by Devine,Carol
She stared at him, wide-eyed. "Transparent?"
"Very."
Her cheeks pinkened and she stopped arguing. When they returned to the salesladies, she meekly followed the bustling Mrs. Schwartz into the fitting rooms. Zach settled into a chair outside. He'd stay long enough to make sure Sarah was okay, then take off.
Mrs. Schwartz emerged two minutes later with a definite frown on her face. "Come with me, young man."
"What's wrong?" he asked with a sigh. At this rate, he'd be here all day.
"The young lady refuses to cooperate. She won't even answer my questions."
The old biddy sounded so put out, Zach didn't bother to reply. She was beginning to get on his nerves. Maybe Sarah felt the same way.
He followed the helmet of gray hair into the fitting room entrance and halted. Had Sarah felt the same suffocation he did when confronted by the overblown glamour of each thickly carpeted cubicle? Framed gilt floor-length mirrors covered opposing walls and the delicate peach-colored chairs scattered around didn't look as if they could support a cat much less a human being. One louvered door was closed.
Mrs. Schwartz pointed to it, stage whispering. "She says she doesn't believe such clumsily made things can cost so much. She refuses to let me help her try anything until I went to get you. She told me she wants you to see, and I quote, 'How little your money is buying.' Just how many years did she spend overseas, anyway?"
"I'll take care of it," Zach said.
"Please see that you do. I'll be out by the register, guarding the fitting room entrance. I certainly wouldn't want any of our customers coming in here and finding a man."
"No, we certainly wouldn't want that," Zach said, struggling to rein in his temper. He waited until Mrs. Schwartz disappeared from view before knocking on Sarah's door.
"It's me," he said.
"Oh, thank God." He heard her draw the bolt on the door and held it closed before she could open it. The last thing he needed was to see how little he was buying.
"Just tell me what the problem is, Sarah."
"Is the mistress gone?"
The mistress? "Yeah, I think so."
"I have to show you these undergarments and I don't want anyone else to see."
"Well, if that's the case, I don't think you should be showing me, either."
"Yesterday I was wearing less than what I have on right now."
That put an interesting picture inside his head. He knew it would stay inside his head, too, for the rest of the day, every time he looked at her. At night, too, the way things were going. "Sarah, I shouldn't be in here. This dressing room is for women only. Mrs. Schwartz should be helping you, not me."
"I don't like her."
"I'll get the other saleslady, then."
"I don't want anyone else. You told me you could see right through my clothes. So what do you think would happen if I wore this?"
A wispy bra slipped through the louvers and fluttered to the floor. Zach bent to pick it up.
Sarah opened the door, wearing an expression of indignation. She also wore a floor-length flannel robe that hid most of her body, a fact Zach was extremely thankful for. He held up the bra, dangling it by a thin strap. "If you want something a bit more substantial, all you have to do is ask."
"What I want is a corset and a cotton chemise to wear underneath it. When I asked Mrs. Schwartz to bring me one of each, she laughed at me."
"Well, she shouldn't have done that," Zach said, trying to imagine the staid saleslady laughing. The image wouldn't come. Instead he remembered her pinched mouth, full of judgment. "Sarah, listen. I know you're not used to these things." He disentangled the straps from the sheer lace cups and held the bra up. I know this looks strange compared to, uh, a corset. But I think you'll find that this will work just as well as what you're used to."
"Men don't wear these things, do they?"
"No, but I know what I'm talking about," he said, thinking about the wide variety of bras he'd unfastened in his life.
"How?"
"I have a mother and two sisters."
"Sisters? You do?"
"I do."
"You said divorce. It's hard for me to think of you as being part of a regular family. Why don't they live on the ranch?"
"When my parents divorced, my dad got custody of the boys and my mom got custody of the girls. She moved to Florida and I haven't seen her or my sisters since." He pushed the bra back into her hands. "Now, get going, Sarah. I'd like to be out of here before the end of the next century."
She put her hand on top of his, preventing him from closing the door. "Your family was split in two?"
"Believe me, it was better that way." He backed away from the dressing room. "I'll see you out by the cash register when you're finished."
"How many brothers do you have?"
"Two." He reached to close the door.
She caught the door before he could close it. "Their names?"
"Come on, Sarah. We'll talk later, okay? After you're finished."
"Talk to me now while I figure out how to put this on." She held up the bra, trying to fit it against her chest. "Is this right?"
His lascivious thoughts must have shown on his face because she wagged a finger at him.
"I meant for you to talk to me from there," she said, indicating a spindly chair just outside her fitting room.
"I told you. Women only dressing room."
"Why does it matter? You and I are the only ones here."
Precisely the problem, he wanted to say. It would be easy to push his way into the room with her and lock the door, and with the problems she was having, she might just let him. If that was the case, wagging a finger in his face was going to result in him kissing that finger and a whole lot more.
"Please stay, Zach. Talking to you will make me feel less addle pated."
"Addle pated?"
"You can tell, can't you? Everybody can. Everybody can tell just by looking at me how ignorant I am."
