Sweet Revenge

out.”
    “The front door?”
    “Naturally. Don’t forget we have brunch at the Palm Court on Sunday. My treat.”
    Adrianne swept out, reminding herself to make a quick stop on the roof to get her mink.
    It had been at her mother’s knee that Adrianne had learned the art of makeup. Phoebe had always been fascinated that a few dabs of paint, a few strokes with a grease pencil, could add beauty or years or take both away.
    Being in the theater, Celeste had taught her even more. After a quarter of a century on the boards, Celeste still did her own makeup and knew every trick. Adrianne combined the arts of her two teachers as she transformed herself into Rose Sparrow, girlfriend of The Shadow.
    The process took forty-five minutes, but Adrianne was pleased with the results. Contacts turned her eyes into a muddy gray, and a little plumping added sleepy sacks under them. She added a half inch to her nose and filled out her cheeks. Heavy Pan-Cake turned her golden complexion sallow. The red wig was handmade and expensive and teased high. Cheap glass balls dangled at her ears. She slipped a wad of strawberry-flavored Bubble Yum into her mouth as she stood back from the full-length mirror to look for flaws.
    Too tawdry, she thought with a quick grin. Couldn’t be better. Black spandex molded the hips she’d padded, and skinny spiked heels added three inches. A cheap fake fur was slung over her shoulders. Satisfied, Adrianne slipped on rhinestone-studded cat’s-eye sunglasses and headed out.
    She took the service elevator. A small precaution; no one looking at her would see Princess Adrianne. Just as no one looking at Princess Adrianne would see The Shadow. Still, she didn’t want Rose to be seen leaving Princess Adrianne’s penthouse apartment.
    On the street she ignored the cab she would have preferred and strode off toward the subway. She had a fistful of diamonds in her imitation leather bag. She smelled asthough she’d bathed in dime-store perfume. Which indeed she had.
    She enjoyed these subway rides as Hose. No one who knew her would walk beneath the streets. Here she was just a body among other bodies. Anonymous, as she had never been from the day she had been born. Her heels clicked on the concrete steps as she descended, and she remembered the first time she had left the streets to go underground. She’d been sixteen and desperate. Desperately afraid, desperately excited.
    Then, she’d been certain a hand would fall on her shoulder, and a voice, the cold, deep voice of the police, would demand she open her bag. It had been pearls then, a single twenty-one-inch strand of milky Japanese pearls. The five thousand dollars she’d exchanged them for had paid for medicine and a month’s therapy at the Richardson Institute.
    Now she walked through the turnstile with the ease of long practice. No one looked at her. Adrianne had come to understand that people rarely really looked at one another down here. In New York, people went about their business while keeping up the stubborn hope, or defense, that everyone else would do the same.
    There was a rush of sound and wind from an incoming train. There was a smell, faint but somehow comforting, of old liquor and damp. Adrianne avoided a wad of gum stuck to the ground and joined the smattering of people waiting for the train that would take them downtown.
    Beside her, two women hunched against the chill and complained about their husbands.
    “So I says to him, you got a wife, not a goddamn maid, Harry. I promised to love, honor, and cherish, but I didn’t say nothing about picking up your slop. I tell him the next time I find your smelly socks on the rug, I’m stuffing them in your big mouth.”
    “Good for you, Lorraine.”
    Adrianne wanted to second that. Good for you, Lorraine. Let the bastard pick up his own socks. That’s what she loved about American women. They didn’t cower and cringe when the almighty man walked through the door. They handed him a bag of garbage and told him to dump it.
    The train rumbled to a halt in front of them. People filedoff, people filed on. She stepped on behind the two women. One quick glance had Adrianne crossing the car and taking a seat near a man wearing chains on his leather jacket. She always felt it wiser to choose a seatmate who looked as though he might be carrying a concealed weapon.
    The train swayed, then picked up speed. Adrianne skimmed the graffiti and the ads, then the people. A man in a suit and tie with a