On the west end of Pearl St., where the arcade ends and traffic begins, there is a certain bench. Some people have lived in Boulder their entire lives and never noticed it—a hardwood bench made from a single section of tree, halved like a watermelon, the top split again to become legs. They frame the legs of a girl sitting there who thinks I'm looking at her.
I'm not. I'm looking at the bench.
There's no toolbox wizardry here, just all the original wood rearranged, the excavated leg slots become armrests. And she looks so comfortable there, unaware she's being held up without the aid of screws or carpenter's glue. A single slice of tree and man's design, holding her up all by themselves.
I'm waiting in the doorway of the Satin Box. A unique and exotic clothier since 1988 says the sign. But I haven't been in yet. I have no desire to rush in. I'm in doorway limbo, neither come nor gone. The not-yet-arrived can never leave.
This is all I'll ever need. Not Nora, not Elle, not anyone. Just the doorway. Just to contemplate the bench made of nothing but that dead oak tree, nodding to the girls who pass like I'm the owner. Welcome to the Satin Box, my eyes seem to say. We've been selling unique and exotic clothes since 1988.
Inside is a soft woman smell, girls tracing the store with a finger run across the racks, feeling velour and pleather and familiar cotton. Inside is incense ash that clings to the clothes like campfire and I smell Cinnamonstix and Serendipity and the young, young women of Boulder, their heart rates wonderful from jogging a mile above the sea.
"This store looks like Elle," says Nora, appearing at the door from within. She's wearing a smiling Nordic look, red hair and bright eyes like she should be welcoming me to a festival.
"Come on in," she says. Compared to the other girls in their short, bright shirts, Nora is plain and baggy, jeans and a Lacrosse T-shirt.
"La Crosse, Wisconsin?" said the owner of a motel in Scottsbluff.
"Lacrosse, the sport I played in high school," said Nora. But she still got his card. If she needed a place in Boulder she should give him a call. He was in the real estate biz.
I smile remembering that. Redheads always get numbers.
Nora and I have come three thousand miles across America together, her moving to Boulder, and I, a hand with the driving, a hand with the luggage. And now we've come to the Satin Box to buy a birthday present for our friend Elle. Elle—once my friend, once my love, twice my friend—now of the talk ten minutes once a month variety, long distance to New Hampshire.
We all went to school together, on a hill over a lake in upstate New York, in a town called Ithaca. Back then we were quite the threesome, like Charlie's Angels but with a guy. Now they're just two girls who are friends of mine, who will call me every couple weeks with questions about the empty spaces in their lives. And I will doubtlessly try to fill them with advice that always, after enough questions, brings up the original question.
"I think this place'll do," I say.
"Should I be looking, too?" Nora asks. "Maybe I'll just get her a card."
See, things have changed since the college days. Elle and I, and Nora and I—we're great. But something has happened between the two of them. A rift opened, the gap filled with a sudden loss of faith. It's so subtle it probably has nothing to do with words, only chemicals, but put them together and it's palpable—two spayed cats sharing a small room.
But now to the present—mine to buy, mine to give on this day. Now is the time to scour the Satin Box for a bit of Elle in cloth and stitching. My faithful guide with twenty-three years experience in women's wear stands waiting.
"How much do you want to spend?" Nora asks me.
"I dunno, fifteen bucks," I say, giving the store the once over. It's bigger than I thought and all these mirrors on the ceiling make it go up too. "I wouldn't be opposed to spending more if I found something really outrageous."
Nora is holding up a green tank top that ties around the back. I shake my head.
"I know this whole store looks like Elle, but a bag shirt? Come on, I could get that in Ithaca."
We start looking and I find plenty. A nice pair of fake leather pants, and they're her color too, this maroon that's blood dried in the sun. Only thicker, and if such a thing were beautiful. But buying pants for a girl is like finding her an organ for transplant. Even if you know her blood type there's still a good chance her body will reject it.
I find luxurious wrap skirts, which won't matter about size. They carry subtle patterns and a texture that makes me think of terra-cotta. They have labels that say Culture Shop, price tags that say forty dollars.
