“Naw, they won’t hurt it, but I don’t think we should let it out of our sight until we’ve made a record of it.”
“Record? Oh, you mean photograph it. I guess I can hold it up for you, or we could tape it to the wall.”
“That won’t work,” he said, frowning, as though trying to figure out a solution. “I know. Why don’t you put it on? Would you mind? The whole outfit looks as though it might fit you.”
A couple of hours ago the idea of looking inside an old box had repulsed Samantha. She wouldn’t have been able to think of anything she’d like to do less than rummage through old clothes. Except maybe put on a blood-stained dress.
Then again, thinking of musty old clothes stained with blood was one thing and being presented with Paris couture and diamonds and pearls was something else again. She touched the lace on the peach-colored underwear. “Do you think it would help you with your biography if I put the clothes on?”
Mike had to put his hand over his mouth to hide his smile. “It would be a personal favor to me if you’d wear them. Just for a few minutes. Why don’t you go put them on while I get the camera? I’ll have to set it up on a tripod so take your time.”
He hadn’t finished speaking before Sam gathered the clothes in her arms, put everything back into the box, and headed for the bedroom.
Once in the bedroom she hurriedly stripped off her own clothes and put on Maxie’s bra and panties. The silk against her skin seemed to change her. Standing up a little straighter, she pulled her stomach in a little tighter and tilted her chin up, then moved just a bit to feel the silk slither against her skin. When she’d first come to New York, during the time she stayed alone in her room, she had listened to her father’s music, the old blues singers. Now, standing in Maxie’s underwear, she began to hum an old Bessie Smith song.
The garter belt came next; propping her foot on a chair, she rolled the silk hose ever so slowly up her legs. When one leg was silk clad, she stretched it out, adjusting the seam down the back. After opening the door to Mike’s closet, she moved the chair before the full-length mirror and watched herself slide the second stocking up her leg. Peach silk bra, loose-legged panties, silk hose, bare thigh between silk and silk.
What was it about a garter belt and hose that was so incredibly sexy? she wondered, straightening, turning this way and that to look at herself and liking what she saw. Panty hose that encased a woman in nylon from waist to toes didn’t feel sexy; they made a woman feel as though she were a sausage encased in a wrapping. But with several inches of bare thigh above the silk, she felt seductive, alluring, as though she were a vampy singer in a Harlem nightclub and handsome young men were coming to hear her sing.
In the bathroom she looked at herself in the mirror, seeing that her face was too clean, too much the young-lady-I-met-in-church, and her hair was too modern, too fluffy with hair spray.
Turning on the tap, she wet a comb and ran it through her hair, and once she began, she couldn’t stop. Parting her hair on the left side, she wet it thoroughly and plastered it to her head, forming stylized curls in front of her ears, then, to make sure her hair stayed in place, she coated it with spray. She used her darkest eye pencil to heavily outline her eyes, then drew a sharp line through her brows, strongly emphasizing them. With a lip pencil she managed to make her lips sharply pointed on top, as she’d seen in pictures of Clara Bow.
Stepping back from the mirror, she studied herself and nodded. She could almost imagine herself as Maxie, getting ready to go on stage—and her lover and the man who bought her diamonds were both waiting for her.
When she slipped the dress over her head, the silk slid over her skin, and she wriggled to make it fall into place. For a moment she stared at herself in the mirror. “Maxie,” she whispered, seeing not herself, but another woman, a woman who was sure that she was of interest to men. When she buckled on the shoes, she tossed her foot onto the countertop then ran her hand up her leg.
“Sam!” Mike yelled. “Aren’t you ready yet?”
“Keep your shirt on, buster, this baby’s worth the wait,” she yelled through the door. She fastened Doc’s earrings on her ears, slipped the diamonds on her wrists, then wrapped the pearls twice about her neck.
As she was about to leave the bedroom, she glanced at a couple of Balinese puppets Mike had on the top of the dresser, noticing the foot-long carved stick attached to the hand of one puppet. Carefully, she unscrewed the stick, then used the little brush in a bottle of Mike’s white typewriter correction fluid that he’d carelessly left in the bedroom to paint four inches of the end of the stick. When she was finished, she had what was a good facsimile of a cigarette holder complete with fake cigarette. Putting it to her carmined, bee-stung lips, she opened the door enough to tell Mike to turn out all the lights except for the single floor lamp and had to ignore his country-boy cry of “Alll riiiight.”
When she left the bedroom she was no longer the innocent, respectable Samantha, but Maxie, a singer who had men fighting each other to have her.
When Mike saw her slinking down the stairs, he gave a low whistle—and completely forgot about taking a photograph. The Samantha he knew, his Samantha, didn’t walk the way this woman was walking with her hips pushed forward and her body undulating in seductive movements as she made her way toward him, the diamonds in her ears and on her wrists sparkling. This woman was as different from the woman he knew as Daphne was from an Indiana housewife. Mike found himself backing away from her, for this woman was a bit intimidati
ng; she made him feel as though he should be wearing a tux and offering her gifts that came in long black velvet boxes. When Samantha put the fake cigarette holder to her newly shaped lips, Mike sat down on one of the chairs by the breakfast table and watched this woman who he felt that he’d never seen before.
When Sam was a few feet in front of Mike, she began to sing an old blues song she’d heard Bessie Smith sing.
Bad luck has come to stay
Trouble never ends
My man has gone away
With a girl I thought was my friend
Many people seem to think that an ability to sing the blues comes from skin color, but it comes from having experienced misery in life—and Samantha had had more than enough heartache and sadness in her short life to be able to sing the blues as well as any other person on earth. Her voice, albeit untrained, was strong from inherited talent, and it was filled with emotion.
Lordy can’t you hear my prayers
Lady Luck, Lady Luck, won’t you please smile down on me
There’s a time, friend of mine
I need your silver feet