"But she hung up on you, at the end, there?"
"Uh-huh."
***
The Powell Street cable car crested the hill and then began the long decline down past Union Square. Shane looked over at Carmen and saw her smiling about something.
"What?"
"Huh? Oh, nothing," Carmen said, still smiling.
"C'mon, what? You always say we don't communicate. So communicate."
Carmen sighed a big sigh. "Okay, I'll tell you. But remember, I'm smiling now about this, right? Remember, I'm smiling now."
"I get it," Shane said. "Whatever it is, it's funny."
"Yes. Now, anyway. First off, before I begin, I don't have to tell you what the all-time worst day of my life was."
"Yeah, I guess I have a fair idea," Shane said.
"Okay, this was the all-time second-worst day of my life. Here it is. About a year after ... you know. Whistler, the wedding thing, I got back from a cruise, and a couple of girlfriends - no, not that kind, just the regular kind of girlfriend, pals, buddies - we decide to go shopping one Saturday. So it's me and Terri and Pat, and we hop on the cable car and we come here to Union Square and we shop for a while, we go in a couple places, and then we walk a block south to O'Farrell Street, that's it, right here at the next light, look to the left, halfway down the block. That's where the Hugo Boss Store was-"
"Oh, no," Shane groaned, knowing what was coming.
"Oh, yes. So we go into the Hugo Boss store. And we walk in, and I'm standing there and I see up on the wall, gotta be 15 feet tall, this giant tinted color photograph of one Shane McCutcheon, the famous fashion model, standing there topless with her hands cupping her tits and wearing nothing but a pair of Hugo Boss low-rider tighty-whities, and the caption says, 'You're looking very Shane today,' and I'm telling you, Shane, I just lost it. I'm standing there crying and sobbing, and Terri and Patty are staring at me like I've lost my mind, which clearly I have, and I'm just destroyed, and there's snot running out of my nose, and I'm pointing up at the poster on the wall, and all over the store people are looking at me, at this totally hysterical woman having a meltdown right there on O'Farrell Street in the Hugo Boss store. And I'm pointing at the poster and trying to tell them, and I'm going 'Shane! Shane! That's Shane!' which is crazy because, yes, it's Shane, it even says Shane, everybody knows the model's name is Shane. And then Terri gets it, she goes, 'Oh, my God! That's YOUR Shane?' and I'm shouting at her, 'Yes! Yes! That's
my
Shane!' And everybody in the store is, like, backing away, going to the other side of the store to get away from this lunatic woman who is pointing at the poster and blubbering. And Patty and Terri take me out of the store and start calming me down and blotting my face with tissues, and I'm still crying and babbling, and I'm trying to tell them about how you have your hands over your tits, and how you have the most beautiful, most perfect nipples in the whole world and nobody can see them, and I'm telling them how awful I felt and how humiliated when you left me at the altar, which they already knew about, and they understand how it's really you, MY Shane, THAT Shane up on the poster on the wall of Hugo Boss, and I'm telling them how I loved your nipples, kissing them and kissing you, going down on you through your tighty-whities only they were Hanes or Fruit-of-the-Looms or whatever, see, and there's people walking past us on O'Farrell Street looking at the three of us, and I'm babbling about your tits, and suddenly Terri starts to giggle, partly because people can hear me rambling on and on about your tits and your underwear, and Patty starts giggling, and then next thing I know I'm laughing at myself and the whole thing, and we just started laughing and howling and whooping, and people on the sidewalk are still laughing at us. And after a while we start to calm down a little, and I say, 'C'mon, let's get out of here and go find a drink.' And Terri says, 'Oh, no. This is like horseback riding. You've got to climb back up on that horse. We're going back in, and anyway, I wanna see that poster some more. So, come on, girl, let's go do some aversion therapy and get Shane McCutcheon out of your system once and for all.' And so we go back into the Hugo Boss store, and we stand there and admire this poster, this giant wall advertisement, and I'm perfectly fine looking at it. I'm not crying or anything, and we look around the store, and you know what? Terri buys a three-pack of Shane-type low-rider tighty-whities, and then I say, 'Oh, what the hell," and I buy a three-pack, and Patty rolls her eyes, and now she's gotta buy a three-pack, and we walk out of the Hugo Boss store with nine pair of Shane-0-Magic low-rider tighty-whities. And that was the day I was finally cured of my Shane McCutcheon jimjams and leftover heeby-jeebies. That was the day I got you out of my system."
"So ... that's how Terri knew who I was, the night I first knocked on your door. She recognized me and knew who I was."
"See? Your detective skills are amazing."
"That's why she had the attitude."
"Oh, yeah. She knew from the first second who you were and what you'd done. And right at that minute, she might even have been wearing a pair of your Hugo Boss panties for all I know. She might have been looking very Shane that night. Frankly, I think you were damn lucky she didn't come down the stairs and tear you limb from limb. She's pretty protective of me."
"Yeah, I noticed," Shane said. "So, anyway, after this hilarious incident-" Carmen was amused that Shane didn't think it was hilarious at all - "what happened?"
"When we got home I called Jenny and asked her why there was this giant poster of you in your undies hanging in the Hugo Boss store, and she told me about Carla abandoning Shay and you taking him in, and him breaking his arm on a skateboard, and you guys being desperate for money to pay his hospital bills, and so on, and how you got recruited to be a model. And she says, 'Jesus, Carmen, that advertisement campaign was in all the newspapers and all over television, didn't you see it? Haven't you guys got newspapers and Entertainment Tonight up there?' And I'm, like, 'Jenny, I just got back from a CRUISE! I've been gone for thirteen weeks! I've been to the Galapagos Islands and New Zealand! I've been on a ship, and no, we don't get Entertainment Tonight out west of Wake Island. Or if we did I was working. So, yeah, whatever publicity there was about that ad campaign, I missed it. I didn't know anything about it.' Jenny says it was a really big deal, though."
Shane was still processing this story when they got to the bottom of Powell Street at the last stop.