excitement. Is this some kind of mean joke?
“The implants have been such a success, we thought we’d get you a fun surprise. Join the club!” Trina shouts, waving happily.
I wander around the room from group to group, seemingly invisible. All the women are strangely perfect, not a blemish, wrinkle, sagging breast, or ounce of fat. They are the Stepford wives of Seattle, but it isn’t their husbands who’ve held them to this standard; they’ve done it to themselves. Every conversation revolves around their “procedures,” past and future. I’m frantically searching for a door out when a ringing phone interrupts me. Where is it coming from?
I wake up. I’m safe in my own bedroom. I don’t own a pink cocktail dress. The phone is ringing. I glance out the window. The first rays of dawn haven’t even touched the street. Who on earth would be calling me at this hour?
“Hello?” I croak, still thinking about my strange dream.
“Molly, it’s Denise. I’m in the slammer. I need you to come bail me out.” It’s my younger sister. Her quarterly jail visits are like clockwork. And she always calls me.
“Geez, Denise. The paperboy isn’t even awake yet!” I stuff my head under the pillow with the phone a few inches from my ear.
“I have to get out of here. There’s a public hearing on the Colony at ten. I have to be there.”
Squinting at the alarm clock, I see that it’s five-something. “Well, then, that only leaves five hours. I’ll be right there.”
The Colony, the artists’ colony where Denise lives, has been sold and is slated for demolition. A group of rebel artists have refused to vacate, deciding, in a last-ditch effort, to save the place by getting it registered as a historical building. Several fledgling artists, including Jacob Lawrence, lived there during their salad days. It has become Denise’s raison d’être.
“I was hoping you’d treat me to breakfast.” She knows the effect her scrawny frame has upon me.
“Yeah, that’s just what I do when people wake me up at five in the morning asking me to bail them out of jail. I take them out to breakfast.”
She is silent. “You want me to call Trina?”
We both know that Trina, with a staff of three, can barely manage to get her kids off to school, let alone get dressed and made up before noon. Mornings, Trina believes, are devoted to trainers and what she calls maintenance work on her forty-year-old body.
After a bit of well-deserved grumbling, I hang up with the promise of hurrying to the courthouse. I have a lunch review of a new eatery favored by what I call the Grazers: young urbanites who flock to hip eateries in herds, abandoning their favorite for the newer, flashier model as soon as it opens.
After a shower, I slip into a leopard-print bra from Angeli, fumbling a bit with the miniscule clasps. A lifetime of Jockey for Her has hardly prepared me for the fine motor skills required for these racy little numbers. When I’ve added the matching underwear, I check myself out in the mirror. A whole new woman gazes back. Well, okay, maybe not a whole new woman, but someone in a plunging leopard-print bra that creates what I believe the French call décolleté. Just for fun, I add another flick of mascara. I enjoy the effect so much, I dig through my collection of Mom’s old silk scarves, finding a leopard-print square that I use to tie back my hair. Maybe I am channeling Anne Bancroft in The Graduate . Who wouldn’t want that? She’s not an age; she’s an attitude.
I pull on another shirt borrowed from Angeli. It exposes too much cleavage. Or does it? Gazing at myself for a long while in the mirror, I’m utterly confused. One half of me wants to play dress-up with the fun new breasts, the other half is exhausted and wants her old flat, anonymous life back.
You don’t sport knockers like these if you don’t want attention.
The same weird Englishman’s voice says to me, “What ’ave ya got to lose?”
I spin around
“The implants have been such a success, we thought we’d get you a fun surprise. Join the club!” Trina shouts, waving happily.
I wander around the room from group to group, seemingly invisible. All the women are strangely perfect, not a blemish, wrinkle, sagging breast, or ounce of fat. They are the Stepford wives of Seattle, but it isn’t their husbands who’ve held them to this standard; they’ve done it to themselves. Every conversation revolves around their “procedures,” past and future. I’m frantically searching for a door out when a ringing phone interrupts me. Where is it coming from?
I wake up. I’m safe in my own bedroom. I don’t own a pink cocktail dress. The phone is ringing. I glance out the window. The first rays of dawn haven’t even touched the street. Who on earth would be calling me at this hour?
“Hello?” I croak, still thinking about my strange dream.
“Molly, it’s Denise. I’m in the slammer. I need you to come bail me out.” It’s my younger sister. Her quarterly jail visits are like clockwork. And she always calls me.
“Geez, Denise. The paperboy isn’t even awake yet!” I stuff my head under the pillow with the phone a few inches from my ear.
“I have to get out of here. There’s a public hearing on the Colony at ten. I have to be there.”
Squinting at the alarm clock, I see that it’s five-something. “Well, then, that only leaves five hours. I’ll be right there.”
The Colony, the artists’ colony where Denise lives, has been sold and is slated for demolition. A group of rebel artists have refused to vacate, deciding, in a last-ditch effort, to save the place by getting it registered as a historical building. Several fledgling artists, including Jacob Lawrence, lived there during their salad days. It has become Denise’s raison d’être.
“I was hoping you’d treat me to breakfast.” She knows the effect her scrawny frame has upon me.
“Yeah, that’s just what I do when people wake me up at five in the morning asking me to bail them out of jail. I take them out to breakfast.”
She is silent. “You want me to call Trina?”
We both know that Trina, with a staff of three, can barely manage to get her kids off to school, let alone get dressed and made up before noon. Mornings, Trina believes, are devoted to trainers and what she calls maintenance work on her forty-year-old body.
After a bit of well-deserved grumbling, I hang up with the promise of hurrying to the courthouse. I have a lunch review of a new eatery favored by what I call the Grazers: young urbanites who flock to hip eateries in herds, abandoning their favorite for the newer, flashier model as soon as it opens.
After a shower, I slip into a leopard-print bra from Angeli, fumbling a bit with the miniscule clasps. A lifetime of Jockey for Her has hardly prepared me for the fine motor skills required for these racy little numbers. When I’ve added the matching underwear, I check myself out in the mirror. A whole new woman gazes back. Well, okay, maybe not a whole new woman, but someone in a plunging leopard-print bra that creates what I believe the French call décolleté. Just for fun, I add another flick of mascara. I enjoy the effect so much, I dig through my collection of Mom’s old silk scarves, finding a leopard-print square that I use to tie back my hair. Maybe I am channeling Anne Bancroft in The Graduate . Who wouldn’t want that? She’s not an age; she’s an attitude.
I pull on another shirt borrowed from Angeli. It exposes too much cleavage. Or does it? Gazing at myself for a long while in the mirror, I’m utterly confused. One half of me wants to play dress-up with the fun new breasts, the other half is exhausted and wants her old flat, anonymous life back.
You don’t sport knockers like these if you don’t want attention.
The same weird Englishman’s voice says to me, “What ’ave ya got to lose?”
I spin around
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