Page 47 of The Drifter

"Come here," he said. "Or don't. Either's fine."

I didn't come there.

I stood right where I was with the shirt in my hand and my arms wanting very badly to do something with themselves. I felt my face go hot, and I hated it.

"I'm not—" I stopped. Started over. "It isn't about you."

"I didn't think it was."

"I don't have a problem with my body."

"All right."

"I don't." My chin came up. "I like my body. I've made peace with my body. I have looked at this body in a mirror, and it and I have an understanding. It’s not shame, if that's what you're⁠—"

"It isn't," he said.

And it wasn't. That's the maddening part. He wasn't arguing with me. He was sitting up in my bed with his hands loose and letting me stand there and take myself apart out loud. The more room he gave me, the faster I unraveled.

"Then what?” I asked.

He thought about it.

That's what he does. He takes a question and turns it over like a stone and looks at the underside of it before he hands it back. It makes me want to scream, and it makes me want to lie down on the floor.

"I've been watching you two days," he said. "You put something on every time it gets close."

"That's not⁠—"

"The blouse." He lifted a finger off his knee. "Behind that desk, the pink one, ironed to death. That's not a shirt. That's a uniform."

"It is a uniform."

"And the voice."

I went quiet.

"You've got two," he said. "You've got the one you used on me at the counter, and it's beautiful, and there's not a seam showing in it anywhere. And then you've got the one that came out of you in that hallway when you were talking about the boiler, and the one that came out in the lobby this morning when Otis got you going, and the one that came out this afternoon in this bed. Which is your real one, and you don't use it in that building. I don't think you use it much anywhere."

I stood there with his shirt hanging off my fingers.

"So, no," he said. "I don't want that shirt on you. Not because I want to look at you naked, though I do, and I'd be a liar to say different. Because that shirt is a uniform, too. And you were about to put it on to walk ten feet in your own house."

The room was very quiet.

Outside, the water was going about its business. A boat went by somewhere with its motor low.

"I don't know how to be looked at," I said.

It came out of me flat and plain. I didn’t decorate it. It landed in that room like a plate hitting a floor.

He didn't say anything.

"That's the whole thing," I said. "That's it. I'm not ashamed and I'm not modest and I'm not shy. I have been useful my entire life. Every room I have ever walked into, I walked into with something in my hands. A key. A folio. A towel. A tray. There is always something between me and the person looking at me, and it’s always something I’m doing for them, and that's the⁠—"

My voice cracked and I stopped.

"There's nothing in my hands," I said.