Page 26 of Still Me
At this both women’s heads swiveled to me.
“Louisa?” came a muffled voice from inside the cubicle. “Can you come here?”
I knew then who they were talking about. I knew just from looking at their faces.
There was a short silence.
“You do realize this is a nonsmoking venue,” one of the women said pointedly.
“Is it? So sorry.” I stubbed it out in the sink then ran some water over the end.
“You can help me, Louisa? My zipper is stuck.”
They knew. They put two and two together and I saw their faces harden.
I walked past them, knocked twice on the cubicle door, and she let me in.
Agnes was standing in her bra, the tubular yellow dress stalled around her waist.
“What—” she began.
I put my fingers to my lips and gestured silently outside. She lookedover, as if she could see through the door, and pulled a face. I turned her around. The zipper, two-thirds down, was lodged at her waist. I tried it two, three times then pulled my phone from my evening bag and turned on the torch, trying to work out what was stopping it.
“You can fix this?” she whispered.
“I’m trying.”
“You must. I can’t go out like this in front of those women.”
Agnes stood inches from me in a tiny bra, her pale flesh giving off warm waves of expensive perfume. I tried to maneuver around her, squinting at the zipper, but it was impossible. She needed room to take the thing off so I could work on the zipper or I couldn’t do it up. I looked at her and shrugged. She looked briefly anguished.
“I don’t think I can do it in here, Agnes. There’s no room. And I can’t see.”
“I can’t go out like this. They will say I am whore.” Her hands flew to her face, despairing.
The oppressive silence outside told me the women were waiting on our next move. Nobody was even pretending to go to the loo. We were stuck. I stood back and shook my head, thinking. And then it came to me.
“Giant finger,” I whispered.
Her eyes widened.
I gazed at her steadily, and gave a small nod. She frowned, and then her face cleared.
I opened the cubicle door and stood back. Agnes took a breath, straightened her spine, then strolled out past the two women, like a backstage supermodel, the top of the dress around her waist, her bra two delicate triangles that barely obscured the pale breasts underneath. She stopped in the middle of the room and leaned forward so that I could ease the dress carefully over her head. Then she straightened up, now naked except for her two scraps of lace, a study in apparent insouciance. I dared not look at the women’s faces, but as I draped the yellow dress over my arm I heard the dramatic intake of breath, felt the reverberations in the air.
“Well, I—” one began.
“Would you like a sewing kit, ma’am?” The attendant appeared at my side. She worked the little packet open while Agnes sat daintily on the chaise longue, her long pale legs stretched demurely out to the side.
Two more women walked in, and their conversation stopped abruptly at the sight of Agnes in her lingerie. One coughed, and they looked studiedly away from her, stumbling over some new conversational platitude. Agnes rested on the chair, apparently blissfully unaware.
The attendant handed me a pin, and using its point I caught the tiny scrap of thread that had entangled itself, tugging gently until I had freed it and the zipper moved again. “Got it!”
Agnes stood, held the attendant’s proffered hand and stepped elegantly back into the yellow dress, which the two of us raised around her body. When it was in place I pulled the zipper smoothly up until she was clad, every inch of the dress flush against her skin. She smoothed it down around her endless legs.
The attendant proffered a can of hairspray. “Here,” she whispered. “Allow me.” She leaned forward and gave the fastening a quick spray from the can. “That’ll help it stay up.”
I beamed at her.
