intriguing tonics. In a large glass display case, hairbrushes and tortoiseshell combs are pinned onto red velvet like rare butterflies mounted in a museum"Can I help you girls?" asks the old man at the counter, poking his head out from behind a giant cash register. He looks daffy. He has wispy fly away white hair and a matching flyaway His cavorts high and low as he talks, each syllable a surprise. I'd never trust this guy to fill a prescription. "Id like a bottle of contact-lens wetting solution," says Susan. This is always kept behind the counter for some reason. He putters off to get it, and Susan turns to me, pitching her eyes upward. While she waits, I turn into one of the aisles. A few other customers glide noiselessly, almost reverently, along as if they were in a house of worship and the shampoo bottles were sacred statues. Susan joins me in a moment. We walk to the end of the aisle, where there is a rotating rack with packages of foam curlers, aluminum clips, eyebrow pencils, and other in objects hanging from it. She turns the rack, and it, too, moves without a sound, without creaking. We stand close together with my shoulder bag, an open pouch, dangling between us. Susan says in a low, apologetic voice"I have no purse Unwillingly, my senses sharpen. I track the movements of the noiseless, gliding customers, the fey pharmacist, and his assistant a large, bespectacled saleswoman. The gentle, almost imperceptible tug on my shoulder is Susan dropping something in my bag Suddenly, something begins to go wrong. It happens rapidly, with points merging in awful combination, control slinking helplessly away. I stand fast, paralyzed, flooded with a strange visceral recognition of what is approaching. It starts innocently: The large, no-nonsense saleswoman moves up the aisle parallel to us on her rounds. There, she is corralled by a turban elderly woman wearing a purple who demands, in a snobby, se amused drawl, to know why the store has stopped carrying a certain brand of laxative that she has been purchasing here"for the past two hundred years This is funny, and the saleswoman's glance veers unpredictably, really to see if anyone is overhearing and sharing the joke. She spots us. If she weren't standing exactly where a sliver of space joins the two aisles the point where the shelves leave off and the rotating rack begins there would be no problem. But she is, and that is all it takes. Very quickly she sees senses with absolute certainty that something is amiss, that Susan's hand is in my bag Her mood changes palpably. She begins moving toward us, dodging the turbaned customer. "Get those things out," I hiss to Susan, looking straight ahead. Tug. Tug Get those things out. "They're out. "Get them out." "They're out I don't know what she put in or whether to believe her or whether she found everything half the time, I can't even find my wallet in that bag. There is no time to check, though, the saleswoman has reached us, her face sweaty and severe"What are you girls doing she demands. Just looking," I hear myself answer in a curiously detached voice. Inwardly, I am in a state of emergency. There is a heavy pressure on my chest, as if a pine tree had fallen across it, pinning me down"What do you have in that bag?" she asks, her eyes straining to see inside it, sure of what she saw, yet doubting it, mainly because of my steady voice. There is a pause. My eyes falter downward, but I quickly pull them up to meet hers: shrewd and medium brown behind wire-rimmed lenses. "Were you stealing something?" she asks directly. "No!" I sound shocked, slightly offended. She doesn't fall for it but doesn't know what to do, either. By now, the other customers have formed a silent, threatening ring around us The pharmacist breaks through the ring, his face working as if he were maneuvering a bicycle through heavy, unyielding traffic. The saleswoman is appreciative of this supportive audience but also flustered by it. She plows on with a determination to triumph that I admire in spite of myself. "If I ever catch you girls stealing in here again Her voice trails off in search of the appropriate threat. "We're going I say breathlessly, falling short of the intended huffiness, then adding irrelevantly, "we have a class The saleswoman's eyes settle on the Kingston emblem on my blazer. "I'm going with you she announces suddenly. "I think we should all have a talk with your doing out roaming the streets this hour, anyway. at An approving murmur runs through the ring. A moment later, us are marching along the three of the street toward the school an unlikely, stony-faced tribe. The absurdity of the situation others me, despite my nervousness. consider running, but that would be an outright admission of guilt. Anyway, she could just come to the school and identify us. And prove what? Nothing. Worse still, she might c