In the Chair After Hours

I sat on the edge of my own exam chair in Andre's oversized scrubs and tried to piece together how we had ended up here.

The paper liner crinkled under me. The overhead exam light was off, but the city glow came through the big windows, so I could see myself reflected in the dark glass. A woman-shaped blur in a man's scrubs, three sizes too big, sitting in a dental chair at 9:40 on a Friday night.

Andre had stepped out to the hallway restroom. I heard his footsteps, unhurried, coming back.

Let me back up. Two hours earlier I was a normal dentist with a normal life. Thirty-four years old, own practice, second year open, doing fine. Then I went to the regional dental conference at the downtown hotel because my partner nagged me about continuing education credits, and I stopped at the hotel bar because I wanted a glass of wine before driving the twelve blocks home.

Andre Biggs was sitting at the bar in a navy blazer, working on a plate of what looked like entirely free appetizer meatballs. He looked up and did a full double take.

"Rina Holland," he said. "No way."

"Andre. Hey." I sat down one stool away from him, which felt like the correct amount of distance. "You still with that supply company?"

"Seven years now. Sales rep, big territory, lots of driving." He pushed the meatball plate toward me. "Eat one. They're free and I've hit my limit."

We were 27 and 28 the last time we'd really talked, back when I was in dental school, seven years ago. There had been one party, one balcony, one conversation that felt like it was going somewhere. Then he got a job offer out of state and I got a residency and it was over.

"You look good," he said, and then he laughed at himself. "Sorry. I mean you look stressed. Your shoulders are basically up around your ears."

"I do not have strict dentist posture."

"Rina. You're sitting at a hotel bar like you're performing a root canal on the stool."

I told him about the practice, the two hygienists, the new equipment I was still paying off. He told me about his territory, his divorce, his apartment with the good light. We talked straight through happy hour. And somewhere around the second glass of wine I heard myself say, plain as anything:

"You should come see my new office."

He set his glass down. "Tonight?"

"I mean, it's empty. Nobody's there on a Friday. I've got my keys. It's got these big windows and this really nice new chair and I've never shown it to anyone who would actually appreciate it."

"That's an invitation," he said, "if I've ever heard one."

It was. That's how I ended up unlocking the glass door of my own practice at 8:15 on a Friday night with a man I hadn't seen in seven years standing behind me holding a paper cup of hotel coffee.

He loved it, which I expected. What I didn't expect was what he noticed next.

I'd hung the garment bag on the hook inside my private restroom door weeks ago and stopped seeing it. Andre came out of the hallway bathroom area, paused at my office restroom, and said, "What's that?"

"Nothing."

"Rina."

"It's a dress." I followed him in. There it was, the deep green thing with the off-shoulder neckline, still in its bag, tags on. I'd bought it for my cousin's wedding in June. I stood in the store fitting room for forty minutes and loved it and then wore a gray wrap dress I already owned instead. "I bought it for a wedding. I didn't wear it."

"Why not?"

"Because I would've been the woman in the green dress. I've never been the woman in the green dress. I've been the girl in the sensible slacks since about age twenty-one." Thirteen years of sensible slacks, and I'd just admitted it out loud to this man. "I've never even worn anything like that outside my apartment. I order things online, I try them on, I take them back off. That's the whole history."

Andre didn't laugh. That's what I keep coming back to. He looked at the dress, and then at me, quiet and serious, and said, "Then let's try something else. Try my clothes."

"Your clothes."

"I've got a spare set of scrubs in my trunk. I carry them because sometimes I do chairside demos and I spill coffee on myself like an animal." He shrugged. "They're mine, so they're cut for a guy. Different animal entirely from a dress. Might be a smaller step."

"Or it might be ridiculous. I'd be swimming in them."

"Yeah," he said. "Probably. You're kinda tiny."

"Thank you."

"You know what I mean." He was already pulling his keys out. "Stay here. If you hate it, nothing happened. If you don't hate it, we'll figure out the next part."

I said okay. I want to note that I said okay before he got to the elevator, standing there in my office restroom next to a dress I'd been afraid of since June. Nobody pushed me. He asked, I said okay, and then I stood alone listening to the elevator go down three floors and wondering what I'd just agreed to.

He came back with a clear plastic bag and a grin he was trying to suppress. "One set of navy scrubs, previously coffee-damaged, laundered. And a spare jacket."

The fabric was stiff in my hands. Starched, somehow, even laundered, with a crisp fold down the middle of the pants and that weird industrial smoothness scrubs have. He turned his back politely while I changed, which struck me as funny given everything, but at that point nothing had happened yet. Everything was still technically innocent.

The pants were enormous. I rolled the waistband twice and they still pooled over my sneakers. The top hung to my thighs and the sleeves went past my fingertips. His name was embroidered on the pocket in small white letters. A. BIGGS. I stared at that little line of stitching longer than I probably needed to.

"How's it look?" he called.

"You can turn around."

He turned. He was quiet for a second, and I braced for a joke, because Andre in dental school had been all jokes.

"Okay," he said finally. "That's doing a lot, huh."

"It's a sack. I look like I'm wearing a laundry bag with a name on it."

"That's not what I said." He came closer, not touching, just looking. "You're standing different. Shoulders down. You've been up around your ears since the bar and now you're not."

He was right. I felt wrong and thrillingly exposed at the same time, which made no sense, because I was more covered than I'd been all day. But the fabric was his, and the cut was male, and my own shape was hidden under his label, and it felt like borrowing a version of myself that didn't have to perform anything for anyone. I pushed my hair back off my face and tucked it down into the collar, and in the dark window a slim young man in scrubs looked back at me, a stranger with my eyes and somebody else's name on his chest, and something low in my stomach turned over.

"Sit in the chair," he said.

"It's my chair. I sit in it all day."

"Not like this you don't."