Free Ghost of a Chance by Kelley Roos

coat. It was two dollars and ninety cents, which I thought a little high, but the saleslady told me frankly that it did a great deal for me and, furthermore, it was genuine felt. The high heeled pumps with the cut brass buckles were four-eighty, and now I was complete.
    The saleslady showed me a cubicle of a dressing room. I handed my tweed coat and hat and brogues to her. She left me to have them wrapped.
    First I put on the ultra-high heels; they increased my height two inches. I broke the blue glass out of the blue-rimmed Harlequins and donned them. I swept my hair to the top of my head and sealed it there with my new hat. I rouged my cheeks with lipstick and made myself a super-Hollywood mouth, larger than life and luscious as a wax plum. I slipped into my sables; they were a little short for me. I pulled my dress up three inches and belted it there. I inspected myself in the mirror.
    It wasn’t I. I wouldn’t have known myself from Eve; I wouldn’t have recognized myself in a million years, and there was small chance that Joyce would.
    I was ready to go.
    The saleslady gawked at my new face when she gave me my package of old clothes, but I didn’t enlighten her. I walked blithely out of the store and, without even a glance across the street toward the man for whom I had gone to all this trouble, I turned right to Fifth Avenue. I threw myself into my part. I was a Miss Somebody from Someplace, New Jersey, in town for a day’s shopping. I tried to look as though I were on my way to Schrafft’s for a soda and a cigarette. When I got to the corner I would reconnoiter, locate Joyce and slip into a position to follow him.
    Then I nearly dropped in my tracks. Joyce had moved from across the street. He was standing not ten feet in front of me, leaning against a jeweler’s window, smoking a cigarette butt so small it should have burnt his fingers. His eyes were fastened on me, but fortunately not on my face, not looking past my disguise. They were on my ankles which were now propped up on shiny, four-eighty, two-inch pedestals. They moved up to my knees and… they stopped there, stayed there. I tried to keep my knees from knocking together.
    I walked on. I was getting away with it. I was directly in front of Joyce now and he, bless his heart, still hadn’t lost interest in my gams. This was very flattering, but rather unnerving. I was a half-step by him, a half step from victory, when a pudgy hand grabbed at my elbow and swung me around. A woman, buxom and overpowering, was beaming at me.
    “Tessie!” she exclaimed. “Tessie Franken! How are you?”
    My back was toward Joyce. I could have kicked up a heel and touched him on his shin. He couldn’t help hearing the woman. He would hear my voice. If I denied that I was Tessie Franken it would be a much more arresting conversation than if we were just Tessie Franken and an old friend meeting unexpectedly. I camouflaged my voice.
    “Hello, yourself!” I said. “What are you doin’ on Fourteenth Street? Of all places!”
    “Why, Tessie! I work on Fourteenth!”
    I giggled. “I’m always kiddin’!” Behind me I heard Joyce suck greedily at his cigarette butt. My voice went up a half octave. “You know better than to take me serious!”
    “You never used to be always kiddin’, Tessie,” the woman said. “I guess Earl has done you a lot of good. Why, I hardly recognized you. Of course, it’s been years.”
    “Years and years practically,” I admitted. Smoke from Joyce’s cigarette drifted over my shoulder. I tried to adjourn the meeting. “Why don’t you mosey up to the house some night after work? After all!”
    “I just might,” Tessie’s friend said. “I don’t see how Earl could still hold that grudge against me.”
    “Earl hold a grudge? No! When it comes to holdin’ a grudge Earl is a regular butterfingers. Which way you goin’? Walk me to Fifth Avenue.” I took the woman’s arm and tugged her along with me, away from Joyce. I could feel his