In three days you’re supposed to pack up your life, cram it into the back seat of your Ford and drive cross-country to Portland with Margaret, the girl who is sitting on the sidewalk bench next to you, feeding a stray cat a muffin. You have an old high school friend out there who says he can help you get work. But last night, when you called to tell Margaret you'd come by during her break at the coffee shop where she works, all she said was “Okay” and hung up.
“It’s not like we’d have to stay there if we didn’t like it,” you say to her now. “If we’re not happy there we could try somewhere else. Jesus, you could even pick where.”
“I know,” Margaret says, apparently focusing on breaking up what's left of the muffin. You sense it coming. “I just think I need time,” she says finally.
You stare at the rusted fire escape of the old brick building across the street.
“You’ve had eight months," you tell her. "Now we're down to three days.”
She only crumbles some more muffin onto the pavement, where the cat picks at it.
“Margaret, I can’t hold off," you say. "If I wait now, I’ll never leave this place.”
She drops the rest of the muffin and stands up. “We’ll talk about this tonight, I promise. Just walk with me for a while, okay?”
She takes your hand and you stroll in a strange silence for a few blocks, until you stop outside a lingerie shop, where in the display window there’s a mannequin in a vinyl corset. You stare at it, taking in the way it stretches over the faceless plastic woman's body.
“Let’s go in here,” she says, pulling your wrist. Before you know it you feel yourself yanked into the store.
From behind her counter, a young goth chick glances at you, then goes back to her magazine. In the center of the shop there’s a table with different corsets on it. You hold one up the color of burnt orange — like the one in the window, and tell her: “Why don’t you try this on?”
“Really?” she says. “Why?”
After a beat, you say: “Because I want to see you in it. Please let me know when I’m not asking too much from you, Margaret.” You say this a little too loud, you realize, and a couple people browsing in the shop turn to look.
“Don’t you dare embarrass me,” she hisses at you, glancing around. “Or I’ll go back to work right now.”
You remember eight months ago, when you first met Margaret at Kelly's Pub. She asked you if you’d buy her a Guinness. You wound up buying her that and then four tequilas. You heard her tell about the time her brother pushed her off a tree limb when she was six to see if she could fly, and she smashed up her forearm. You told her how when you were small you opened the family parakeet's cage to pet it and it shot out of the cage and through the open kitchen window. That night she took you to the apartment she shared with her mom, and you sat on her floor while she read your life in her tarot cards. You have a pretty boring life, she told you, then giggled. But she didn’t tell you everything she saw in those cards, though. Somehow you could tell.
“So put it on.” You whisper this but people still turn their heads toward you, probably because you’re whispering. You don’t know what it is, but you want her wrapped up in that thing more than ever.
She grabs it and holds it against her chest, examining it, then makes off for the fitting room.
Leaning against the wall, you wait for Margaret to come out.
“What’s the holdup?” you ask.
“Would you please just wait one second? You can’t just slip this on like a sock.”
Two minutes later she sticks her head out the door. “I think I need you,” she tells you.
“Oh?”
“I can’t get this on by myself. It’s a two-person job. I almost separated a shoulder trying.”
You glance at the salesgirl. She’s talking to a stocky shaven-headed guy with face piercings, nodding and smiling.
“Just slip in real fast,” Margaret tells you. “You have to fasten this from behind. I can’t reach to tighten it.”
Before you can think about it, you slip into the tiny room and yank the door shut.
“Okay,” you say, “you have to tell me what to do here.”
She tells you to tug in the laces at the back and weave them through the eyelets.
“How tight should I go?” you say, holding the laces.
“Just keep pulling them,” she instructs you over her shoulder, ”until I tell you they’re snug enough, understand?”
When you first told Margaret about your plan, she told you she would go anywhere with you. She was sick of her job, sick of living with her mother, sick of Florida, sick of all the things you were sick of. You'd been burning to get out, you told her, but was never brave enough to do it. At least not alone. That night, you killed a bottle of Tito’s vodka between you. In the middle of the night, you woke and stumbled to the bathroom, feeling sick. When you plopped back on the bed you shook her and asked her if she really was going. She mumbled something then fell right back asleep, with her mouth open.
