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  I could smell the sweat on her skin from the hot summer day as it rolled down the corner of her forehead, smearing her makeup. She tapped on her right shoulder, so I went back in and loosened the strap, giving it one last pull backward to bring her breast up without creating an indentation on her shoulder. She was a difficult fit, as her breasts morphed into mushed softness once I squeezed them into the cups. After pulling her breasts in from the sides again, I backed away to examine the work.

  “Go ahead and sit down, Gladys,” I said, pulling the dressing room chair out of the corner. “I think the bra fits you just like the other ones. Let’s try your underwear on now.”

  “Oh, honey,” she sighed, gazing into the full-length mirror, her fuchsia lipstick bleeding into the cracks of her wrinkled mouth. “It’s hell getting old.”

  I waited for Gladys’s cue before unhooking the underwear. She sat staring at me, carefully moving her eyes along the edges of my hairline, making me self-conscious about my extra-wide forehead while reminding me that, though there’s ample room for bangs, they do nothing but collect grease.

  “You certainly don’t look like her, honey,” she said, massaging her kneecaps with the palms of her hands. “You know, the actress, Natalie Wood.”

  “I’m Natalee with two Es.” I smiled, moving her stained leather purse away from her feet. “And I have an s on the end of Wood.”

  She continued to stare at me, softly patting her chest with a Kleenex she pulled from her pocket.

  “Well, can you at least swim, honey?”

  A widow, Gladys was erratic, lonely, and, in the most self-preserving way, disturbed. I saw a glimpse of my future self in her, buying vintage jewelry and mixing cocktails in a floral muumuu before the sun went down. She lived in Beverly Hills in the same house she and her late husband, Archie, bought back in the sixties. “It’s my asylum,” she told me just days before. “And with too many memories to sell.”

  Her skin had aged and thinned out, making the dark purple veins in her hands look like implanted IV lines. I could see the sticky aftermath of high-end hair spray sparkle atop her silver-blonde curls under the dressing room lights, making the contrast with my cherry-red hair look like a blazing fire in the mirror.

  “Are you doing okay, Gladys?” I asked.

  “It’s damn hot, and I’m tired today,” she replied, pulling on the elastic waistband of her linen capris. Her mouth shifted out of nothingness into a wide, timid smile. “But I’ve got bourbon and the Wheel of Fortune at home. That Vanna keeps me going! Though I wish she’d get some meat on her bones like you, honey.”

  I laughed, suddenly thinking about Vanna White’s well-preserved breasts compared to my nylon-tits filled with sand. Glancing at myself in the mirror, I held up a pair of ivory-colored underwear while Gladys started to take her bra off.

  “Oh, Jesus.” She snickered, looking at her underpants. “Why haven’t you told me that these damn things look like a pair of swim trunks?”

  I chuckled again, bending down in front of her to help unhook her bra, seeing her nipples, framed with dark curly hairs, disappear into her tummy’s small rolls.

  “Actually, Gladys, do you want to leave your bra on since I’ve adjusted the straps for you?”

  “No, honey,” she replied, standing up from the dressing room chair. “The one I wore in is fine.”

  We stood in silence in the middle of the dressing room as Gladys kicked off her slip-ons and dropped her linen capris to the floor. I stared at her skinny legs and small waist in the mirror, slowly moving my gaze down to the bunions lining the base of her big toes, and then up to the disarrayed gathering of pubic hair making its way out of her underwear’s leg holes.

  “It’s quite a sight, I know,” Gladys joked, following my stare. “Richie can only do so much.”

  “You’re perfect.” I smiled, feeling slightly awkward about being caught eyeing her genital area. But it happened sometimes, considering our close proximity with everyone, making me think about how personal our bodies are, and how quickly they become a topic of discussion in the fitting room—and our culture, from the pedicures to the Brazilians.

  “It’s funny how things change as you get older.” Gladys turned toward the mirror. “It’s both liberating and sad.”

  Liberating and sad? I wondered if my own neglected arrangement was happily liberated or sad.

