Page Five

I sweated some seconds before the door broke open, and Judith burst from the office panting. Sam was laughing. And momentarily, the entire office of Roper and Tyme would join him.  It was worse to be stuck working there after that day than to be stuck in the corner those minutes. 

Judy refused to talk to me about it.  What's worse was how she refused.

"Judy, Sam's wife is no shrinking violet.  She won't tolerate hanky panky at the office," I'd say.
Judy would half smile, unconcerned, ready to meet a dark future without any help from her sister.  

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You are viewing page three of "Edith/Judith," a fashion photostory whose accompanying text draws inspiration from pulp magazine stories.

CREDITS  Models: Tonya Smith, Carmine Leighton; Hair: Corrie Horacek; Clothing by Sartorial Splendor; Photographs, text: Tom Seiler. 

Page Four

Listening hard feels like suffocating. I removed my shoes and stockings and dragged my wastebasket to my listening place. And perching again between the wall and file cabinet, I raised myself nearer to the level of the vent overhead, scraping along the wall’s tiny rough bumps, my cheek warming. There was just enough space for me to slide an earring off.

Sam despised me.  If Sam ever saw me coming, he would pull the elevator gate shut rather than share space with me. He treated having to visit my desk as a horrible ordeal, which prompted me to deliberately misspell his name on documents every so often. I heard him now, barking, “Doll! Closer!” He was saying it was nearly one o’clock. I heard Judy’s voice. Then, the electric heater clicked on and the growing hum sealed over the sounds from the room.

It was then my backside slid down the cabinet. I fell hard, sitting down, but suspended an inch above the floor, my knees pinned against my chest, my shins against the wall. I was wedged there! Not daring to scream for help—if I even could have drawn a breath deep enough to do so—I made a silent, sad struggle to pry myself from the trap before the men returned to find me there with reddened bare legs and a raw ear.

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You are viewing page four of "Edith/Judith," a fashion photostory whose accompanying text draws inspiration from pulp magazine stories.

CREDITS  Models: Tonya Smith, Carmine Leighton; Hair: Corrie Horacek; Clothing by Sartorial Splendor; Photographs, text: Tom Seiler. 

Page Three

This was why we came here tonight.

It happened before Judy had filled a single timecard. Lunch hour gives me my only chance for a smoke, but on this particular Friday, I was stuck instead responding to letters from school officials upset by typos in our latest textbook. “On behalf of Mr. Roper, I can assure you that the author meant to encourage these students to 'have a good time holding elections’ in their communities. Will an errata sheet suffice until the next edition appears?” Between frustrated strikes at my typewriter, I suddenly imagined I could hear crying coming from Sam the bookkeeper’s door. I halted, pencil in teeth, straining to identify the source. It might have been Sam’s chair shifting. Why wasn’t he at lunch? I rose and approached the wall outside his office. A filing cabinet stood near it, but not so near as to prevent me from wedging my body in the surplus space, and pressing my ear to plaster. I waited. With my chest to the wall, my own heart was the loudest sound.  The file cabinet chilled me through my skirt. There was hardly enough room to draw a breath. Sam whispered something. A gasp. Sharp breathing. Was it mine? 

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You are viewing page three of "Edith/Judith," a fashion photostory whose accompanying text draws inspiration from pulp magazine stories.

CREDITS  Models: Tonya Smith, Carmine Leighton; Hair: Corrie Horacek; Clothing by Sartorial Splendor; Photographs, text: Tom Seiler. 

Page Two

“Don’t pretend—Don’t for a minute pretend that’s what I meant!”  I shouted.  “This is a nice place.”  It wasn’t like the office.

Passing trucks curled the collections of a summer downpour over the curb with a lulling regularity.  Judy tilted her face toward the sound and weighed her hair in gentle pats that sent the smell of reefer cigarettes toward me.  She turned back and smiled.  If only that smile had belonged to a grocery cashier, or a salesgirl, or teacher.  Or someone's wife.  I wished I could start again, and keep from always lying to her.

"Judy, let's join them upstairs."

Her shoulders resiled. She gave me a challenging stare. Then, in a flash, I saw my sister as the men must see her.

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You are viewing page two of "Edith/Judith," a fashion photostory whose accompanying text draws inspiration from pulp magazine stories.

CREDITS  Models: Tonya Smith, Carmine Leighton; Hair: Corrie Horacek; Clothing by Sartorial Splendor; Photographs, text: Tom Seiler. 

Page One

To me as a young girl, the old apartment was nothing but wood, and gosh, it was overwhelming.  Judy and I ran quarters in the gouges of the red oak floor, near the sticky, stained, walnut coffee table.  Until I was a teenager I didn’t know that everyone had a “coffee” table, since no one else’s was so soaked through-and-through with the stuff.  A sign behind the fold-away ironing board notified “boarders” of their rights, and I remember that Judy believed these boarders must be the wooden nutcrackers on Auntie A’s table.  That’s because I told her they were.  But mostly, it was the doors of the closets that made everything seem wooden and hard, meaning to keep people out like when I’d wrap myself with Auntie’s leather belt inside there and stab her favorite pin into the palms of my hands.

Judy doesn’t remember prying into my hiding place and screaming in my face.  She doesn’t remember the old place at all, or anything about our Sunday visits to the city.  So it wasn’t right, hiring her to work under me at Roper & Tyme Publishers, and, boy, I knew it.  She had no sense for how to behave here, how they press you downtown.  And should she get into trouble….  We interviewed six different girls for the position before I relented and handed my sister's application over to the boys.

She was still thanking me for that helping hand two months later—that night, when after drinks, I decided she could come with me to experience her first party outside of the office.  Only now, her voice took on a quality I don't want to describe.

"I thank you, Edith, for the way you tried to look out for me."  She then also corrected me, as I found the building and led her inside.  "This certainly won't be my first party.  Please don't pretend."

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You are viewing page one of "Edith/Judith," a fashion photostory whose accompanying text draws inspiration from pulp magazine stories.

CREDITS  Models: Tonya Smith, Carmine Leighton; Hair: Corrie Horacek; Clothing by Sartorial Splendor; Photographs, text: Tom Seiler. 

Edith/Judith

      "As I listened to her lurid retelling, it grew harder to fight my suspicion. This was my sister no longer. Judith had gone girl-mad."      

Once the picture of sororal rivalry, big-city sisters Edith and Judith gave up competing for men when they both found work at the same downtown publisher. Now, Judith obeys her older sister's demands uncomplainingly and steers clear of office controversy. Yet a secret belies Judith's new faraway calm.   

Serialized exclusively here, this week. Check back for daily updates to this fashion photostory.

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