54. This Woman’s Work #2
When my eyes open again,
I move to the next rack.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
I shove ten hangers aside,
the wire hook screeching across the rod.
“If I ask him to leave work early, he starts talkin’ with his hands—‘Oh, sure, let me just tell the boss I’m callin’ out on a Friday night.
That’ll go over real great when the mortgage is late.
’” Then I do his blue-collar sigh. “‘Christmas party don’t pay the stack’a bills waitin’ on me’—like some forty-five-year-old sole provider of the entire state of Jersey. ”
Celie tips her head back with a cackle.
“Buuuuut…” I slide sideways down the rack. “If I ambush him romantically, in public, wearing a red dress? Yeah, nah, he’s done. Italian men are genetically incapable of saying no to two things: tenderness and a woman in a red dress.”
She follows me. “So basically, you ain’t even thought this through.”
“I don’t have time to think this through.”
“You should make time. You really out here Cinderello-ing a Jersey boy, trying to make him look perfect—”
“He’s already perfect.”
The words leave before I can stop them.
My breath cuts in half, afraid to follow.
Silence steps up next.
I stand paralyzed,
hand frozen on crisp-white cotton.
Celie stands paralyzed.
The male model nearby stands paralyzed. (Probably for completely different model-reasons.)
“Oh no,” Celie clicks her tongue.
“Shut up please,” I sing.
She doesn’t, “You said it naturally.
“You ain’t even fight it.”
“Celie, don’t say it—” I snap.
“You love him.”
A shirt drops from my fingers,
making the hanger swish back and forth,
and I turn slow, demon-like,
until I’m facing her.
She steps back,
spine hitting the mirror behind her.
“Allie, it’s okay,” she says gentle.
“No. Celie. No—”
“Be serious,” she interrupts, trying to make light of it. “I bet the boy’s been in love with you too.”
“Celie, stop!” I all but shout.
She goes silent.
I fall into my spine, the fight leaving me.
“I get it, okay?” I say. “But people don’t fall in love,” I lift my hand to her, then let it fall. “They fall into possession, into expectations, into cages wrapped in all those pretty words.”
Her smile dies away.
I shrug. “It’s the truth. It starts with ‘I adore you’ then ends with ‘Where you goin’?’ ‘cause the second love stops feeling like a high, people start makin’ rules to keep it alive, and I?”
Out of breath, I inhale deep.
“I don’t want that. I don’t trust that.
“You?” I point my chin at her.
“How many times you gotta get hurt?
“Love’s a vampire, Celie. Love's a fuckin' vampire.
People leash it… suck the life out of it ‘til it’s all used up.
Sometimes that takes years… sometimes months, or days, and sometimes not even an hour.
Then after, 'cause there is always an after, something dies in you. Something you'll never get back. And that’s the last thing I want to feel for him, okay?”
My chest’s heaving, and my heart?
She’s dragging a baseball bat across my ribcage, threatening to break out again, willing to go down swinging if she ever has to go through that.
Truth is,
I don’t think love is bad, just ruined.
People cursed it by trying to own it.
Hell, most people don’t even love each other. They love the security of knowing someone’s theirs, then turn into someone they don’t recognize when they’re afraid of losing it.
“You really need help,” she finally says,
with pity, with love.
“No fuckin’ shit.”
I toss a shirt into the pile she’s juggling
and stomp off.
“Allie, c’mon. Where you goin’?”
The song loops again.
My growl comes out harsh. “Tom Ford.”
“You buyin’ him a whole-ass suit?”
“Change this stupid song,” I shout back.
“No wonder models are driven
“in-
“fuckin’-
“sane.”
// 7:26 PM - WEST VILLAGE, NYC //
In the back of a Rolls-Royce, in a Poinsettia-red silk dress, I ride through the city to the Clover, passing concrete towers and hollow alleys, snow tapping against the window’s glass.
With every mile closer to Andrew,
the car turns airless.
I want to heave out the nerves, retch Celie’s words out onto the leather seat, but it’s too late, the car slides up to the curb, the neon green Clover sign buzzing above.
The driver exits and rounds the rear,
opens the door.
