I said.
I started alone toward the break room, where there was a folding table and a charry old coffeemaker—we’d been told never to bring a customer to the break room—but it seemed lawsuit-worthy, not to mention very mean, to abandon a customer with a head injury.
“Come with me,” I said. “We’ll get you some ice.”
The girl stood woozily, though it’s possible she always stood that way—her body was a bad bit of engineering, her legs pick-thin and double-jointed, her large breasts seemingly transplanted from another girl.
“I don’t need ice,” said the girl. She held out her hand. “I’m Alwyn,” she said.
I glanced at her HELLO LYDIA nametag.
She unbuttoned her coat to reveal a mussy cardigan underneath, to which was affixed a HELLO ALWYN sticker. While Lydia wrote her name in architecturally precise caps, Alwyn’s script looped around like a piece of dropped string.
“I’m Julia,” I said.
I located the stain remover in the cupboard above the coffeemaker.
“Dry cleaners will scold you for pretreating a stain,” Alwyn said, “but thirty-five percent of stains can be positively impacted by pretreatment.”
“You know a lot about stains,” I observed as Alwyn, seated at the folding table, sprayed my dress.
“I’m the daughter of a textile magnate,” she said. “When I wasyoung I thought that meant he was a man to whom fabrics would gravitate and stick.”
“Are you in town on textile business?” I asked. This, of course, would explain why she had entered the showroom.
“I’m here for a conference,” she said.
The conference was being held at a hotel I hadn’t heard of called the Regnor.
“There,” she said, finishing with my dress. “Let’s do the carpet.”
She stood up. She sat back down.
“Dizzy,” she said.
My cell phone rang. It was the Belgian-Iraqi woman.
She said she’d heard there’d been a mishap at the Emirates. I confirmed this to be the case. She ordered me to lock the doors.
“But I have a customer right now,” I said.
“Get rid of the customer,” she said. “Take the rest of the day off.”
For what would prove to be the first but not the last time in our relationship, I wondered how to get rid of Alwyn.
“Why don’t I walk you back to your hotel,” I offered.
To replace the coffees she’d spilled, I took her to a Greek café that served hot beverages in Styrofoam cups, the kind with the rims you can’t resist biting.
As I was waiting for her to pay, my cell phone rang again. The Belgian-Iraqi woman, I assumed, checking to make sure I’d locked the showroom doors. I dug around in my bag, trying to distinguish by touch the plastic of my many pill bottles from the plastic of my phone. The plastic of my phone pretended, to the eye, to be stainless steel, and to the touch it did feel slightly colder, though perhaps that was my imagination.
It was not the Belgian-Iraqi woman.
“Hi,” said my father.
“Hi,” I said.
While he said nothing I held the phone a safe few inches from my ear, his audible unease registering to me like a neglected teakettle’s whistle. He and my stepmother Blanche had just arrived from Monmouth, New Hampshire, where I’d grown up, where they still lived. They’d come to Manhattan on the pretense of seeing a ceramics exhibit of a onetime mistress of Duchamp, but their real reason, I knew, was to check on me.
Finally he spoke.
“I’m just making sure we’re still on for dinner,” he said.
“We’re still on,” I said. My poor father acted around me like a guy expecting to be dumped.
I asked him what else he and Blanche had planned during their visit.
“Tomorrow I’m having lunch with a former colleague from South America,” he offered. “He’s in town delivering a paper about the sinkholes in Guatemala City.” My father also specialized in sinkholes, though his area of expertise was a man-made phenomenon called “chemical weathering.”
“The Guatemala City sinks,” my father
I started alone toward the break room, where there was a folding table and a charry old coffeemaker—we’d been told never to bring a customer to the break room—but it seemed lawsuit-worthy, not to mention very mean, to abandon a customer with a head injury.
“Come with me,” I said. “We’ll get you some ice.”
The girl stood woozily, though it’s possible she always stood that way—her body was a bad bit of engineering, her legs pick-thin and double-jointed, her large breasts seemingly transplanted from another girl.
“I don’t need ice,” said the girl. She held out her hand. “I’m Alwyn,” she said.
I glanced at her HELLO LYDIA nametag.
She unbuttoned her coat to reveal a mussy cardigan underneath, to which was affixed a HELLO ALWYN sticker. While Lydia wrote her name in architecturally precise caps, Alwyn’s script looped around like a piece of dropped string.
“I’m Julia,” I said.
I located the stain remover in the cupboard above the coffeemaker.
“Dry cleaners will scold you for pretreating a stain,” Alwyn said, “but thirty-five percent of stains can be positively impacted by pretreatment.”
“You know a lot about stains,” I observed as Alwyn, seated at the folding table, sprayed my dress.
“I’m the daughter of a textile magnate,” she said. “When I wasyoung I thought that meant he was a man to whom fabrics would gravitate and stick.”
“Are you in town on textile business?” I asked. This, of course, would explain why she had entered the showroom.
“I’m here for a conference,” she said.
The conference was being held at a hotel I hadn’t heard of called the Regnor.
“There,” she said, finishing with my dress. “Let’s do the carpet.”
She stood up. She sat back down.
“Dizzy,” she said.
My cell phone rang. It was the Belgian-Iraqi woman.
She said she’d heard there’d been a mishap at the Emirates. I confirmed this to be the case. She ordered me to lock the doors.
“But I have a customer right now,” I said.
“Get rid of the customer,” she said. “Take the rest of the day off.”
For what would prove to be the first but not the last time in our relationship, I wondered how to get rid of Alwyn.
“Why don’t I walk you back to your hotel,” I offered.
To replace the coffees she’d spilled, I took her to a Greek café that served hot beverages in Styrofoam cups, the kind with the rims you can’t resist biting.
As I was waiting for her to pay, my cell phone rang again. The Belgian-Iraqi woman, I assumed, checking to make sure I’d locked the showroom doors. I dug around in my bag, trying to distinguish by touch the plastic of my many pill bottles from the plastic of my phone. The plastic of my phone pretended, to the eye, to be stainless steel, and to the touch it did feel slightly colder, though perhaps that was my imagination.
It was not the Belgian-Iraqi woman.
“Hi,” said my father.
“Hi,” I said.
While he said nothing I held the phone a safe few inches from my ear, his audible unease registering to me like a neglected teakettle’s whistle. He and my stepmother Blanche had just arrived from Monmouth, New Hampshire, where I’d grown up, where they still lived. They’d come to Manhattan on the pretense of seeing a ceramics exhibit of a onetime mistress of Duchamp, but their real reason, I knew, was to check on me.
Finally he spoke.
“I’m just making sure we’re still on for dinner,” he said.
“We’re still on,” I said. My poor father acted around me like a guy expecting to be dumped.
I asked him what else he and Blanche had planned during their visit.
“Tomorrow I’m having lunch with a former colleague from South America,” he offered. “He’s in town delivering a paper about the sinkholes in Guatemala City.” My father also specialized in sinkholes, though his area of expertise was a man-made phenomenon called “chemical weathering.”
“The Guatemala City sinks,” my father
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