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“You look gorgeous,” she
says.

“So do you.” And she does—a
Renaissance-era painting, full and rosy and dark. Her eyes are
narrow and as dark as her hair. “Yes,” she says and turns to me.
“You should get yours, too.”

“I thought you were buying the other
one.”

“I’ll get both.”

I show her the price tag hanging
from my strap.

“And? Mine’s four
twenty-five.”

“Which one?”

“This one. The other one is only two
hundred.”

“You can afford those?”

“Hazard pay.” She spins to make the
dress fan. “He said he wants me to keep myself happy while he’s
gone. He didn’t say how.” She bends forward, inspects her cleavage,
uses cupped hands to nudge them high. “I might need this taken in,
some. You think?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think I will. I don’t want to
look saggy like his mother. Did I tell you she called?”

“No.”

“Does Jake’s mom call
you?”

“No. I mean, sometimes.”

“William’s called yesterday,” she
says, and then, “Come on.” She leads me back to our dressing rooms.
“And every few days before that. ‘Have you heard from William?’
‘How’s the house’? What does she mean, ‘How’s the house’? What
could happen to it?” She holds my arms straight out. “My god, it
really is stunning on you, just like I said it would be. You have
to buy it, and you have to come with me to the party. Look.” She
pushes me past the curtain and holds me in front of the mirror. I
don’t know that ‘stunning’ is the word, but I do like what I see,
for a change. The way the padded bodice adds more than a cup size.
The way the rest clings to my hips and waist. I swivel to this side
and to that side and the bottom sways. I am a bell, a wind-dancing
daffodil.

“See?” She sticks her face in the
mirror, then opens her mouth and digs clumps of lipstick from the
corners with her fingernail.

“What party?” I say.

“Some of the ones still here thought
it would be fun to have a formal. Or maybe the idea came from their
women friends, or their wives. I really don’t know. But it ended up
sounding like a good idea. Don’t you agree?”

“Sure.”

“It’s not until next month, but that
allows time for alterations.”

I look at my watch. Twelve
thirty-three. It’s been dark for Jake for a couple of hours, now.
“And they expect a lot of women to come alone? I mean, it won’t
be—People won’t look at us funny?”

She pulls away from the glass and
studies the points of her shoes. “I won’t be going alone. But you
can. What I mean is, one will think anything of it. You can ride
with us so you’re not by yourself.”

“Us?”

She slides off her shoes and picks
them up and holds them by their ankle straps. “Me and Brian.” She
looks again at the mirror and plays with her dress straps. “He’s
Rear-D. Rear detachment? He almost doesn’t want to go because he’s
afraid he’ll have to see some of the wives who call him. You
wouldn’t believe. ‘I have a cold! So, like, my husband needs to
come home!’” Her wife-voice is high, nasal. “From
war,
Mia
.
Are they
serious?” She shrugs. “Anyway, the Rear-D guys are good for a
party.” She swings the curtain shut and the rings knock the wall.
“Hurry up and change, okay? Want to get a coffee?”

I let the dress fall off, let
gravity pull it down over my skin, and it feels like slipping out
of a bath. Naked again, or nearly enough, in front of the mirror
and the shadows emphasize the tonelessness of my arms, the lines
between my ribs. It’s no wonder clothing stores are so successful.
In this light, anything looks better than naked.

________

“
It’s not as if I never looked for a
job,” Denise says, “but
you
know how it is. Why would you drive a taxi unless
you had no other options?” Rain streaks the window behind our
table. Air-conditioning season, now, and it’s on southern-standard
high. I fold my arms to cover my nipples. Denise sits back in her
chair, hands flat on the table, and I try not to look at her
shirt.

There were options. Like
teaching.

“Did you graduate from high school?”
she says. She sucks latte foam through the hole in the plastic
cover.

I tell her I did.

“College?”

“Sure.”

“See? But that doesn’t mean anything
here. There’s nothing,” she laughs, and not with much humor, “we
can do with our degrees. I applied to every major hotel in town.
Not one of them contacted me. When I called them to follow up, they
said they were looking for cleaning people. Front desk clerks. And
I didn’t even try at some of the smaller places. Have you seen
them? The one-floor wonders on the side of the road?”

I have seen them. “I drop people
there, sometimes. What about them?” Blackout curtains stay drawn
across small windows, and doors open a sliver when cars pull into
the lot. People live in them, not stay in them. Tourists and
visitors are steered to hotel-city, a two-block cluster of
accommodations just off the interstate.

“Mia, they should be condemned. The
lobbies are ten feet by ten feet, the grounds are littered, and,”
she shudders, “they’re scary. I checked the papers for a month
straight for other jobs, so it’s not like I’m not looking. I am.
And do you know what I found? Telemarketing. In a cubicle! I
wouldn’t even get to be a supervisor. ‘We only promote from within,
sweetie, and it’s based on seniority.’ Luckily, my husband
understands. I told him after the first month of living here and
looking for work that I can’t—cannot—settle. It sounds selfish, and
maybe because it is, but that’s just the way it’s going to be. I
don’t want another job. I want a career.” She blows into the cup.
“William knows. When the right thing comes along, I’ll take
it.”

I know what I’m supposed to say.
That it’s his fault, really, because he brought her here, and that
if she can’t find work, William can’t blame her for holding out for
something better. It’s technically true, but more than that, it’s
convenient, so I say everything I am supposed to say, the way
people do.

“It must be a little harder for you,
not being married. You two don’t get the extra pay. Do you have
health insurance?”

“No.”

“What happens if something happens
to him over there?”

I look at my cup. “It’s okay. It’s
taken care of.”

