SEAMS
by Sarah Gelvin—
The mannequins that decorated The Chart were so realistic that the first time Jenna went there, she offered to buy one of them another gin and tonic. Having had several gin and tonics herself, Jenna failed to identify the object in the mannequin’s hand as a scented candle. The Chart was a private bar run by a woman who designed wedding cakes for celebrities. For this reason, the bar’s interior was painted to look like an elaborate cake, all pastel yellows and blues, with stripes and bows that appeared to have been made with a pastry bag the size of a car. Jenna sometimes rested her hands on the bows, and felt disappointed when they didn’t melt.
The clientele were similarly delicate and ornate. Having seen them outside The Chart, Jenna knew that when getting dressed, they considered the appearance of wherever they were going to spend the evening. Patrons of The Chart were only required to dress “formally,” but most opted for pastel leisure suits, tiered dresses, layers of ribbons and plastic jewels. To be on the dance floor when it was crowded was like being in a dessert case in which all the pastries were drunk and making out. The music was so loud that nobody attempted much communication beyond complimenting each other’s outfits. Jenna regularly received such compliments.
Jenna could spend hours getting dressed. She frequently spent entire Sundays shopping, but rarely bought anything, because she only shopped in vintage stores and only bought men’s clothing. In six full days of shopping, she would usually find one thing she liked. The best thing she had ever found was a wool coat from World War II, which had once belonged to a very small naval officer. The buyers i the antique shop where she found it had somehow overlooked a sixty-year-old blood stain on the lining near the shoulder.
Once Jenna was putting laundry away and dropped a vest next to a tie that was on the floor. It was as if the shades of red and blue in the tie had been contained in a balloon that was punctured when the vest touched it. She bent over the fabric until her neck hurt, staring. She felt like she used to when she was a kid, leaning back in her chair until she was balanced on only two of its legs. Sometimes when she got an outfit just right, it felt like that.
She built a railing all the way around her bedroom and hung every article of clothing she owned from it, organized by color. She liked to lay in bed and follow the gradation of color around and around. Sometimes it looked perfect, but sometimes the spectrum looked wrong and she would stare for a long time, then move something. Usually she moved it back.
She could tell when she liked girls because when they were asleep in her bed, they seemed to fit into her storage system. It had nothing to do with their appearances. Jenna knew this because once she went out with a girl she met at The Chart whose hair was exactly the same shade of reddish brown as the wool coat hanging above her side of the bed, but to Jenna she looked like a fire hose spraying bleach onto every garment she owned. Most of them made her feel this way.
Once Jenna was coming home from a cocktail party late at night and invited one of the prostitutes who worked on the street over to her apartment. The woman wasn’t old, but her skin looked like an older woman’s. She had enormous breasts that seemed to rest on top of, rather than inside her shiny blue robin’s egg-blue dress.
“What are you, like fifteen?” the woman said as she ran her hand down the front of Jenna’s silk vest. Her name was Andrea. When she set her bag on the bedside table it gaped open, exposing the handle of a gun. Andrea thought Jenna’s heartbeat was accelerating from excitement, and this assumption was only false for a moment. Jenna thought Andrea’s soft, hairless body smelled like the mall, and that she looked good in her bed. Sometimes, somebody did.
An hour later, alone in her apartment, Jenna stood in front of the mirror, naked except for the naval officer’s jacket. She felt attractive in it, she wondered if Andrea thought she looked good, as she had said, or if it was weird for her to find a woman’s body under the guy’s clothes. She took off the jacket and spread it on the bed. There was something so orderly about it, the rows of gold buttons on the dark blue fabric, the embroidered stars on the sleeves. But she didn’t like these as much as the bloody lining. Or perhaps she liked them because of it. The sight of the blood of a man who no longer existed, as an irregular blotch, soaked into the neat seams of the jacket’s lining made her feel like she was on a swing—that feeling in her stomach as she dropped toward the ground.
Jenna was wearing the jacket the night she saw a woman pour human ashes into a bowl of punch at The Chart. Outside the bathrooms, there were a couple of secluded rooms with armchairs, candy and fruit punch on tables. The rooms were designed for sitting and talking, though the noise from the dance floor made conversation nearly impossible. The woman didn’t see Jenna fixing her tie in the bathroom. The woman had an empty bottle of champagne in one hand and a carved brass urn in the other. She had to set down the champagne bottle to steady herself. She seemed not to realize it was empty. Squinting, she opened the urn and poured all of its contents into the punch bowl. The bowl was large enough so that the ashes looked like fruit juice sediment when they collected o the bottom. The woman put the urn back into her purse and made her way down the hall.
“Uh, hey!” Jenna yelled after her. “Hey!”
The woman didn’t hear her and quickly disappeared on the dance floor. Jenna stood in the dim red light of the bathroom for a moment before approaching the punch bowl. The punch looked the same as it had before, except for one floating white speck. Jenna fished it out with a ladle. Its porous surface looked like a meteorite. Something tickled Jenna’s face and she noticed sweat was running out of her hair. She refilled her glass with the ladle and took a sip.
