line of smoke with a familiar smell rising from her mouth and floating into the air.
He creeps toward her. With every step, more and more of her comes into focus. The lines around her legs begin to sharpen. She is wearing fishnet stockings and red T-strap heels. Her hair is jet black like his, but hers seems to absorb light, not reflect it, and her head is like a storm cloud, all heavy and moody and maybe dangerous. A green robe hangs around her, hastily tied and partially covering her black satin one-piece. She crosses her left leg over her right, and a row of green sequins around the tops of her thighs catches a wayward beam of light.
When she turns to look at him his stomach lurches. Instantly, he is aware of the toothpaste stains on his shirt, his mismatched socks, even the tiny hole over the baby toe on his right shoe. She is everything beautiful that he has ever imagined, more beautiful than Lana Turner or Rita Hayworth or even the stars in the night sky. This woman stands before him, breathing and shifting, more real than any actress or far-off constellation, as real as his own mother, but so, so much more dazzling. She would never pin up her hair without looking in a mirror or wear her husband’s old corduroys rolled up to her knees because they’re still too good to throw away. For a second, he sees his mother in that same green and black outfit, but he realizes she would still be the mother he has always known, just squeezed into clothes she has no business wearing. A familiar surge of disappointment rolls through his chest.
He imagines running down the alley and resting his cheek against the smooth satin barely covering this woman’s body; he is sure her muscles won’t give, that there will be no extra rolls padding her belly. But he stands motionless, hoping that he will somehow melt into the grime and slick of the alley and that this perfect creature—so powdered, so fleshy—will not see him and the telltale signs of his unsophisticated life.
She squints through the shifting light, her face hard and suspicious, like she is bracing herself for something unpleasant but predictable: perhaps a stumbling, drunk man, or a woman from the nearby church, maybe even the same one who came into his father’s shop two days earlier clutching a fistful of pamphlets and wearing plain brown shoes. When Danny feels her black-lined eyes travelling over his flushed, hastily washed face, he holds his breath, wondering if she will ignore him, yell at him, or, worst of all, pat him on the head like a puppy and send him on his way.
A pigeon waddles across the alley, stopping to consider a soggy piece of bread.
The beautiful, satiny woman suddenly smiles. Her face softens and she looks, for a moment, like she has just spotted her child in a crowd. Danny lets the air out of his chest and puts a brown hand on his forehead. Somehow, he feels swollen and light at the same time.
“Do you need something, little boy? Are you lost?” Her voice is like gravel crunching under the wheels of a speeding car. Danny feels sorry for her and wonders if the cracking in her voice is from sobbing into a pillow in the dark early morning, the way he once saw a light-haired actress weep in a sad, romantic movie.
“Are those Sweet Caps?” He wants to kick himself for uttering such an ordinary thing to this woman, who is surely a temperamental creature, one who might bristle at questions deemed too mundane for her bejewelled ears. But his words have already fallen like heavy bricks.
“My smokes? You’re far too young to be thinking of putting one of these in your mouth.” She smiles again, runs a painted fingernail across her red lips.
“My dad needs some, but I’ve lost the money. He’ll yell at me unless …”
“Sweetheart, if you need some smokes to keep your dad from dressing you down, by all means.” She reaches into a pocket on her robe and pulls out a full pack. “Here, take them.”
“Thank you,” Danny whispers, darting forward to take the cigarettes from her white, unlined hand. “Miss …?”
“You can call me Miss Val. Although everyone around here knows me as the Siamese Kitten. Funny, isn’t it? Pretending to be Oriental in the middle of Chinatown.”
“Sometimes I think I would rather be someone else,” Danny ventures, tucking