Between her lessons, she’d tell me about her time spent in the OSS—how she first took up with the Old Boys’ Club, how she’d managed to survive it. She told me about the person she’d been—a poor kid from Pittsburgh—and all the people she’d become since: a zookeeper’s assistant, the second cousin of the Duchess of Aosta, an appraiser of Tang Dynasty porcelain, the heiress to the Wrigley’s gum empire, a receptionist. “They got less creative over time,” she said.
“Who do they want me to become?” I asked.
“That’s not for me to decide, honey.”
* * *
Sally had gone on a trip. She didn’t tell me where she was going, and when I inquired, she just said “Overseas.”
“Yeah, but where overseas?” I asked.
“Overseas overseas.”
She couldn’t tell me where she was going, but promised she’d call when she returned. That week dragged on, and when she finally did call, Mama answered. I hissed her away from the receiver as soon as I heard her say “Sally? I don’t know of any Sally.”
Sally skipped the small talk and immediately invited me to a Halloween party. Up to that point, all our contact had been work-related, so the invite caught me off guard. Plus, Halloween had passed. “But Halloween was last week,” I said.
“It’s actually a post-Halloween party.”
When I told her I didn’t have a costume, she said she’d take care of everything. We made plans to meet at a secondhand bookstore in Dupont and go from there.
* * *
—
The bookshop was narrow, with long shelves arranged not by author or genre, but by topic: Spiritualism & the Occult, Flora & Fauna, Elder Issues, Nautical Tales, Mythology & Folklore, Freud, Trains & Railways, Southwestern Photography. The first to arrive, I walked the aisles, looking for the paperback section. “Excuse me, where are the novels?” I asked the bohemian-looking man behind the counter, who pointed toward the back of the store without looking up from his book.
“Do you have the time?”
He looked as if I’d asked him to explain Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. “I don’t wear a watch.”
To spite him, I asked if he’d open the case of rare books for me. The man sighed. He closed his book, stubbed out his cigarette, and slid off his stool. Before he fished out the key from his pocket, he asked if I was really going to buy something.
“How do I know before I see it?”
“What is it you want to see?”
I panned the shelf and said the first thing I saw: The Light of Egypt.
“One or two?”
“What?”
“Volume. One or two?”
“Two,” I said. “Of course.”
“Of course.”
Convinced Sally wasn’t going to show, I rambled on about my love for archaeology and the pyramids and hieroglyphics as he went to put on his white gloves to handle the book.
Finally Sally came in, holding two shopping bags. The bookseller slapped his white gloves to his thigh. “Sally,” he said. She presented both cheeks for a kiss. “Where have you been, darling?”
“Here and there,” she said, her eyes directed toward me. “I see you already met my friend.”
“Of course,” he said, his voice taking on a warmer hue. “She has excellent taste.”
“Would I associate with anyone who didn’t?” She held up the shopping bags. “Can we use the little girls’ room?”
He bowed with his hands folded in front of him. It took everything in me not to roll my eyes.
“Thanks, love,” she said. I trailed her into the back room. “Lafitte’s such a pill,” she said as soon as we closed the bathroom door, which doubled as a janitor’s closet.
“Lafitte?”
“Not his real name. He’s from Cleveland, but lets people think he’s from Paris. The type who goes on vacation and comes back with an accent, you know?”
I nodded as if I understood.
“But I still love this place,” Sally continued, handing me one of the shopping bags. “One of my favorite places in this artistically impaired city. Wanna know a secret?”
“Yes.”
“My dream is to open a bookshop of my own someday.”
It was hard to picture Sally sitting behind a counter, her head buried in a book, and I wanted to know more about this person who wouldn’t look out of place on a Hollywood red carpet but dreamed of running a bookstore. I wanted to dig into that space between the contradictions.
She placed her shopping bag on the back of the commode and turned around. “Do you mind?” She brushed her red curls away from her neck and I took hold of the zipper, trying to gently ease it down. It didn’t budge. She took a deep breath. “Try now.” The zipper came down and she stepped out of the dress in one motion, not catching her heels on the fabric. She was wearing a black slip, her body an exaggerated version of my own. But I wasn’t jealous in the way other girls in my old high school gym class had made me feel. Their bodies had been something to measure against—we’d disrobe and quickly calculate who had the largest breasts, whose stomach jiggled, whose legs bowed out. Seeing Sally wasn’t like that; it was something different altogether. I wanted another look, but focused on my own undressing. She handed me a shopping bag.
Inside was a bundle of metallic fabric. “What is it?”
“You’ll see.”
I stepped into the jumpsuit and zipped it up. She handed me a headband with two fuzzy brown triangles glued to the top. Looking in the mirror, I started laughing.
“Wait!” she said, and reached into her bag. “The finishing touch.” She carefully pinned a red CCCP patch over my heart.
“I wanted to use a fishbowl as the helmet, but I couldn’t figure out how to drill holes in it so we wouldn’t suffocate.”
“You made this yourself?”
“I’m pretty handy.” She joined me at the mirror, pulling a compact out of her purse and dabbing the shine off her nose. “You can be Laika if you want. I’ll be one of the nameless dogs who perished among the stars.”
* * *
—
Music spilled from the four-story Victorian row house off Logan Square. It was one of those grand D.C. homes I’d walked by a thousand times but had never been inside—with its iron-railed steps and front-facing bay window, its red bricks and sage-green witch’s hat turret. The windows were open but the curtains drawn, and I could see the silhouettes of people dancing: people I didn’t know and who didn’t know me, people who might think me a bore or not notice me at all. The palms of my hands tingled. Sally must’ve sensed my apprehension. She straightened my fuzzy ears and told me what a gas the party would be now that I was arriving.