framed the boardwalk, drawing gazes and appreciative murmurs. The centre smelled like new cars revving their engines, a few winks escaping from the windows of Porsche 911s and my aunt’s personal favorite—the ruby-red Audi A8 roaring down the boulevard, a man’s hand resting on the outside of the door handle. 

I was with my aunt—the pretty, chain-smoking one with the rouge artfully smeared across her glass-cutting cheekbones—and her untamable taste for luxury. She taught me to put makeup on that summer (a skill I promptly forgot when returning to marshy, sticky South Florida). 

She taught me the fake voice she wore in front of white people, the jaunty little mask she applied alongside eyeliner and Estee Lauder. Elongate the vowels. Smile but never too much. Hide your teeth unless they’re bleached and orthodontist-certified. Don’t you dare drop into the slang those boys taught you at school; “ain’t” is a cardinal sin, and you better not forget that. Say “oh my gosh,” bonus points if you nail Midwestern nasal chic, instead of your mother’s accent-tinged “oh my god.” Say “I see” while twirling your blown-out bleach-blonde hair instead of “I disagree.” 

My aunt was an expert at making herself smaller and brighter, like a pearl—perfectly smooth, silent, and shiny. No one could break her. 

We were in that store because she insisted on a new lipstick, something French and unpronounceable. You couldn’t get it at Macy’s or Nordstrom, she insisted on that. She was

good at sounding expensive. She whispered brand names like spells, like Cle de Peau was a prayer chanted under her breath. They could transform her, if she tried hard enough. She drifted through that place in the throes of transformation, a saint strutting through a basilica, her Rivera-chic perfume leaving her essence (smoke and money and that godawful Guerlain Shalimar) behind for me to catch and chase like fireflies. I tried to keep up. I really did. But my flip-flops echoed against the aged wooden floors, and my shirt caught on the edge of a mirrored table. 

“Don’t slouch, Dina,” she began, one manicured nail against my spine, “you look like some orphan in a charity ad.” 

“Sorry.” I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood. 

She didn’t mean it in a rude way. She wasn’t mean about it, either. Nothing she ever said was mean. She spoke in that throaty way, like she was determined to teach you life’s secrets but was damn sure you would never ever figure out she learned it the hard way. She looked so beautiful under the low, glowy lighting of the boutique that the store clerks fluttered toward her like moths to a bonfire. It was the same way men approached her at restaurants and bellhops grinned when she walked into lobbies. 

“You know what your problem is?” she said, inspecting the row of creams and lipsticks in a glass vitrine. 

I shook my head, my ponytail beating my neck. 

“You’re always apologizing. Even your body language. Like you owe the world something.” 

I blinked at her. She reached over and smoothed a strand of copper hair behind my ear, tut-tutting at the fake gold hoops. 

“You owe nothing. Remember that, Dina.” 

The salesgirl (young, mid-twenties, forgettable in the eyelash extensions and balayage) hovered, a bottle of perfume in hand. She cleared her throat, her pale cheeks reddening with

the strain. I wanted to reach out and prod her real blonde strands, tug them until they fell to reveal black or grey or a ruddy brown. My aunt’s were fake, done half-up in a salon in New York; I didn’t notice it then, but in pictures I realize her roots were growing out, two inches of inky black misplacing the confident honey. 

Later my aunt would tell me that the salesgirl started tailing us around the bra counter, presumably postulating that my aunt would shove undergarments into her Chanel bag. My aunt’s eyes would bug out while revealing this later. Imagine that—they think I’m going to steal cheap sweatshop stuff. 

The girl didn’t speak at first, just clung to the table near the jeans, folding and refolding with an unnecessary kind of violence. My aunt noticed, of course. She let her fingernails dig into my shoulder, red marks developing under my rashguard. Behind her oversized Jackie O sunglasses, she tracked the girl, and her lip curled slightly. 

“Don’t touch anything unless you plan to buy it,” she whispered to me, the corner of her mouth barely moving. 

I froze. My hand was mid-air, fingers extended toward a silk slip dress the color of an exhale, something pale and sickly against my tanned skin. She stepped forward, then. Into the space the salesgirl was guarding. The girl stiffened, shoulders jerking back like she’d been hit with static. 

