The Showroom

The showroom was so hot that the editors and the buyers and the ex-supermodels soon slumped over in their chairs, like silly putty that starts out stiff then softens over time to show what it really is. And so their crisp layers peeled away, their make-up skidded down their oily cheeks and streamed down their shiny foreheads. Their flat hair curled at the edges and at the top. Soon they turned into what they long attempted to conceal behind expensive makeup and luxurious clothing and leather boots that zipped up to their knees. Finally, the models emerged, each one more pale and more wiry than the last. They marched to the murmuring of a thousand flapping paper fans.

The models wore simple black dresses that appeared too small and too large at the same time, swallowing their perfect, painted toes and obscuring their shiny stilettos. The show was very dramatic. I choked on its suffocating silence, I choked while studying the slow, reverse transformation of one thousand beautiful people. I observed them revert back into their natural states, how gently yet how surreptitiously the heat folded away their smiles and placed them on the floor, near five thousand dollar handbags and two thousand dollar clutches. How quickly the men wore their tight lips and the women their lopsided expressions.