“He put you down as his beneficiary,
right?”

“I guess. Sure.”

“Still. Just because you’re not
married doesn’t mean you should be stuck driving a cab. I assume
you moved here to be with him, so…Wait. Unless you like driving a
cab, of course! It’s just so…It’s so…What is it?” She looks to the
beamed ceiling. “Something. No offense.”

I want to tell her that offense is
taken, if even just a little, and that I drive by choice, not by
necessity. I was a professor, an adjunct, but telling her that
would sound like a defense of some kind, and she would ask
Why? Why don’t you teach anymore?

“I was no good.”

She looks at me. “What was no
good?”

“Pardon?”

“You said something was no good.
What was no good?”

“Um…the school,” I say, and then I
tell her I used to teach and add some things—anything—about the
school, about the students not knowing the basic sentence structure
they should have learned before being admitted to college (“I
didn’t sign on to teach basic English”), about school politics,
scheduling conflicts, a lack of opportunity for tenure, low pay, a
poor paper supply that left the copiers empty just when I needed
them for handouts, warm water in the drinking fountains.

I finish off with a complaint about
bad parking and the price of lot passes, “Which, if you consider
what we’re paid, is stupidly expensive.”

“You gave up a job as a
professor—a
professor
—”

“Instructor. Adjunct.”

“—to drive a taxi?”

“I thought it would be fun,” I say,
which is true, “and it is,” I say, which is not.

She smiles. “Wow.”

“What?”

“I have this weird kind of respect
for you now. To give up something like that. Are you going back to
it when you two move to a place with a better school?”

I say, “Oh, definitely, you know,
for the money,” and, “Did you know they have art here?” I point
over her shoulder at paintings hanging on the far side of the
room.

“Mm,” she says. “So, when
are
you and Jake getting
married?”

I tell her, “Some time after he gets
back,” and sip coffee. Admitting there are no wedding plans will
plunge us into the inevitable woman-talk of stereotypical men
dragging their feet toward marriage, the
U
s women
(
when it should be ‘we’
women
)
need to push
them into things like that or they’ll never commit; you know how
men are
, eye-roll, and
Amen, sister.

The paintings must be originals.
Typed labels display…something too far away, too small to
read…beside the unframed canvasses. It is the white one—a white
house covered in snow—that grabs me.

“Excuse me.”

I get up to read the tag.

Emily’s at Dawn, 1981. G.D.
(Oil.)
The house is old, chipped paint
giving way to dull wood, the structure itself slanting rightward
with the shallow decline of the snow-draped yard. The sky is
winter-morning gray, but early sun shines through the haze and
catches the shadow of an adjacent shed, spreading it across the
undisturbed driveway. White sheers fall behind long, wood-framed
windows, and the distinct, warm, brightness of dawn (but
controlled—no brash oranges and golds, here) touches the half of
the house closest to what would be considered the back yard, the
slope, and inside is, must be, a woman,
Emily
, who would be middle-aged, yes,
with long, wavy hair and wearing gray wool socks and a flowing
white bathrobe. Happy in her kitchen, warm in her winter house.
Brewing coffee, probably, unaware of the adoring man standing at
the end of her driveway and watching her house morning after
morning, who painted this rendering of his love, ‘pure as the
undriven snow,’ no doubt, and like the house, worn but warm,
hidden, the way she is hidden behind the windows to—

“What a dingy old house. You can
drive five minutes from here and take twenty pictures of houses
like that, and that’s art?” Denise says, passing on her way to the
counter.

—her kitchen. No light comes from
inside, but sunlight stripes the sheers and must (must!) spear
through them and across hardwood floors, patching the wall, setting
fire to Emily’s hair when she passes. The floorboards are deep
mahogany and the distressed kitchen table holds dried flowers in
the center in a crude pottery vase and there’s bright sun porch
just past the kitchen and—

—and I have to have it. Have to
possess it.

I check the tag for the
price.

Denise, behind me with her refreshed
cup, says, “One
thousand
two-
hundred
?
D
ollars?
” She
adjusts the cardboard sleeve. “It must be a typo. Excuse me,” she
says, turning to the girl behind the counter. “Is this one
thousand
two-hundred
dollars, or a hundred and twenty?”

The girl comes out from behind a
grinder, twisting a rag in a carafe. “It’s twelve
hundred.”

“Who’s the artist?”

“Doesn’t it say on the
label?”

“Yes, it says on the label, but
they’re just initials. Is he or she famous?”

The girl twists and twists the rag.
“No.”

“Then what makes him…or
her…?”

“Him.”

“What makes him think anyone would
buy this…house…for one thousand dollars?”

“It’s not a house,” the girl
says.

“It’s not a house?”

“No.”

Denise points at the canvas, her
finger touching oil siding. “This isn’t a house?”

“Please don’t touch that,” the girl
says. “Yes, it’s a house. But the painting is not a painting of a
house.”

Denise cups both hands around her
latte. “Well, I guess I’m ignorant then, aren’t I?”

Twist, “No, ma’am,”
twist.

Denise leans in to me. “Would you
pay a thousand dollars for this?”

I look at the girl. She sets the
carafe on the counter and waves the rag in the air. I follow Denise
outside.

Before pulling away from the curb in
front of my apartment, Denise tells me she’ll call in a few weeks
about the party and suggests I think about wearing “some kind of
pretty yellow flower, but a small one,” behind my ear—“It’ll make
you look so feminine!”—and adds that I might not want to mention
the party in a letter to Jake. “Sometimes it just makes them feel
worse when they can’t be a part of something,” she says.