On the half-price rack I find a knee length skirt of black velvet that has turquoise bells dangling from the trim like sizzles on a ride cymbal. At twenty-four dollars this becomes the frontrunner.
"But she won't be able to wear it in the summer," Nora says. "It'll be too hot."
"You mean she'll be too hot." I say it in a falsetto that's supposed to make fun of fifteen-year-olds who read Seventeen for maturity. "Fine, forget it."
After a thorough excavation of the store—through the wary stares of the front clerk—I find all that's available in my price range are little pieces of fabric with spaghetti straps. I may as well just buy her those glittery stars that stick to your nipples.
"Can I help you with anything?" asks the clerk, who has the face of Kate Hudson if she smoked a pack a day. What she really wants to know is, Why is the only man in the store dallying so long and if he's a pervert he might as well get the hell out before I call the cops.
"I'm just looking," I say. At the clothes.
I collect Nora and say, "Let's try somewhere else. We can always come back."
"We might be back," Nora tells the clerk.
And we might.
* * *
Our next stop is the Tibet Store and every hippie town in America must have a Tibet store. Ithaca did. That store made me uncomfortable too. It's the thought of Mr. Charity coming out of here smiling, thinking he's done his part to end oppression in East Asia by buying a sarong. It makes me taste my lunch a little. Tuscan chicken with rosemary vinaigrette.
As we enter, the man behind the counter looks up from his catalogue to tell us all clothing is ten percent off. His skin is a deep copper and I have the momentary urge to ask him where's he's from and how the Tibet Store works. Where these clothes come from, where the money goes. How does good happen here?
But I'm chicken. Tuscan chicken.
"If you want me to try anything on," Nora says. "I can stand in for Elle. I'll be a fashion double."
They're about the same build and I like the idea of a fashion double. It sounds dangerous. So I pick something out, a low-cut tank-top with a light pattern sewn in over the trim.
"Wow, this is really nice," she says. It's twenty dollars.
"That's a very nice shirt," says the clerk. I didn't notice him watching us. I wonder if anyone else has been in here all day.
"Can I try this on?" Nora asks.
"Between the towels," he says. Where he's pointing four towels make a little room up to her neck. She goes in and I turn around so not to accidentally see anything. Everywhere there are gold Buddhas watching me. On the wall an embroidered rug hangs under a sign. New arrival. Handmade. 400 dollars. Cash only.
It's a good rendition of Krishna, in my opinion. Hard to tell if it's woman or man, adult or child.
Nora steps out from the towel and she's laughing.
"I think you might want to get her something else," she says. The top barely contains her. "It's all kinds of loose."
"Yeah, okay," I say and nod back to the towel room.
"There's a full length mirror over here," calls the clerk. We look over to where the mirror is, right next to the entrance, right in front of him and we're both laughing now.
"We can see just fine, thanks," Nora says from a spot in the very corner of her eyes.
I recognize her laugh from back at a gas station in Sutherland, Nebraska. Some local kids putting oil in their van were all watching Nora work the pump and I thought, the way men watch women—no wonder she's afraid of walking home in the dark. When she went in to pay one of them said, "Hey baby," or something and back in the car she was laughing like she is now.
"I don't think this town has seen redheads before," she said.
As we leave the Tibet Store I hold my hand up to the clerk. Thanks. Maybe Nora thinks he's crass, but I can see he's just trying to be helpful. Poor guy probably hasn't made a sale all day.
* * *
We're back on the street looking in all the windows.
"Maybe you should just get her jewelry," Nora says. "A nice bracelet or even a belt or something."
"Maybe just a T-shirt," I say and turn us into this very hip T-shirt pagoda selling shirts that say Get Me a Beer, Princess and UPS—United Pot Smugglers.
Inside we're surrounded by Seventeen readers and some drum and bass. Nora is sort of laughing at some of the shirts, but it's not her real laugh. The vibe in here is all wrong for buying a birthday present.
