Don’t Apologize (1000 Pictures),” Otherwise
“New York,” Snow Patrol
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
Red lips.
Smooth skin.
Perfume.
These are tricks a lot of women know. Men like silky hair and clinging dresses, high heels and gartered stockings like the ones she wears now. In her twenties Stella had taught herself how to be sexy for a man; it wasn’t until she was older that she discovered it was so much better to be sexy for herself.
Her feet whisper on the cool industrial tiles as she tips her scarlet-soled pumps into the bin and pushes it along the rollers toward the X-ray machine. Next, her bag, which she affectionately calls the TARDIS. Like the traveling police-box time machine from her son’s favorite TV show, Stella’s bag is bigger on the inside. It can hold a weekend’s worth of everything a woman needs to make herself beautiful, plus a book in case she doesn’t find anyone worth being beautiful for.
Her coat goes next. She’d prefer to keep it on, but even if they let her through the scanner with it, the buckle will set off the alarm. Then again, so will the clips on her garters, probably. At this point, Stella knows most of the TSA agents who work at the Harrisburg International Airport by name. They still have to pat her down, of course, but by now it’s become sort of a game for them and for her.
“Hi, Pete.” She doesn’t miss the way his gaze dips to her seam-stockinged toes and lingers on her calves when she turns to add her cell phone to a second bin before pushing that one through behind the first. She can’t see him do it, but she’s sure he takes a good, long look at her ass too.
This is good.
It doesn’t matter that Pete is at least her father’s age and wears a walrus mustache. Or that he’s married with kids and grandkids whose pictures he proudly displays on his phone. Or even that the gum he chews constantly can’t cover up the pervasive odor of bad breath. It doesn’t matter that she will never take Pete home and fuck him.
It only matters that she could, if she wanted to. If she tried hard enough. If she let him stand a little too close, breathe a little too hard, if she shifted just the right way so the slit in her dress parted just enough to give him a glimpse of her bare thighs.
Stella is pretty sure Pete thinks she’s a relatively expensive call girl, or at the very least some rich man’s mistress. It’s the clothes, hair, the manicured nails. It’s the shoes. There’s
