The Secret Lives of Dresses Read Online Free Page B

things happened. It was nobody’s fault (although she did treasure some spiteful thoughts about her erstwhile archaeologist). The scholarship administrator was relieved; she’d expected tears, recriminations, possibly even threats—some of the Lymond scholarship students were very well connected. She shook Dora’s hand very firmly on the way out.
    “Again, I’m so sorry, Dora. I hope you have a good summer in spite of this difficulty.” Dora thanked her and wandered out of her office, to stand in front of the job board on the last day of the semester. All of the sheets with their paper fringes of phone numbers mostly torn off, informing you that you could work to save the environment and make good money, asking for students to babysit, to wait tables, to be interns of every kind but the medical, left Dora empty and blank.
    While Dora was standing there, wondering whether or not she could still sublet her room and head back to Forsyth, a guy rushed up. A cute dark-haired guy with a roundish baby face, hauling an open box from the copy shop. Dora could see that it was full of job flyers. He tried to juggle the box and a stapler, and Dora watched, fascinated, as the box spilled from his grasp. A ream of paper fanned out over the floor.
    “Here, I’ll help,” Dora said.
    “Thanks.” He smiled up at her, already on his knees, shuffling paper.
    Dora went to the end of the spill, where some pages had fallen in a damp spot and were quickly getting soggy.
    “Just toss those,” he said. “It’s stupid, anyway, I left it too late, and everyone who needs a job at this point has one.” He ran an exasperated hand through his short dark hair, and it fell back exactly into place.
    Dora looked at him again. “I don’t,” she said. “What do you need?”
    “The coffee shop is rehabbing. I need someone to help me clean, paint, and redecorate it. And then restock it. And all before August, which is going to be tight, I can tell you.”
    “Okay.”
    “Okay?”
    “Okay, I’ll do it.”
    “Don’t you want to know what I’m paying? Or the hours?”
    “Not especially. I figure you’re paying at least the going rate, because you’re trying to get someone late in the semester. And as for hours, if you have to be done by August, it’s as many as possible, which is fine by me.”
    “Can you lift seventy pounds?”
    “How many times?”
    “Once or twice a day will do.”
    “Well, then, yes, I can lift seventy pounds.”
    He stuck out his hand. “I’m Gary. I’m your new boss.”
    Dora took his hand and shook it. “I’m Dora. I’m your new employee.”
    Gary swept up the rest of the sheets and dumped them in the recycling bin. He shoved his stapler into his pocket. “Let’s go get your paperwork in order.”
    Dora followed him back to his office. Surprisingly, it was in the Music Department.
    “The Music Department runs the coffee shop?” she asked.
    “Well, not exactly, no. But I run the coffee shop, and I’m a grad student in musicology, and so this is where the office is.”
    Dora followed him up the steps. Music was in one of the older buildings on campus. In the distance she could hear a flute repeating the same lighthearted phrase over and over again, stopping and starting like someone trying to tell a joke through an attack of the hiccups.
    The office was tiny, ancient, linoleum-floored. Gary shuffled through the papers on his desk, and came up triumphantly with a battered folder marked COFFEE SHOP .
    “Wait—you’re a U.S. citizen, right?” He looked so alarmed by the possibility that she wasn’t that Dora was almost tempted to claim that she was Bosnian or Venezuelan.
    “I’m a citizen,” she reassured him.
    “That’s good; I have no idea where to get the noncitizen form.” Gary dug around and thrust a stack of papers at Dora. Dora held them while Gary realized there was nowhere for her to sit and fill them out. He rushed out to the hall and dragged in a chair, and then shoved a stack of