The only shirt I see for Elle is one with the Wal-Mart logo, their usual motto replaced with Your Source for Cheap Plastic Shit. If you knew Elle, you'd know she's about the most vocal Wal-Mart opponent there is. She gets in prosecutor mode at the very mention of the place. And when she returned home one summer to find ten acres of the White Mountains replaced with sales space for Ramen and bulk jars of peanut butter, I'm sure she cried.
"They don't have her size," I say. "Anyway, Wal-Mart probably makes this shirt." I toss it back in the bin unfolded, suddenly angry at how you can't even step outside without the world making a hypocrite of you.
Back in the arcade a man in spandex is stretching on a prayer rug near a two-foot square Plexiglas cube. A small crowd is forming.
"Is he going to get in there?" she asks.
I shrug. It doesn't seem humanly possible.
"Do you think Elle would have liked that shirt?" I ask
"She would have gotten a kick out of it." Nora says.
"That's not the same thing," I say. People get a kick out of those plastic soda cans that dance to music. I don't know anybody who likes them.
The gift-giving mood is escaping me, disappearing slowly in this land of thin air.
I need to find the present here. Boulder has made me think of Elle. In the Rockies I see the White Mountains and maybe all those three thousand miles we drove, that was just the thickness of the mirror: Here is negative New Hampshire hot and waterless. Here are white caps dressed up in pine. And if I look hard enough, here in the streets of Boulder will be an Elle, waiting for me in a birthday present.
Just listen to yourself.
Do you even know Elle anymore? Maybe you just get a kick out of creating her.
"This sucks," I say. Nora doesn't hear me. She's busy watching a very flexible man stuffing himself into a painfully small box.
* * *
It's almost dinnertime and we're beat. Gift giver and fashion double take a load off on the edge of a little man-made garden, tulips and an aspen. Through the canyon of the arcade we can see the Flatirons and the tips of the Rockies beyond, white tips like the hoods of ghosts. Nora pulls out two single-serving applesauces from her bag, two plastic spoons that we've used since Iowa. That we've maybe washed once.
In the next garden over a couple is trying to make out in the privacy of rush hour foot traffic.
"I've had the best time on this trip," I say. I'm looking down at the bricks in the street, at where the sun makes tiny stars in the granite. "I mean, we've seen America. We fought. We made up. We've shared everything."
"Even these nasty spoons," she says.
"And what I wanna know is, what's the difference between us and that." I point to the neckers, who are now completely behind closed eyes, completely behind each other's teeth.
"That," she says with her mouth full, her eyebrows arching up.
"Exactly, and we've even slept in the same bed."
"And don't forget about Indiana." She points at me with her spoon.
"We even huddled for warmth in the same tent in freezing Indiana," I say. "As close as boy and girl can be without being related, without tasting teeth—and come on, it's wonderful. Here we are enjoying a simple sugar on a gorgeous afternoon, just two friends telling it like it is. And what I want to know is, when you could have this—why does everyone want that?"
"It looks pretty appetizing from this angle," she says.
I shove her leg. "I'm being serious," I say.
Nora thinks about my question. Stirs her spoon against the plastic. Listens to the quiet rustle of people moving, talking. The brakes on a rusty Blazer. Really thinks about it.
"We just do."
I don't hate that she's right. I just hate how the only answers you get to the big questions are the same ones your mother gave you when you were five. If you were a smart five maybe you figured out there really was a reason, but it was classified. As a five-year-old you were getting stuff on a strictly need-to-know basis.
But here at twenty-three, I really I need to know. And I feel cheated to discover the answer I got at five wasn't a cover up at all. I feel cheated that, had I dared to ask the gold Buddhas of the Tibet Store the meaning of life, they would have surely said, "Cause," and I would have ended up right here, eating applesauce with Nora just as if I never asked them anything at all.
"That's just great." I shake my head. "All I know is I could never have come three thousand miles in a compact car with Elle. I would have analyzed everything. And then it's not even love anymore. It's—I don't know. An investment."
I take a long, cool spoon of apple and smile at her out of the swallow.
"But with you," I say, "when you start getting annoying I can just stop listening."
"That's flattering," she says.
"Did you say something?"
