making his noxious point, whatever it was (You bring shame upon this family?), and Mrs. Alexander, apparently objecting (I’ve given my life to this family?); she watched as he became belligerent (You should be ashamed?) and she grew sarcastic (Right, because you’re such a good man?), their voices competing with the radio (THOU SHALT NOT?), and reaching an unreasonable level of drama. Miss Adele strained to separate the sounds into words she might google later. If only there was an app that translated the arguments of strangers! A lot of people would buy that app. Miss Adele had read in The Times that a person could make eight hundred grand off such an app—just for having the idea for the app. (And Miss Adele had always considered herself a person of many ideas, really a very creative person who happened never to have quite found her medium; a person who, in more recent years, had often wondered whether finally the world and technology had caught up with precisely the kind of creative talents she had long possessed, although they had been serially and tragically neglected, first by her parents—who had wanted twin boy preachers—and later by her teachers, who saw her only as an isolated black child in Bible college, a sole Egyptian among the Israelites; and finally in New York, where her gifts had taken second place to her cheekbones and her ass.) You want to know what Miss Adele would do with eight hundred grand? She’d buy a studio down in Battery Park, and do nothing all day but watch the helicopters fly over the water. (And if you think Miss Adele couldn’t find a studio in Battery Park for eight hundred grand you’re crazy. If she had any genius at all, it was for real estate.)
Sweating with effort and anxiety, Miss Adele got stuck at her middle section, which had become, somehow, Devin’s middle section. Her fingers fumbled with the heavy-duty eyes and hooks. She found she was breathing heavily. ABOMINATION, yelled the radio. Get it out of my store! cried the man, in all likelihood. Have mercy! pleaded the woman, basically. That thirty percent of extra Devin-schlub had replicated itself exactly around her own once-lovely waist. No matter how she pulled she simply could not contain it. So much effort! She could hear herself making odd noises, grunts almost.
“Hey, you okay in there?”
“First doesn’t work. Trying the second.”
“No, don’t do that. Wait. Wendy, get in there.”
In a second the girl was in front of her, and as close as anybody had been to Miss Adele’s bare body in a long time. Without a word, a little hand reached out for the corset, took hold of one side of it and, with surprising strength, pulled it toward the other end until both sides met. The girl nodded, and this was Miss Adele’s cue to hook the thing together while the girl squatted like a weightlifter and took a series of short, fierce breaths. Outside of the curtain, the argument had resumed.
“Breathe,” said the girl.
“They always talk to each other like that?” asked Miss Adele.
The girl looked up, uncomprehending.
“Okay now?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
The girl ducked out. Miss Adele examined her new silhouette. It was as good as it was going to get. She turned to the side and frowned at three days of chest stubble. In winter certain grooming habits became hard to keep up. She pulled her shirt over her head to see the clothed effect from the opposite angle and, in the transition, got a fresh view of the husband, still berating Mrs. Alexander, though now in a violent whisper. At the same moment, he seemed to become aware of being observed and looked up at Miss Adele—not as far as her eyes, but tracing, from the neck down, the contours of her body. RIGHTEOUSNESS, cried the radio, RIGHTEOUSNESS AND RAGE! Miss Adele felt like a nail being hammered into the floor. She grabbed the curtain and yanked it shut. She heard the husband end the conversation abruptly—as had been her own father’s way—not with reason or persuasion, but sheer volume. Above the door to the emporium, the little bell rang.
“Molly! So good to see you! How’re the kids? I’m just with a customer!” Mrs. Alexander’s long, pale fingers curled round the hem of the velvet. “May I?”
Miss Adele opened the curtain.
“Oh, it’s good! See, you got shape now.”
Miss Adele shrugged, dangerously close to tears: “It works.”
“Good. Marcus said it would work. He can spot a corset size