"So you've never worn a bra before. That doesn't make you ignorant."
"I don't know how to put them on."
"I'll get the saleslady to help you."
"She'll laugh at me again, especially when I have to ask her how to put these other things on." She held up a stretchy pink thong. "Which way is front? I can't tell. I don't know what I'm doing. Stay with me, Zach. Please."
He eyed the thong, girding himself. "If you promise to keep the door closed and try this stuff on right now, as fast as you can. I'll wait out here."
He pulled the door shut and briefly glanced at the chair before settling on the floor with his back against the wall opposite Sarah's dressing room. He stretched out and crossed his legs at the ankles, noting the feminine bare feet just beyond the pointy toes of his cowboy boots.
His focus sharpened. Her toes, her feet, her calves were all visible under the bottom of the door. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on his point of view, the little louvers on her door were going the wrong way so even at this low angle, he couldn't see her body. But the bottom ten inches of her legs he had a tremendous view of, thank you very much.
"Well?" she asked. She was trying the thong on, lowering it to put one foot in the leg hole, then the other. The thong was pulled up her legs and disappeared.
"Well what?" he asked quickly, watching her feet turn this way and that as though she was checking how the thong looked on her body in the mirror.
"Tell me about your brothers." The thong dropped to the floor. She stepped out of it, picked it up. Black lace appeared next, or more accurately, strings with a mere triangle of fabric. At least it might made it easier for her to tell exactly which was the front part. Her right foot lifted and disappeared along with black lace, then her foot came down and flattened on the plush gray carpet.
"Zach? Are you there?"
"Yes, I'm here." He didn't want to be anywhere else.
"So tell me." Her heels came off the carpet and she went up on her toes, turning around as if s
he were looking at her back. To distract himself, he told himself the soles of her feet looked a whole lot better than they did yesterday. The scratches underneath were healing up nicely. "I want to know their names."
"Names?" Black lace and strings landed on the carpet around her ankles. Names for underwear? There wasn't another name for g-string was there? How did it get that name anyway? Sarah was going to ask, he just knew it.
"You said you had two sisters and two brothers. What are their names?"
Flesh colored granny panties appeared next. It wasn't the reprieve it should have been. They were the exact same color as Sarah's skin. Talk about see-through. Zach leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling, trying to concentrate on what she was talking about. If only he could remember what it was. "Abraham," he said. "First, there's Abraham," he said, trying to think. The ceiling wasn't helping either.
"Then?"
"Uh… Elizabeth." He couldn't stand it anymore. He looked. She was stepping into a pool of ivory satin.
"Then?"
"Joseph. Joe. Except he goes by his middle name. It's from my mother's side of the family."
"Why does he do that?"
"He missed her the most when she left, I guess."
"And your other sister?" Her hands reached down and pulled up the satin. It whisked up her legs, becoming a slip with a creamy lace hem.
"Lacy," he said.
"What kind of name is that?"
The hem settled around the tops of her calves, caressing them. "Margaret," he said. "Her name is Margaret. Goes by Meg. Don't ask me why."
"All biblical."
"Come again?"
"All the names in your family come from the Bible. We do the same."
There was a rustling sound. She must be trying on something higher on her body than the slip. He picked up the thread of the conversation, vowing to keep his mind on asking her some questions, even if it killed him. "We?"
"My people."
"What kind of people?"
"The people of the Community."
"Is that the name of your hometown?"
"It's what we call it. Officially we are known as the Community Order."
"Sounds like a religious cult."
"It's not the same as those I have read about from other places. Children are allowed to go to school beyond the eighth grade if they so choose. We learn how to use technology but only for educational purposes. There is no talk of imminent Armageddon or the stockpiling of many weapons to keep strangers away. Indeed, the Community was founded on principles of harmony, spirituality and simplicity. We live as farmers, sheepherders and cattle ranchers did a hundred years ago.
"You mean like the Amish?"
"Yes, my mother told me of the Old Orders. We, too, live a plain life although only some follow a literal translation of the Bible. Those who founded the Community came from many different traditions. My father told me how, thirty years ago, many young people of his generation chose to return of the ways of the forefathers. The Community was founded to celebrate such a life."
"You mean the Community is not part of an organized religious group?"
"Correct. My father, for example, grew up on a reservation and believed in the concept of a Great Spirit. My mother, on the other hand, was raised in a Christian home and had me baptized in Jesus' name."
"What did you end up believing in?"
"My beliefs combine both, actually. In my mind, the Great Spirit is another name for God, the Creator of us all."
Zach nodded, amazed that with all the religious dogma she spouted, he shared similar beliefs.
The door opened. "Is this really supposed to hang from my shoulders so?"
She wore the satin slip and a matching camisole with the bra in the right place underneath. But the straps were loose and fell down over her slender upper arms. Zach scrambled to his feet. "Not unless you're Madonna."
"Certainly if bras are a modern invention, the Madonna would not have dressed in such a fashion."
