He had to wait a few minutes before she came down the stairs, but when he saw her, he smiled at her and offered her his arm.
When Samantha saw the way Mike was dressed, she wanted to die. Just plain sit down and die. She’d had dreams of embarrassing him, of making him say that he wasn’t going to be seen with her dressed as she was—that’s what her ex-husband would have said if she had appeared wearing her workout clothes—so she’d dragged an ancient pink sweat suit, worn bare in places, discolored in others, from the closet. Across the chest of the sweat shirt was emblazoned “At first he put me on a pedestal and now he wants me to dust it.”
As Samantha stood at the head of the stairs, looking down at Mike in his beautiful dark suit, she knew she had never seen a better-looking man in her life. At least this time when her father had chosen a man for her, he had picked one who looked good. She hadn’t been as fortunate with Richard.
After one look at Mike’s eyes, she knew he wasn’t going to be embarrassed by her. In fact, she wasn’t sure he was aware that what she had on was inappropriate. Smiling at her as though he was looking forward to going out with her, he held up his arm for her to take.
“I can’t—” Samantha began. “I have to—”
“Samantha, it’s eleven o’clock. If you take any longer to get dressed, the stores will be closed.”
“Stores,” she said, horror in her voice as she tried to pull away from him, but he held her firmly.
“I cannot go to a store looking like this,” she said.
Mike looked her up and down and read her shirt. “You look fine to me. I like pink on you. Besides, we can buy you new clothes if you want.”
Pulling at her arm didn’t gain her release. “I have to change.”
Giving her a look of frustration, one of those count-to-ten looks, he said with exaggerated patience, “If you didn’t like what you had on, why did you wear it?”
Samantha wouldn’t answer that, since she couldn’t very well tell him that it had been her intention to make him refuse to be seen with her, especially not since he didn’t seem to notice what she had on.
Feeling like a child who was being punished, her chin down, she followed him out of the house and into the streets. So far, her total experience of New York had been Lexington Avenue. Now she walked with Mike toward Madison Avenue, then to Fifth, and the closer they got to Fifth Avenue, the more Samantha became aware of her atrocious clothing. In magazines one saw models wearing gorgeous designer clothing, and a person in the real world of Middle America sometimes wondered who in the world wore those things. Most Americans wear bright-colored sportswear, looking as though they spend their lives climbing mountains or running marathons. But in New York the men and women—especially the women—looked to Samantha as though they had stepped from designer showrooms.
As she walked with Mike, her hand held firmly in his arm, Samantha was painfully aware of the women around her. They were so fantastically well groomed. Their hair looked as though they shampooed it with fairy nectar, their nails were perfectly trimmed and polished, as though they never used their hands, and their clothes were nothing less than divine.
Of course one drawback to New York women was their snobbery. Many of the women gave Samantha looks of pity when they saw the way she was dressed, and some of them even smiled at her in a way that made Samantha move closer to Mike, as though for protection. Turning, he looked down at her, patted her hand, and smiled when she moved closer to him, seeming to have no idea what was going on between the woman who clung to him and the women on the street. Samantha thought it must be wonderful to be able to be oblivious.
By the time they reached Fifth Avenue, Samantha wanted to crawl in a hole. Mike seemed to have a place he wanted to go so they hurried past store after store with beautiful c
lothing in the windows. They passed Tiffany’s, Gucci, Christian Dior, Mark Cross. After a while Samantha stopped looking at the clothes because the more she saw, the worse she felt.
At Fiftieth Street, they came to a large store with dark blue awnings, and to her horrified amazement, Mike started toward the revolving doors. Samantha pulled away from him. In the first place, revolving doors puzzled her; she couldn’t seem to get the hang of when she was to enter and when she was to exit. Once, she had gone around one of the things three times before she was able to get out. In the second place, she saw that this was Saks Fifth Avenue. She could not, absolutely could not, enter a world-renowned store dressed in a worn-out, faded pink sweat suit.
Mike went round the revolving doors, saw Samantha wasn’t with him, then went round again, this time stretching out his hand and grabbing her arm. After wedging her into the pie-shaped door area with him, he pulled her out of the door into the store at the appropriate time.
When they entered the store, Samantha stood still for a moment, dazzled by what she saw before her. To anyone who had spent four years in a town like Santa Fe, Saks was heaven come to earth. Here were consumer goods that did not have howling coyotes on them. Here was clothing that was not made from Pendleton blankets. She saw saleswomen who wore something other than Mexican cotton and acres of turquoise and silver jewelry. She saw people who moved faster than sun-warmed lizards, and people were wearing shoes that in no way resembled the footwear of cowboys. Best of all, there was not one single solitary piece of leather fringe in sight.
“Like it?” Mike asked, watching her face, which showed her awe as she looked at the sparkling Judith Leiber purses in the case before her.
Samantha could only look at him, much too stunned to speak.
“Want to do a little shopping?” He was on the verge of laughing at her as he asked the rhetorical question. “I think the escalator is back there.”
As Samantha came out of her trance, she became aware of the women in the store looking her over, knowing full well that she failed on every count. Maybe she could go back to the house, she thought, change her clothes, and come back here. With the money she had saved, she could afford a new dress. But the truth was, Samantha knew she didn’t own a garment that was up to the fashion standards of the women she saw in this beautiful store.
“I can’t go shopping wearing this,” she whispered to Mike.
From the look on his face she could see that he didn’t understand what she was saying. Sometimes it seemed that the language difference between men and women was as great as that between Chinese and English. How could she explain to a man that saleswomen would have nothing to do with a woman who looked as though she needed their goods?
“You look great,” Mike said, then began pushing Samantha toward the back of the store.
There were tall, beautiful young women offering other customers samples of perfume, but they took one look at Samantha with her pulled-back hair and repulsive old sweat suit and didn’t offer her the perfume. One woman after another glanced at Mike, then at Samantha, then back at Mike, with an expression that asked, How could a great-looking guy like you be seen with a frump like her?
As Mike practically pushed her into an elevator, Samantha almost hid behind him, trying to keep anyone from seeing her.
Pulling Samantha along, Mike got out on the ninth floor, then led her through the children’s department.