You tug the laces. Hard. “Like that?”
“Tighter.”
You start to feel light-headed, dizzy almost. You pull even harder. “How’s that?”
Margaret sucks in a huge breath. “Can't you do better than that?” she says.
You yank those fucking laces as hard as you can.
“Ow! God!” she says.
Your fingers are turning white. It looks like you're cutting her circulation off right beneath her shoulder blades. Only after a few seconds, you loosen your grip.
“Okay, that’s good,” she manages to say. “Now lace it all the way up.”
When you’ve laced the strings through all the eyelets you fasten it at the top. She looks in the mirror. “What do you think?” she asks you.
You look over her shoulder, at her reflection. “Can you breathe?”
“No. I love it!”
You tell her you're not feeling so hot and you should probably slip back out of the changing room, but you don’t make a move.
You watch Margaret as she continues to admire herself in the full-length mirror. She cups her breasts and turns right, then left. In that burnt orange thing squeezing her white skin she looks like a piece of fruit going bad.
Then she spins around. “You have to get this for me,” she says. “This can be my present.” She throws her arms around you, something Margaret rarely does spontaneously.
“What present?”
“My early birthday present.”
“Right. Margaret, this thing is over a hundred bucks,” you say, slipping underneath her embrace. “We kind of need the money right now. You know, for other stuff.”
She turns back to the mirror. Her face tightens. “You know, it was your idea for me to try this on. It wasn’t mine.” She stands there, arms folded. Her back is straight and tense. “It was your idea.”
Your mouth feels dry. You fixate on the silver knob of the fitting room door.
Margaret turns her head slightly but keeps her back to you. “Unlace me,” she says finally.
That evening you sit on the floor at her mother’s apartment, drinking beer. She is wearing sweats and no make-up and chain-smoking.
“I’ve already quit my job, you know,” you tell her, after taking a swig.
“What do you want me to say to that? I’m sorry? Well, I’m sorry, then.”
“Much obliged.”
“Listen," she says. "I thought I could just run off like that, but I can’t. It’s you, but I realize now it’s just not me.”
The stagnant smoke starts to make you queasy. Or something does. “Am I crazy or did you tell me different a couple nights ago?”
“I’ve packed and unpacked three times since then, I swear. It was still hazy, I guess.”
“Pretty clear now, huh?” Then you fire this off: “Is it that you don’t want to leave here or you don’t want to leave here with me?”
She just stares at her toes.
“Margaret.”
Her voice is steady. “You can talk to me like this if you want, if it makes you feel whatever you have to feel toward me. But remember, there’s still nothing tying you down here.” She looks at you. “You know that.”
You try a deep breath, but somehow it backfires. It feels like your vital organs are getting crushed beneath the heavy smoke of a house fire. You catch a glimpse of your reflection in her wall mirror — your skin is starting to feel clammy and your face is a sickly, orange-white. Dizziness.
You try to stand up but Margaret grabs your head in her hands and kisses your forehead, then your ear. She nods over at the corset you bought for her- — it’s leaning upright on a chair, the laces dangling freely over the seat. “You know, if you stick around, I’ll wear that for you.”
You push her away and get to your feet, putting both hands on her coffee table for balance. You tell her that you need air. That you need to step out.
“Are you staying over? My mother’s at her boyfriend’s tonight.”
In three loping steps you're at the door and you yank it open.
Night has fallen. You parked across the street from Margaret’s apartment, and through the darkness you spy something on the hood of your old Ford — a large black shape. As soon as you take a step it jerks its head to look at you, revealing its shiny eyes.
Suddenly you feel something grab you from behind. Margaret has her arms wrapped completely around you in an awkward hug, pinning your elbows to your sides.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “For my present.”
With this, she squeezes you even harder. But you haven’t taken your eyes off the black shape. Margaret is still holding on to you tightly as you watch it jump off your car and escape into the night.
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This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 2, 2017.