A Yellow Cashmere Scarf

“She always wanted a yellow cashmere scarf fringed all around that looked like melted butter.”


Nora saw the yellow scarf the day the seasons changed in New York City. Although it was still summer on the streets, with the weatherman’s promise of another week of temperatures in the nineties combined with insufferably high humidity, in a blink of an eye, as if by magic, it became fall in all the store windows on Fifth Avenue. The womannequins, only yesterday posed suggestively in two-piece bathing suits and clingy summer dresses, turned overnight into fall-draped figures in high boots and wrap-around woolen skirts bracing for the cold. In the morning they stared out through windows dripping air conditioned moisture at the rush hour traffic, the passers by in shorts and flip flops, oblivious to the mid-night wrinkle in the time, the disruption in the time/space continuum.

But it wasn’t lost on her sitting in the doorway across from Saks Fifth Avenue where she had spent the night. Unable to sleep because of the heat and the traffic, she had watched the designers move into the windows after midnight like a precision military team. And before the first light of dawn summer had been replaced by fall.

She gathered her things together, everything she owned, and packed it into the U.S. Post Office crate she had appropriated and partitioned into compartments to hold and crossed the street for a closer look. Cutting across traffic in the middle of the block, she exchanged words on the way with taxi drivers who cursed her in several unintelligible languages. “Your mother is a whore and your father is a goat,” she said to one. “Your sister eats pork during Ramadan,” she called to another, flashing a one-fingered New York peace sign. “And just in case you don’t speak English,” she added, she turned it into a backhand two-fingered victory salute.

She laid down the crate on the sidewalk in front of Saks, carefully selecting the place that would be her base of operations for the day, or at least until store security or the police moved her along. She shaded the window glass with her hands to block the reflection of the lightening sky and the traffic passing behind her and she pressed her face against the window like a child peering into Santa’s workshop. Within, the display shimmered with twinkle lights and stars and streamers that moved slowly in the air conditioned breeze and sparkled like the inside of a shaken snow globe. Outside it was heading toward another sweltering day, but inside it was a winter wonderland. Her eyes, jaded by the things they had seen during her time living on the streets, passed from one new fashion to the other to another – dresses, coats, boots. And when she saw the butter-yellow cashmere scarf draping the womannequin’s neck, she almost broke the glass to get a better look. She could see its elegant richness; she could feel the softness of the cashmere against her skin. She had always wanted a yellow cashmere scarf fringed all around that looked like melted butter. She sighed.

Back at her station she rummaged through the hand printed signs she carried in the crate. She considered the one that said: “I can work, I just prefer not to,” lettered in red magic marker with the “o” in the word “to” turned into a smiley face. It was good for a laugh and sometimes for a few extra dollars. But she passed over it and opted instead for something more serious. “Here but for the grace of God….” the unfinished statement said ominously. With the continuing downturn in the economy, the collapse of financial establishments once considered American institutions, the audible pop of the real estate bubble and rising unemployment, more and more people were realizing they just might be a paycheck or two away from taking residence there on the sidewalk next to her. As if to illustrate, two passers by dropped handfuls of change into the Dunkin’ Donuts cup from the night before that still contained something like coffee. She fished them out, counted the amount, eighty-seven cents, and tucked it into her pocket.

Nora drained the cup and winced just as a car, a black 7 series BMW with limo tinted windows rolled up silently to the curb and stopped. She watched as the driver, dressed in livery and wearing a cap, crossed around the front of the car and opened the back door, extending his other hand to a woman, tall and tan, young and slender, and clean, who emerged from the inside darkness into the bright morning late summer light. Her hair and make up, even that early in the day, were perfect. Well dressed to her shoes, she had to be a model, Nora thought, or should have been. The woman was closely followed by a man, every bit as elegant, engrossed in a cell phone conversation.

Nora followed the woman with her eyes as she approached. The scent of perfume, something expensive, floated behind her in the slipstream. The woman walked past without a glance; totally unaware that Nora existed until she heard her say, “Good morning, toots. Great outfit. Love your perfume.” The woman turned, glanced down through her Jimmy Choo sunglasses at Nora’s sign before she walked through the door held open by the driver into Saks.

“Not very friendly,” Nora said when the man paused in front of her.

He stopped talking on his cell. “The price of beauty,” he said as he fumbled for his wallet and looked inside for cash but changed his mind. Instead, holding the phone between his shoulder and his ear, he patted his pants pocket reached inside and pulled out several folded bills that he dropped into Nora’s cup. Then he resumed the call. “You still there?” As he attempted to replace his wallet, it caught in the material and slipped unnoticed from his back pocket into her Post Office carton. Only Nora saw it fall. The rags inside the carton muffled the sound. She threw one over the wallet to hide it, and the man, deep in conversation, continued obliviously into the store.

Nora waited until the driver was back behind the wheel of the car before she dug through the carton and located the wallet. Yves Saint Laurent. She traced her finger over the “Y” in the soft grain leather, weighing its heft in her hand. She opened the wallet and looked at the contents. Large denominations, fifties and hundreds in size order. She did a quick count. Apparently he kept the smaller bills in his pocket. American Express Black Card issued to Sharpe Ingersol. She wondered what kind of first name that was, if that was his name. Or was it the name of his multi-national company? And there was a refillable Starbuck’s gift card.

When the driver opened the car door, rushing out as he folded his cell phone, Nora knew she had been caught. Once Sharpe Ingersol was inside the store he was sharp enough to realize he had dropped his wallet outside and called the driver to retrieve it, she thought. She hid under her blouse, fully expecting the driver’s hands to wrest it from her. But the man hurried past and into the store without a look. Minutes later he was out again, weighed down under a pile of boxes, followed by the young woman who was talking on her cell.

“Early morning shopping,” Nora said. “Great idea to beat the crowd. The early bird catches the bargains. Pick up anything good?”

The woman briefly looked down on Nora, snorted and continued to the car.
“Have a nice day–” she called, adding breath just as the man walked past holding the boxes the driver couldn’t handle, “–bitch.”

In another minute they would be gone and she could have a closer look at the contents of the wallet. Then Nora saw the folded bills in her coffee cup. They weren’t singles as she thought, but two twenties and a five. She took a deep audible breath. ‘Hey, Sharpé,” she called, sounding the “e,” as the man was ducking into the back seat of the car.

“Excuse me?” he asked coming back out of the car and facing her. “Do you know me?”

“Intimately,” she said, “but not well. And not in the Biblical sense. I just wanted to say thanks.” She held up her cup with the money in it. “‘Here but for the grace of God,’ Sharpé,” she quoted her sign.

“How do you know my name?” He came closer. “And it’s Sharpe, not Sharpé.”
“You missing anything?” she asked. And when he was slow to respond she produced the wallet from under her blouse.

He patted his back pocket. “That’s my wallet! How did you get that?”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I didn’t take anything.” She handed him the wallet.

He looked inside and then at her.

“It’s all there. You can count it. Although I was tempted by that Starbuck’s card.”

He smiled. “It’s yours.” He handed her the card. “Thank you,” he said, and he went back to the car. In another minute he was back holding one of the Saks boxes. “This is for you,” he said and handed it over. “And this too.” He pressed two hundred dollar bills into her hand.

“No, no,” she protested mildly. But she took the money and the box, stashing the bills in her carton, slipping the ribbon on the box to look inside.

The car pulled away and Nora sat there. The September sun was warm on her face. Behind her she felt the security of Saks against her back. To those passing by, the ones who took the time to notice, she must have looked strange smiling in the late summer heat with a cashmere scarf, butter-yellow, fringed and soft, wrapped around her neck.

© 2011 J. E. Scalia