Page 54 of Swiped
Ninety-nine percent.
Maybe a finely-tuned algorithmic output was the new seeing sparkles. Maybe her lizard brain just hadn’t caught up with her coding brain to feel the dopamine rush of a genuine connection delivered on the wings of a hundred data points.
Maybe Thom would actually like her.
Nat looked at herself again in the mirror. She saw a very tired and terrified woman staring back at her, who also desperately needed to go shopping.
* * *
It was a store Nat had walked past many times, but never been brave enough to venture inside. Marked by black-and-white polka dot awnings and a telltale crowd of variably patient male partners waiting outside, Milieu was the best boutique in the city, packed to the gills with everything from the trendiest new denim silhouettes to timeless knits, cocktail dresses, gemstone rings, and almost literally everything in between.
As soon as Nat stood in the entryway, she felt claustrophobic. Circular racks of clothes were jammed with so many hangers that it seemed to defy the laws of physics. Howmuch weight could a metal tripod possibly support? Every inch of wall space was lined with racks of tops, bottoms, and dresses, all arranged by a logic that Nat could not discern but was deeply intimidated by. Women squeezed themselves around the stuffed racks and towering piles of denim and shoeboxes. By their defensive postures and intense focus, Nat got the sense that every woman in the store was locked in battle against each other. She could see that more than a few of them were sweating. A thirty-something in athleisure approached a teeming display of dresses and actually stretched her biceps for mobility, and also maybe violence, before pushing apart the frilly fabrics to clear a browsing space with an audible grunt and a pterodactyl-like screech of the metal hangers.
With rising horror, Nat realized that this was only the downstairs portion of the store.
She scooted toward a rack of what appeared to be regular, cotton long-sleeve tops in a full rainbow of colors — a non-terrifying starting place! Another woman was already flipping through the shirts, snapping the hangers aside with daunting speed as she looked through heavily mascaraed eyes. As Nat reached for a pale blue popover, the woman’s face shot up, and she glared at Nat with distinctly territorial vibes. The woman shifted her oversized tote purse toward Nat, twisting her back to take up more space and hunching over her spot on the rack like a student covering up their test answers. It was the shopping equivalent of a cat hissing.
Nat stepped away and moved to the denim wall. Suddenly, she felt self-conscious of her current leggings and chunky sweater outfit, even though she’d worn it at least once a week for years. Although she had no idea what she wanted to wear on her date with Thom, she was deeply sure that nothing she already owned would be right for it. She couldn’t remember the last time she had bought an outfit for a social event of any kind,let alone for a date. She knew that, as far as bodies went, hers was decently OK-looking, and she could always fall back on the reality that she did, in fact, have breasts. But she’d always relied on her friends to help her pick out clothes, or at the very least, she had simply bought things that she thought had looked good on Sara or Jo.
Now, though, she had to do this alone. Sara had never confirmed an answer on Nat’s offer to help her with rent, and she’d gone to her room by the time Nat emerged from messaging Thom that night. Nat wasn’t eager to rock the boat when it seemed like her friendship with Sara was the one relatively normal thing in her life at the moment, so she hadn’t brought it up again, either. With a pang, she realized that she’d never heard whether Sara had gotten the job at her salon or not. That meant Sara hadn’t bothered to tell her, and also that Nat hadn’t bothered to ask. Both were bad signs. This contest was sucking away her soul . . . which was why she had to win it.
She ran her fingers over a stack of dark jeans that were folded with origami-like precision. She did at least know that jeans were probably not what she should go with for a cute date, but she also figured maybe she could start in her comfort zone and work her way into trying on clothes with patterns and pleats and maybe even ruffles, if those were a thing?
A lanky and lean woman, also in running clothes, strode up beside her at the denim wall. Nat tried to stand taller and make herself appear even larger than her five-foot-eight height.Welcome to the jungle, baby. You’re gonna die if you take my ten percent off, size M, high-waisted flares.
Without so much as a glance at Nat, the runner grabbed a single pair of white, wide-leg crops in one rapid motion and headed toward the staircase. Nat balked. She hadn’t even looked at the stack of off-white crops right next to the white stack, or even glanced at a size tag! And yet this woman had somehowalready found an item and was heading up to take on the next level of this sartorial Tetris?
Nat grabbed the same pair of jeans, no matter that the prospect of white denim terrified her and the pants were three sizes too small for her. If there was some kind of hack going on here, she needed to know what it was. She followed the runner up the paisley-carpeted steps.
Upstairs, there was a long line of about a dozen women waiting for one of the velvet-curtained dressing stalls. All of them heaved colorful piles of clothes to try on, battle-weary expressions drooping under their beachy waves — and yet the runner held a single item as she smacked gum and scrolled blithely on her phone.
What was her secret? Store employees, all in their twenties and in impeccably original combinations of clothing, hairstyles, and makeup, buzzed around the dressing stalls like gorgeous bee-butterfly hybrids.
Nat tapped the tall runner on the shoulder and gestured to the white jeans they were both holding. “Excuse me, um, nice choice!”
The woman blinked clear brown eyes at Nat and then swept them over her from head to toe. “Oh, I’m not gonna buy these.” She smacked her gum. “But I bet they’ll be cute on you!”
Now, Nat simply had to know what was going on. “So, either you enjoy waiting in long and chaotic lines, or you have maybe cracked some kind of code to this place?”
The woman’s face broke into a broad smile. “Oh yeah, you just gotta get the Milieu gals to shop for you,” she said. She held up her white pants. “I grab something, anything, just to get in line for the dressing rooms. Then, once you’re in there, you tell them your sizes and they’ll pull stuff for you.” Her Texan drawl made this foreign concept feel folksy and natural to Nat. Shegestured downstairs. “I don’t have time to sort through all that crap.”
Gratitude flooded Nat. Maybe angels were real?
An attendant in an oversized floral blouse, neon blue overalls, and patent leather Mary Janes buzzed up to Nat.
“What’s your name, hon, and are you shopping for anything special?”
The runner winked at Nat.
Nat smiled at the attendant. “Hey, I’m Nat, and yes, I’m shopping for a date!”
* * *
That night, Nat bumped open the door to her and Sara’s apartment with her hip as she wrangled the large Milieu shopping bag inside. She’d ended up going for a V-neck midi dress with a line of tortoise shell buttons along the side. It was the kind of carefree but curve-hugging shape she’d never even thought to attempt before, and in a soft coral color that was, apparently, in her “seasonal palette.” She had to admit that she’d savored the warm glow of excitement as she’d watched the sales attendant stuff reams of tissue paper around the single item, swaddling it like a three-hundred-dollar organic cotton baby before gingerly slipping it into a bag at least two sizes too big.
Nat had carried it home like a trophy.
For the first time in maybe ever, Sara had beaten her home and sat cross-legged on the couch, eating from a takeout box as she scrolled on her phone. She shot Nat a guilty glance over her raised chopsticks. Nat wasn’t sure what the look was for, but Sara never did have much of a poker face.
