Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“I haven’t talked to humans besides my parents in a week.” Amina heard a cough in the background, followed by Dimple’s quick shushing. “Who is that?”

“What? Oh, just Sajeev.”

“Just Sajeev?” Amina started to laugh but then stopped. “Wait a minute. Are you dating Sajeev?”

“Hold on a sec,” Dimple said, clackclackclacking across the gallery floor quickly, and then, from the sound of things, into the bathroom, where she whispered, “Yes.”

“What?”

“It’s not like it’s a big deal.”

“Not a big — are you fucking kidding me? Sajeev Roy? Your mother is going to hold an international press conference!”

“Shh! I’ve been trying not to think about that.” Dimple paused. “I really like him.”

“Really?”

“Is that so surprising?”

“Well … yes .”

“I know.” Dimple sighed. “It’s totally fucking weird. Sometimes when he’s asleep I just stare at him and think, What the hell is he doing in my bed? But then when he wakes up and I don’t know … he’s nice to me. I feel like I don’t have to try so hard with him.”

“Huh,” Amina said, feeling a little nick of jealousy. “Wow.”

“Anyway, do me a favor and don’t tell the others. I just want to enjoy this without everyone, you know.”

“Planning an all-Albuquerque ticker-tape parade?”

Dimple laughed. “Exactly.”

Amina hung up a few moments later and headed back down the white corridor, a little disoriented. Dimple and Sajeev? Was that kind of oppositional attraction possible in anything other than a romantic comedy? She made her way through the food court with its faux hot-air-balloon landscape and back into Macy’s, where she skipped the horrible dresses that had sent her to the pay phone in a panic and stopped at the first set of shirts. She pulled one up, frowning at its twinkly curviness. “Can I help you?” a hen-faced saleslady asked, smoothing her plump waist.

“I need to buy a shirt.”

The woman drew up short in surprise. She recovered quickly. “Is it for a formal event? Gala? Black-tie wedding?”

“No, just a regular old dinner.”

“Oh, great.” She smiled nervously in a way that put Amina at ease. “So let’s get out of the formalwear.”

Twenty paces and a few turns later, they were surrounded by decidedly less ball-worthy clothes. “Anything in particular you’re looking for? A tank top? A button-down?”

“I have no idea.”

“A color, maybe?”

“Something bright.”

“Gotcha.” She moved with surprising deftness for her girth, lifting and plucking shirts from the racks like they were ripe fruit. “You open to yellow?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Most people can’t wear it,” she said, lifting up a sunflower-yellow blouse. “But it’s great for your skin. And green?”

“No green.”

The woman motioned for Amina to follow her back to the dressing room, where she hung the blouses in a tidy row. “Anything else right now?”

“No, thanks. This is great.”

There were reasons that Amina didn’t like to shop, her too long, thin-in-odd-places torso among them. The fuchsia shirt hung on it like a sail. The blue button-down made her look like a high school lesbian. She pulled on the yellow tank top, gasped a little as she looked in the mirror. It worked. She looked healthy, glowing.

“You doing okay in there?”

Amina opened the dressing room door. The saleslady smiled.

“That’s really great.”

“You think?”

“Absolutely. It’s the right color and the right fit. Shows off your neck and arms.”

“Yellow isn’t weird?”

“Not a bit.”

Amina closed the door, turning her back to the mirror and trying to see what she’d look like to Jamie. Minutes later she stood at the register, flushed with an unusual amount of pleasure. Was it a purchase high? Minor-task accomplishment? She took the receipt and folded it.

“Thanks so, so much,” she gushed. “You’ve been really helpful. That was so, you know, easy.”

“Oh, sure.” The woman hesitated before handing her the bag with her shirt. “I’m Mindy.”

“Hey, Mindy, I’m Amina.”

“I know.”

Amina looked at her for a moment before the trapdoor in her brain released. “Holy shit.”

Mindy laughed a little, shifting nervously. Her fingers reached up to straighten her necklace, a small silver cross on a thin chain.

“Hi,” she said, and Amina tried to find some vestige of the girl who seduced Akhil with a joint and cleavage. Was it always this way? Did everyone from high school end up looking like weird facsimiles of other people’s parents?

“This keeps happening,” Amina said.

Mindy nodded. “So you’re back visiting?”

“Yeah. Parents.”

“Oh, nice. I live here. Obviously.” A slight blush rose to her cheeks. “Remember Nick Feets from school?”

Amina didn’t. She nodded.

“We got married a few years ago. We live in the valley.” Mindy took a quick breath. “Yep, three kids, dogs, the whole nine. Our oldest is probably going to start at Mesa next year. They’ve opened a middle school, you know.”

“Wow.” Amina had the distinct feeling she was supposed to say something more. Congratulations? Hallelujah?

“What about you? Last I heard, you and Dimple were in New York or something?”

“Seattle,” Amina said, distracted by that funny, bubbling-up feeling of thought rising from her subconscious. “We moved to Seattle.”

“Oh yeah? You like it?”

“Mostly.”

The girl Akhil lost his virginity to has a hen face and three kids . This was the thought, whole and uncharitable, and with it came the subsequent thought that Akhil himself might have looked old by now, which was so obvious that Amina felt stupid for never having thought of it before. And yet she hadn’t. The tiny corner of her imagination reserved for what-ifs had always brought him back more or less as he was, maybe a little taller, or broadened in the chest and waist, the way boys tended to be after college.

“Oh no,” Mindy said. “You look upset. I didn’t want to upset you. I just thought …” She was really blushing now, red patches blooming on her cheeks and chest like an allergic reaction. “I mean, I didn’t know if you recognized me and were just being nice or something.”

“Oh,” Amina said, backing away from the counter. “No, I didn’t.”

“I mean, it’s a job, you know?”

“Yeah, sure. And you’re really good at it.”

Mindy’s eyes narrowed, and for a split second Amina thought she saw the old Mindy, the one who would shred her with a sentence, but then she just shrugged. “Thanks. Well, we’re having a thirty-three-percent-off-all-red-tag-items starting Wednesday — everything except housewares.”

“Okay.” Amina raised the bag awkwardly in salute and backed away. She walked quickly down the aisle in front of her, taking one turn and then another, racing through the golden-hued jewelry/perfume section until she was finally, thankfully, spat out into the dark cavern of the mall. On one side of her, a few bodies pummeled at unseen forces in a video arcade, and on the other, a collection of massage chairs were entirely empty, save for a lone, undulating salesman. At the farther end of the mall, a shoe store specializing in designer names for less promised relief. Amina walked toward it.

Jamie Anderson was with another woman. Why this should feel so bad was not anything Amina wanted to dwell on, though she was sure that the shower and the shirt and optimistic leg shaving had something to do with it. She stood in the doorway of Jack’s Tavern, her breath lodged in her chest as Jamie smiled at a pretty redhead, the kind of girl who turned playing with her hair into performance art.