jeans on but also donned a red Christian Dior sweater. “Is that all you bought on your shopping spree today? I figured you'd buy out the store.”

“Nope.” I tossed my head. “I'm going with the less-is-more approach while I'm here.”

Her eyebrows knit together. Then her face cleared, and she gave me a searching look. “Phoebe, do you need money?”

“No!” I answered a little too quickly.

Lord, please forgive me for that little white one and the one I'm about
to tell now.
“Actually, I was remembering how awful it was getting all my luggage on the train when we first arrived. If I go and buy a bunch more clothes now and then the airport finds my bag, where in the world would I put them?” I shuddered. “The last thing I want to do is add another suitcase to the mix.”

She looked at me in delighted amazement. “Wow. I think you're getting logical in your old age, Pheebs.”

We settled into our seats, and I pulled my leather jacket closer to conceal the small rip at the bottom of my beautiful new thrift-store sweater. I picked up the opera glasses Cordelia had given us, eager to catch a surreptitious glimpse of my Alex. Delia had told me where they'd be sitting—in their family box on the other side of the theater—so there'd be no chance of our running into him until after the play.

Where is he? I can't find him!
My heart clenched, then relaxed. “There he is,” I whispered to Mary Jo. “Adorable as ever—he's gotten a haircut, though. And those must be his parents behind him, and there's Delia sitting next to her dad. But wait—who's that?” I gripped the glasses tighter. “
She
wasn't in the family portrait.”