Later, while Iris is getting dressed, while the sun begins its downward creep, the phone rings again, her cell this time.
“Happy Birthday!” Mallory says. “We’re going out. Please put on something fantastic and await further instructions.” She hangs up with a menacing cackle before Iris can respond. This is a long-standing tradition between them. Since Mallory pried the date out of her when they were well into their junior year of college, she’s made it her mission to make a big deal out of Iris’s birthday. Iris is touched enough not to argue, though she does her best to let the big deal happen around or adjacent to, rather than about her. She tries to reciprocate in kind on Mallory’s birthday. It’s the only time she ever bakes.
She ambles back to the bedroom and looks in the mirror at the black T-shirt and khaki shorts she has put on. Her wet hair hangs down onto her shoulders, the tips darkening her shirt to a blacker black. She looks at her open closet, taking it all in as a sloppy color spectrum, clothes blending together, new and old, clean and dirty. The radio sings “96 Tears.”
Digging through the back end of her wardrobe, Iris comes across a glittering gold cocktail dress that she bought at a yard sale because it was a dollar. She has never worn it, but a sense of reckless whimsy and the word fantastic in her head lead her to pull it out from the tangle. It smells of something stale, and feels filmy between her fingers. It feels as though she could just pull it apart. It would just stretch and separate like fly paper. She pulls off her clothes and steps into it, fastening it with a hook at the back of her neck. Goosebumps rise all the way down her bare back, a breeze of indeterminate origin.
She stands in front of the mirror and she is not herself. She is someone who wears gold cocktail dresses. Her first impulse is to take it off, but there is a shadow she casts. Against the bedroom wall, with the sun looming pink through the window, she sees her silhouette towering over the room. From where she stands, gold sequins send tiny rays of light through the air. She hypnotizes herself, and for a brief second wonders what makes a self, maybe a self is as mutable as a half breeze through a crack between the window and frame, the waning light, or a passing thought, with no substance to it at all. She blows her hair dry, puts on heels, fills a clutch with lipstick, keys, credit card, cell phone, and a twenty dollar bill folded into thirds. The phone rings again, and she is out the door.
Iris approaches the back railing of the brewery’s patio. Though the lowering sun still hovers, and the air is mild, the restaurant has set its outdoor heat lamps to inferno. Mallory, leaning against the railing, sees her and waves her over. “Look at you,” she mouths across the patio.
“I feel underdressed now,” she says as Iris meets her. She is wearing a standard little black dress and suede boots that fold languorously around her ankles.
“It’s dumb, right? This is a dumb dress.”
“Shut up, it’s your birthday. Nothing’s dumb. Come with me.” She takes Iris by the elbow and leads her through the front doors and into the restaurant. The music is loud, but impossible to hear.
Mallory yells, “Do you remember Nathan?”
“The one with the long hair? And the beard?”
“He shaved and cut his hair. He’s actually cute now. We’ve been hanging out. Anyway, he and his friend Marcus are waiting for us at the table.”
“Oh god. I didn’t approve this.” Iris’s shoulders drop.
“And you never would have, which is why I am forced to lie to you all the time and never feel guilty about it.”
They arrive at the table, where two clean-cut young men smile up at them expectantly. They wear the young guy kind-of-nice-but-not-nice-nice going out uniform of jeans and button down shirts. Iris wishes she had worn something different. There is too much air all over her.
In short order, they are sipping tall beers and Mallory is engaged in intimate conversation with Nathan. She cannot hear what they are saying over the music, so she stops trying to listen.
“So,” Marcus asks, “how old are you, anyway?”
“Isn’t that one of those questions you’re not supposed to ask, like how much money do you make?” She says this facing the tabletop, digging her nail into the grooves of KISS Army, which someone has carved in ballpoint pen, lord knows when.
“I don’t know,” he laughs, “I was just curious. Isn’t aging the point of birthdays?”
“Twenty-five,” she answers, looking up, a little bit charmed.
“I love your hair,” he says.
“Oh, um, thanks.”
Then he reaches a hand out to touch it and she flinches, but not enough to actually move her body.
“It’s so soft I could run barefoot through it,” he continues, working his fingers through. He hits a snag.
“Let me get that,” he laughs, tugging at her hair.
“Ow!”
“Wait, wait, almost got it— there!” He frees his fingers and gives her hair one last stroke. Iris stares at the grain of the wooden table.
“You okay?” he asks. “Was that too forward? I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.” He laughs nervously, but she doesn’t look up.
“No— it’s okay.” She looks across the table at Mallory, whose eyes are closed, Nathan whispering something in her ear.
“Excuse me,” Iris says, standing up, and Marcus squints his eyes shut and massages the bridge of his nose.
She makes her way through the brewery to the narrow hallway that houses the restrooms, tugging at her dress the whole way. The overhead lights, the walls, and the carpet are all different shades of red. She feels squeezed, lit, heated. She presses herself into a corner and dials her brother.
“Hello?”
“Hi.”
A long pause follows, and Iris thinks she hears traffic.
“It’s your birthday,” Neil blurts out, breaking the silence.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t forget.”
“It’s okay. You’re allowed.”
“I can hardly hear you. Where are you?”
“Out. Being the birthday girl.”
“Good. That’s what you should be doing. Right?”
“I know… I just can’t relax.”
“Sure you can.”
“Do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you have to be all bright and chatty for your job and all, but, do you feel that way for real? Do you usually… feel like you know exactly what’s going on? Like that’s really how you feel?”
“What?”
Iris pauses and tries to figure out how to re-arrange her thoughts so they make sense. “I just wish I knew how you do it.”
“I don’t know what you’re asking me.”
Iris peeks out at the bar and sees Mallory greeting more people she vaguely recognizes.
“But, you do,” she says quietly.
“What?”
“But you do know,” she says, a little louder now.
Neil doesn’t respond.
“Hello?” she says. “Hello, are you there?”
Suddenly Neil is back on the line, with the fuzzy sound of the road amplified.