"I was talking about a different Madonna," he said, beginning to understand the limits of Sarah's experience. No wonder she acted wise one minute and dumb the next. She had very little knowledge of modern day life. "She's a pop singer."
Her nose wrinkled. "A what kind of singer?"
"A singer whose music is popular. She's a bit more free with her clothes than either you or the Virgin Mary. "There," he said, tightening straps. "How does that feel?"
"Strange. The clothes I sew for myself don't require such adjustments."
"Well, it looks…" He tried not to leer. "Great."
"And one is supposed to wear this under every piece of clothing?"
"At night you can go free. I mean, when you're sleeping, you don't have to wear anything. That is to say…"
"You don't have to be embarrassed, Zach. Women of the Community don't wear their corsets at night, either."
He chuckled, appreciating the irony of having Sarah, dressed in little more than body clinging satin, tell him not to be embarrassed. For the next hour he tightened straps, undid hooks and generally made himself useful while she chattered away like a magpie, careful to keep her modesty but freely soliciting his opinion about the correct fit of everything she wore. It was about time she became more like the women in his world, she said.
He learned she'd grown up an only child and had been home-schooled along with the other children in the Community. When she was fifteen, he father died from a bad fall during the building of a new barn. Her mother had hired a newcomer to the Community, a man named Cal to help with the work. Within a year, she had married him. Sarah claimed she'd never liked him herself but since her mother was sick, she did her best to try. She stayed on under Cal's roof for several years to care for her mother. When her mother died, Sarah left the Community, simple as that, saying she had wanted to see something of how other people in the outside world lived.
Approving of her sense of adventure, Zach took his turn in the long story department, telling her about some of the places he'd visited during the last thirteen years of his life, ever since he'd left home at the age of seventeen.
After they left the dressing room and waited in front of the cash register for Mrs. Schwartz to add up the tally, he timed his best confession for last, launching into a story from childhood about how he used to raid his sisters' panty drawers to make parachutes for his plastic army men.
Mrs. Schwartz looked suitably appalled.
He and Sarah were walking away, shopping bags in hand, when Sarah asked what a parachute was. He described the equipment needed for jumping out of airplanes in such detail she asked if he had ever jumped out of an airplane himself.
"Among other things. There's paragliding, too, basically parachuting from cliffs or bridges or behind speedboats."
"Aren't you scared?" she asked, eyes wide.
"That's half the fun. The adrenaline rush. Living on the edge."
"What is adrenaline rush?"
He ushered her to the main aisle and tried to explain the compulsion that drove him to climb the tallest mountain and sail the stormiest seas, searching for the ultimate adventure. "For now it's Brazil, deep in the last true virgin jungle on earth," he said at the end of his little lecture. "After that, I'll head south as far as I can go, to Antarctica. It's the only continent I haven't been on."
"I know from my geography lessons how cold and inhospitable Antarctica is," she said with a shiver. "Do you get tired of traveling? Do you not want to find a place to call your own and settle down?"
"I like my freedom."
"Freedom from what?"
She really didn't get it. Talking to someone as naïve as Sarah was like talking to his government suppliers in Brazil. In translating English to Portuguese, he had to formulate his thoughts very clearly to communicate effectively. He thought for a moment, struggling to define his philosophy of life in one word.
"Responsibility."
"You have no desire to be responsible?"
"Only for myself
."
"What about your family, your brothers and sisters?"
"My older brother, Bram, has stayed in touch but all I have in common with the rest is the same last name."
"Surely you could create a new family, one of you own choosing. What about marriage and children?"
How typical for a woman like Sarah to think along those lines. "What do I want a wife and children for? They would only get in my way. I like my life just the way it is."
Puzzlement creased her brow. "Are you one of those happy men who don't like closets?"
Happy? Closets? The confusion in her tone was his final clue. Comprehension dawned. Under other circumstances, he might have been offended by the conclusion she'd drawn. But with Sarah, he halted in the middle of the aisle, laughing outright. "You think I'm gay?"
"Yes, that's the word. I've been seeing references to it since I left the Community. I understand it is quite a popular thing nowadays. You've already told me how much you like to be on the cutting blade."
"Edge, Sarah. I think you mean cutting 'edge.'"
"Of course. Edge. How silly of me."
Flustered by her mistake, her cheeks took on a rosier blush than usual. That and the assumption she'd made caused him to decide he needed to set her straight, pun very much intended. He glanced around the store and saw the coast was clear. "I am not gay, Sarah."
"You're not?" she asked, obviously still confused.
"You want to know how I'm absolutely, positively sure?" He looked at her mouth.
She must have had an inkling she was way in over her head because she licked her lips in that nervous way he recognized. "I have a confession to make, Zach."
"Really?"
"Yes. You see, I don't exactly know, in this particular context, what the word gay means. Even when I read about it, it was not explained very well and when I looked it up in the dictionary, the definition didn't make a great deal of sense."
"I bet. Would you like me to give you a clear definition?"
She nodded.
"To understand, you have to stay very still. Promise?"
"Why must I stay still?"
"Because," he said, "I'm going to kiss you like you've never been kissed before."