  “It all leaves you so fast, honey.” Her tone changed. “One day, you’re perky and alive, and then the next day you’re stopping for air with aching knees and tender hip bones. And I’ll tell you something. Our world doesn’t let you forget the clock is ticking, yet we still find ways to escape it.”

  I nodded as she grabbed onto her stomach’s flesh, long-faced and dismayed.

  “You start out desirable and end overlooked,” she added with a sigh.

  I stared at her long breasts in the mirror again, quietly noting a gathering of swarthy age spots.

  “I thought age was just a number,” I said, smiling.

  “Oh, honey.” She exhaled again. “I think that’s just what we like to tell ourselves to soften the blow.”

  Her words penetrated right through what I thought was sustainable in terms of dealing with aging’s unavoidable tricks. Thanks to all the widespread Band-Aids—better known as lifts and tucks and sharp smoothers used to soothe the sting of feeling invisible—women had opportunities to preserve the fallen. Perhaps there was truth in her reasoning, making me question what really feeds our fears as the birthday candles pile up: what we look like, or how we feel?

  “Why don’t you sit back down, Gladys?” I offered, guiding her into the chair. “I’ll help you with the underpants.”

  “Are these size small, honey?” she asked loudly, plopping down on the edge of the chair.

  “Yes,” I replied, taking a second glance at the tag.

  She sat with her hands on my shoulders as I stretched the lace-trimmed holes of the underpants around each foot and then up and over her thighs. Pulling on the price tag with her finger, she softly placed the thick elastic band on top of her sunken belly button, covering up the frayed edges of her own underpants with the new pair I had picked out for her.

  “How are you doing, honey?” she asked, throwing me off guard with the softness of her voice. She was sincere and ready for anything, looking at me with her glossy bug eyes.

  “I’m a little tired myself, Gladys.” I sighed, carefully running my fingers around the lace stitching of her underpants to make sure it wasn’t digging in anywhere. “And this is one hot summer day.”

  “I know,” she replied, standing up again to look at herself in the mirror. I watched as excess skin rippled through the frailty of her short legs. “It’s a goddamn inferno out there.”

  She stood for a second, quiet and consumed, looking into the mirror at her wilted breasts again. “Yours will get here,” she said as she smiled coyly and reached for her old Feather Light. “Especially those,” she added, her smile widening as she pointed to my boobs, perched in their nest, ready to take their descending flight with one quick unhooking of the band.

  “Do you have a boyfriend who gets to enjoy those?” she asked, moving back over to the chair.

  Continuing to laugh at her unwavering candor, I rested my body against the wall. “Nope, I sure don’t.”

  “We need to change that,” she quickly replied, casting her finger into the air as I stood staring at the ground. “What about your family, honey? Are they close by?”

  Fidgeting awkwardly, I moved closer to the bar, feeling unprepared for a conversation about my dead mother. Visions of hospital beds and morphine drips and heart monitors swarmed my brain, offering nothing but unforgiving panic and heavy heartbeats. I was inconsolable and messy, constantly regressing into a complicated torment I couldn’t understand.

  “I moved here from Seattle.” I looked up to find Gladys staring directly at me. “My father and older brothers live there. My mother unfortuna
tely passed away not too long ago.”

  Sensing my fear and reserve, Gladys moved her gaze to the floor.

  I stared at her breasts.

  “Oh, honey.” She began rubbing her kneecap. “This is fresh.”

  My head started to feel lighter as the beating of my heart grew louder. Sweat pooled in my palms, making me feel slippery and exposed.

  “It’s a beast, isn’t it?” she said softly, looking back up at me after her sharp words cut through the dressing room.

  Beast. It was a fair description, I thought as I reflected on the sequence of events. My mom had broken the news a few weeks before my college graduation as I sat in front of my bedroom computer typing my last English paper. Listening to her, I felt the burn of my insides coming together in the pit of my stomach, nearly cutting off my airway. She’d spoken tenderly as I saw waves and stars and fuzzy dots. And then everything went dim. Recounting my mother’s words, I sat blinking to black: stage four colon cancer ... metastasized to the liver and lungs ... going to need a blood transfusion ... and a whole lot of hope.

