“Yeah, I might have a skirt.” She rummages around in a bag behind a counter.
“And I have a top!” They toss the clothes to me.
“Put those on, and we’ll go from there,” Lacey says, an encouraging tone in her voice. “You’ll do a heck of a lot better if you look really devastating! Go on, get changed, you can do it!”
“Okay,” I say, but I’m doubtful. I thought all I had to do was serve food and drinks, and now I’ve got to look the part as well. In the bathroom, I lock myself in a stall and pull the top over my head. It’s definitely meant for a girl with smaller breasts than me, because I’m practically busting out of it. But I pull it on and then the skirt as well, which barely covers my ass. When I look in the mirror, my mouth gapes open. My cleavage has never been so on display before. I barely recognize myself, mostly because I can’t see anything but my body.
I hear a knock. “Can I come in?” Lacey yells.
“Sure,” I say, pulling the door open. I make a face at her as she eyes me up and down.
“Damn girl, now we’re talking!” She whistles long and low.
“Are you kidding me? This is incredibly slutty-looking, don’t you think?” I pull the shirt down as it’s threatening to expose my abdomen, but when I sort that out, it’s cleavage for days. I can’t win.
“It’s perfect!” she says, shocked. “You look totally amazing.”
“I guess.” I can feel my face scrunch up in disbelief. I can’t really agree, but she seems really convinced.
“Your tips just went WAY up.” She nods at my reflection in the mirror, clearly satisfied with herself.
“Or my tits did,” I joke, squirming the shirt down again. “Stupid shirt!”
She snorts, and opens the door. “Girls, check out Chastity now.”
The one who lent me this booby trap of a top walks in first and stops in her tracks. “Chastity,” she says. “More like Chas-titty! Very nice!”
I cross my arms over my chest. “Oh man, it’s too much, I can’t do this,” I moan.
“You have to do this!” says the girl. “You look way better in that than I ever did. You can keep it!”
“And you should wear it every day, right Chrissy?” Lacey says slowly, like she’s talking to a child.
“Damn straight. That’s an extra couple hundred dollars a night,” she says. “At least!”
I play with my hair in the mirror, wondering if I can cover up my exposed skin a little more if I wear it down.
“Nah girl, you’re perfect,” Lacey says. Then she looks down and stops. “Except for the shoes.”
“What’s wrong with the shoes? Are you kidding?” I plead. I was trying to look so professional. Who knew professional meant skankville?
“You need something with a little bit higher heel, you know?” Lacey says. “I think I have another pair in my locker.”
/> When she leaves, Chrissy puts her hand on my shoulder. “Didn’t you ever waitress before?” Her voice is sympathetic, but in the kind of way that makes me feel like she thinks I’m a bit slow or something.
“Not really. Honestly, I never needed to work.”
It’s true, when Jeffrey and I were married, his plan was that I’d stay at home, and instead of arguing, I just got right down to baby-making. I think of the little one I was carrying, the bun that I had in the oven, and a spasm of pain goes across my face before I can hide it.
Chrissy catches it, and says, “Don’t worry hon, I’m sure you’ll pick it all up right quick.”
“Thanks,” I say, trying to give her a convincing smile.
But that’s where love leads, eventually, to this kind of pain. The day that we got into that car accident was the day that all my dreams died. In the hospital later, while Jeffrey was in emergency surgery and the doctors were assessing me, I already knew. I knew the baby that we had been anxiously awaiting, building a nursery for, the one we were so excitedly choosing names for, going back and forth, I knew that baby was gone. And it was the deepest pain that I’ve ever felt in my life. More intense than knowing that Jeffrey probably wouldn’t make it through the surgery, and Jeffrey had been my main concern for my whole, albeit short, adult life.
I never felt love for anyone like I did for that little baby. Of course the little one was part of me and part of Jeffrey, and I guess Jeffrey loved at least the idea of him, but he was inside me. He was real to me in a way that he wasn’t real to anyone else, even my husband, his father. I could feel the baby from the inside, and when he moved and turned, it made something inside me sing. And that singing had stopped. Like a bird who had flown away, never to return, or the sound of an old record player skipping over and over again just waiting to be turned off. That was how I felt then—like an empty cage—and I vowed never to go through anything like that again.
I pretend to be fixing my eyeliner in the mirror, but really I’m wiping away a tear that surprised me with its insistence. I’m sure Chrissy would be embarrassed if she knew what I was thinking about. We’ve only just met. So I effect a bright tone to my voice, and exclaim, “Thanks so much for this shirt! I don’t know what I was thinking wearing something so plain.”