The boutique smells like money and steam — new silk, hot iron, the ghost of somebody's expensive perfume hanging in the air vents. The fitting room is bigger than my old bedroom. Full-length mirror on three walls, plush gray carpet, a little gold sconce on the ceiling doing its soft yellow thing. Velvet curtains pulled on both sides, separating me from Mom, and Mom from whatever she's doing in there with the older one.

Which, from the sound of it, is a lot.

"It's stuck, honey," Mom says through the curtain. Her voice has that syrup in it, the one she uses on men she's decided to play with. "You'll have to pull harder."

I hear fabric. I hear a man's throat clear. I hear the low, knowing laugh she does when she's already won.

My own associate — younger, maybe twenty-four, maybe twenty-five, with the kind of pressed-shirt haircut that says he's been told he's handsome his whole life and has never once been told no — is standing behind me with his hands hovering like he's about to defuse something. I'm still in the silk slip I tried on first, the pale champagne one, and I've got my back to him because the hook-and-eye at my nape is done up wrong and I need him to fix it. That's what I told him. That's what I said.

The slip is already sliding off my left shoulder. I didn't catch it. I just let it go and watched his eyes in the mirror go to where it landed.

"It's the hook," I say. "Right at the top. Can you — "

"Yeah. Yeah, yeah, of course."

He steps in. His fingers find the little metal loop and the little metal hook and he starts working at them like they're a combination lock. They are not a combination lock. They're a hook and an eye. My mom could do this in her sleep. But his knuckles are against my spine now, and his breath is coming in through his nose, short and fast, and I can feel the heat off his chest even though he's not touching me anywhere else.

"It's — sorry, it's tight," he says.

"Take your time."

In the mirror I can see the curtain of Mom's fitting room bulging a little where she's leaning back against it. There's a sound like a zipper being dragged up, and then down, and then up again. Slow. Deliberate. Like a man who's been told to pull harder and is now pulling in a rhythm.

"Oh, that's it," Mom says. "Right there. Don't stop."

The younger one's fingers go still on my back.

"Don't mind her," I say. "She's just — she's like that."

"Right." He swallows. I can hear the swallow. "Your mom."

"Mm."

The hook comes free. The slip loosens across my shoulders and I feel the whole back of it start to slide. I don't stop it. I turn, slow, so I'm facing him, and the champagne silk goes down my right shoulder, down my arm, catches at my elbow for a second, then drops. It pools at my feet in a whisper of fabric.

I'm standing in front of him in a strapless bra and a pair of high-waisted lace underwear, and my belly — the small, firm, just-starting-to-round belly that's been growing under everything I wear for the last two weeks — is right there, at eye level, if he looks down. He doesn't. He looks at my face. He's trying so hard to look at my face.

"Sorry," he says. "I — the clasp. The slip. I didn't — "

"You didn't do anything."

Mom's curtain rustles. Her voice floats out of it, syrup and smoke.

"Don't stare too hard, she's pregnant."

The man's hands freeze. Right there, six inches from my belly, palms down, fingers spread, not touching. Frozen. His eyes go to my stomach — he can't help it, she said the word — and then snap back up to mine, and his face is doing a thing, a red thing, a hot flush spreading from his collar up to his hairline.

I should say something. I don't. I just stand there and let him look at the belly, and let him look at the bra, and let him look at my face, and let him cycle through all three like he's trying to memorize the arrangement.

The silence is doing the work for me. That's a thing Mom taught me. When a man doesn't know what to do, you don't tell him. You wait. He'll tell you himself, in about four seconds, exactly what kind of man he is.

One. His jaw works.

Two. His fingers curl, then uncurl.

Three. He takes a breath through his nose.

Four.

"Go on, honey," Mom says from behind her curtain. "Touch her. She likes it slow."

His hand moves. It moves the way a hand moves when the man attached to it has stopped being in charge of it. It comes up and his fingertips land on the side of my belly — just the side, just the curve where the muscle's gone soft and the skin's gone tight — and his whole body shudders like he's touched a live wire.

"It's okay," I say. My voice comes out lower than I meant it to. "You can use your whole hand."

He does. He lays his palm flat against my belly, and I feel the heat of it, the slightly damp heat of a man who's been sweating in a fitting room for ten minutes and pretending he hasn't. His thumb moves. Just once. A little stroke, down and back up, right where the bump is starting.

"You're — " He stops. Starts again. "You're really pregnant."

"Yeah."

"How far?"

"Not far. Two months, give or take."

"And the — the father — "

"Doesn't matter." I smile at him. It's the smile Mom uses. I've been practicing it in mirrors since I was fifteen and didn't know why. "It's mine."

