My phone rang. It was Mindy.
"Hey!"
"Hey."
"What's up?"
"Um. Listen. Hector. I'm really sorry, but it looks like I won't be able to go to the concert after all. I don't think my design project will be done."
"Oh, no! Can't you work on it tonight?"
"I'm going to. But there's still a lot to do. . . . I'm really sorry. I really wanted to go."
"Jeeminy. Look, is there anything I can do to help?"
"It's sweet of you to ask, but . . ."
"You'll need to eat, won't you?"
"Hmm?"
"Friday night. I know how those design projects go. One percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent sandwiches."
"I'll be all right."
"What do you like? Pastrami?"
"What about the concert?"
"Corned beef? Horseradish?"
"I'm vegetarian."
"Roasted peppers and provolone, then. Done."
"Carly's not doing anything Friday night."
"She can have the tickets, then."
"Don't you want to take her?"
"Can't. Busy."
"Hector!"
"Look, I know how these design projects go. Just leave the sandwiches to me, OK?"
---
Nothing lonelier than a classroom corridor on a Friday night. One light was on, way down the hall. One solitary student, sitting at a sewing machine, enveloped in billows of shimmery fabric. She raised the needle, loosened the foot, rotated the material, clamped it back down, and kept on sewing.
"Carly says thanks for the tickets," she said without looking up.
"Did she find anybody to go with?"
"Not the last I heard. Carly likes everything about going out on dates except for the guys."
She raised the foot, cut the thread, and pulled the fabric out of the machine.
"How's it going?" I asked.
"I re-sewed this seam so many times that I wore out the material. I had to re-sew it a size smaller. Carly was going to model it for me, but now it looks like I'll have to do it myself."
Couldn't hurt, I thought.
"My boobs are too small, though."
She gathered everything up and took it behind the changing screen.
After a minute she stepped back out wearing an elegant, shimmering, peach evening gown. It had a sleeveless, v-neck, pleated grecian top, a flat waist, and an ankle length columnar skirt. She looked herself up and down in the mirror, stood up on tiptoe, took a step this way and a step that way, fiddled with the top, pivoted, and looked back over her shoulder.
The gown was simple and quite attractive. But the material was way too sheer. It hid her top because of the pleating, but you could see her panties plain as day. There was a kind of frilly loin cloth in front that helped a little.
"Just don't say anything, OK?" she said. "The material didn't work out the way I thought."
She turned a couple more ways, then ruffled the loin cloth and sighed.
"I think it looks terrific," I said.
She looked over her shoulder one more time.
"Oh, man," she sighed, as if just remembering something.
"What's the matter?"
"I still have to buy panty hose."
"Hey," I said. "That's a job I bet I can handle. Do they have them at the Union?"
"Piggly Wiggly."
"Any special kind?"
"Nude," she said. "Medium."
I had the key to my roommate's bike. It was a pleasant night, a touch of Spring in the air. A night for riding no-handed. I looked down toward the Pavilion where the concert was going on.
I could probably build a robotic exoskeleton, but I could never make anything as pretty as an evening gown. Funny how a sewing machine and a drill press are so similar in some ways, and so different in others.
They had two kinds of panty hose at the Piggly Wiggly, control top and non control top. I took one of each to be on the safe side. But at the checkout counter, I didn't have enough cash. The checkout girl was amused by my predicament.
"Are you getting them for your mother or your girlfriend?" she asked me.
"Girlfriend," I replied.
She rang up the non control top and gave me a friendly smile.
Mindy was back at the sewing machine. She had waited for me to eat her sandwich.
"Seems like a big crowd at the concert."
"I hope Carly found somebody to go with."
"Making any progress?"
"Hard to say."
"Ever thought of switching to Civil Engineering?"
"Do they have design projects?"
"Sometime we get to use blow torches."
"Maybe that's what I need."
After the sandwiches, she tried on the gown with the panty hose. She'd removed the loin cloth, and the gown looked much better without it. Simpler, more elegant. But you could clearly see the silhouette of her legs. Even worse, the panty hose weren't exactly the same shade as her skin, and you could see the discontinuity around her middle. It was almost as glaring as the panties had been.
She reached up under the gown and peeled off the panty hose. That got rid of the discontinuity, but you could see that she was naked. You could see her pubic hair in front and her butt crack in back. Not enough dress, way too much girl. She suddenly remembered that she wasn't alone and hurried behind the changing screen.
"What I need is a body stocking," she said from behind the screen.
"Have you got one?"
"I'm trying to think. Maybe a dancer's leotard. Maybe even a one-piece swimsuit."
I knew a guy whose girlfriend was a dancer, but I couldn't reach him. I called his roommate. He gave me the girlfriend's dorm phone. The girl was out, and her roommate thought she mostly kept her dance things at the studio. But she knew someone on the swim team. I called her up. She lived in the same dorm as Mindy and Carly. And, she had a swim suit we could borrow.
Back on the bike. It was starting to get a little chilly. It was an all girls dorm, and at this time of night you had to wait in the lobby for them to come down. The swimmer was a muscular red head. The swim suit was white, but it had three bright red stars across the front. I had to laugh, imagining how the gown would look with those stars.
"Wild goose chase," I said, back in the sewing room.
"I'll just go with the panty hose," Mindy yawned. "I finished the top. I just need to try it on one more time."
She went behind the screen and came out in the gown. She looked at herself in the mirror from every different angle. The boobs were satisfactory. But your eye was still drawn to the glaring discontinuity across her middle.
"I look like a mannequin where they put the wrong top on the wrong bottom."
It was starting to feel very late, the way it does in the wee hours of a design project.
She stood there for almost a minute. I couldn't tell if she was lost in thought or just tired. But then she seemed to come up with something. "OK," she said. She rolled out the bolt of peach fabric and cut off two full yards. She held it up in front of herself, gathering it at the shoulder like a sari. She took a piece of chalk and made a couple of marks.
She went and changed back into her jeans and blouse. She turned the gown inside out and laid it over the cutting table. She wafted the new piece on top, adjusted, stretched, pinned, measured, held up, cut, re-adjusted, and pinned some more. It was like she was operating on a jelly fish. She took it back behind the screen.
"Hector?" she called.
She'd been half swallowed by the jelly fish, with only her arms and legs sticking out. "Can you help me pull it down gently so I don't pull out the pins?"
I tried to sort out the different layers. I couldn't avoid touching her panty hose. Her head emerged, and she wriggled the gown the rest of the way.
The inner panel crossed her chest like a tunic and then fell along the midline of her thigh, making the gown richer and less transparent. It hid the juncture between her legs, although you could still see the hem of the pantyhose along her side.
"We'll have to adjust the pins so that the weight hangs evenly," she said. "Can you undo this one for me?"
But the pins were on the underside.
"Johnny Bungle," she muttered. She hitched the gown up a bit and slid her arm out to let the left side of the bodice hang down. This gave me access to the pins, but it also uncovered her breast.
Her breast was beautiful, soft and round, just the size of my cupped hand. The nipple was pale and shy. She was embarrassed to have me see it. "Is there anything else I haven't gotten around to showing you yet?" she asked.
"I guess we could go over the checklist," I replied.
She showed me what to do with the pins. I was careful to avoid touching her breast. I had to reach down into the other side of the bodice too, which brought me right up against the other one as well. When she was satisfied with the pinning, she pulled the bodice back up and put her arm back through.
