He takes the picture of Beth off the Gazelle, scratches the tape off the corners, and holds it up to the blinking purple lights. As he gazes at it, swaying a little from the beers and pot, his fingers itch to do something with it—set fire to it, put it in a frame. He’s about to tear it up when he hears sex sounds, forced, violent, and oddly familiar, from down the hall.
He finds her sitting at the desk with his laptop open before her. Her back is to him, her bony shoulder blades pointed at him like arrows of accusation, the moans of all of his uncleared history boomeranging through the small, thin-walled room. It looks to him like the one he watched the other night about the two fat maids, specifically the scene in which they demonstrate their versatility to their employers. Only he doesn’t remember it being this loud. In the window’s reflection, he can see her hand covering her mouth, her expression frozen in horror and disgust and fascination.
“Beth,” he calls like a question, but it’s no good. He can see she is far too transfixed by the fat girls, by the spectacle of flesh which she Gazelled countless miles to shed, by the ecstasy which she is now too hungry and tired and angry to summon. And he knows that she must see him there in the window’s reflection, standing in the dark doorway, softly calling her name.
The von Furstenberg and I
Despite my better judgment, I’m in the fitting room wrestling with the von Furstenberg again. I’ve thrown it over my head and I’m attempting to wedge my arms through the armholes even though it’s got my shoulders and rib cage in a vise grip. The fabric’s stretched tight over my face so I can’t see and it’s blocking my air supply but I’m doing my best to breathe through twill. This is the moment of deepest despair. This is the moment she always chooses to knock on the door.
I can hear the slow-approaching clicks of her heels. Three light raps on the door with her opal-encrusted knuckles. I brace myself for the sound of her voice, all of my nerve endings like cats ready to pounce. When she speaks, I hear her disdain, bright as a bell.
“How are we doing in here?”
We. She means me and the von Furstenberg. The von Furstenberg and I. She saw me out of the corner of her exquisitely lined eye going to the back of the store to retrieve it between the frigid Eileen Fishers and the smug Max Azrias and she disapproves. She knows the von Furstenberg is a separate entity, that it and I will never be one.
“Fine,” I say. I remain absolutely still, try not to sound breathless. Like all is well. Just a regular shopping trip.
“Oh good,” she says. “You let me know if you need anything.” But in her voice I hear: Give it up, fat girl.
She knows I’ve been coveting the von Furstenberg ever since I first stood on the other side of her shop window, watching her slip it over a white, nippleless mannequin, looping some ropes of fake pearls around its headless neck. I didn’t know it was a von Furstenberg then. I only knew it was precisely the sort of dress I dreamed of wearing when I used to eat muffins in the dark and watch Audrey Hepburn movies. Before I knew brands, I’d make lists of the perfect dresses—and when I saw this dress it was like someone, perhaps even God, had found the list and spun it into existence. Cobalt, formfitting, with a V in the front and one in the back. Cute little bows all down the butt crack, like your ass is a present. The sort of dress I’d wish to wear to attend the funeral of my former self, to scatter the ashes of who I was over a cliff’s edge.
“Can I try this on?” I asked her.
Her eyes opened a little wider. Small glimmers of incredulity like slicks of oil.
“What? The von Furstenberg?”
“Yes.”
She looked from the von Furstenberg to me, then back to the von Furstenberg, sizing both of us up. We two? Never we two.
Sighing, she led me to a fitting room, rearranging items as she went—insect hair clips, Baggallinis, peacock scarves—so it wasn’t a totally wasted trip.
The whole time I was in there being asphyxiated by the von Furstenberg, I felt the fact of her clicking on the other side of the door, waiting for me to admit defeat, to come to my senses. Come on.
? ? ?
Today, though, I’m determined to prove her wrong. Today, I won’t come out of the fitting room, let her snatch the mangled von Furstenberg from me, ask me, How did we do? as if she did not know how we did. As if she didn’t already have the steamer turned on and ready to smooth out the creases of my failed struggle, a task she always undertakes with overdone tenderness. Then after I’ve left the store, through the shop window, I’ll watch her pointedly press a damp rag all over the von Furstenberg, presumably to get rid of the slashes of Secret I leave behind. But those stains are always there when I come back. That’s how I know it’s all for show. Like, Look what you do, fat girl. Can’t you take no for an answer? The von Furstenberg doesn’t want you.
Well maybe I don’t want the von Furstenberg. Has she ever thought of that? That maybe I despise it? That maybe I’m trapped in this dance with the von Furstenberg against my will?
Knock knock.