Brooklyn Page 0,48

and Miss Delano, and your job is to pretend that it’s no big deal.”

“The sign is going in the window this morning,” Miss Bartocci added. “And you stand there and smile. Is that agreed?”

Eilis and her companion looked at one another and nodded.

“You probably won’t be busy today,” Miss Bartocci said, “but we’re going to hand leaflets out in the right places and by the end of the week you won’t have a moment if we’re lucky.”

Miss Fortini then led them back to the shop floor, where to the left at a long table men were piling up new packages with nylon stockings that were almost red in colour.

“Why did they choose us?” Miss Delano asked her.

“They must think we are nice,” Eilis said.

“You’re Irish, that makes you different.”

“And what about you?”

“I’m from Brooklyn.”

“Well, maybe you are nice.”

“Maybe I’m just easy to kick around. Wait until my dad hears about this.”

Eilis saw that Miss Delano had perfectly plucked eyebrows. She had an image of her in front of the mirror for hours with a tweezers.

All day they stood at the counter chatting quietly, but no one approached them to look at the red-coloured nylon stockings. It was only the next day that Eilis spotted two middle-aged coloured women coming into the store and being approached by Miss Fortini and directed towards her and Miss Delano. She found herself staring at the two women and then, when she checked herself, looked around the store to find that everyone else was staring at them. The two women were, she saw when she looked at them again, beautifully dressed, both in cream-coloured woollen coats and each chatting casually to the other as though there were nothing unusual about their arrival in the store.

Miss Delano, she observed, stood back as they came close, but Eilis stayed where she was as the two women began to examine the nylon stockings, looking at different sizes. She studied their painted fingernails and then their faces; she was ready to smile at them if they looked at her. But they did not once glance up from the stockings and, even as they selected a number of pairs and handed them to her, they did not catch her eye. She saw Miss Fortini watching her across the store as she added up what they owed and showed it to them. As she was handed the money, she noticed how white the inside of the woman’s hand was against the dark skin on the back of her hand. She took the money as busily as she could and put it in the container and sent it to the cash department.

As she waited for the receipt and the change to be returned, her two customers continued talking to each other as though no one else existed. Despite the fact that they were middle-aged, Eilis thought that they were glamorous and had taken great care with their appearance, their hair perfect, their clothes beautiful. She could not tell if either of them was wearing make-up; she could smell perfume but did not know what the scent was. When she handed them the change and the nylon stockings wrapped carefully in brown paper, she thanked them but they did not reply, merely took the change and the receipt and the package and moved elegantly towards the door.

As the week went on more of them came and as each one entered Eilis noticed a change in the atmosphere in the store, a stillness, a watchfulness; no one else appeared to move when these women moved in case they would get in their way; the other assistants would look down and seem busy and then glance up in the direction of the counter where the stockings in Red Fox were heaped before looking down again. Miss Fortini, however, never lifted her eyes from the scene at the counter. Each time the new customers approached, Miss Delano stood back and let Eilis serve them, but if a second set of customers came she moved forward as though it were part of some arrangement. Not once did a coloured woman come into the store alone, and most who came did not look at Eilis or address her directly.

The few who did speak to her used tones of such elaborate politeness that they made her feel awkward and shy. When the new colours of Coffee and Sepia came it was her job to point out to the customers that these were lighter colours but most of them ignored