Thanks to those who left reviews! I'll try taking this forward a bit. First foray into fanfiction, so a little uncertain what I'm doing, but feeling simpatico with Carol.
I like the hat, I like the hat. She said it to herself twice, in a singsong voice. What the hell was that? The girl couldn't have be more than twenty.
As the elevator began to descend, Carol forced herself to regain her composure. When the doors opened, she felt herself pulled along with the Christmas crowd, a mob that made the atmosphere stifling. All Carol wanted was out.
On the sidewalk beneath the porte-cochere, she signaled the valet. It occurred to Carol that the sunlight, weak in winter, was failing. Should she head across town where she Abby would be meeting friends for drinks?
She realized that she did not want to see Abby. She knew why. Abby would be able to tell.
She couldn't say exactly what it was that Abby would tell by looking at her, but she knew it would be something, and she wasn't ready to have it seen. No, what she needed was a cigarette and a long drive. Alone. Abby could wait until later, once Carol figured out how to keep a certain look off her face.
For now, she could tell, it was still there.
Impatient, she wondered how long the valet would make her wait. She would not smoke on the street. And the wind! Carol reached into her purse for the grey gloves.
The instant her fingers dipped into the satin-lined pocket, she saw the gloves, on the glass countertop. Herself, leaning in to sign the sales slip. The girl's voice in her ear. The ridiculousness of buying Rindy a train. A train! How ever would she explain it to Harge?
Well, she supposed, the gloves and the train would be the price of flirting.
Carol thought of the way the girl had held her gaze, the girl's slight blush when she realized that neither of them had, at the usual moment, looked away. She shook off a shiver, then found herself feeling ridiculous. The girl could not be much older than she had been when she had first met Harge. It felt like a lifetime ago. She could hardly remember being that person. Still, it brought her a smile when she thought of the girl returning her gaze. Twenty, indeed! All in good fun, thought Carol.
The arrival of the car took her from her thoughts.
Well, she though, there had been no real prospect of returning for the gloves. It would have humiliated her, seeming that she had left them as an excuse to return. She slid behind the wheel, then eased the car into the traffic.
On the exit for the tunnel, Carol's mind wandered. What might the girl do with the gloves? She had no doubt the girl would notice Carol had left them. The girl had seemed to notice everything. Carol had her frank, interested gaze from across the store. The purchase had felt entirely fresh.
Carol smiled at the thought of the girl wearing them, then frowned, realizing that they would wind up on a shelf in the Lost & Found. She preferred the idea of the girl wearing them out for the night. She wondered what a girl like that did in the evenings after work. A single girl, working in the City. It had never been an option for Carol. She thought she would not have minded, but she knew that her time sharing the shop with Abby had functioned more as an escape than a livelihood.
It occurred to her that once the divorce was final, she would find out for sure.
They had missed her at Valencio's, Abby had told her. Abby wondered what Carol had got up to.
Nothing much, Carol had said. Christmas shopping.
If you say so, Abby had said. Carol had laughed when she saw that Abby did not believe her.
Later that night, after she had put Rindy to bed, Carol thought of the girl again, while she waited for her bath to fill. It's Carol, darling, not Mrs. Aird, she could hear herself saying. And what it would be like to—
She had shaken off the thought. It wouldn't do to use another human being for a thrill. Not like that. The girl hadn't asked for that.
Carol knew well enough what it felt like to be touched without being seen.
She wondered, though, what it was that had so captured her attention. If not the eyes, the body, lithe and pert? She had missed those years, in a fashion. Everything had centered, then, on being presentable for some eligible young man and preparing herself for later. Always later, always for someone else. Never for herself.
Carol slid into the bath. It occurred to her that, until recently, she had not even known what her own body felt, or what it could want. Had it not been for Abby, she might have gone on not knowing. It infuriated her that she could not just love Abby. It would have been so much easier. That had been part of the problem, of course.
Carol recalled for a moment the sudden thrill of realizing that she need only return Abby's gaze and not, as usual, look away. She had known it the moment she had recognized that Abby already knew what she was. Carol would not have to cross that line. Abby had already crossed it for her. Carol had simply chosen not to know it.
But that same directness, that absence of mystery and challenge, had let Carol fully explore the contours of that desire very quickly. She had found Abby without dimension. No places to get lost, no complexities stubborn enough to match her own. If she had wanted safe, easy, and predictable, she could have had plenty of that with Harge.
Carol's gaze took in the bathroom's marbled surfaces and gold fixtures, the unmistakable trappings of privilege. She knew she had been privileged, too, to be sent away to school and never to have to worry about work or money. Her mind floated back to the girl. The girl, she knew, would have to worry about money and … a boyfriend? Still, she felt a twinge of envy. Surely an income of one's own made it more possible to know one's own desires or, at least, to live more freely.