13 Little Blue Envelopes(7)

They emerged onto a pulsing London street. The road was

completely jammed with red buses, black cabs, tiny cars,

motorcycles. . . . The sidewalks were crammed to capacity.

Though her brain was still cloudy, Ginny felt a shock of energy run through her body at the sight of it all.

Richard directed her around a corner to a building that

seemed to stretch on forever. It was a solid wall of golden red brick, with decorative cornices and a dome on the roof. Green awnings stretched above dozens of huge windows, each opulently displaying clothes, perfume, cosmetics, stuffed animals, even a car. Each one of these awnings was printed with the word Harrods in a mustard-gold script. Richard led Ginny past the windows, past the front doors and the doorman, and around to an unobtrusive nook by a large trash bin.

“This is it,” Richard said, indicating the side of the building and a door marked STAFF ONLY. “We’re going in through a side 32

entrance. It gets a bit mad in here. Harrods is a big tourist destination. We get thousands and thousands of people a day.”

They entered a stark white hallway with a bank of elevators.

A sign on the wall next to the door listed various departments and floors. Ginny wondered if she was misreading them: Air Harrods helicopter services, Air Harrods jet aircraft, tennis racquet restringing, piano tuning, saddlery, dog coat fitting. . . .

“I just have to take care of a few things,” he said. “Maybe you can walk around, have a look at the store, and meet me here in an hour or so? That door leads to the ground floor. Plenty of things to look at in Harrods.”

Ginny was still stuck on “dog coat fitting.”

“If you get lost,” he said, “have someone call Special Services and ask for me, all right? My last name’s Murphy, by the way.

Ask for Mr. Murphy.”

“Okay.”

He punched a code into a small number pad and the door

clicked open.

“It’s good to have you here,” he said, smiling widely. “See you in an hour.”

Ginny poked her head through the doorway. A display case

there featured a miniature speedboat, only big enough for a small child. It was colored olive green and had the name Harrods printed over the bow. The sign said: FULLY OPERATIONAL.

￡20,000.

And then there were people. Massive, scary throngs of

people pouring in through the doors, lining up at the display cases. She stepped tentatively into the crowd and was

immediately absorbed into the flow of humanity, which sucked 33

her along. She was pushed past the cigarette lighter repair desk, through a Princess Diana memorial, into a Starbucks, and then dropped on an escalator entirely decorated in Egyptian artifacts (or really good copies, anyway).

She went up through the hieroglyphics and the statues until the river of people unloaded her into some kind of children’s theater room with a Punch and Judy show. She managed to get through that room pretty much on her own, but the crowd got her again as she passed through the door into a room filled with tuxedos for babies.

Departments that made no sense were strung together in a

series of large and small rooms. Every offshoot led to something weirder, and nothing appeared to be an exit. There was always just more. She went from a room displaying colorful kitchen appliances into a room entirely filled with pianos. From there, she was swept up by the crowd into a room of exotic pet supplies. Then a room devoted solely to women’s accessories, but only ones colored light blue—purses, silk scarves, wallets, shoes.

Even the walls were light blue. The crowd snagged her again—

now she was in a bookstore—now back on the Egyptian

escalator.

She rode all the way down and stepped off into some kind of food palace that stretched on for room after massive room devoted to every kind of food, organized as an ever–Mary Poppin-izing array of displays, great arches of peacock—

patterned stained glass and sparkling brass. Decorative carts stacked with pyramids of perfect fruit. Marble counters loaded down with bricks of chocolate.

Her eyes started to water. The voices around her thrummed 34

in her head. The bolt of energy she’d gotten on the street had been rubbed away by all the people, burned out by all the colors. She found herself fantasizing about all the places she could rest. Under the fake wagon that held the parmesan cheese display. On the floor next to the shelves full of cocoa.

Maybe here, right in the middle of everything. Maybe people would just step over her.

She managed to pull out of the crowd and get to a chocolate counter. A young woman with a short and taut blond ponytail came over to her.

“Excuse me,” Ginny said, “could you call Mr. Murphy?”

“Who?” the woman asked.

“Richard Murphy?”

The woman looked highly skeptical, but she still politely took out what looked like a thousand pages of names and

numbers and systematically flipped through them.

“Charles Murphy in special orders?”

“Richard Murphy.”

Several hundred more pages. Ginny felt herself gripping the counter.

“Ah . . . here he is. Richard Murphy. And what is it I need to tell him?”

“Can you tell him it’s Ginny?” she said. “Can you tell him that I need to go?”

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