Sybil Bruncheon’s "After Christmas Capers"… Chapter 12; "The Girls”…
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Inga had just come in from skating all night with her pals from the Norwegian Olympic team. It wasn’t that she was even close to their ability or athleticism, although everyone commented on her unmatched grace, even as a dedicated amateur, but she did love skating with the Northern lights waving like incandescent curtains while she glided over the frozen pond, imagining herself flying among the stars.
And Beatrice had just wandered in from after an evening with her French lover, the Duc du La Chou Chou. It was true, as all her girlfriends here said, that he was a bit old for her, but then again he was still quite handsome in a distinguished way, and was undeniably… um… energetic… in his “attentions” to her. Generous both in gifts and in his love-making, sometimes he even made Beatrice blush both in the jewelry shops and in the boudoir! On occasion, she could be talked into a hushed confession or two, which would send her girlfriends into fits of giggling tinged with admiration and envy.
The Harleton twins, who insisted on dressing as differently as possible sat beside each other listening to the stories whirling around them, dreaming of their own adventures someday. And adventures they would have too; their family had made a fortune in bisque and porcelains in the mid-1700s and had been at the forefront of the first experiments with plastics in the mid-1800s at the Great Exhibition in London… for Queen Victoria! They’d been told that when they reached a respectable age, they would be allowed to leave home and tour the world as well-to-do and highly educated young ladies (but always as a pair!... which is why they always insisted on dressing differently from each other though identical twins!).
Dotty, always shy and trying to stay out of the way, tiptoed behind Princess Mtumba-Wanda, and Baby Kootch who kept accidentally-on-purpose kicking Clotilda in the shoulder. Clotilda was frantic that Kootch might damage her pearl choker, which was actually glass beads, but she was incredibly vain about both her alabaster skin and the perception by everyone that she had been a member of the nobility in a far-off place like Bulgaria… or Latvia… or a place called Idaho.
Oh, there were others that gathered again to chat, have tea, select a few pastries, and meet old friends. But the whole scene took on some drama when Nanny Prother who was very intent in her conversation with a couple of ballerinas and a Mexican Señorita didn’t notice that the baby perambulator she had wheeled in began to roll away and bumped into the glass! A small crowd of various characters scolded and clucked over her doddering absent-mindedness… which only embarrassed her and made her tearful. When Tink, the little bear from a neighboring zoo display, sneaked in to see what the fuss was all about he was shushed and almost shooed away, but Doreen alerted everyone.
A little girl had moved slowly up to the window, and no one knew how much she had seen. Doreen was always more aware of the people outside being a bit of a coquette herself and more in tune with the so-called “ways of the world”… She stared the girl down, looking right into her eyes while everyone else adopted the straight-ahead, far-away look that they learned from birth; that look that saved them usually from… God knows what… sometimes. Doreen kept staring and recognized the little girl as DeeDee Krentworthy, the one with the fancy limousine that was longer than the tiny store where they lived. And she remembered that DeeDee had looked in the window just a few days before on Christmas Eve and dismissed everyone standing patiently in the cheery holiday display. “No, Papa, I don’t like any of them! Not even that little bear!”.
Doreen didn’t mind being lumped in with the other dolls, and she certainly didn’t feel strongly about defending any of them from a bully… well, maybe except for Nanny Prother who really was very good-hearted even if there wasn’t ever any baby doll in her perambulator… but Tink! Doreen wouldn’t tolerate someone hurting Tink’s feelings. She began to growl under breath, but Inga and Beatrice shhhhed her when they saw her start to clench her fist. DeeDee’s eyes widened… she saw the fist too. Suddenly she shivered, even in her matching beret and fur jacket ensemble… and she could almost hear through the glass Doreen’s muttered, “Buzz off, you little shit.”…
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