philip_k_dick_-_the_man_in_the_high_castle

hurry, she said to herself. I can even wait until evening to go to the Abendsens'; that way I'll be able
to wear my new dress. It wouldn't do to show up during the day with it on — you just don't wear a
formal dress like that before dinner.
And I can finish reading the book.
She made herself comfortable in the motel room, turning on the radio, getting coffee from the
motel lunch counter; she propped herself up on the neatly made bed with the new unread clean
copy of The Grasshopper which she had bought at the hotel bookshop in Denver.
At six-fifteen in the evening she finished the book. I wonder if Joe got to the end of it? she
wondered. There's so much more in it than he understood. What is it Abendsen wanted to say?
Nothing about his make-believe world. Am I the only one who knows? I'll bet I am; nobody else
really understands Grasshopper but me — they just imagine they do.
Still a little shaky, she put it away in her suitcase and then put on her coat and left the motel
room to search for a place to eat dinner. The air smelled good and the signs and lights of Cheyenne
seemed particularly exciting. In front of a bar two pretty, black-eyed Indian prostitutes quarreling
— she slowed to watch. Many cars, shiny ones, coasted up and down the streets; the entire
spectacle had an aura of brightness and expectancy, of looking ahead to some happy and important
event, rather than back . . . back, she thought, to the stale and the dreary, the used-up and thrownaway.
At an expensive French restaurant — where a man in a white coat parked customers' cars, and
each table had a candle burning in a huge wine goblet, and the butter was served not in squares but
whipped into round pale marbles — she ate a dinner which she enjoyed, and then, with plenty of
time to spare, strolled back toward her motel. The Reichsbank notes were almost gone, but she did
not care; it had no importance. He told us about our own world, she thought as she unlocked the
door to her motel room. This, what's around us now. In the room, she again switched on the radio.
He wants us to see it for what it is. And I do, and more so each moment.
Taking the blue Italian dress from its carton, she laid it out scrupulously on the bed. It had
undergone no damage; all it needed, at most, was a thorough brushing to remove the lint. But when
she opened the other parcels she discovered that she had not brought any of the new half-bras from
Denver.
'God damn it,' she said, sinking down in a chair. She lit a cigarette and sat smoking for a time.
Maybe she could wear it with a regular bra. She slipped off her blouse and skirt and tried the
dress on. But the straps of the bra showed and so did the upper part of each cup, so that would not
do. Or maybe, she thought, I can go with no bra at all . . . it had been years since she had tried that .
. . it recalled to her the old days in high school when she had had a very small bust; she had even
worried about it, then. But now further maturity and her judo had made her a size thirty-eight.
However, she tried it without the bra, standing on a chair in the bathroom to view herself in the
medicine cabinet mirror.
The dress displayed itself stunningly, but good lord, it was too risky. All she had to do was bend
over to put out a cigarette or pick up a drink — and disaster.
A pin! She could wear the dress with no bra and collect the front. Dumping the contents of her
jewelry box onto the bed, she spread out the pins, relics which she had owned for years, given her
by Frank or by other men before their marriage, and the new one which Joe had gotten her in
Denver. Yes, a small horse-shaped silver pin from Mexico would do; she found the exact spot. So
she could wear the dress after all.
I'm glad to get anything now, she thought to herself. So much had gone wrong; so little remained
anyhow of the wonderful plans.