Mrs. Gleason she noticed. Dolores Gleason was hard not to notice. The blue bouffant through which shone the bony hemisphere of her scalp, the three-pronged aluminum cane she pumped with the precision of a drum major, the little bronchial explosions the woman periodically issued. But Audrey was so deeply embroiled with Mr. Del Greco, who had jumbled the figures in his checkbook, that she didn’t notice the other woman until she stepped out of Mrs. Gleason’s shadow, appeared in front of the counter, and passed the note over.
An altogether pathetic sort of person, the woman was short, swarthy, furtive. Her face was crabbed and puckered as a wild apple. One eye, haloed in raw pink, roved sightlessly. She was wearing a long coat, sun-bleached purple beneath the dirt, even though it was too early in the season for a winter coat. From the folds of the fabric seeped a piercing odor—perfume, sweat—no, no, something more astringent than that, something Audrey wasn’t sure of and didn’t want to identify.
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