The Unexpected Waltz by Kim Wright

Author:Kim Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Gallery Books

PAMELA, NEEDLESS TO SAY, owns her gown. It is stunning, heavily stoned, a bright red chiffon with a low back that reaches almost to the dimples of her butt cheeks. The sort of thing a woman wears when she is no longer afraid of being noticed.

“It’s amazing,” I tell her.

She shrugs. Pamela and I have only had one conversation in our entire lives, that night in the Esmerelda’s bathroom when she tried to warn me off Nik. I wonder if she even knows I’m the one who walked in on her that day in the instructor’s lounge. “I’m thinking of getting rid of it,” she says.

“Really?” Quinn says. “I’d take it off your hands, but I’m too fat.”

“It might fit you,” Pamela says. It takes me a second to realize she’s talking to me.

Quinn has Pamela in the chair, putting up her hair, and I walk over to the dress hanging on the door. It’s a Doré, which is one of the best. The price of ball gowns seems ridiculous until you learn how much engineering goes into them and then the price still seems ridiculous, but a little less so. They’re sewn together over a skeleton of girdles and bras so that nothing ever slips, even if the dancer does lifts and splits. Looking inside one of these dresses is like opening the hood of a sports car. You see at once where the money went.

“It’s a professional dress,” Pamela tells me, which, thanks to Quinn, I know means that it’s superconstructed, even by ball gown standards. “I saw someone wearing it last year and pitched such a fit that Bob got it for me for Christmas.” She laughs, a high, tinkly sound like a bell you’d ring for a maid.

“Pamela’s husband,” Quinn says, so many bobby pins in her mouth that I can barely understand her, “owns the shopping center the studio is in.”

“Canterbury Commons is one of his properties,” Pamela says primly, a note of correction in her voice.

“Really?” I say. “That’s very cozy.” And then I lift the hanger off the doorframe and nearly drop the dress. Between the beading and the interior construction, it’s much heavier than I would have figured and I’ve been carrying ball gowns around all morning. If you were to put this dress in the corner, it would probably be able to stand there a minute on its own.

“It weighs sixteen pounds,” Pamela says, as if reading my mind. “Do you want to try it on?”

“There isn’t time,” I say, but I hold it up to myself in the mirror and for a second my reflected image gives me pause.

“Red on a blonde is unexpected,” Quinn says. “I’ve never thought about it before, but you two look a little bit alike. You’re both about the same height, I mean. And the hair.”

This is an observation that probably doesn’t please either one of us, but Pamela shifts a little in the chair so that she can see me in the mirror.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.