December 8th, 1948:
Kathleen Wiggins Senn (Mrs. E.R. Senn), (…) resplendent in a mink coat, appeared one day in early December in the seventh-floor toy department at Bloomingdale’s department store on Fifty-Ninth Street and Lexington Avenue, where Pat, anxious to pay for her psychoanalysis and awaiting the publication of Strangers on a Train, had just taken a sales job for the Christmas rush season. Blond, statuesque, with an angled, Saxon profile and intelligent gray eyes, Mrs. Senn, slapping a pair of gloves suggestively into the palm of one hand, walked slowly and absently up to the doll counter where a mesmerized Pat stood waiting to serve her. (…) Mrs. Senn ordered a doll sent to her house in Ridgewood New Jersey, for one of her daughters. The enthralled young salesgirl, Miss Highsmith, filled out the receipt — but her Alter Ego, the canny writer Patricia, quickly memorized the client’s address. In a trance of desire, Pat, both parts of her, went straight downstairs to the Bloomingdale’s card shop, bought a Christmas card, signed it with the perfect Highsmith nom de plume, and mailed it off at the post office in Bloomingdale’s basement to Kathleen Senn’s address. But the signature Pat put on the card wasn’t a name. It was her Bloomingdale’s employee number.
Kathleen Senn never connected the number or the Christmas card with the attractive, flustered salesgirl who had waited on her, and she never replied to it. Later, Pat felt grateful for Mrs. Senn’s incomprehension.
— The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith, by Joan Schenkar
