<\/p>\n
The clacking and shuffling of other people’s feet made him look a dozen times, but none of the people exiting the Kingston Tango to this pay lot were thin and blonde or walked the way Ginny did.\u00a0 The constant disappointment turned him off to looking for her, and when she did walk up next to his car, he was surprised.\u00a0 Ginny knocked on the window with one gloved hand.\u00a0 He unlocked the passenger door from the inside and opened it for her.\u00a0 He started the car and backed out, but didn’t notice that she was crying until they were driving under the bright lights on East Ninth Street, headed away from downtown.<\/p>\n
“Ginny, what’s wrong?” he asked.<\/p>\n
She sniffed and turned her head toward the window.\u00a0 He could only see the back of her head, the curls losing their strength, falling messily around her head and neck.<\/p>\n
“Where’s your hat?” he asked.<\/p>\n
She didn’t say anything.\u00a0 She laid her head against the seat and turned onto her side.\u00a0 He was aware that she was still awake but was tired of her and weary of trying to get anything out of her.<\/p>\n
“Okay,” he said.\u00a0 “Okay.”<\/p>\n
It was futile; when Ginny became silent, she stayed silent.\u00a0 He drove on in a confused state of annoyance and concern.\u00a0 Ginny’s slight crying seemed to cease, but after a few minutes of complete silence, it started again and built up rapidly until she was heaving and wailing above the sound of the heater and above the sound of cars rushing past in the mist.\u00a0 She turned over and put both her hands over her face, crying into her gloves, then bent over and put her head to the dashboard, her back shaking under her thick coat.<\/p>\n
“Ginny, what’s going on?\u00a0 What happened to you?”<\/p>\n
She didn’t answer.\u00a0 After a few moments she wiped her eyes and snorted through her nose, then took off her seatbelt.\u00a0 She pulled her shoes off with her feet, and wriggled up, pulling her stockings off.\u00a0 She got out of her coat and turned to him again.<\/p>\n
“Will you unbutton this please?” she said.<\/p>\n
Seth looked over at her then back to the road.\u00a0 “What?”<\/p>\n
“Unbutton this, please! Now!”<\/p>\n
“I don’t know if I can…” he reached over and tried to unbutton the back of her dress with one hand.\u00a0 His attention shifted back and forth between the road ahead and Ginny’s back, and his fumbling got worse with his discouragement.<\/p>\n
“Dammit!” Ginny almost screamed.\u00a0 “Dammit, dammit!” She twisted away from his hand and reached her hands over her shoulders.\u00a0 She grabbed the fabric and pulled at it, bunching up more and more of it as the material stretched in her hands.\u00a0 A middle button tore off then another, and she pulled her head through the gap, and tore the dress down.\u00a0 It ripped along the seams and down the sides.\u00a0 She got out of the sleeves and pushed the silk carcass off of her, down to her ankles.\u00a0 She stepped out of it and gathered it up in her arms.\u00a0 She tried to open the window, but the button was unresponsive.<\/p>\n
“Unlock the windows!”<\/p>\n
Seth did so, and the passenger window came down.\u00a0 Ginny threw the dress out of the window, followed by the shoes and stockings.\u00a0 She took off her gloves, and they went flying, one wrapping around the back antenna then letting go.\u00a0 She was in a black slip now, thin straps over her shoulders and a fraying hem around her thighs.\u00a0 She sat there, arms straight and hands on the seat, staring straight out the windshield, her tears still falling but without any accompanying sounds.\u00a0 She pulled down the sun visor and looked at herself in the little mirror.\u00a0 The weak lights lit her face in the corner of Seth’s eye.\u00a0 He had chosen not to ask any more questions.<\/p>\n
Ginny looked at herself with a disgusted, anguished frown, and started wiping her face.\u00a0 She held both her hands out of her window, palms out to the wind, catching raindrops.\u00a0 She wiped her face off again, rubbing hard at her cheeks and forehead.\u00a0 She wet her lips and ran each forearm over her mouth, leaving long red trails.\u00a0 She pulled at her eyelids with her fingers, rubbing them fiercely, and when she pulled her hands away they were black and purple, little stains trickling down her fingers and knuckles.\u00a0 She looked at her face in the mirror again, clean and plain, odd-looking without her regular full eyebrows.\u00a0 She put the visor up and proceeded to chip away at her fingernail polish, scraping her thumbs roughly against the dark polish.\u00a0 Seth turned his head every few moments to see.\u00a0 Little flakes of polish fell on her white legs and in the lap of her slip but scattered when she blew sharply at her hands.<\/p>\n
