Page 1 of Best Woman
It’s so hotinside the club, the walls are dripping.
I’m not a very good dancer, but tonight isn’t about dancing. I’m on the prowl, but I’m no sexy feline. I’m a bumbling, bipedal animal and evolution has not been kind to me. I watch everyone around me pair off in twos and threes—the first orgy on Noah’s ark, after the flood.
Suddenly, like light breaking over the horizon, I see her. She stands alone, nursing a drink long turned to ice, leaning against the sticky wall in jeans and a black tank top. Her messy mullet is meant to look effortless, like she took a pair of shears to it herself, but I’m guessing it’s the work of the lesbian-run salon in Williamsburg that specializes in sapphic shags.
I bob and weave through the heaving mass of bodies, mumble something loud enough, charming enough, to catch her attention. We join the other dancers. Her arms are strong where they wrap around my waist, and her hair is slick with sweat that drips into our eyes as we kiss.
In no time at all, we’re shoved inside a bathroom stall, furiously making out, hands in each other’s hair. I don’t know hername, but I don’t need to. She doesn’t know mine either. She doesn’t know anything about me.
After, when I’m back out in the sea of bodies, I don’t feel any different than before. My feet are beginning to hurt from these shoes. Just another night, another party, another nameless stranger. Another train ride home alone.
Better luck next time.
There are nomalls in New York City. As a recovering mall goth, I find this sad. Malls are my favorite kind of liminal space, a portal to a bygone era that smells like Auntie Anne’s cinnamon pretzels and credit card debt.
On occasion, a woman finds herself in need of a garment so special in its mundanity, so particular in its ubiquitousness, that it can only be obtained in a large, air-conditioned building where one can also buy ill-fitting cargo pants made of microplastics, expensive body lotion that smells like rotten bananas, thigh-high boots that were trendy four years ago, a sleek new laptop, lipstick in one hundred nearly identical shades of mauve, vinyl records that will end up in a landfill when their owner has moved on to a new hobby, and designer perfume. I am a woman who has found herself with this particular need, meaning that after three subway transfers and one sojourn on the Long Island Rail Road, I am at a mall.
The skylights, soft pop music, and power walking seniorcitizens remind me of home. I spent enough of my adolescence in malls to know that they are all fundamentally one shared space stretching across the fabric of reality. This mall is my childhood mall, the mall of my ancestors, my children’s mall, etc.
I pass a department store full of middle-aged women returning jeans they’ve already worn twice, a fast fashion chain selling fetish wear to teenagers, and, of course, a Starbucks.
“New phone case?” The pimply teenage salesman stares at my chest, not that he’ll find much there.
“Try our new falafel recipe!” I spit out the overcooked ball of fried chickpeas as soon as the kind-eyed woman who forced them on me is in the distance.
“You’d look gorgeous with some extensions.” The pretty girl running the kiosk probably means that I’d lookbetterwith extensions, as the rain and humidity have both flattened my hair and electrified it with frizz, but alas. I check my boring brown bangs in my phone camera, but they’re beyond repair.
After walking what feels like miles, I finally reach my destination. Born to Bride is tucked away in an older corner of the mall that clearly hasn’t been renovated to keep up with the newer additions. While there are, according to the Born to Bride website, thirty-five locations across the country, this was the only one in New York State. Headless brides clutch plastic flowers in the windows, which seems like a bad marketing strategy—how are they supposed to sell veils that way? Do brides still wear veils, or is that outdated?
I text Aiden.Is Rachel wearing a veil?
nahhe replies right away.fuck that purity culture bullshit. she might be doing a flower crown though. very early lana.
I can’t deal with my twenty-seven-year-old heterosexualbrother knowing who Lana Del Rey is, so I drop my phone back in my bag and head inside the store, passing through the archway molded to look like a chuppah—Born to Bride being a chain primarily marketed toward Jewish women—and into a scene straight out ofSay Yes to the Dress,but with uglier dresses. In one corner of the store, a girl with frizzy hair—I raise a mental fist in solidarity—is hissing at a woman who can only be her mother, who is in tears. At the other end, a sales associate bearing a shocking amount of cleavage for a Thursday morning seems to be talking down a woman who can’t zip up the back of her dress.
“I’m sofat,” she wails. “My wedding is insix weeks.” So is mine, incidentally. I thought everyone got married in the spring, but autumn weddings are seemingly de rigueur for East Coast Jews.
“We can try the next size up!” The sales associate’s face is braced for impact. The gaggle of friends circling the bride-to-be starts shaking in fear.
“I willnotwear a size fourteen on the most important day of mylife.” The bride is not quite blushing, more tomato red with rage. She whips out her phone, presses a button, and raises it to her ear. “Hello, I need to make an appointment with Dr. Roth for CoolSculpting next week.” A momentary pause, her face cracking with rage. “I don’tcareif he’s boogie boarding in Corsica, I am getting marriednext month.”
As fun as it would be to watch her meltdown progress, I am on a mission. I shoot a sympathetic glance toward the sales associate and refocus my attention to the register, where a woman around my mother’s age is perched, assessing the space like a large bird. The kind of bird that reminds you birds aredescended from dinosaurs. There are dark, puffy circles under her eyes barely hidden with concealer that’s far too light and far too yellow for her. She has clearly been on her feet far too long today, or this week, or this life. But she plasters on a smile as I approach. According to her name tag, she is Lorraine.
“How can I help you today?”
“I’m attending a wedding next month.” I’m a bit sweaty from my trek through the mall, and it’s warm under the bright lights. Every pearl and scrap of lace glimmers in this overstuffed store. “It’s in Florida, but I called customer service and they said I could come to any location and pick up a dress with the model number.”
Lorraine nods, eyeing my sweaty upper lip. I give her the number and she checks their system. “Yes, we should have it in stock. What size do you need?”
“Well, here’s the thing,” I say. “I need that dress in a fourteen, but I actually need it in a different color.”
She sneers. “The order has no additional color options attached.” Her face smooths into something resembling customer service. “Listen, honey, I know you might not think”—her eyes flick to the screen—“burnt sienna daydreamis your color, but…I’m sure you’ll look lovely.” She’s not really selling the compliment.
“And after all,” she says, clacking away at the keyboard, “it’s not aboutyou,darling. You’re a bridesmaid.”
Big smile. “A groomsperson, actually.”
She nods, eyebrows raised. “I’ll see what I’ve got.”
