Gumb caressed the back of the form at the natural reach of his arms. Then he walked behind it to consider the powder marks. Nobody wanted to feel a seam. In an embrace, though, the hands lap over the center of the back. Also, he reasoned, we are accustomed to the center line of a spine. It is not as jarring as an asymmetry in our bodies. Shoulder seams were definitely out, then. A center dart at the top was the answer, apex a little above the center of the shoulder blades. He could use the same seam to anchor the stout yoke built into the lining to provide support. Lycra panels beneath plackets on both sides—he must remember to get the Lycra—and a Velcro closure beneath the placket on the right. He thought about those marvelous Charles James gowns where the seams were staggered to lie perfectly flat.
The dart in back would be covered by his hair, or rather the hair he would have soon.
Mr. Gumb slipped the muslin off the dressmaker’s form and started to work.
The sewing machine was old and finely made, an ornate foot-treadle machine that had been converted to electricity perhaps forty years ago. On the arm of the machine was painted in gold-leaf scroll “I Never Tire, I Serve.” The foot treadle remained operative, and Gumb started the machine with it for each series of stitches. For fine stitching, he preferred to work barefoot, rocking the treadle delicately with his meaty foot, gripping the front edge of it with his painted toes to prevent overruns. For a while there were only the sounds of the machine, and the little dog snoring, and the hiss of the steam pipes in the warm basement.
When he had finished inserting the darts in the muslin pattern garment, he tried it on in front of the mirrors. The little dog watched from the corner, her head cocked.
He needed to ease it a little under the arm holes. There were a few remaining problems with facings and interfacings. Otherwise it was so nice. It was supple, pliant, bouncy. He could see himself just running up the ladder of a water slide as fast as you please.
Mr. Gumb played with the lights and his wigs for some dramatic effects, and he tried a wonderful choker necklace of shells over the collar line. It would be stunning when he wore a décolleté gown or hostess pajamas over his new thorax.
It was so tempting to just go on with it now, to really get busy, but his eyes were tired. He wanted his hands to be absolutely steady, too, and he just wasn’t up for the noise. Patiently he picked out the stitches and laid out the pieces. A perfect pattern to cut by.
“Tomorrow, Precious,” he told the little dog as he set the beef brains out to thaw. “We’ll do it first thing tomooooooorooow. Mommy’s gonna be so beautiful!”
CHAPTER 47
Starling slept hard for five hours and woke in the pit of the night, driven awake by fear of the dream. She bit the corner of the sheet and pressed her palms over her ears, waiting to find out if she was truly awake and away from it. Silence and no lambs screaming. When she knew she was awake her heart slowed, but her feet would not stay still beneath the covers. In a moment her mind would race, she knew it.
It was a relief when a flush of hot anger rather than fear shot through her.
“Nuts,” she said, and put a foot out in the air.
In all the long day, when she had been disrupted by Chilton, insulted by Senator Martin,
abandoned and rebuked by Krendler, taunted by Dr. Lecter and sickened by his bloody escape, and put off the job by Jack Crawford, there was one thing that stung the worst: being called a thief.
Senator Martin was a mother under extreme duress, and she was sick of policemen pawing her daughter’s things. She hadn’t meant it.
Still, the accusation stuck in Starling like a hot needle.
As a small child, Starling had been taught that thieving is the cheapest, most despicable act short of rape and murder for money. Some kinds of manslaughter were preferable to theft.
As a child in institutions where there were few prizes and many hungers, she had learned to hate a thief.
Lying in the dark, she faced another reason Senator Martin’s implication bothered her so.
Starling knew what the malicious Dr. Lecter would say, and it was true: she was afraid there was something tacky that Senator Martin saw in her, something cheap, something thief-like that Senator Martin reacted to. That Vanderbilt bitch.
Dr. Lecter would relish pointing out that class resentment, the buried anger that comes with mother’s milk, was a factor too. Starling gave away nothing to any Martin in education, intelligence, drive, and certainly physical appearance, but still it was there and she knew it.
Starling was an isolated member of a fierce tribe with no formal genealogy but the honors list and the penal register. Dispossessed in Scotland, starved out of Ireland, a lot of them were inclined to the dangerous trades. Many generic Starlings had been used up this way, had thumped on the bottom of narrow holes or slid off planks with a shot at their feet, or were commended to glory with a cracked “Taps” in the cold when everyone wanted to go home. A few may have been recalled tearily by the officers on regimental mess nights, the way a man in drink remembers a good bird dog. Faded names in a Bible.
None of them had been very smart, as far as Starling could tell, except for a great-aunt who wrote wonderfully in her diary until she got “brain fever.”
They didn’t steal, though.
School was the thing in America, don’t you know, and the Starlings caught on to that. One of Starling’s uncles had his junior college degree cut on his tombstone.
Starling had lived by schools, her weapon the competitive exam, for all the years when there was no place else for her to go.
She knew she could pull out of this. She could be what she had always been, ever since she’d learned how it works: she could be near the top of her class, approved, included, chosen, and not sent away.
It was a matter of working hard and being careful. Her grades would be good. The Korean couldn’t kill her in PE. Her name would be engraved on the big plaque in the lobby, the “Possible Board,” for extraordinary performance on the range.
In four weeks she would be a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.