"You're so mean," she says quietly, as if all hope is lost. She'll be sad when I'm in hell, but oh well. Maybe she'll visit. Maybe she can get a day pass.
I scoop out the remains of my snack and hold it up to the sun, which comes through in a glow, like a flashlight in a snow fort.
"You know what," I say. "Applesauce is sexy."
Tired as we are and with blood sugars scraping the ground we start laughing like there's no end to it. Three thousand miles from everything we know, at the feet of mountains so present they can hardly be real.
* * *
As the day wanes we head back to the Satin Box, walking west. That's the great thing about Colorado. You always know in what direction you're headed because of the mountains. And on the plains you really know where you are because there it is—forever in every direction. You can see yourself moving across the flat atlas pages of America and there you are in your lap right where Rand McNally says. You can see the curve of the earth.
As we walk Nora is puzzling something out loud, trying to remember a rhyme from her childhood.
"Yesterday never—" she begins.
"Giving sure drains the brain, eh?" I say. She shshhh's me.
There are people all around us. Backpackers. The homeless. A woman dressed like Queen Victoria. A man in a suit riding a push scooter. I notice how in Boulder, even large crowds are quiet. In Boulder, people must listen.
"Tomorrow's gone—" Nora's saying.
"Is this a John Denver song or something?"
"Wait, I got it. Yesterday's past, tomorrow won't last. Each moment is a gift and that's why it's called the present."
"Good," I say, "cause we're here." The doorway of the Satin Box lending a thin shadow to the sidewalk over which we step.
* * *
Inside I have Nora try on everything I liked. The blood-pants. The satin, black knee skirt. I sit on a poofy couch by the door and try not to look at the girls coming out of the fitting rooms who aren't Nora. At the soft bit of skin that bunches up over the rim of a skirt as she turns to show a friend.
"Cute, very cute," says the friend.
I look up at the ceiling which looks back down at me with mirrors, shows me draped among rugs and curtains like the proprietor of some remaining harem, some gold rush leftover. Nora turns in her booth but doesn't appear.
I close my eyes and look at the back of my eyelids, which are dark and safe and quiet. But I still hear their voices, which are of nowhere in particular, but have breath behind them. How the people must learn to talk in Colorado.
"Cute. Very cute." There's a rustle to it, a wind reaching down to touch the grasses. Just out of curiosity.
"Hey!"
I open my eyes and Nora is coming into the room. She's wearing something green and light. Something that ties in the back.
"That looks great on you," I say.
The other girls agree and so does Kate Hudson behind the counter. They're fawning over her the way girls in a clothing store sometimes do. And it's not so much Nora or the shirt but the beauty inherent. Floating there among us, but which we can never choose to show off. Which always chooses us.
"But wait," I say. "Isn't this the very first thing you picked out?"
"The bag shirt," she says, "from Ithaca."
I smile too, hopelessly. Three thousand miles to buy Elle something she might be making in her room at this very moment.
"Well, we have to get it now." I say. Just look at her.
Nora likes the shirt so much, she might just get one herself and goes to the racks while Kate and I settle up. The clerk is no longer accusing, only happy to be of help and I watch her wrap the shirt, putting in a Satin Box business card so Elle will know her gift is exotic. Since 1988.
"Did you find everything you were looking for?" she asks.
"No," I say. "But this'll do."
I decide to wait for Nora outside and I find my favorite bench, now vacant. It's quite a piece of work, this bench. It could be one of the last natural wonders. From my seat I have a straight shot into the Satin Box and I see Nora and the clerk talking without hearing them. I'm in no hurry and it feels good just to watch them, their hands talking too, putting hair behind ears and making change.
I sit like that for some time, there on the bench with the present beside me. Until slowly Nora begins to leave, exiting into sunlight bright and sharp on the bricks, where the end of the day has begun and all the people walking east are following their shadows home.
322 Review publishes provocative emerging and established artists. Conceived and operated by former Rowan University graduate students of the Master of Arts in Writing Program, 322 Review is aggressively seeking the best fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and mixed media works of visual art.
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