“I’ll only be a minute,” I tell him, noticing passersby slowing to ogle the car.
Soon as my heels hit the sidewalk,
I glance down at them.
My ankles are wrapped in liquid champagne—gold that looks poured onto my feet in a single, bubbly stream.
In the story by the Brothers Grimm,
I’m neither Cinderella nor something good. Instead, I’m the stepsisters, hacking off my own toe, slicing away my own heel to make the shoe fit, mutilating myself just to stand in a feeling, a moment I don't deserve.
Now I’m half-frozen, lungs punching out frost, staring down at my feet as I stand on colors of cinder and ash, trying to find a way to take another step without taking my heart with me.
So before I glance up,
my eyes glaze over,
as if a mask’s sliding down my face.
Like stepping into a fairy tale—
Once upon a time, I tell myself,
a girl in red approaches the bar…
The heavy oak door groans open, and for a heartbeat, the winter wind chases her heels as she steps out of the gray winter slush of Manhattan and into an Irish pub dressed in 1920s vintage.
Soon as the door thuds shut behind her, the crowd that was singing “Fairytale of New York” goes deathly still—every head turned, a slow-motion ripple stare as she stands there, red wine wrapped around a torso.
Her dark hair cascades in waves of night-shade, waterfalling around her shoulders, crashing down at her waist.
Oh, how she’s never felt so out of place.
But it happens exactly as she’d write it in one of her songs, with the noise falling away, the crowd dissolving into the shadows, leaving a wide path straight to him.
He’s huddled at the till with another bartender—female, hot, brunette, tall, five-foot-fuck-her—their heads close together as they count bills, her laughing over the roar of The Pogues, her shoulder bumping into his chest.
In that moment,
he doesn’t see her so much as feels her.
His eyes lift off the co-worker, forgetting she exists, and he turns toward Allison, smile severed, leaving his face exposed and aching. The light from the Christmas tree catches the glass in his eyes, his pulse fluttering frantic at the base of his throat.
Allison stands by the door,
knots in her belly.
And all Andrew can do is stare,
his hands hanging useless.
“Who’s that?” his co-worker asks him.
“Angelo mio…” he breathes it out, a private whisper to himself. The corner of his mouth kicks up “…il mio angelo di mezzanotte.”
Before Allison can blink, he’s rounding the bar, entering the floor, slipping through the crowd. The second he touches her, she breaks from the spell—
“Sonny, what the hell you doin’ here?”
His palm coasts down my naked arm,
leaving gooseflesh in his wake
as he looks down at my dress.
“I—” His chest caves.
“I can’t even stand here normal,
“with my heart… and my dick…
“Makes me feel sixteen.”
He smiles and tilts his head,
still can’t look away,
scratches his brow.
“I had words.”
He lifts a shoulder.
“Lost ‘em all.”
He raises his hand next, gesturing at me.
“You’re... everything.”
A small laugh rushes out of him.
He shrugs again.
“You’re everything.”
I fight back the small smile,
not willing to so easily get my hopes up.
He flicks his gaze across the bar, then they’re back on me with stars falling dim in his eyes as if I’m soon to be the best part of someone else’s night.
He brushes back a strand of my hair. “You gonna make me lose my shit tonight, huh?”
“And maybe your job,” I reply,
biting into my lip, hopeful.
His head tips back
with a blushing “Fuck.”
Around us,
the bar’s swaying from side to side,
returning to the chorus,
singing loud and drunk.
I hook my fingers into his pocket and pull him closer until his hips brush mine, and I press my mouth close to his ear.
“Outside, I have a black Phantom waiting, your very own pumpkin carriage…” I drag my nails across his pants at his thigh, inhaling the cologne soaked into his neck.
“A suit in the backseat for you to wear for a magical night… with me—”
I lean back to catch his hooded eyes.
“—at the label's Christmas party.”
He turns his head,
scrapes a hand down his face.
I blink up at him,
smoothing my hand back down his leg.
“Please,” I say lastly. “I could bring Ben, or anyone, really… But I want you by my side.”
He wants to smile, fights it even,