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submissions had quite satisfied her father. “Not aristocratic-looking enough,” he kept saying, “not classy enough for us,” so the artists would tear at their hair and go back to their drawing boards. “Show us the kind of woman you have in mind, Mr. Si,” they said at last, and on a sudden impulse he had pulled out some photographs of his wife. “Make them all look like her,” he said. “That’s what my kind of woman looks like.” And so, though Tarkington’s mannequins had been given various hairstyles and coloring, they all had Consuelo Tarkington’s sculptured facial bones.
    Consuelo herself had been amused by this. Miranda had found it unnerving, at first, to encounter her mother’s face at every turn in the store, in every room of her house. But then she decided it was better to have dozens of beautiful mothers than no mother at all. These mothers were there whenever she needed one, and they all gazed at her with unerring approval and even curiosity.
    After store hours, a new and tangible and approachable father could be found in this house too. He sat in his empty corner office, in an empty chair, behind an empty desk, waiting for her to visit him where, in real life she was not supposed to venture without an appointment or without being announced by Pauline O’Malley. Here was a perfect place to talk to him, where he could give her his undivided attention and listen to her ideas. At night, she would slip into her father’s empty office, close the door behind her, and seat herself opposite the father who was sitting in the empty chair.
    â€œDaddy, I have a plan,” she would say to him. “It’s about me and the store. Please listen to it.…”
    And, even though he wasn’t there, he would listen, listen, listen.
    That way, he could become the most wonderful, caring father in the world while, downstairs on the selling floors, her mother, in a variety of welcoming gestures, greeted the guests who came to be treated to the wonders of Miranda Tarkington’s store.
    When a child isn’t blessed with much in the way of parents, she thinks a little wryly now, the child becomes attached to things .

2
    THE SCENE: A drab stretch of West 23rd Street in Manhattan. Outside a nondescript office building, a sign reads: MOSES L. MINSKOFF, DEVELOPER .
    THE TIME: A muggy morning in August 1991 .
    The lights go up to reveal the interior of this establishment: a pair of offices, cheaply furnished. In the smaller of the two rooms, the reception area, MINSKOFF’S secretary, SMYRNA, sits reading a movie magazine and chewing gum. In the larger office, MINSKOFF sits in a swivel chair at his desk, talking on the phone. He is a large man in his shirt sleeves, with an unlighted cigar clamped between his teeth. He wears a yellow Ultrasuede vest, and a heavy gold watch on a gold chain is slung across his middle. In addition to his desk and chair, the principal features of his office are a big old-fashioned Mosler wall safe and a spavined sofa against one wall. The sofa’s condition suggests that MINSKOFF often sleeps here .
    MINSKOFF (on the phone): I’m making a credit card call. (He rattles off a fourteen-digit series of numbers. There is a pause.) What? What do you mean that credit card has been canceled? This is an outrage! I shall most certainly report you to your supervisor, young woman!
    He slams the receiver down and simultaneously draws a line through the top number in the list of numbers on the pad in front of him. Then he picks up the phone and dials again. Credit card call.… (More numbers.)
    Thank you ! Thank you for thanking me for using AT&T. I always use AT&T, and with the greatest pleasure, my good fellow!
    While he waits for his call to go through, he consults his watch .
    Milton? Moe Minskoff here. How’s the weather out there? … Well, it’s hot as hell here. Listen, Miltie, we got a little problem, you and