Free One Day the Wind Changed by Tracy Daugherty

Seattle, whose surfaces glistened with rainwater and looked twice as bright as they really were.
    That October afternoon, twenty-three years ago, as Howard waited outside the shoe store, he looked up the street and spied in nearby windows transistor radios, portable hi-fi sets, chewing tobacco, saddle soap—none of which could be located today in the mall, just as none of the mall’s treasures would have been offered, much less understood, on old Main Street. And back in the day, there were no unaccompanied women on the sidewalks.
    He had felt fortunate, then, to stand near a girl who’d taken an interest, so much so that she’d adorned her feet to please him. That day, his approval of Mindy’s footwear was his claim on her. Were he a high school junior now, he wouldn’t dote on just one person (these kids and their freedoms!): he’d wallow in possibilities, the dreamy display of available beauties, alone or in small groups, all of whom wore tennis shoes or flimsy sandals: I can—and I will—fly away from you and back again into your arms.
    O girls! O heart, O brain! I am still alive!
    Moving toward him, toting a stark white Abercrombie and Fitch bag was a stunning young woman in a jeans skirt and black semisheer stockings, a beige sweater and a red silk scarf She caught his eye and smiled. Young woman? No, a child, about his daughter’s age. Twelve. Thirteen, at the most. Astonishing, the power of camouflage: lipstick, eyeliner, rouge.
    And in fact, here was Alina now, with Meagan, her friend from Seattle. Howard hadn’t paid attention earlier, but watching Alina in the cool light slanting through the leaves of the fat, potted trees, he understood that she wore makeup too: a moderate blush in the cheeks, a hint of blue on her eyelids (of course, she refused to wear her glasses in public). The more she tried to distinguish herself, the more she resembled every other girl in the mall—jazzed by the bills in her purse.
    Howard chastised himself for lusting after girls his daughter’s age, children testing their power, practicing sexy smiles, being adults. He stopped staring after Abercrombie and Fitch.
    Meagan grinned at him, and he made a solid effort to return her greeting. He’d had trouble warming up to her, though it wasn’t her fault: somehow, he linked her to Mindy. A slight resemblance? The same distracted air? Each time he had phoned the old girl, planning to get Alina home for a visit, she was on her cell, rushing around a fabric store or a furniture outlet, bargaining with salespeople. “Alina could bring a friend,” Howard suggested to Mindy one afternoon. “She wouldn’t have to fly by herself. Mindy, what if—”
    â€œYes, yes, the leather recliner,” she said. “That red one in the corner.”
    In the world of her accumulated objects, there was little room for him now. “You’re lucky she’s moved away,” Gary, a friend from work, assured Howard one morning in the coffee room, before they set out together to inspect a series of wells. “There’s nothing worse than the Ex-Wife Dinner, those awkward meetings to plan for the kids or to split the medical bills … and always, afterward, out of guilt or whatever, you feel obligated to buy her an after-dinner drink or an ice cream or a little something for her bedroom dresser, which used to be your bedroom dresser too, so the two of you go to a shopping center and you sit there in the Baskin-Robbins or you walk around the jewelry store and things get friendly again, like the old days, warm and flirty, and you think, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ and you see she’s thinking the same damn thing, and so pronto, you agree to call it a night and, I swear, run away from each other in the parking lot.”
    In the abstract, an Ex-Wife Dinner sounded oddly fun to Howard. Maybe with a different ex-wife. Better than finding in his mailbox monthly