Dolores’s life has taken a turn, according to some. It is Dolores’s own opinion that Dolores is undergoing a sort of enlightenment, a spiritual awakening, or a private avant-garde understanding of how to be a successful human in the modern world, or whatever. Dolores no longer wants to feel sad or happy, and so Dolores looks toward an even mental gray devoid of any leaning toward any particular way or thing. This grey has always been within Dolores, Dolores knows, but Dolores has only recently been able to escape Dolores’s embarrassment regarding Dolores’s grayness because Dolores has learned from past experiences that people shy away from such things. Dolores’s decision is not a black and white change, of course, with a defined beginning or end. Dolores does not wake up one morning and change from black to grey or white to gray. Dolores is sort of grey then all gray.
It can almost be felt, this greyness, inside the building with the thermostat set just so its workers fuss their sleeves up and down their arms as they crack their knuckles and check the armpits of their shirts for sweat stains, unsure about whether or not having both sleeves rolled up or buttoned down is allowed by office regulation. Outside, Dolores wears one sleeve up and one sleeve down and feels calm and smooth like a dolphin. Sometimes Dolores nearly smiles.
Dolores’s realization that Dolores can assume a sort of invincibility if only Dolores is willing to desire nothing more than exactly what Dolores already has is alluring, then calming. Like a lingering scent familiar from childhood in the wake of an attractive stranger walking past. Like cool, shaded concrete. Dolores feels safe. Armored.
Instead of making sure the bike that carries Dolores from place to place during this particular time in Dolores’s life is locked to a rack, Dolores sells the bike and other things and uses the money to buy a nice hat, then a plane ticket. Dolores gives Dolores’s bike lock to a bike-rider and seems to half-smile. One person with two bike locks.
Dolores finds where life is cheaper, wears headphones often, and resolves to gray. There, Dolores supposes most other people would never think this grey or that gray, but Dolores does. There, Dolores greys Dolores’s gray.