“Excuse me,” my aunt said, letting her cigarette rasp of a voice sharpen into elegance. “Do you carry Tom Ford?” 

My aunt didn’t want Tom Ford. Something she’d tell me the next morning over orange juice and breakfast in bed: it’s so ostentatious, just expensive for people who are cheap. But, it’s universal in that sense. Who doesn’t know it? 

The girl blinked. “Um, yes. But only a few shades.” 

“Show me.” 

It wasn’t a request.

The girl turned, hips too tense, and began to walk toward the glass vitrine in the back corner. My aunt followed slowly, savoring the pace like it was part of a performance. I trailed behind, unsure whether to keep my hands to myself or pretend to belong, pretend to be interested in the ribbed tops my aunt called ostentatious but bought anyway. 

Another sales associate joined then—older, with hard eyeliner and that permanent scowl women in luxury retail develop after too many years of telling teenagers not to lean on the glass. She took one look at us (be glad this isn’t the Deep South, or I would go feral type of look) and repositioned herself two feet to our left, arms folded, mouth pinched. 

“Oh, look,” my aunt murmured, leaning toward a gold-plated lipstick, “we’ve attracted an audience.” 

“I didn’t do anything,” I whispered as my aunt pulled me along the shining floor. “Exactly.” 

At the display, my aunt lifted one tube after another with surgical precision, inspecting the names. They were absurd, as always—Wild Ginger, Casablanca, Flamingo, Indian Rose. She held each like a knife, unsheathing the bullets of color with a flick of her wrist. 

“‘Indian Rose,’” she said, raising a drawn-in eyebrow. “Christ. Can’t even colonize properly.” 

The younger girl flushed but said nothing. 

She didn’t buy the lipstick. Just held it in her palm like a ruby she didn’t need, inspecting it with the bored detachment of a woman who knew exactly how much power she wielded just by existing in the space. She set it down with a soft click, like she was dismissing it from a casting call, and turned. 

“You ready?” she asked me, but didn’t wait for an answer. 

We walked slowly—deliberately—toward the exit. Rather, she walked like a queen and I scrambled behind her, uncoordinated and incoherently styled in my flip-flops and bandanna. The salesgirls flanked us like security personnel, all too eager to make sure we didn’t stray. One

pretended to rearrange a display of mesh cardigans we hadn’t even glanced at; the other stood by the door like a sentry, the tension in her shoulders betraying her thin smile. They weren’t subtle. She’d later tell me over vodka (for her) and orange juice (for me) that they never are. 

I saw the way the older one’s eyes flicked to my aunt’s bag—real, black, quilted Chanel, vintage gold chain worn dull by time and touch, one of twelve in the collection—and I saw her make the judgment anyway. I wanted to scream at her: She’s not stealing. She’s never stolen a thing in her life except maybe attention, but that’s not a crime, is it? 

But my aunt beat me to it. Not by speaking—in that upper-crust way, she never wasted her breath on the help—but by pausing at the threshold. One stiletto-heeled foot outside, one still on the parquet. She turned, ever so slightly, her sunglasses slipping just enough to reveal a flash of her eyes: mascaraed, kohl-ringed. 

“Toodles,” she said, with venom so sweet it could rot your teeth. And then she smiled, full teeth, perfect teeth, fuck-you money teeth. The kind of smile that made the salesgirl step back involuntarily. 

We entered into the heat like royalty, sweat already starting to bead beneath the designer labels. My aunt didn’t break stride, didn’t look back, didn’t let me lag. She lit a cigarette before we even hit the crosswalk, flicking the match to the ground without looking. “You saw that, right?” she asked, exhaling. 

“I did.” 

“I don’t imagine they follow every girl who walks in there, do you?” 

I shook my head. 

She glanced at me sideways, lips pursed around the cigarette like it was a punctuation mark. “Good. You remember that.” 

There was silence for a beat. The trees whispered overhead. Somewhere in the distance, a fountain gurgled like a throat clearing. I thought maybe we were done.

But then she added, quietly, “That’s why you never give them a reason. You walk in with your head up, and you make them sorry they ever doubted you. You don’t shrink. You don’t steal. You don’t give them that satisfaction.” 

She didn’t say who “they” were. She never would.