I worked in HR.
I’d saved my money, not spent it on costumes and greasepaint pots.
Sadness fluttered down and hung heavy on my shoulders.
High on the shop’s walls, raw lumber nailed to the drywall held rows upon rows of Styrofoam heads with blank faces, crowned with wigs of every hue and historical hairstyle from the fifteen-hundreds to the shaggy wild-child seventies and center-parted aughts.
The sweaty smell of scalps floated downward.
Rows upon rows of fluttering costumes in scarlet, violet, and gold hung from racks in the back of the shop, ready from any character from any time period, from Juliet to Alexander Hamilton to Macavity the Mystery Cat to Prior Walter. Stage swords, muskets, and angel wings piled in a corner like the aftermath of war.
I inhaled deeply, drawing in the scents, breathing in the life.
Jimmy had been right about one thing. In high school, I’d wanted to be an actress. I’d been cast in all the fall comedies and spring musicals, and I’d even played the lead in both productions my senior year.
The University of Nebraska had offered me a full-ride scholarship as a theater major before Jimmy had proposed, but his mom had convinced me that show business was no place for a modest young Christian girl like me.
And so I used my overdue maxed-out credit card to buy theatrical makeup and body paint, and I held my breath until the credit card machine flashedacceptedon its tiny screen.
It wasn’t Shakespeare in Central Park, but it was theatre. It was stage.
Maybe it was a part of me that I needed to recover in order to survive.
Maybe theatre would help me survive.
The next day at five o’clock in the evening, I climbed into the back seat of my car where there was a little more room to move and slathered white body paint on my arms and chest, swiping it over the back of my neck and between my shoulder blades as well as I could with a sponge meant for cleaning a kitchen sink.
My face makeup was a clown kit, but I didn’t make myself up like a clown.
White greasepaint blanked out all my features, and then I painted my lips carefully into a scarlet Cupid’s bow and outlined my eyes with black with a plastic makeup brush with limp nylon bristles.
I slithered into the yards and yards of white polyester satin and rayon lace of my wedding dress.
The peach carnations and baby’s breath in my bridal bouquet were dead in the rear window of my car, so I bought some bedraggled daisies from a convenience store to hold.
After parking my car in a cheap lot a few blocks away, I dragged my sturdy old suitcase and bundled the train of my wedding gown over my arm as I walked, slathered in white greasepaint, through the cramped crowds on the wide Las Vegas sidewalk.
No one even glanced at me.
One fashionable block away from the Strip, a street corner was bounded with luxury stores, high-end restaurants, andboutique hotels where thereallywealthy people stayed, the kind of hotel that didn’t have slot machines in the lobby.
The stores and restaurants were brands I’d read about inPeople Magazine’s“Who Wore It Better?” column or seen on Instagram influencer accounts, but never been in the presence of in real life.
Hermes. Alexander McQueen.
Kobe and Company Steakhouse. Sushi Dominus. Movado. Louboutin.
Billionaire Sanctuary.
At the corner, I popped open a cheap magician’s top hat and dropped it on the sidewalk at my feet as I stepped up onto the suitcase, bobbling for a minute but finding my balance as the lace and polyester dress settled around me.
I struck a pose with my bouquet held high and gazed at the wilting flowers in the savagely hot sunlight, becoming a living statue of a bride, rigid, unable to move forward or back.
As still as death, but still standing.
That was my plan to get some money.
Busking, the last resort of theater folk.
