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He watched with pleasure as she admired the cloth, reaching up to stroke
the blue silk. “That’s nice,” Megan said, shrugging her shoulders.
“Good.” Dan strode toward the cashier.
“Wait a minute Dan!” hissed Megan, following him. “I’m not going
to let you buy me lingerie!”
“You like it?”
“Yes, but that’s not the point! I don’t want you to buy it for me!”
“You like it, it’s yours,” he said placing the silk on the counter and
pulling out his wallet.
“Look, I don’ t like it all that much,” Megan said desperately. But
Dan was already signing the check. Megan stalked out of the store,
leaving Dan to follow her.
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * *
“We might as well stay here for the night,” Dan said, pulling into a motel
parking lot. Megan was still not speaking. He got out and came
back with the keys. “Come on, let’s go.”
Megan slammed the car door shut. He gave her the keys to the room.
“I’m just going to grab some stuff for the night. You can go on in,
I’ll be up in a minute.”
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * *
Megan came out of the motel bathroom to find Dan on the floor, surrounded
by all the shopping bags. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Well, when we bought all this stuff, you never tried it on to make sure
it fit. So I thought you should do that now, so we can exchange it
if we have to.”
“Do we have to do it now? It’s the middle of the night.”
“We’re leaving early tomorrow, there won’t be any time. Why don’t
you just go try them on and quit arguing with me?”
Megan grabbed the bags and stormed into the bathroom.
“Make sure you come out here and show them to me,” Dan said, pulling out
his camera bag. “I want to see what they look like on you.”
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * *
The girl stood in the
middle of a dirty room – clothes were strewn all over the floor and the
sagging bed. Fluorescent lights bounced dully off her pale skin and the
blue silk that she wore. Her face was turned away from the camera,
and red hair lay limp against her shoulders, hanging dispiritedly.
Felicia
puts down the picture of the red-haired girl clad in blue silk, and opens
the envelope for another. She sifts through dozens of pictures of
the girl, but she never finds another one where her face is showing.
Just her body hugged by various hues and materials. Felicia picks
up the second, newer envelope and opens it to find a single picture inside.
The girl wears a long white
dress; her hair hangs free to fall down her back in a black shield.
She walks barefoot, holding white slippers in one hand. Dark trees
huddle like chaperones on either side of the path. Their branches meet
overhead. Like a photograph superimposed on its own negative, the
trees themselves form one picture and the light between them forms its
twin. A tunnel with a black wooden colonnade and a roof of gray leaves.
Or shadow-trees of pure sunlight, with bright trunks and a leaf-splintered
ceiling of light. Tombstones hide beyond the trees, peeping out between
them like shy boys standing with their fathers.
“Hey
that looks like grandma’s cemetery,” thinks Felicia, staring hard at the
picture. She is almost certain that it is her long black hair, flying
like a flag in the wind.
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