Skritch.\u00a0 Skritch.\u00a0 Skritch.<\/em><\/p>\n The tears were coming out slowly now, barely moving down her cheek.\u00a0 She worked violently until her nails were clean and the little folds of flesh around them were a raw pink.\u00a0 She spread out all ten of her fingers and analyzed them.\u00a0 She rubbed her hands together, letting her sweaty palms clean off most of the makeup.\u00a0 Then, without any warning, she started snapping her nails against the dashboard, one by one, taking a deep breath, then pushing a finger at an angle against the hard vinyl, pushing the fingertip down until the nail bent and broke, shattering at odd angles.\u00a0 She started with the pinky on her left hand and worked with a quick and ordered violence.<\/p>\n Snap.\u00a0 Snap.\u00a0 Snap.<\/em><\/p>\n Her eyes teared up again, but this was just physical pain now.\u00a0 She pressed her hands into fists, pushing the sharp and splintered edges of her fingernails into her palm, trying to become unconscious of their awkwardness.<\/p>\n She sat still again, hands in fists in her lap, watching the rain fall faster, rushing toward her at an angle and slamming against the windshield as if she was drawing it all right to her.<\/p>\n “When I get home,” she said, her breath fogging the window, “I’m going to cut my hair.”<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Back home, off-off campus.\u00a0 Ginny stepped out of the car into the chilly air, barefoot and seemingly close to naked.\u00a0 She didn’t seem to mind the cold sidewalk or the air, and she strolled to their house and up the porch stairs.\u00a0 Inside she put down her purse and went into the bathroom to retrieve the scissors.\u00a0 In the kitchen, she stood over the sink and used the small window above it as a mirror.\u00a0 The bright lights in the kitchen made her reflection stand out against the deep black from outside, her eyes enlarged by shadow in the reflection, imperceptible.\u00a0 Seth stood a few steps behind Ginny, looking at her freckled upper back and watching her wretched fingertips emerge from the forest of blond curls as she ran her fingers through her hair, conceiving a plan.<\/p>\n She held the big black-handled scissors close to her head, just beside the roots she exposed by holding the curls up and away from her ears.\u00a0 She pulled her hair taut, opened the blades of the scissors, and started cutting.\u00a0 She would close the scissors and her other hand would come away full of shiny gold ringlets and curls, like a fairy tale princess’s.\u00a0 She flicked her hand away from her, letting the hair fall wherever, into the sink, on the countertop, down to the floor.\u00a0 She cut steadily for a few minutes, pulling and slicing, then shook her head and examined herself in the mirror.\u00a0 There was a wide swath cut against the right side of her head, contrasting with the curls building up above it.\u00a0 She waited a moment, then continued, shaking out loose hairs, then pulling and slicing again, on and on until it was all over the space around her, piles of fine gold straw.\u00a0 Her hair stuck out at various lengths all over her head, one to two inch stalks.\u00a0 She looked at it for a while then decided against it.\u00a0 She had Seth fetch some clippers and told him to cut her hair evenly.<\/p>\n He didn’t argue; he just plugged in the clippers, put on the longest attachment, and began cutting her hair even shorter.\u00a0 He ran the buzzing clippers over her head, folded her ears down and trimmed the arc around them, and shaped the slope down her neck.\u00a0 Ginny looked in the window-mirror, turning her head from side to side.<\/p>\n “Shorter,” she said.<\/p>\n Seth took a tiny step closer to her.\u00a0 He was standing behind her, aware that his body was hot compared to her cool skin.\u00a0 He put on the next attachment and cut her hair down again.\u00a0 After every few strokes with the clippers goose bumps would appear on Ginny’s shoulders and run in a herd under the edge of her slip.<\/p>\n “Shorter,” she sighed.\u00a0 She shivered just a little.<\/p>\n Seth put on the shortest attachment and ran the clippers over her head again.\u00a0 Her hair stood up just a half an inch now, bright gold shining over the powdery white of her scalp, light still reflecting off of it when she turned her head.<\/p>\n “Good enough,” she said.\u00a0 Her little ritual completed, she turned around and looked at Seth.<\/p>\n She looked like a patient wrought by chemotherapy or a ghoul, pale white skin standing out against the black slip, pastel purple in the skin underneath her eyes, dark shredded pink at her fingertips.\u00a0 She looked at Seth with her eyes, her eyes like new copper, two shining coins, and their color jumped out at him above all the others.\u00a0 All the other sick, dull colors covering her body and nothing stood out except her eyes.\u00a0 She could not change their appearance except with her heart and its shifting emotions.<\/p>\n “I’m sorry,” she said.\u00a0 She came closer to him, bent her face to his shoulder, the short, soft hairs tickling his jaw and chin.\u00a0 She reached her arms around him and leaned against him, almost totally dependent on him to hold her up.\u00a0 “I’m sorry for what I was…earlier, at the party.”<\/p>\n Seth simply breathed, smelling Ginny’s natural scent, being quiet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,352],"tags":[68,353],"class_list":["post-2475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cass","category-gsarchive","tag-cassander","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2475"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2830,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions\/2830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}