"You'll want a throne next," Remo whispered to her.
She turned to Remo looking up. "If we are living in a feudal system, then we who are doing secret work should appear to be part of it, correct?"
"I suppose."
Mei Soong smiled a smile of rectification. "Then why should I suffer insolence from a serf?"
"Listen," said Miss P. Walsh. "I don't have to take that crap from you or anyone. You want this package wrapped, then mind your manners. I've never been insulted like this before."
Mei Soong braced herself and in her most imperious manner, said to Miss P. Walsh: "You are a servant and you will serve."
"Listen, Dinko," said Miss P. Walsh. "We got a union around here and we don't have to take that kind of crap from anyone. Now you talk nice or you're getting this coat in your face."
Mr. Pelfred was telling his assistant manager about the cash purchases when he heard the commotion. Up running he came, hippity, hippity, his black shiny shoes pattering along the gray marble floors, his breath puffing from his fatty, shiny face, his hands atwitter.
"Will you please?" he said to Miss P. Walsh.
"Watcher mouth," yelled Miss P. Walsh. "Steward," she screamed. A gaunt hard woman in iron tweed stomped to the cluster around the packing of the greatcoat. "What's going on here?" she said.
"It's not a grievance, please," said Mr. Pelfred.
"I don't have to take this crap from customers or anyone. We got a union," said Miss P. Walsh.
"What's going on?" repeated the gaunt woman.
"There's been a minor disagreement," said Mr. Pelfred.
"I been crapped on by this customer," said Miss P. Walsh, pointing to Mei Soong who stood erect and serene, as if witnessing a squabble between her upstairs and downstairs maids.
"What happened honey?" said the gaunt woman. "Exactly what happened?"
"I was wrapping this funny coat for her and then she told me to tie my tongue or something. She was real aristocratic and she crapped on me. Just plain crapped on me."
The gaunt woman stared hatefully at Mr. Pelfred. "We don't have to put up with this, Mr. Pelfred. She does not have to wait on this customer and if you order her to, this whole store is gonna shut down. Tight."
Mr. Pelfred's hands fluttered. "All right. All right. I'll do the wrapping myself."
"You can't," said the gaunt woman. "You're not in the union."
"Fascist pig," said Mei Soong coolly. "The masses have seen their exploitation and are breaking their chains of oppression."
"And you, lotus blossom," said the gaunt woman, "button your lip and get your friggin' coat out the friggin' door or you're going out the friggin' window, along with your sexy looking boyfriend. And if he doesn't like it, he's going out with you."
Remo raised his hands. "I'm a lover, not a fighter."
"You look like it, gigolo," the gaunt woman said.
Mei Soong slowly looked to Remo. "Are you going to allow these insults to be heaped upon me?"
"Yes," said Remo. Her golden face flushed pink and with great chill, she said: "All right. Let's go. Pick up the coat and dresses."
"You take half of them," said Remo., "You take the coat."
"All right," said Remo. He looked mournfully at Miss P. Walsh. "I wonder if you could do me a big favor. We have a long way to go and if you'd put the coat in a box of some sort, I'd really appreciate it. Anything would do."
"Oh, sure," said Miss P. Walsh. "Hey, look, it might rain. I'll double wrap it. We got a special kind of paper in the back room that's impregnant with chemicals. It'll keep it dry."
When lie sales girl had left for the special paper wrapping and Pelfred had, as prissily as possible, marched back toward the elevator, and the gaunt woman had swaggered back to the stock room, Mei Soong said to Remo: "You need not have groveled before her."
And on their way back to the hotel, she added: "You are a nation without virtue." But she warmed in the lobby and by the time they had returned to their rooms where Chiun sat atop his luggage, she was bubbling over with enthusiasm about her upcoming visit to the karate school she had heard of and what great fun it would be.
Over her shoulder, Remo winked at Chiun, and told him, "Come on, we're going back to Chinatown. To see a karate demonstration."
Then Remo asked the girl, "Do you want to eat now?"
"No," she said quickly. "After the karate school, then I'll eat."
She did not say "we", Remo noticed. Perhaps she expected that he would not be around for dinner.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"Sir, I must advise you that soon you may not place faith in our efforts concerning the matter."
Smith's voice had passed the stage of tension and chill and was now as calm as the Long Island Sound outside his window, a flat, placid sheet of glass, strangely undisturbed by its usual winds and waves.
It was over. Smith had made the decision which his character demanded, that character for which a dead president had chosen him for an assignment he did not want, that character begun in his youth, before memory, and which told Harold W. Smith that there are things you must do, regardless of your personal welfare.
So it was ending now with his own death. Remo would phone. Dr. Smith would order Remo to tell Chiun to return to Folcroft. Chiun would kill Remo and return to his village of Sinanju by the Central Intelligence Agency.
"You've got to stay with this longer," the President said.
"I cannot do that, sir. The three of them have collected a crowd around them. A line of ours was tapped, fortunately by the FBI. But if they knew for sure who we were, think of how they would be compromised. We are going through our prepared program before it will be too late. That is my decision."
"Would it be possible to leave that person still working?" The President's voice was wavering now.
"No."
"Is it possible that something will go wrong with your plans for destruct?"
"Yes."
"How possible?"
"Slight."
"Then if you fail, I still might be able to count on you. Would that be possible?"
"Yes sir, but I doubt it."
"As President of the United States, I order you, Dr. Smith, not to destruct."
"Goodbye, sir, and good luck."
Smith hung up the special phone with the white dot. Oh, to hold his wife again, to say goodbye to his daughters, to play one more round of golf at the Westchester Country Club. He was so close to breaking 90. Why was golf so important now? Funny. But then why should golf be important in the first place?
Maybe it was good to leave now. No man knew the hour of his death, the Bible said. But Smith would know the exact second. He looked at his watch again. One minute to go. He took the container with the pill from Ms gray vest pocket. It would do the job.
The pill was white and oblong with beveled edges like a coffin. That was to let people know it was poison and not to be consumed. Smith had learned that when he was six. It was the sort of information that remained with a person. He had not, in his lifetime, ever had use for it.
With his mind now floating in the nether world of faces and words and feelings he had thought he had forgotten, Smith spun the coffin-like pill on the memo that would take the aluminum box to Parsippany, New Jersey.
The central phone rang. Smith picked it up and noticed his hand was trembing and the phone slippery from the perspiration.