In this chase scene, Angela -- who is on the lam and needs to remain incognito -- has been spotted by someone she needs to avoid. She has run along the seashore to a crowded beach-side seafood shack, where she has acquired a souvenir sun-hat and t-shirt. (June is her step-mother and mentor.)
from In Flight
Angela ducked into the ladies' room and locked herself in a stall. She removed tags from the newly bought clothes, and pulled the red shirt over her pale blue blouse. She dumped out the contents of her purse into the paper bag which had held the t-shirt and turned the purse inside out.
One of June's rules was that you should always carry reversible purse. A purse was a dead giveaway for a woman. Angela's plain khaki purse was now yellow, with little orange fishes on it.
She returned the contents to the purse, let down her hair, which she'd had clipped up. She took up the hat and left the stall. Three teenaged girls came squealing in. Angela paused and fussed at her hair in the mirror, but the didn't seem interested in her. Two of them had way too much makeup on.
Angela paused. June would take it one step further, and she wouldn't be too shy to do it. Angela took a deep breath.
"Any of you have bright red lipstick?" she said.
The girls looked at each other. One of them made a face like she knew better than to share lipstick with a stranger, but Angela pulled out a twenty dollar bill, and waved it. The other two girls went digging in their purses. Neither had bright red, but Angela decided that the orange might match her purse and look less like a disguise.
"That's not your color," said one of the girls.
"I know," sighed Angela. "I want to look like kind of clueless."
"You do," she was assured.
The girls took their twenty dollars and Angela put on her hat and a small pair of sun glasses (big ones, according to June, looked like a disguise) and went back out into the crowd.
In other news, I finished Murder and Blueberry Pie, and have discovered that The Tangled Cord (the book whose cover I posted yesterday) is indeed another, unknown Nathan Shapiro novel. He seems to be quite prominent. But I intend to finish Murder Must Advertise before I start that one.
See you in the funny papers.
2 comments:
I've never had Burmese food (haven't been particularly adventurous, food-wise...and now I'm afflicted with a necessary gluten-free diet). Will have to give it a go...maybe with rice no pasta.
Like the excerpt! Neat ideas for creating a disguise on the spur of the moment (and very believable teen girls).
Burmese is a lot like Thai (at least to the American palate). Most of the noodles are rice noodles, too.
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