This morning, I rise from her plastic-covered couch and look at her view of the desert through her compulsively Windexed windows. I see a lake made of salt. An already too-high sun that’s blinding. A parched landscape, so far from the one I grew up in. Come home, my father said in a voice mail. He’d tried calling me at the apartment and Tom had told him I’d left. Just come back. Use your mother’s money and put a down payment on a place out here. There’s no reason for you to be out there anymore. Just come home. I think of calling him back now. Instead I look up Mel’s contact info on my cell phone, my finger hovering over the call button while I stare at her name. She and I haven’t talked much at all since I moved out here, though I did call her a few weeks ago one night when I was first sleeping at Eve’s. It was awkward. She was pretty miserable, she said, and when I asked why, she said she and her boyfriend were having problems, that she hated her job, and worst of all, she’d gained weight. She didn’t want to talk about it. I said she was being too hard on herself, it happened to everyone, and anyway I was sure she was still beautiful. I meant it. When she said nothing, I told her I was feeling miserable too. I told her about me and Tom. It was hard because so much time had passed and there was so much she didn’t know. I told it in fragments that felt insubstantial, that seemed to come apart as I spoke, that didn’t appear to add up to anything at all against the scrutiny of her silence. Telling her made it all seem petty, somehow. When I finally trailed off, she said, That sounds rough. I’m sorry.
I think of Tom down there in the parched valley, behind his office door. Maybe he doesn’t even know I’m gone. I think of Cassie and her husband, what adventures they might be up to today. Or perhaps it’s a lazy day. They’ve drawn the curtains, are lolling about on their island of couch, he’s kissing the thin white strip of shoulder under her straps that the sun never catches.
? ? ?
When I called Aria the other day, I was told Cassie was booked solid. I was offered Hattie. It was like that one time I went to For Your Eyes Only and asked for the voluptuous redhead, and what they gave me instead was this thin Caribbean girl with poorly done streaks. These days I go to this Vietnamese place down the road Eve recommended. It isn’t so la-dee-dah, she warned, but they get the job done. There are only two kinds of hand treatments—Basic and Spa—and the only difference is paraffin. There’s no food in the waiting area either, just a fishbowl full of what looks like licorice but turned out to be nothing but slippery black stones. The one perk is that the proprietress hammers at your upper back and shoulders with her smooth little fists while you’re waiting for your nails to dry. It’s a nice touch, Eve says, and I agree. Also, she’ll do whatever color you want without comment. She’ll paint my nails the black-red I love, which will make them look dipped in vampire blood. And at the end of the treatment, when she offers me the emery board, I shake my head no every time. Because what the hell am I going to do with it anyway? She nods and chucks it in the bin, where it belongs. That’s our ritual. I tip her exactly 15 percent.
Additionelle
Since I’ve returned home, I sometimes feel compelled to come back here. The sight of the plus-size mannequins in the shop window still soothes me. The outward undulation of stomach as comforting as an ocean wave. Their outfits look surprisingly current, almost hip. Skirts that nearly fishtail. Polka-dot bustiers. Things with eyelets and things edged with lace—and not weird plus-size lace either. Only when you look more closely, observe the generous cuts, the longer hemlines, three-quarter-length sleeves, do you see how they give themselves away as clothes for those with something to hide.
When I enter the shop, I see the familiar stepped display of boatneck T-shirts, the ones emblazoned with iron-on appliqués of various animals. Mainly varieties of cat. Cheetahs. Tigers. Domestic shorthairs gleefully swiping at balls of yarn. The animals regard me with those sequined eyes that, in former years, when I couldn’t shop anywhere else, I used to dream of gouging out. The music they play in here hasn’t changed. Instrumental variants of soul tunes still drip from unseen speakers. Songs with lyrics that always seem to revolve around the word woman. You make me feel like a natural woman. When a man loves a woman, etc. As if the idea of being a woman in here requires convincing. I watch the fat female shoppers within pawing through the racks, presumably hunting for The Least of All Evils: a black cardigan without rhinestone jetties or webs of pearl across the front; a stretchy unadorned V-or scoop neck. Back when I had to shop here, I used to do the same. I’d spend hours hunting for something—anything—that would render me moderately fuckable. And if not fuckable, something in which I could grieve over the fact of not being fuckable with unbaubled dignity. I make my way through these racks, among these women, not one of them anymore, and yet one of them still, and it’s as though I’ve never left. I really should stop coming here.
The saleslady, seeing me hold up a zebra-patterned A-line dress, asks if she can help me. She doesn’t recognize me, of course. How could she? It’s been years since I’ve shopped here and I’ve lost God knows how much in that time, maybe a full-grown woman. Also, I went by a different name. Also, I never used to come in here alone, but with my mother.
Though my mother also had to shop here, make do with Addition Elle slacks and sweaters, she, like this saleswoman, always wore a necklace that matched her earrings that matched her bag that matched her shoes. She called this “jazzing it up.” My mother and this saleswoman got along famously.
The saleswoman doesn’t remember me, but I remember her. Her jewelry is still aggressively cheerful, still screams, I’m trying to make the best of things. But whereas once she spoke to me kindly via my mother, her tone with me now is suspicious, her eyes dipping down my body to size me up. I’m not within the 14-to-24 range. What the hell am I doing here?
Just looking, thanks, I tell her.