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That evening in the pharmacy, she buys soap, razors, shampoo and a cheap bottle of perfume. Mascara in a bright pink tube, a plum-red lipstick, foundation one grade of beige too dark – every item the cheapest she can find. She pays twenty dollars for a day pass at the health club. She asks how much for just a shower. There's no price for that, miss. She washes her hair, once, twice, three times, each strand stiffened with salt and grease. She looks down from time to time. She doesn't recognize the body beneath: feral, bleak. She shaves everything off. She forgot to ask for a towel so she walks around naked, drying herself off. She clips her nails and plucks her eyebrows, brushes her teeth. Two women in their sixties walk past her, catch a glimpse; she is denuded, goosebumped, a chicken with her feathers just off. They stare down sheepishly at her feet. She slips on one of the dresses from the hostel's lost and found. Floral, cheap. She is tall, and this spaghetti-strapped shift for someone shorter; it sits too high on her thighs. In the mirror, she sees what she will look like to others: she is not displeased. Only she knows what is amiss, like a loose tooth at the back of her mouth holding on by just a few threads. From time to time, she touches the fact of it with her tongue.
He is easy enough to spot. He orders a beer before the last one is halfway done. Rich boy, she thinks, hair smoothed back, gold pinky ring nestled in flesh. Prep school, financier, end-of-season loaf. She sits next to him. His teeth are small, his gums inflamed. He is already gone, left the building. She doesn't want money, she tells him, just a house to hole up in, a bed for the night. She takes his hand; she feels the fat pooling at the knuckles. She wonders if he ever takes the ring off, if he can. No, she doesn't do drugs, not that kind. It's a real problem around here, he says, in his newscaster's drone.
He is not a bad guy, she thinks, just a dummy, a clown. The ice clanks against his teeth, the cold sinks through her. She asks him to take his blazer off, to let her wear it. She is chilled to the bone, she tells him, dying of cold. He takes his wallet out the inside pocket, flips it open. Now, he'll show her his sweetheart, she thinks. But he takes out his own college ID and points to the picture: I want you to see what I looked like when I was sober. In the photograph, he is good-looking, slim-faced, jaw pressed proudly out. Now there is one large fold of fat in which his face is propped up. She takes his hand and places it on her lap. She doesn't mind. This is the easy stuff.
She was the one who taught herself to read. B and A makes BA. Everyone asked her, incredulous, How did you do that?
He lists back and falls off his stool, takes her with him. She is lying above him: flotation device, emergency raft. It takes a long time for the patrons to turn their heads, to witness the wreckage. She gets off him and pulls at his hand, but he is heavy, dead weight at the bottom of a slippery rope. He's bleeding, she says, and three big men come to hoist him up.
Such a pretty house, she says, despite herself. It's his parents' house. Large enough so he can lumber up the back stairs without waking them up, a house designed around its blind spots. She remembers a talk she attended when she was in her early twenties. The architecture of estrangement. She had liked the title, but the talk itself had been garbled, a series of simple words at the mercy of impossible sentences.
She doesn't know what she has in mind. One night, negotiated into two. She'll lie down, open up, the nib of a fountain pen split neatly apart. He has regained some strength. He looks over at her on the landing, has forgotten how he got here, who she is. He tells her she ought to go. But then, he lays his hand on her breast and says: Fuck ... well, fuck.
Excerpted from Tides by Sara Freeman. Copyright © 2022 by Sara Freeman. Excerpted by permission of Grove Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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