STUDIO 69: TURN YOUR DESIRE ON ITS HEAD
Open 7 days a week, 8pm-?
W. 5th St., Paradiso
Talia Nowell stared at the flier for a long moment before slipping it into her purse. It was one of the fanciest things she’d ever seen, printed on actual vellum with letters embossed in gold leaf. Much too nice to be stuck underneath her windshield wiper in a strip mall parking lot outside Whitefeather Cleaners. West Fifth Street was twenty-five blocks and a world away from here. Puzzled, she looked around, wondering who on earth could have left it, but the parking lot was empty. None of the other cars seemed to have a flier, either.
Weird.
A woman of few words, even when talking to herself, Talia shrugged and got in the car. Thirteen years with Garrett the hometown hero had worn away the girl’s bright, sharp edges and turned the woman into something dull and soft. She hardly recognized the face that looked back at her in the rear-view mirror. Where were the piercing blue eyes, the bright golden hair, the flawless skin, the luscious body of youth? How could a person change so much in a decade?
The question ate at her as she left the cleaners and drove to the supermarket. It nipped at her heels as she picked up Garrett’s Rogaine, bought lunch fixings for the kids, and visited the butcher’s counter. On her way out of the store, she glanced up at the shoplifting mirror, one of those horrible bulging contraptions that stretch and distort the people reflected within. No one looked their best in one of those mirrors, but even so…
That night, she bypassed the lasagna and ate a salad instead. The next day she drove to the gym near work and signed up for a trial membership. She began walking in the evenings, and, on impulse, signed up for a 5k fundraiser that summer. The palette of meals in the house slowly shifted to lighter, healthier fare, as she eschewed processed food for fruits and vegetables and lean cuts of meat.
Not everyone approved of these changes. Talia was forced to cope with the tacit disapproval of both husband and children as she tried to turn her life and health around. The boys because they’d been raised on a comfortable, fattening Southern diet, and Garrett because he simply couldn’t stand when something wasn’t about him. More than one night saw one or the other of them sleeping on the couch, or turning away purposefully when they passed each other in the hallway. But she withstood the sulks, the silences, the slamming doors, the childish epithets hurled at her by mutinous little boys who wanted chicken nuggets instead of quinoa. She endured the biting little insults Garrett muttered under his breath when she walked by. The sly innuendo whenever another woman was around, whether that woman was their geriatric next door neighbor or the teenage dog-walker strolling by with her bouquet of leashes. Talia took it all in stoic silence, hopeful that one day the girl inside her would return and help the woman figure out what the hell she was doing.
Oh, and she kept the flier tucked away in a little zippered compartment in her purse. Safe and sound.
Just in case.
Katia Cole 