by C.A. Masterson A literary short published by The Harrow (2006) Her glazed eyes take in more than anyone can suspect. She is watchful of everyone. It is beyond her to be otherwise. She stands in the shop window, eyes unblinking, as workday people hurry past. These same people pass day after day, at the same time, she guesses, though she can't really tell for sure; Richard, her dresser, never puts a watch on her wrist. Such accessories are foolish, he tells her, and too expensive - possibly too tempting for an admiring passersby. She's seen it happen before - an item goes missing, the light-fingered shopper thinking no one had seen. Mornings and evenings - rush hours - she focuses on the people herding past. Waiting for one in particular, to be exact. She exists for the smallest glimpse of him. She doesn't know his name, doesn't know anything about him except that he'd once intercepted a runaway toddler, delivering the wide-eyed boy back to the frantic young mother. He's careful to step around slower-paced walkers. He occasionally slows his step if he's talking on his cell phone. A few weeks ago, he lingered just outside her window, and she memorized his facial expressions as he talked. She wished she could hear his voice. But too many car horns, buses and taxis and cars were whooshing past. In that moment, she wanted more than anything to be empowered with motion, animation, so she could step out of this spotlight, into his arms. He has the perfect face and body of a mannequin. Apparently none of her poses appeal to him. He never stops to look at her as others do. Or maybe he has someone else. Yes, she's sure he must, someone as handsome and well-dressed as he is couldn't possibly be alone in life. He likely has a queue of women waiting for him, waiting to have their chance. If only she could step out of this window and dance into that queue! She remains frozen as he moves out of her frame of vision. ~~~~~ She used to be content to have her poses rearranged by her dresser. Until Richard. Richard dresses to perfection, his hair plastered just so. His fingers are long and cold. She liked it when her first dresser talked to her, but Richard hisses that he doesn't get paid enough, no one likes him, no one appreciates his artistic talents. If the audiences drawn to this window are an indication, Richard isn't exaggerating about his talent, at least. Twice each month, he selects a wildly different outfit to showcase. He tilts her head just so, extends her arms invitingly, all in the aim of catching the attention of passersby. Tittering girls, discerning women, sometimes even pubescent boys stop to gasp and point, to admire her, to say how hot she looks. Their adoration filled her with what she knew must be happiness. Until she began watching, really watching, the people who walked by in pairs rather than singles bunched together by chance. Clearly these couples - whose heads inclined toward one another, hands clasped - chose each other. She can only watch and wish. Adoration simply is no longer enough. She hates her stationary, stagnant life, hates herself. ~~~~~ Each evening, crowds of shoppers and workers eventually thin out in the store until there are none. Although her window stays lit throughout the night, the store dims its interior lights after ten, signaling another day's end. That's the time she hates most - the interminable nights, when she's forced to confront her own immobile reflection in the glass. Hours upon hours of stillness outside. Until the delivery trucks begin to crawl past, and the morning's first light sparks from the small patch of sky visible to her, and ricochets off the windows of the restaurant and shops across the street like a laser spotlight. How she wants to see the entire sky - see the darkness bleed across it, awash with shimmering stars. She's been stuck in this place forever, it seems. She suffers the hands of Richard as he moves her arms, runs his hand up her thigh, around her waist a little too slowly as he positions her just so. These caresses she endures with grace because it allows her long-awaited movement - some freedom, enough to whet her longing for more, enough that she can focus on the motion being afforded her, and ignore the offensive touches. It's like taking a breath after weeks of suffocation. Richard murmurs to her as his fingers wander, tells her she looks a lot like Candi, tells her what he'd do to her if she were Candi. Candi, Richard says, works behind the makeup counter, her face and nails painted in lickable colors, her hair sprayed like a fountain from the top of her head. "I'd love to have a taste of Candi," he says, fingers inside her blouse as he tugs upward. "Candi calls me Dick. I've told her and told her, my name is Richard, not Dick. Someday, I'll make sure Candi knows that. Someday, maybe I'll dress her like I do you. But with special things." He whispers, then, his breath trembling: "Maybe a leopard-print scarf, nothing else, except spiked high heels. Maybe a spiked dog collar. Until she learns to be nice." His diction is all too clear, his sibilant nice sounds sinister. She knows, then, that inside, Richard is as hollow as she is. Maybe more so. ~~~~~ Richard sometimes moves her to the opposite side of the window. This feels like a huge leap, but still only affords her a slightly altered view. Since she was created, she's known only this place, and a vague memory of the place where she began - of being assembled by blurred faces; her time there had been so brief as to be nonexistent. A hazy memory of a truck