he could answer, she was gone. She half jogged through the Final Frontier Passage to the Rings of Uranus, the building of condominiums where she lived. It stood fifteen circular stories tall, providing sweeping views for most of its tenants. Natasha often wondered why that was supposed to be a selling point in the middle of Nowhere, Indiana, and generally kept her vertical blinds closed.
She impatiently tapped her foot as the elevator climbed to the thirteenth floor. The only other occupant of the car was a good-looking man in his twenties who was obviously returning from a visit to the workout room. The doors of the elevator slid apart, and the man opened his mouth as if to say something. Natasha shot him a look that said, Don’t bother, loser, when she got out of the car. The man’s mouth snapped shut as if he’d heard her.
She walked into her apartment, slamming the door behind her, then threw the deadbolt and dropped her keys on the table in the small entryway. Moving as quickly as she could, time being of the essence, she undressed as she went to her bedroom. She tossed the discarded clothing on her bed and stopped at the bedside table. She slowly opened the drawer and lifted up a false bottom, removing a tiny key. She looked over her shoulder, as she always did when taking out the key, in spite of knowing how silly it was to be furtive in her own home. She maintained her stealth as she went down the hall to a closed door. She inserted the tiny key into a padlock, slid the lock off, and slipped inside the room, relocking the door behind her. Only then did she feel safe enough to release the breath she’d been holding.
Without taking the time to look around, she quickly applied more makeup and got dressed, finally pinning up her hair and putting on a hat. Only then did she look at herself as objectively as possible in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. One corner of her mouth turned slightly upward.
Good God, she thought, I hardly recognize me. I’m getting better at this all the time.
She left the room and relocked the padlock from the outside. She went back to her bedroom, replaced the key, and found a large pair of sunglasses, which she slid on carefully so they wouldn’t get tangled in the blond extensions that were attached to her hat.
She picked up a paper bag from the counter and tucked it into her dress pocket before walking to the door and looking out the peephole. Slowly, carefully, Natasha opened the door just an inch. She listened for footsteps or voices and heard neither. She darted out the door and ducked into the stairwell, walking down to the ninth floor before slipping into the corridor and taking the elevator.
She continued in the same clandestine fashion to the section of the mall anchored by Kohl’s department store. It wasn’t an area she normally ventured to, given that most of the businesses were discount stores. That was what made it the perfect rendezvous place. She sauntered into a bar located near the entrance to Kohl’s and surveyed the room without removing her sunglasses. She spotted the owner of the gravelly voice sitting at a table not too near the bar in a dark corner.
He was wearing bib overalls and a T-shirt, which had some sort of condiment stain on it. His oily hair was thinning, but was long on the sides and in the back. His long beard undoubtedly doubled as a flytrap when he rode his motorcycle on the highways.
Natasha sat opposite him and brushed back the hair hanging from her hat like any actress working with a prop. “You have it?”
“I said I did when I called, didn’t I?”
“Let me have it,” Natasha demanded.
“First things first. You know that,” the man chastised her. It was annoying to be admonished by one of Hell’s Angels, but she reached into her pocket without argument.
“Here,” she said with disdain, taking the bag from her pocket and pushing it across the table, casually glancing around to make sure no one saw. A ferret-faced man at the bar was looking in their direction, but Natasha dismissed him with contempt. In spite of his cashmere sweater, he looked like a big loser who wouldn’t know his ass from his elbow.
“And here’s to you,” her companion said, pushing a similar bag across the table toward Natasha. When she anxiously started to open the bag, he said, “Are you sure you want to do that here?”
“Huh?” Natasha asked, her hand already inside the bag. She was delirious with anticipation.
“We have enough history that I don’t feel out of line saying that you don’t want to do that here,” he commented.
Natasha caught herself, finally understanding his warning. Without another word, she got up from their table and hurried back to her apartment, her fingers tingling where they clutched the bag in her pocket. Once inside, she retraced her earlier steps, getting the key and letting herself into the locked room. Then she gently placed the hat with attached extensions on the one empty Styrofoam head among many neatly lined up in a row, each wearing wigs of various styles, lengths, and shades of blonde.
Natasha sat in a chair and reached into the bag, touching something wrapped in tissue paper. She pulled it out and gently placed it on her lap. After carefully folding the brown paper bag and putting it on the table in front of her, she gazed expectantly at the clump of tissue, inhaling sharply at the bright colors bleeding through the thin paper.
She barely breathed as she carefully unwrapped the tissue to reveal a tiny patchwork coat in perfect proportion, about four inches long and half as wide, quilted with the love and care of an eighty-seven-year-old Amish woman. It was brilliant in design and color, the stitching perfect, and hemmed just so.
Natasha held it carefully in the palm of one hand, like a little girl who’d found a baby bird on the sidewalk. With the index finger of her free hand, she gently traced the stitching, squirming at the sudden dampness between her legs. She shifted in her chair just a bit, and as her fingernail bumped over the precise stitching, she let out a soft, “Ohhhhhh.”
She fondled and inspected the tiny coat for almost an hour, turning it every which way, hypnotized by the colors and the flawless detail. Finally, she gently put the coat on the tissue paper and set it all on the table so she could reach up to a shelf. She took down a doll that resembled how Barbie might look after she’d stuck her finger in a light socket. The blond hair on the doll was enormous.
Natasha took a tiny blue sequined jacket off the doll and delicately set it on the table, then picked up the patchwork coat. With all the finesse and precision of a surgeon, she slipped the coat onto the doll and admired how perfectly it fit.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. With the tracing fingernail, she brushed a bit of hair from the doll’s face, drawling, “You’re beeeeautifuuuuul…”
She reached over to push a button on a nearby remote, and Dolly Parton’s voice filled the room. Natasha stood to look at the other dolls on the shelf. Dolly in one of her less overwhelming hairstyles, wearing a white satin dress slit all the way up her thigh, with tiny pearl beads on the bodice. Dolly in red, white, and blue sequins, wearing a jaunty cap over her blond shag. Dolly with spiral curls cascading over her black turtleneck sweater, jeans tucked into her black boots. Dolly in a red sequined calico dress, her hair in a beautiful updo. Dolly in shimmering white lace, curls flowing to her waist from a tan cowboy hat. Dolly in a black bustier, garter, and stockings. Dolly in tight, dark denim, wrists weighted with red bracelets, and red earrings peeking out from her blond tresses.
There were more than a hundred in all, and Natasha sighed with contentment as she inventoried her little World of Dollys. She swayed back and forth, crooning to the Dolly in her new coat of many colors, conveying in song that she wished her joy and happiness, but above all that: She would always, always love her.
9
Why the Long Face?
Although Derek’s paychecks were relatively meager in the World of Hunter, he’d earned more in a month than he had during any of his college semesters. He bypassed the mall office of First National Bank, where Hunter had set up an account for him, and went to the mall branch of Indiana State’s credit union. Half an hour later, he emerged with his temporary checks and a new sense of independence. A man on a mission, he resisted the siren calls of Aveda,