Respond to job postings within cycling distance of the beat-up apartment you share with three college mates. Get interviewed and hired to sit evenings at a stone-front house with a circular driveway because, you know, dream big, aim high, tread the ground you want as yours. Show up to babysit the Bices’ six-year-old son the evening when the couple has planned a date night. Drama and dinner, you hear. Though your belly is full with the Taco Bell beefy burrito you just had, slobber over Sarah Bice’s peach-colored dress, her three-inch stilettos, and the lavender-scented hand she slides into her husband’s as they head out. While the boy is in the playroom, elbow deep in the mountain of red, blue, and yellow Lego blocks, sneak into the adjacent master bedroom. Lie down on the blindingly white cotton bedsheet that hugs you like the early summer breeze, its softness permeating through the coarseness of your dress. Slide your hand under the mattress to discover a packet of strawberry-flavored premium condoms, the kind your fellow student partners don’t use. Replace the packet where you found it, resist the urge to taste the flavor of premium rubber or wear it on your thumb. Open the top drawer of the walnut-wood dresser and gaze longingly at the flimsy underwear—the kind you see in movies, the kind you ogle at in store windows. Find a pair of unworn lace-bordered panties with the $90 price tag still attached. Do the math. You could buy about 20 underpants with that money, or a month’s worth of grocery. Run your fingers through the fabric’s buttery softness, marvel at its weightlessness in your palm. Pull down your worn-elastic underpants and slip on the new ones right at the moment when the boy appears in the doorway holding a Legos airplane. Smooth your cotton dress over your lace-hugged hips and say Great job, Ethan, as the boy continues to stare at the spot between your legs. Hear the front door open, hear Sarah Bice complain to her husband about the over-booked theater, track their footsteps approaching the bedroom. Feel the heat rush into the hollow of your neck, the throbbing of your pulse, the calcifying of your limbs. Look down at your shame-laden panties lying at your feet, as Sarah Bice says. What the heck, Katy? and Ethan points to your thighs, She got hair there.