ride with dozens of other mannequins, all sporting the same new-plastic smell on their shiny forms. A burst of light as the truck doors opened, the darkness of a storage room before her first dresser, the first of many - carried her to this place in the store. The window is wide, looking out onto the concrete sidewalk, the glass and stone restaurant and shops of a street she guesses is like many of the streets in this city. She longs to see grass, a stand of trees, but most of all, the sky. She's heard much about the sky from conversations of workers and shoppers - how the light drains into it and spills back out, how the sun skips across it during the day, the moon at night, how the clouds can be multi-hued. If she could, she'd walk far away, under the glorious, ever-changing sky. ~~~~~ Another day is winding down. There's still an early spring chill in the air, she can feel it through the glass. A couple stops when the woman, a blonde like herself, twists her too-high heel. They both bend to inspect, when he straightens she sees that it's him. Brow furrowed, he asks, "Are you okay?," the blonde nods with a wince, then a small smile. The blonde's eyes snap to the window, and they walk closer. The woman's eyes glitter with want as they drift across her. "What a great outfit!" the blonde says. Their voices are clearer now, magnified in proximity. She feels like a Broadway star, alight in the spotlight. This woman wants to be like her! And she wants to be the live blonde, to feel his hand on the small of her back, feel it slide to her shoulder. "That would look great on you," he says to her, his smile more apparent in his eyes than his lips, which brush across the blonde's prominent cheekbone. In this moment, as the woman turns to kiss him full on the mouth, she feels for one instant what they feel - happiness, love, longing, acceptance - all the complications inherent in human life. The moment catches her, suspends her in ecstasy. The blonde turns away, and he begins to follow but stops, his eyes riveted back to the window. "Did you see..." "What?" asks the woman, stepping back toward him, nuzzling into him. "For a second, it looked like she had tears in her eyes." Open-mouthed, the blonde glances at her, turns back to him, face relaxing into something like a smile, but from deeper within, emanating a kind of luminescence that she knows is only for him. He clasps the woman's hand and they turn to leave. "Must have been a trick of the light." In two steps, they are out of view. A trick of the light. These words swirl inside her, gain momentum like a phosphorescent tornado as she imagines all the qualities and properties of light, and the more she imagines, the more desperate she is to see the sun, feel its warmth. The rest of the night passes in what could be minutes or hours. In the morning, before the store has opened, she hears Richard's heels click, shuffle to a stop behind her. He tells her it's time for a change, and dims the light. She doesn't want him to touch her, to taint her good feelings that cling to her from the evening before. It's not a good sign that he's come so early, it always means his hands will find excuses to linger. She doesn't like to be with him in the shadows. "Do you know what Candi said to me yesterday?" His voice sounds metallic, as if dredged from some well of poison deep within him. She feels his hand cup her breast, his breath shallow. "I told her she looked really pretty. I'm always so nice to the bitch." He's standing close, pushing up against her. He slides her sweater up over her smooth plastic exterior. "But she gives me this look - like I'm nothing, you know? Then she smiles - a smile more plastic than yours - and says, 'Thanks, Dickie'." He bends her torso forward, and she pushes him from her thoughts - the glass is so much closer, the view of the outside is so much wider, a panorama, a diorama containing more buildings, a tree, an intersecting street, and more sky. The man she sees every day is walking toward her. She wonders if he'll see her reaching out for him from these shadows. Her mind registers with horror: Richard is slowly pushing her skirt up, when he should be lifting it quickly over her head to replace it with another. His hands hold her hips, and he grinds against her, his whisper a hiss: "Someday, Candi, you'll get this for real." Somewhere behind them, a woman gasps, says, "My God! What are you doing!" and Richard stops with a sharp intake of breath. The woman shrieks, and a clerk - maybe Candi? - barks "Dick! You've gone too far!" He turns too quickly, maybe it's an instinct of self-preservation that makes him push her away, put distance between them, distance she's glad for, space she welcomes as much as the motion he's set her into. She moves toward the glass, where the man has just walked by. The window gives way under her propelled weight, the glass splintering into a rain of shards. She imagines herself plunging into water - breaking its surface as the glass breaks. The shards reflect the sunrise, so she's surrounded by refracted pieces of sky, prisms of magenta, amber, crystalline blue. She's diving into splashes of colors, arcing out over the sidewalk with pure grace and ease - an Olympian motion, the essence of fluidity. She wishes she could call to the man: Wait for me! Her descent is buoyed as her hard shell cracks open, her inner self expands with the slanting rays of sun. It's like breathing in effervescence, she feels flooded with light, warm and brilliant and wonderful, as she'd always known freedom would be.