  “You know what, honey?” Gladys stood up from the chair, staring at my fingers tucked into the palms of my hands. “I think I’m set. I’ll let you know what I think of these big ole britches. In the meantime, I want you to enjoy a few chocolate chip cookies and remember to be good to yourself.”

  I stopped short from her comment before smiling, relieved that the beating in my chest had suddenly stopped scattering its sound up my neck and into my eardrums. I watched as Gladys unfolded her short summer pants and smoothed out the creases.

  “Thank you, Gladys,” I said as I lowered my chin, wondering when I’d see her next. She had such a peaceful strength about her that made me wonder if she was the key holder to all the wisdom one needed to embrace what is—and what will be. Again and again, I felt the weight of the word dead and Gladys’s comment that everything “leaves you so fast,” from the dependence we can have with our ever-changing bodies to the people in our lives. Everything seemed to have an expiration date. Here today, gone tomorrow. And Gladys certainly didn’t hide her fear or frustration because of it, which made me appreciate the realist that she was.

  I was convinced she had life figured out, yet I couldn’t help wondering if her profound takeaways and revelatory aha moments about her aging body, or deep inner peace, happened far later than she expected, when life gave her no other choice. I wondered what became more clear as she got older. Perhaps that was the point, an ironic certainty paired with wisdom’s cheated timeline. But if I had anything to hold onto in that moment, it was an image of Gladys waving a pom-pom and a celebratory bourbon, chanting, “You can do this, you can do this… YOU CAN DO THIS!”

  like a virgin

  “Does he always have to call when I’m the one closest to the phone?” Yvonne snapped, slamming the receiver down in disgust. “He’s such a pervert!” There was truth to Yvonne’s statement, no doubt about it. The same guy called frequently with inquiries on such minutia as how long the strip of cotton was in our thong underwear. “Would you say it’s precisely three inches?” he’d ask, his words quietly coming through the holes against my ear. They were slow and careful and moderately creepy.

  He seemed like a man with exquisite taste, or at least that was the conclusion that Farah and I came to after he asked if some of our delicately sewn French-style bras, priced like a pair of jeans, had “authentic silk” along the edges of the straps or if they substituted their intentions with polyester. And he would always ask if they came in red and black, with his first choice being the latter.

  Farah was convinced he had naturally curly hair, small square teeth, and mimicked the characteristics of a serial killer. He said his name was Harry, and though he never gave me his last name, Farah took the liberty of giving him a last name for all of us, because she was also convinced that there was another part of him that was curled, like his fingers around Mr. You Know What, standing stiffly below his waistline when he felt the urge to call the lingerie department. So we called him Harry Curly.

  Yvonne always tried to handle Harry with as much patience as she could possibly conjure when he called, smiling an uncomfortable smile as she looked around the department for someone to pawn him off to. Yvonne was down to business 99 percent of the time, with the remaining 1 percent dedicated to her husband, whom she called when the department was slow.

  “I got some new ones in four,” Farah said, sighing as she exited the dressing rooms. “She refuses to let me put her in a double-D—keeps rambling on about not being fat and that her doctor swore on the bible that she was getting ‘full Cs.’”

  “Shocker,” our assistant manager, Rachel, mumbled under her breath before going into managerial mode. “Sell her what she wants, and bring her more than what she needs.”

  Farah flashed a fake smile. I knew that Rachel had called her out about flaking on fits and not bringing in enough bras to sell the customer so that the department numbers would continue to increase.

  “I saw you bring a woman back into the dressing rooms holding only two bras, Farah.” Rachel walked off, smiling smugly with an armful of thongs.

  “You think I’ll go to jail?” Farah asked with a straight face, and I knew Rachel’s comment went in one ear and out the other. Her boyfriend, Lorenzo, was picking her up after work for some quality time on Rodeo Drive, and her objectives were clear.

