Ghosts of Bergen County by Dana Cann Page B

walking the floor. Ferko pointed his phone and took a surreptitious picture. Then he walked by Jen and took another. She didn’t blink. He went to the opposite side of the escalator and touched the silk scarves, while watching the pedestal. Then he moved on to the leather belts. He went through them—black, brown, blue, red, yellow. The world was filled with crap. You could clothe an entire town with the inventory of this store alone, one of four anchors in one mall, not counting the dozens of boutiques in the hallways. He thought about Grove Department Stores. Would an acquisition and investment improve demand and profits? Wasn’t there a fundamental problem with the whole retail model in this country? Didn’t it start with too much supply?
    Then a shopper appeared—two, actually—a mother and daughter in almost-matching shorts and T-shirts. They meandered by the escalator, looking lost, and their meandering took them directly by Jen. She didn’t blink. Nor did they. The mother and daughter wandered past as though nothing in the world were out of the ordinary. Maybe the mother had noticed something awry and had cautioned the daughter, It’s impolite to stare , but Ferko didn’t think so. Jen really wasn’t moving. But they didn’t stop and look at the black dresses on the rack, either. Wasn’t that part of Jen’s hypothesis? That live mannequins would boost sales?
    More shoppers happened by, and these, too, didn’t pay any mind to Jen or her pose or her black dress. She became part of the store’s wallpaper. She was a pillar, a mirror, merchandise on the racks, one more ingredient in American retail’s assault on the senses.
    She’d been up there for twelve minutes. (Ferko was timing her.) He’d seen her twitch a couple of times—nearly a hiccup—but recover to hold her pose. But now the two salesladies from the handbag counter were on their way, squinting, it appeared, at Jen. They were in their fifties, dressed to the nines in blue and gray pantsuits. Ferko imagined that they spent their entire paychecks buying merchandise with their employee discount.
    He circled toward them, to a sale rack within earshot, where random items had been placed according to size and marked at forty percent off.
    The women stopped five feet from Jen and studied her.
    â€œIs she real?” the one in the blue suit asked.
    â€œI don’t remember her.”
    â€œThat’s not what I asked.”
    But the other woman didn’t answer, and there was a pause when no one said a thing. For her part, Jen stepped it up a notch, if such a thing were possible. She looked like the real deal—as in fake .
    Then the woman in the blue suit stepped forward and touched Jen’s wrist and recoiled. “She is real.”
    Jen didn’t move.
    â€œShe’s got hair on her arm,” the woman said. “See?”
    The woman in the gray suit stepped forward with one foot, but kept the other back.
    â€œRight here.” The woman in the blue suit pointed.
    â€œDo you min d ?” Jen turned her head to face the women, who jumped back. She held the rest of her pose.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” the woman in the blue suit asked.
    â€œI’m working,” Jen said. “What are you doing?”
    Ferko kept his head down and examined an orange blouse with an ugly green swirl.
    â€œYou’re working? Does Mr. Davies know about this?”
    â€œMr. Davies hired me.”
    â€œHmmm,” the woman in the blue suit said. “He should have warned us.”
    â€œWe should tell the other girls,” the woman in the gray suit said. They stared at Jen, who looked off again, toward the far wall, to resume her pose. After a minute the women wandered off to, Ferko assumed, find someone.
    When they were gone, Jen frowned and kicked off the heels. She put them back where she’d found them. “That sucks.”
    â€œYou did