“Does anyone even come in here?”
“Oh yeah, it gets busy! I sell lots of dresses. I pick things out for people and make them feel like I’m making them look good.” She flipped the sign on the door to Open and then walked toward the mirror-covered pillar in the center of the store, staring herself down, smoothing the sides of the dress. Her mirror face was grim and determined, but satisfied. As usual, her makeup was immaculate, though her hair, never very clean, looked wild and slept-on. Somehow this juxtaposition was, on Callie, glamorous. Looking at her made you want to stop washing your own hair. It was easy to see why she sold lots of dresses; being around her made you want to try to look as good as she did, and also somehow made it seem like it might be possible.
“Do it for me, pick me out something.”
“You can’t afford any of this, even with my discount.”
“I have a job! I could get some new clothes.” Having sex had also made her feel pretty. There was no better time to go shopping.
“I get that you’re trying to distract me, but I’ll weasel some intel out of you before we’re done here,” said Callie, circling Laura and looking at her from all angles. “This is what I do: I stare at people like I’m computer-analyzing their unique proportions and going through a mental database of our whole inventory. Then I pick the most expensive thing I think I can get away with, or whatever is going on sale next week.”
“Well, don’t do that with me. Just show me the cutest thing,” said Laura.
“For you? It’s this.” The dress had a halter top that exposed the top of Laura’s back. She liked that it was a light color, so she couldn’t wear it at work; it was a dress for her actual life, not the dim black-clad half-life of the bar. It was perfect for summer and could even be worn under a cardigan in fall. It showed off Laura’s arms and shoulders, where her muscles were well defined from years of both playing and carrying around her guitar. She imagined standing near Dylan and having him reach behind her neck to untie the straps. As soon as she put it on she knew that she would have to buy it, no matter how expensive it turned out to be.
She waited until the flush that rose across her chest subsided and came out of the dressing room to get Callie’s reaction, but Callie was paying attention to an actual customer, so instead she walked around the store, pawing the racks. There was a shelf of “vintage” shoes near the back of the store, which the shop’s owner had found at thrift stores just outside the city, polished slightly, and marked up several hundred percent. They were good finds, though, pretty eighties pumps and barely worn leather sandals. Laura found a pair of heels in her size and slipped them on. They were lipstick pink, which looked good with the off-white dress and her dark hair. Callie’s customer left the store, and she walked back over toward Laura.
“Okay, very nice, but where are you going in that?” she asked. “I mean, how are you going to justify it to yourself?”
“I’m going to wear it onstage,” Laura said, without thinking. Callie nodded approvingly. She rang her up with her staff discount and threw the shoes in for free. “They probably cost the owner a dollar, let’s not sweat it,” she said. “Now, let’s figure out where your band is going to play.”
“I don’t have a band,” Laura said. She went back into the dressing room and started putting her dirty clothes from the night before back on. Callie kept talking to her through the door.
“You should get one. You know, I’ve been thinking about this. No one’s going to book a singer-songwriter, that’s some open-mic-night shit. I can pretend to be in your band till you find someone better. Then we just need a drummer, and maybe someone who can actually play bass, but that can happen later.”
“Pretend to be in my band?” She was still zipping her jeans, but she stuck her head out of the dressing room so that she could see the expression on Callie’s face and try to gauge how serious she was.
“Yeah, like a backup-singer type of situation. We’ve sung together before, remember? In high school.”
Laura came out of the dressing room, avoiding the letdown of the mirror. Without the dress on she was returned to her former self, dirty and puffy around the eyes. “If I’m onstage with you, no one will look at me,” she said.
“Of course they will, you idiot. You’re the one who can actually sing and play. I’m just going to help you get your foot in the door.”
The thought of wedging her foot into that door alone was terrifying, which was why Laura hadn’t made any attempts to do it yet. “Okay, I’ll think about it,” she told Callie. “I got you a croissant, by the way.” The owner didn’t like food in the store, so they ate sitting on the stoop just outside, watching as the sidewalk got more crowded as noon approached and the day properly began.
* * *
The Clips were leaving to go on tour in two weeks. Laura had sex with Dylan whenever she could. At 4:00 a.m., after her shift ended, she’d call to see if he was still up or even take the chance that he wasn’t and just walk to his apartment and buzz. Most of the time, he answered. Then they would stay in his tiny, uncomfortable bed till the middle of the next day, when he would leave to go rehearse and Laura would be back in the non-Dylan part of her life. She was dreading the tour, already imagining how empty she’d feel on the first day, when this part of her life would be all that was left and she would have to figure out something else to care about. A few times, Callie asked her if she was still thinking about the idea of a band, but she didn’t press it. Laura was, of course, but somehow it didn’t seem as important as thinking about Dylan.
The day before Dylan left, he invited Laura to meet him at a recording studio in Bushwick where he was supposed to be finishing up some alternate takes of songs the band was going to put on their next album. He told her to bring her guitar so that he could hear her songs for the first time.
The first part of the trip, the walk from her apartment to the J at Delancey, was blissful. Laura loved crossing Houston and looking west at the giant sky over the low buildings, feeling small but fast and purposeful as she marched in a mass of people across the intersection. Her guitar case bumped against her back rhythmically as she walked, reminding her over and over of the purpose of her trip. And the elevated subway journey into Brooklyn was beautiful, too, the same giant sky over the receding city. When she disembarked and walked down the dirty staircase to Broadway, Laura started to feel nervous. She craved contact with Dylan but also felt shy about singing and playing music in front of him. For a moment as she loped down Broadway, attracting stares with her guitar, she found herself unable to quite remember his face, or what his speaking voice sounded like. But, she knew, sex would immediately put everything back in order. If they couldn’t have sex at the studio they could at least make out. It had been days, and it would be the last time for a while.
She was passing a Dunkin’ Donuts that seemed reassuring in this alien neighborhood, so she went in. Her whole body was buzzing with adrenaline, but it still seemed like a good idea to get a cup of coffee. She got a limp, weird bagel with toothpaste-texture cream cheese, too, because even though she was too nervous to be hungry, she wasn’t sure when she was going to get to eat again and she didn’t want her stomach to make weird noises in front of Dylan.