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“Yeah. That place over on Dufferin had another pop-up.” Koko pulls a bright yellow beaded gown from the rack and holds it up. “I think most of the stuff came from that Law & Order spin-off they were filming downtown all last year, but they had some cute dresses.” She turns the gown so the light makes the beading shimmer. “Fifteen bucks for this. I couldn’t resist.” She hooks the hanger back onto the rack.
“Are you just getting home from work?” She glances at the gold vintage Cartier on her left hand. It’s another one of her secondhand finds. According to last week’s sidewalk conversation, she thrifted the watch from an impromptu garage sale she happened across on her walk to work last month for forty dollars. Even from the upside-down angle, I can see that the time reads almost six.
I nod and resist the urge to slide my arm back through my strap, so it once again sits ergonomically on my back, relieving the weight of my laptop and notebooks.
“Yes. Long day.” I look past her, toward the painted yellow door next to her store that leads up to my second-floor apartment—home to my sweatpants, my incredibly comfortable couch, and my premium subscription Netflix account.
“You look like you could use a drink or three,” she says. “I’m closing up in an hour or so. What are you up to later? You should come out.” She says it more like a statement than a question. “My friend Lucien knows this guy who is bartending at this great new place in Ossington. He says the cocktails are a little gaudy, but that’s kind of the norm these days.”
I smile as if I know about the norm these days. “That sounds really great; I’m just not a drinker.” Or a stay-out-past-nine-thirty-er or socialize-with-strangers-unless-I-absolutely-have-to-er.
She continues to smile at me.
We have been doing this delicate sidewalk dance for three months or so, since she opened her thrift store below my apartment, replacing the dry cleaner, who I highly suspect was using the place as a front to launder money, seeing as he only seemed to be open on Tuesdays and every other Sunday. Our conversations have slowly progressed from deliberate eye contact to casual “heys” to a friendly level of chitchat. The last few weeks she has started to invite me to things: casual drinks, free concerts in the park, her friend Ramone’s autobiographical one-person show. Although I’ve come to enjoy our impromptu chats, I’m just not sure we’re ready to take things to the next level. “And I actually have a thing tonight.
“It’s a dinner at that big Polish church over on Roncey,” I explain. “They awarded me this scholarship for my PhD. It’s not all that much—just two grand—but they’re having this big awards ceremony tonight for all the recipients. I think they will make us all stand onstage and receive those big cardboard checks. Anyway, I need to be there. Thank you for the offer, though.” I take another step toward my door.
It’s not that I don’t like Koko—I do. It’s just that humans, as a species, typically prefer forming close bonds with similar people. It’s a biological instinct driven by our mammalian brains. Our personal safety is dependent on flocking with herds that are as akin to us as possible, and I cannot imagine anyone describing Koko and me as birds of the same feather.
Koko is effortlessly cool in her two-sizes-too-big carpenter pants and a tiny cropped top that looks like it once lived a double life as an elderly man’s necktie. She has a glossy blue bob, and I have practical penny loafers and the same button-down blouse bought in three colors because it fits my short torso and disproportionately long arms.
We simply don’t match.
Putting all that aside, there’s also the fact that I have less than three months until I’m heading off across the pond to Liverpool to pursue my PhD degree in neuroscience. We would be investing in a relationship that would most likely dwindle to an obligatory sporadic text message every few months.
“What are you wearing?” Koko’s question catches me so off guard that I stare down at my blouse, wondering if I accidentally said that last part out loud.
I pull at the hem. “It’s a hundred percent cotton. The store had a BOGO.”
Koko laughs. “No, not right now. I meant tonight. It sounds like it’s a big deal. Do you have something special that you are planning to wear?”
Again, my eyes fall to my blouse, preferring the previous question to this one. “Uh…I don’t know. Maybe like black slacks and a shirt?” My voice inflects upward as if I’m asking her the question.
She shakes her head in a way that I immediately know I’ve said the wrong thing. It’s confirmed as she grabs my wrist and tugs me inside the store with a roll of her eyes and a “Come on.”
As soon as I’m inside, Koko begins pulling clothes from three different racks, all within arm’s reach.
“I have a few ideas,” she says, tossing me a brightly patterned dress. “The hall will be hot this time of year. Everyone’s turned their air off. You’ll want something that breathes and a jacket for when it gets cold later.”
She’s right about both things. I find a room full of strangers stifling on a good day, let alone the mid-September heat wave we seem to be having. But there is a nice breeze once the sun goes down. It blows right off Lake Ontario, keeping the south end of Toronto a few degrees cooler than the north and thus making a commuting jacket a necessity.
Koko drops another dress into my hands along with a tube of fabric I’m not entirely certain is a skirt or a top. “Pop these on.” She nods toward a tiny dressing room separated from the rest of the store by a pink velvet curtain.
I obey, slipping inside and pulling the curtain closed behind me. I take a second to breathe before I slip out of my blouse and jeans. The dress slides on easily, but there is no mirror inside, so I am forced to pull back the curtain and step back into the store and Koko’s assessing gaze.
“Cute,” she says, addressing the dress and not my socked feet, which I’ve only now realized are two black trouser socks that are noticeably different lengths.
“But maybe try the blue one next.” She shoos me back behind the curtain. “It will bring out those beautiful ocean eyes.”
I do as she says, grateful that, unlike the fabric tube, the blue one is a scooped-neck sundress with puff sleeves, tiny buttons, and, more important, a zipper, which makes it very easy to tell the back from the front.
When I step out again, I can immediately see from the lift of Koko’s eyebrows that she approves.
“What do you think?” She turns me toward the three-way mirror and watches me appraise my reflection. The dress’s cinched waist gives the illusion of curves where they otherwise don’t exist, and the periwinkle does seem to bring the blue out in my eyes. I lift my arm to glance at the price tag. It’s eighty dollars. I wince, knowing I would think twice about buying a dress like this new, let alone used.
“It’s vintage,” Koko says as if reading my thoughts. “And it’s my treat.” She turns my shoulders and steers me back toward the changing room. “It’s my way of saying thank you for not calling the cops last weekend. We were way later than I said we’d be.”
I am pretty certain she’s referring to the party she held last Saturday in the store. It was her friend Ramone’s birthday. The music thumped up through my floorboards until after three. Koko had invited me to that one, too. Instead, I put in my earplugs.
