After the last couple of weeks of more lengthy short stories--especially the Caspary with its wonderful character and plot development, this week's short short story was over almost before I had a chance to make myself at home! I've finally had a taste of Dorothy B. Hughes's work with her 1965 story "Everybody Needs a Mink". It's not explicitly written and I had to skim again as there was never a shocking denouement or a sense of foreboding. It's so subtly presented, I think I missed that moment where the epiphany arrives. I'd say Dorothy Hughes, at least in this case, is all about understatement.
Dorothy B. Hughes is most decidedly on my reading radar and I have added several of her noir novels to my reading stacks. I hope to get to one or more of them sooner than later and she will fit in quite nicely with my vintage mystery reading. As a matter of fact I think I am going to line her up next after Josephine Tey (so had better get a move on with The Man in the Queue!). Interestingly she began her career as a journalist and had published a book of poetry before turning to crime fiction. Weinman notes that "the crime genre gave Hughes her true voice, one mixing a terse, hard-bitten style with a deep understanding of her flawed protagonists, who struggle to stay true to themselves as larger criminal forces threaten to overwhelm them."
Hughes wrote the bulk of her novels in the decade between 1940 and 1950 with a last novel in 1963. Later she wrote shorter fiction and and did a lot of reviewing of crime novels. Apparently (and maybe I'm glad of the fact), this particular short story is something of a departure from the style of her best known novels.
If there is a flaw in Meggy Tashman it's that she lives outside her means. Meggy--"that soignee young socialite of Larksville-nearly-on-the-Hudson". I understand that only too well, though I have no desire for a mink coat. Meggy is married with children. She knows how to dress well and knows her own mind when it comes to clothes--the right cut and color and the right accessories. And everything must be "good".
On a buying trip to Randolphs in NYC for children's school clothes she decides to take a turn around the Fur Salon. She spots the perfect mink--not only beautiful but practical, too.
"Something to sling over the faded blues and Tash's old short on the dash from the vacuum cleaner to the supermarket. Mink was so durable. A lifetime investment. So rich, so utter, utterly rich."
She really does have expensive tastes! And it looks good on her too. So good that a man in a salon asks her to model a coat--she being just the right size. When she puts it on, it's as if the coat were made for her and she is like a teenager in her excitement. It's all a game to her until she is told, after the man has left, that he has bought the coat for her and it is going to be delivered to her home. She thinks it's a good gag all the way home--not expecting that anything will come of the encounter.
But Monday morning there it is, monogrammed and everything. "She didn't put it on. It was like a firecracker waiting to explode." Now the question is why? Why would this man buy a total stranger a mink coat? Money laundering? A tax write-off? She was waiting for the moment when the man comes back for his mink. Nothing is free, right? And so am I. I expect it's meant to be left up to the reader's imagination. Hughes drops a few hints along the way, but all in all this is a pretty tame short story--as thrillers go that is.
I was sort of expecting more from Hughes and this story, but I think I won't be disappointed in her novels. Next up is a story by Joyce Harrington.
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This week's New Yorker story (February 10 issue) is by Zadie Smith and it is currently 'in progress'--am reading it today. I'll be back soon to tell you about it. A cursory look and I have to admit I think this weekend's short story reading is all around disappointing (that meaning that the subject matter of Zadie Smith's story isn't all that appealing to me, but I expect it to be entirely well executed), but I am keeping an open mind.