His thumb does the stroke again. Longer this time. His other hand comes up, hesitant, and lands on my waist, and I feel both of them on me now, both palms, one on the belly and one on the hip, and he's breathing through his mouth.

"You're not — you're not gonna tell anybody I — "

"Why would I tell anybody?"

"I don't know. I just — your mom's in there — "

"She's the one who told you to touch me."

His face does something complicated. He looks toward the curtain, toward the sound of his coworker working on Anna Cole's zipper, and then he looks back at me, and I can see him doing the math — the two women, the two of them, the way this is going — and I can see the exact moment he decides to stop doing math.

His hands settle. Both of them. His thumbs find the underside of my belly and press, gentle, and I feel my whole body go warm and loose, the way it does when somebody touches the bump. The baby isn't big enough to kick yet. But something in there knows. Something in me knows.

"Does that feel — " he starts.

"Keep doing it."

He keeps doing it. His hands move in slow circles, learning the shape of me, and I lean back against the mirror and let him, and I watch his face in the reflection behind him — the flush, the open mouth, the way he keeps glancing at the curtain like he's afraid his boss is going to walk in.

From Mom's side, the zipper sound again. Up. Down. Up. Down. Then a long, low sigh.

"Honey," Mom says. "You're gonna have to get that zipper past the waistband."

"It's — it's caught, ma'am, I don't want to rip — "

"You won't rip it. Put your hand flat on my back and pull."

A pause. Then the sound of a palm smacking skin — flat, deliberate, the sound of a man doing exactly what he was told. Mom makes a noise. Not a big noise. A small one. A noise that says good, now keep going.

"That's better," she says. "Now the hips."

"The — ma'am?"

"The zipper's stuck at the hips. You'll have to work it down. Both hands."

I hear the fabric move. I hear the man's breath catch. I hear Mom laugh — that low, almost-silent laugh she does when she's got a man exactly where she wants him.

My own associate has stopped circling my belly. His hands are just resting there now, flat, warm, and he's looking at me like he's waiting for permission for something he can't name.

"You can move up," I say.

"Up?"

"Up."

His right hand slides up my ribs, slow, and stops just under the underwire of my bra. His left hand stays on my belly. He's holding his breath.

"Higher," I say.

His hand moves. His palm covers my breast over the cup, and he makes a sound — a small, wrecked sound, like he's been holding it in for a while — and his thumb finds my nipple through the lace and presses.

I let my head fall back against the mirror. The glass is cold on my shoulder blades. The sconce light is doing that soft yellow thing on the ceiling, and in the mirror I can see the curtain of Mom's room, and I can see her shadow moving on it, and I can hear the older one's voice, low and strained, saying something I can't make out.

"She's pregnant too, you know," I say.

His hand stops.

"My mom. She's pregnant too."

"I — she — "

"Same father. Well. Same three fathers. We don't know which one."

He stares at me. His mouth is open. His hand is still on my breast and his other hand is still on my belly and he's staring at me like I just told him the world is flat.

"You're — you and your mom — "

"Sister wives." I smile. "It's a whole thing."

From behind the curtain, Mom's voice, warm and easy: "Don't break him, baby. He's got a shift after this."

"I'm not breaking him."

"You're breaking him a little."

My associate's hand comes off my breast. Then it comes back. He's not sure what to do with it. He's not sure what to do with any of this. I can see it in his face — the wanting, the fear, the way his eyes keep flicking to the curtain and back like he's waiting for somebody to come in and fire him.

"What's your name?" I ask.

"Danny."

"Danny." I put my hand over his, on my breast, and press it down. "Danny, do you want to keep going, or do you want to stop?"

"I — "

"Because if you want to stop, we can stop. My mom and I will buy the dresses and walk out and you'll never see us again."

He swallows. His thumb moves on my nipple again. Involuntary. He doesn't even know he's doing it.

"I don't want to stop," he says.

"Okay then."

Behind the curtain, the older associate says something — low, apologetic, the sound of a man trying to be professional in a situation that stopped being professional about ten minutes ago. Mom answers him. I can't hear the words. But I hear the tone, and the tone is don't you dare stop.

The curtain of her room bulges. Shifts. A hand comes out at the edge — a man's hand, older, thicker through the knuckles — and grips the velvet, holding it closed, and then pulls it just an inch, and then lets it fall back.

"Don't stare too hard," Mom calls out again, laughing. "She's pregnant."

Danny's hands freeze on me. Both of them. Right where they are. Right on the belly and the breast. Like a man who's been caught.

And the silence that follows is the loudest thing in the room.