31_days | [OCTOBER 5] [ORIGINAL] THAT OLD DYE

Title: That Old Dye
Day/Theme: October 5, 'Over-educated'
Series: Original
Rating: T

She is a nervy young woman in a sandy suit with smooth hair. She opens the door to the motel room, pale desert sun coming in behind her. There is a neat rim of sweat under each armpit, showing through her cream silk-style blouse, though not her jacket itself. Her nylons end half way up her thighs, held in place with thick clammy bands of elastic. When she takes them off, it is as though she has been branded, from a distance. She has little silver studs in her ears, blonde hair held crisp by hairspray reaching to just above her shoulders. In the heat, it is curling and streaking a little around her temples, the tops of her ears. She holds a camel-coloured handbag in front of her with both hands.

She wears wide dark sunglasses like insect eyes and her shoes are red patent leather.

“Hello, Grace,” she says to the girl on the bed.

The girl crosses her legs in her daisy dukes and mouths her gum. She does not bat an eyelid, although she could have sworn that today she was Theresa. Plenty of the clients have a fancy for convent-school names.

The motel room smells of old sunlight and bleach; the bed is still made, its sheet-corners tucked tight. Over the bed there is a reproduction of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, although the yellow has faded to the kind of greenish Prussian blue one finds bleeding out across the glaze from the painting on willow-pattern plates. Dust motes swirl through the slats of light sliced out by the blinds. There is water on the bedside table in a blue glass, an unlit lamp. There is a Bible in the drawer, certain passages underlined in red ink.

The woman by the door swallows, shifts her grip tighter on the handle of her handbag. She’s one of those whose neck is all vein and tendon, a bundle of twitching stuff as strange to see so clearly as an arm-thick twist of multicoloured electrical wiring, visible behind a gap in plywood wall-panels. Scrawny. If the girl were ever to say it, her accent would wring the word out like a chicken for the pot. Scraaaawny.

“Hi there, cutie,” says the girl. Grace. “How may I help you, ma’am?” She pauses, gauges the effect. Shopgirl, this time. Not a whole lot. She sighs, softly, takes out her gum. Wedges it carefully into place at the top of the bedstead, in the middle, a little lump of chemical blue. It must have been a novelty version; her mouth is dark inside with the dye.

The woman crosses the five steps to the bed, stands with her heels together, perches the briefcase on one starched corner and clicks it open. She takes out a thin wodge of documents, red markers sticking out like strips of wrong-colour bubblegum. She looks sideways at the girls, under her sunglasses. Takes them off, pinches the sweat off the bridge of her nose. Lays them down inside the briefcase, says something about how long she's been waiting. How fortunate she was to find the girl's employer, how helpful he was. Well, yeah. The woman sounds like someone announcing the names of hymns in church. She begins reading.

The girl picks it up at once, bounces up to sit cross-legged and yes-teacher, eyes wide and guileless. It is odd that the woman is reading an account of an adoption, but not that odd. The girl feels the old dye turning sour on the back of her tongue, the edge of hunger, the roll and whisper of her long blonde hair down her back, sticking in the sweat.

“And it was this child who was adopted by Mr and Mrs Penson of Hummingbird Drive, Little Dark Trees, Illinois.” The woman pauses, looks across at the girl, her mouth making small quirking movements, and a car drives into the parking lot below them. Somewhere, a fan is rattling. She opens her mouth, about to speak.

The girl may not have been listening very closely, not closely enough to catch names, but she’s good at her job because she knows a cue when she sees one. Good enough that she won’t let a crummy motel room and a client like a stringy old bank clerk put her off her game. She’ll bring an apple for teacher, all right. She licks her blue-stained lips.

“Oh, wait, Miss, I know this one!”