While we’re in Texas with Bryan’s family, we have dinner at the hotel where we’re staying. On my way to the bathroom, I realize the hotel is also hosting a high school homecoming dance. The hallway is jammed with boys in ill-fitting suits and extravagantly rouged girls, all fiddling with their itchy wrist corsages.

In the women’s room, a the girls are jockeying for a bit of the mirror, applying lipstick and fussing with their severe updos. When they notice me, they give embarrassed smiles and scoot aside so I can wash my hands. Just then, two girls enter and stop inside the door. One is in a tasteful chocolate dress with cream piping, cut in a fifties silhouette. The other is wearing a Barbie-pink gown, festooned with glitter, and transparent from her feet up to her knees. She is very slim, just leaving behind her gawkiness, and she begins to hike her skirt up in front of the mirror. Her friend objects:

-You’re doing it right here?

-What?

-You’re just going to do it right here?

-Yeah? Why not?

She reaches up her skirt, wriggles, yanks free an enormous, elastic, tan girdle. She lets out a heavy sigh and pats her flat tummy.

-Why were you even wearing that thing?

-Because my mom told me I looked fat.

-What?

-She said, Here. Your stomach is sticking out. Put this on.

-What a bitch.

-I know.