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"The Curtain," by Lindsay Hunter
The man behind the counter had urine-yellow nails and a lady’s ring on his pinky, the stone pink and heart-shaped. The band was loose, that stone spinning round and round, and a painful looking knob of knuckle kept it from falling to the floor, where it’d likely be lost forever among the doll’s legs and old magazines and stained postcards and old packets of little-girl undies.
Can I try this on? she asked him. Tried to work up some passion for him—maybe the gray, pubeish hair thatched at his neck? Maybe the thick veins in his arms? The small neglected gut might be good for some pity something or other…but no. And that was fine. Can’t win ‘em all. She held a purple camisole between her thumb and first finger, dangling it. It was sexy because it was lacey and barely strapped, but it smelled like everything else smelled in this place, this second- or third- or hundred-hand shop: car fumes, feet, breath, and if you were lucky a bright choke of air freshener.
You can, the man said. He was working a wad of something behind the sharp lines of his mouth. Gum, or some kind of chew. He had the mouth of a turtle born the year Jesus was, his glasses were scratched into a fog, he was wearing, she could now see, some kind of chopped up blondie of a wig that was too tight and was maybe why he put so much into working that cud in his mouth. Focus on this instead of that. He was a real dumbass, she thought, the words coming to her like old friends.
Dressing room? she nudged.
But she already knew where the dressing room was, knew there were two rooms at the way back of the store, stalls really, one closed off by a white curtain, the other closed off by a curtain dotted with strawberries, both guarded by a stuffed coyote stricken with mange. Thirty-four dollars, marked down from sixty-eight.
Read the rest of this story in Unstuck #3.
"The Curtain," by Lindsay Hunter
The man behind the counter had urine-yellow nails and a lady’s ring on his pinky, the stone pink and heart-shaped. The band was loose, that stone spinning round and round, and a painful looking knob of knuckle kept it from falling to the floor, where it’d likely be lost forever among the doll’s legs and old magazines and stained postcards and old packets of little-girl undies.
Can I try this on? she asked him. Tried to work up some passion for him—maybe the gray, pubeish hair thatched at his neck? Maybe the thick veins in his arms? The small neglected gut might be good for some pity something or other…but no. And that was fine. Can’t win ‘em all. She held a purple camisole between her thumb and first finger, dangling it. It was sexy because it was lacey and barely strapped, but it smelled like everything else smelled in this place, this second- or third- or hundred-hand shop: car fumes, feet, breath, and if you were lucky a bright choke of air freshener.
You can, the man said. He was working a wad of something behind the sharp lines of his mouth. Gum, or some kind of chew. He had the mouth of a turtle born the year Jesus was, his glasses were scratched into a fog, he was wearing, she could now see, some kind of chopped up blondie of a wig that was too tight and was maybe why he put so much into working that cud in his mouth. Focus on this instead of that. He was a real dumbass, she thought, the words coming to her like old friends.
Dressing room? she nudged.
But she already knew where the dressing room was, knew there were two rooms at the way back of the store, stalls really, one closed off by a white curtain, the other closed off by a curtain dotted with strawberries, both guarded by a stuffed coyote stricken with mange. Thirty-four dollars, marked down from sixty-eight.
Read the rest of this story in Unstuck #3.
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