The maroon skirt was long though it was more billowy than slinky. On top she wore a low-cut black T-shirt and over that a lacy see-through blouse. Stephanie picked out some dangly earrings in orange plastic.
"It's not the old me but it's definitely a sort of me."
"I think you're evolving," Stephanie told her.
As the clerk wrapped up the clothes Rune said, "You know the story of the little red hen?"
"Was it on Sesame Street?"
"I don't think so. She was the one who was baking bread, and nobody helped her, except this one animal. I forget what it was. Duck, rabbit. Who knows? Anyway, when the bread was done all the other animals came to the hen and said they wanted some. But she said, 'Haul ass, creeps.' And she only shared it with the one that helped her. Well, when I find the bank money I'm going to share it with you."
"Me?"
"You believe me. Richard doesn't. The police don't."
Stephanie didn't say anything. They stepped outside and returned to West Broadway. "You don't have to do that, Rune," she said finally.
"But I want to. Maybe you can quit the stupid video store and audition full-time."
"Really ..."
"No." The Hungarian accent was back. "Don't argue with peasant woman. Very pigheaded ... Oh, wait." Rune glanced at a store across the street. "Richard said he's got a surprise for me. I want to get him something."
They ran across Broadway, dodging traffic. Rune stopped, caught her breath, looked in the window. "What do men like?" she asked.
Stephanie said, "Themselves." And they walked inside.
The store seemed futuristic but it may actually have been antique, Rune reasoned, since it reminded her of how her mother described the sixties--gaudy and filled with weird glowing lights and spaceships and planets and a confusion of incense smells: musk, patchouli, rose, sandalwood.
Rune looked at a black-lit poster of a ship sailing in the sky and said, "Highly retro."
Stephanie looked around, bored.
In the display cases: geodes, crystals, stones, opals, silver and gold, magic wands of quartz wrapped with silver wire, headdresses, meteorites, NASA memorabilia, electronic music tapes, optical illusions. Colored lights broken apart by spinning prisms crawled up and down the walls.
"It's going to make me epileptic," Stephanie groused.
"This is the most radical store ever, don't you think? Isn't it fantastic?" Rune picked up two dinosaurs and made them dance.
"The jewelry's nice." Stephanie was leaning over a counter.
"What do you think he'd like?"
"This stuff is too expensive. A rip-off."
Rune spun a kaleidoscope. "He's not really into toys, I don't think."
The clerk, a thin black man with a round, handsome face framed by Rastafarian dreadlocks, said to Rune in a deep musical voice, "What you see in there?"
"Nirvana. Look." She handed the heavy tube to him.
He played along, peering inside. "Ah, nirvana, there she is. Special today on kaleidoscopes that show you enlightenment. Half price."
Rune shook her head. "Doesn't seem right you should pay for enlightenment."
"This is New York," he said. "Whatchu want?"
Stephanie said, "I'm hungry."