  “Grab the new Wacoal push up.” I laughed, glancing at the phone to see one last blinking red light before Harry hung up. As Yvonne gathered a pile of customer returns on the counter, I watched a young girl make her way around one of the panty tables, meticulously examining their patterns and thin linings. She was conscious of her surroundings, too conscious, like she was prepared to run off at any moment out of embarrassment. Her hair’s golden streaks and dark abandoned roots shone brightly under the department’s blinding lights.

  “Do you need something?” I asked, moving out from behind the counter while staring at the neon bracelets bunched around her wrists.

  “Yeah,” she muttered, lowering her voice as she held four pairs of thongs and a small pile of push-up bras clenched in her hands. “Can I have a fitting room?”

  I smiled, taking her bras and matching thongs. “No problem. I see you’ve done pretty well.”

  Leading her into the room, I watched as she hung her gray zip-up sweatshirt and rainbow-colored bag on a hook. She was quiet yet considerably confident in her pursuit. She watched me organize her bras and panties on the bar adjacent to her sweater, sneaking fast glances at my red cowboy boots. Before I closed the door, I gave her another warm, comforting smile.

  “Thank you,” she said, moving her arms closer to her chest. I spent the next few minutes putting away bras and panties that had accumulated on the counter and in the dressing rooms. It was a monotonous chore, which we were all responsible for throughout our shift, but because the lingerie department had a steady flow of shoppers most of the time, the stray pieces of lingerie quickly turned into tall mounds on the counter and on the table in the back room. I was convinced management tallied our zealous exertions, so in an attempt to score quick brownie points with Rachel before checking back with my young customer, I walked to the front of the department to reorganize one of the disheveled panty tables. As I stepped out onto the walkway to study my tedious undertaking, I knocked a pile of thongs off another table.

  “I got it,” a deep voice said from behind me. I knelt down quickly to pick up the pile of thongs off the cold marble when I met his gaze.

  “Thank you,” I said sheepishly, stunned by the color of his turquoise eyes framed with long, dark, thick lashes.

  We stood up together as he handed me the thongs he had picked up, smiling crookedly from the corner of his mouth. He was tall with broad shoulders and had an inviting jawline that led my awkward stare down his neck, right along the cavernous edging of his Adam’s apple, and then right back up to his slightly messy, dark brown hair.


  “Oh, thank you,” I said again, my face warming up to a comfortable 99 degrees as he nodded, crooked smile still in place, and walked toward the double doors to where the time clocks were. He moved gracefully, loosening his blue checkered tie, leaving me standing in the middle of the walkway with a handful of chonies and warm insides.

  “I saw that,” Rachel said, slyly circling a mannequin.

  “What?” I played stupid, hoping I didn’t look as red as I felt, which would’ve made me Farah’s perfect bull’s-eye if she was near. Though, at that moment, as my face boiled down to its pasty normalcy, I wasn’t too concerned; I wanted to know who it was that had disappeared through the double doors.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” Rachel teased as she walked off smiling, picking up on my sudden intrigue.

  At twenty-five, Rachel lived with her parents in a small house off of Melrose, hoping to find a good Jewish boy who knew how to play house. And as a frequent user of JDate.com, she seemed to be getting closer to matrimonial bliss, because she was going on dates at least four days a week, which we were all proud of because she was actually doing it.

  Dating—the thought alone made my stomach drop. I pictured it being the other way around. I thought my long hours of pretend playtime burping baby while flipping plastic pancakes on my Fisher-Price kitchenette would have elicited a longing to pencil in the other half. But in actuality, I was one of Dr. Phil’s episodes on noncommittal basket cases who fear far more than they should, hindering any possible growth whatsoever.

  “You should try online dating,” Rachel threw out on a daily basis. I’d carefully swallow her words and nod as their repercussion translated into a box of Franzia. I pictured an oversized blimp drifting through the summer sky with the words complicated and looking for ass under my name printed boldly across its side.

  “How are you doing in there?” I asked, peeking through the cracks of the door to make sure I had the right customer.