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Authors: Ali Brandon
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his name on his own.”
The story James had told her was that Hamlet, then a scrawny little kitten, had simply shown up in the store one day. Somehow, without anyone noticing him, he’d managed to pull a volume of Shakespeare down from one of the shelves and made himself a little bed. He was fast asleep on it when Great-Aunt Dee found him, his little paws pointing to the word “Hamlet” on the cover. So, Hamlet he became.
Darla finished checking out the woman, whose Hamlet sighting had seemingly blunted her pique over Valerie Baylor’s black-clad fans. Then she excused herself to sign for a UPS package. Lizzie, meanwhile, tucked her cell back into her pocket and began ringing up the next person. James had abandoned his post at the main phone— I refuse to speak with another crazed sixteen-year-old , he’d said—and was helping the handful of noncrazed customers who were actually shopping.
Returning from the stockroom after dropping off the package, Darla glanced at her watch again to see that time was doing a pretty fair semblance of freezing. The words “a long, long day” echoed in her mind. Sometimes it was the anticipation and not the actual event that was the killer, she thought with an inner grimace.
“Hold down the fort. I’ll be back,” Darla told the others and headed out the front door to see how things were going outside.
Controlled mayhem was the best description of what awaited her. All five hundred allowed fans must have been already standing in the line, which wrapped from the front of the store and around the block.
Oh my God, it’s like an undertakers’ convention , was Darla’s first thought upon seeing the sea of black . . . not that the color wasn’t already the official uniform of a large percentage of New York City’s women. That had been one of the first things she’d noticed after her move there; though, as Jake had pointed out with a grin, the pastels and earth tones that Darla favored made it easy to spot her in a crowd.
But few of the city’s stylish black-clad working women wore hooded black capes over long black shifts as did almost every one of these girls of various ages and ethnicities. Darla spotted several random teen boys among the crowd—fans, she wondered, or simply there to pick up girls?—dressed in black to match their female counterparts. And where in the heck had they all found these cloaks, anyhow? She sure hadn’t seen any Capes R Us stores back in the malls in Dallas. Clearly New York City had more shops catering to goth outerwear.
Although relatively well behaved, the waiting fans shouted back and forth to each other, swapping red lipsticks and comparing outfits. Since, at Jake’s direction, stoops were off-limits for seating, many of the fans were using the barricades as makeshift benches. Most, however, had simply plopped on the concrete sidewalk, their young bones apparently impervious to the late September chill that still seeped from the ground. At regular intervals, the hubbub would be split by one of those distinctive high-pitched shrieks characteristic of pubescent girls, causing nearby window glass to practically vibrate and Darla to fear her ears would spontaneously start bleeding.
Standing guard a few yards down the line was Jake’s off-duty cop friend, Reese. He was a tall guy with curly blond hair who looked like he spent a lot of time in the gym. Darla guessed he was a few years younger than she, probably no more than thirty. No doubt when he was in his twenties, he’d been considered a pretty boy.
Still would be, in Darla’s opinion, had his nose not been broken in the past and apparently never properly reset, maybe for that very reason. Like Jake and everyone else in line, he was dressed all in black: long-sleeved black denim shirt with sleeves rolled to expose a hint of oversized biceps, black jeans, and black motorcycle boots. Darla figured the attire was less an homage to Valerie Baylor and more a nod to the boys in S.W.A.T.
The story James had told her was that Hamlet, then a scrawny little kitten, had simply shown up in the store one day. Somehow, without anyone noticing him, he’d managed to pull a volume of Shakespeare down from one of the shelves and made himself a little bed. He was fast asleep on it when Great-Aunt Dee found him, his little paws pointing to the word “Hamlet” on the cover. So, Hamlet he became.
Darla finished checking out the woman, whose Hamlet sighting had seemingly blunted her pique over Valerie Baylor’s black-clad fans. Then she excused herself to sign for a UPS package. Lizzie, meanwhile, tucked her cell back into her pocket and began ringing up the next person. James had abandoned his post at the main phone— I refuse to speak with another crazed sixteen-year-old , he’d said—and was helping the handful of noncrazed customers who were actually shopping.
Returning from the stockroom after dropping off the package, Darla glanced at her watch again to see that time was doing a pretty fair semblance of freezing. The words “a long, long day” echoed in her mind. Sometimes it was the anticipation and not the actual event that was the killer, she thought with an inner grimace.
“Hold down the fort. I’ll be back,” Darla told the others and headed out the front door to see how things were going outside.
Controlled mayhem was the best description of what awaited her. All five hundred allowed fans must have been already standing in the line, which wrapped from the front of the store and around the block.
Oh my God, it’s like an undertakers’ convention , was Darla’s first thought upon seeing the sea of black . . . not that the color wasn’t already the official uniform of a large percentage of New York City’s women. That had been one of the first things she’d noticed after her move there; though, as Jake had pointed out with a grin, the pastels and earth tones that Darla favored made it easy to spot her in a crowd.
But few of the city’s stylish black-clad working women wore hooded black capes over long black shifts as did almost every one of these girls of various ages and ethnicities. Darla spotted several random teen boys among the crowd—fans, she wondered, or simply there to pick up girls?—dressed in black to match their female counterparts. And where in the heck had they all found these cloaks, anyhow? She sure hadn’t seen any Capes R Us stores back in the malls in Dallas. Clearly New York City had more shops catering to goth outerwear.
Although relatively well behaved, the waiting fans shouted back and forth to each other, swapping red lipsticks and comparing outfits. Since, at Jake’s direction, stoops were off-limits for seating, many of the fans were using the barricades as makeshift benches. Most, however, had simply plopped on the concrete sidewalk, their young bones apparently impervious to the late September chill that still seeped from the ground. At regular intervals, the hubbub would be split by one of those distinctive high-pitched shrieks characteristic of pubescent girls, causing nearby window glass to practically vibrate and Darla to fear her ears would spontaneously start bleeding.
Standing guard a few yards down the line was Jake’s off-duty cop friend, Reese. He was a tall guy with curly blond hair who looked like he spent a lot of time in the gym. Darla guessed he was a few years younger than she, probably no more than thirty. No doubt when he was in his twenties, he’d been considered a pretty boy.
Still would be, in Darla’s opinion, had his nose not been broken in the past and apparently never properly reset, maybe for that very reason. Like Jake and everyone else in line, he was dressed all in black: long-sleeved black denim shirt with sleeves rolled to expose a hint of oversized biceps, black jeans, and black motorcycle boots. Darla figured the attire was less an homage to Valerie Baylor and more a nod to the boys in S.W.A.T.
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