I felt my life flick by at 2x speed. I used to be able to take my time eating the cheese out of a big sandwich or wandering the public library, watching kids peel the cardboard spines off Berenstain Bears books and mutilate them with marker. It wasn’t long ago that I spent hours sulking because I missed Joaquin, that I somehow always ended up at a Pret A Manger in Midtown, staring at more sandwiches⁠—⁠cage-free mayo, mature cheddar. Then I’d check and it would only be Tuesday. Now it was always Saturday again and I always had to go to my job at the vintage glasses store.

You would think it might be a good thing, it always being the weekend.

On Saturdays in the East Village people stepped out in clusters, clad in their best jeans, chattering about their weeks. The store I worked at was called Marvelous Martha’s⁠—⁠“Meet your marvelous” was our slogan⁠—⁠and was popular for deadstock fifties cat eyes, interesting designer stuff, and because there was viral gnocchi next door. It came glommed in a Chinese takeout box and cost thirty dollars. People took turns filming cheese pulls with chopsticks. Teenagers stumbled in smelling like truffle sauce. We’d get a curious couple or two dead set on buying nothing, but trying on everything: We’re looking for something square and Kelly green. Do you have anything green? People came in confused and high and screaming, but, most importantly, came the girls, our most loyal customers, the lines of girls in camel coats, fresh off  bottomless brunch, lightly tipsy, pushing in through the front door, a halo of daylight and strawberry vape smoke around them.

So wacky, one girl would say to another, pointing at some sixties squares with an abalone beetle appliqué. Wait, a third would announce. She’d slip on a delicate gold pair with little Versace coins embedded in each temple, and she’d look around, hands outstretched like she was wearing IMAX 3-D glasses, like she was blind. Maddie, do you like these?

Maddie would emerge from the back of the store⁠—⁠she’d be the one with the most intricate hair highlights, a bronde with the most depth. She had the 250 cc moderate-profile implants under the muscle, taut, unclockable. She’d tilt her head and look Lauren in the face, and Lauren would look back, unflinching. Then Maddie would tap her lightly on each shoulder and say:

They kind of make your face look round.

The girls would nod solemnly in agreement, Lauren too. Lauren would be resigned to her round face, and though I’d personally call it more heart-shaped, she wouldn’t want my opinion. People like her preferred it this way. That shape had dictated her place in the world and it’d be difficult to imagine anything different.

Lauren would look into our cheval glass and jab at her cheekbones.

Every now and then, someone seemed to know what they needed.

Sorry, could I please try on those? a girl asked today. If that’s okay? Overly polite, her mouth small and tight like a cat’s, her hair loose blond curls.

Yes, sure.

She pointed to the locked glass cabinet with the designers⁠—⁠Gucci, Fendi, Vivienne Westwood. Mostly metal, shimmering under striplights. I twisted my key in the latch. The Gaultier suns, vintage nineties, gunmetal, rare. They had weird eyeholes, like rectangles with a half-moon chunk cut out of each side, the lenses purple-tinted. What made them most special was that the temples were shaped like Eiffel Towers, with lattice detailing, the very tops of the towers curling over the ears.

She put them on and instantly they looked excellent. Head width was most important when it came to glasses, it was like shoe size. Then came all the other stuff, brow placement and complexion-matching, the choice between angular and soft-edged.

In the back, Josh was trying to sell something clunky and metallic, like a car part, for six hundred dollars. We didn’t earn commissions. Josh did it for the love of the game.

This girl slid them off and glanced at the price. Two hundred and fifty dollars.

She smiled, gave them back. Thanks.

Those look great on you.

Thanks, she said again. I really like them.

Her boyfriend, I realized, was standing right behind me. He stood like a boyfriend, hands pocketed, a little too nonchalant, like this was his living room.

Do you like them? she pressed him.

He wobbled his head in a way that could have meant absolutely anything. Everyone was always parading around their boyfriend who was dressed in ill-fitting athletic shorts and not realizing how important this was for her. It was so obvious when someone found the right thing, that confluence of someone’s grandma auctioning off  her progressives on eBay in Lithuania and a person’s ears being the ideal distance apart. It meant something, for a frame to fit, and for the person to feel good in it.

I’ll come back for them, she said firmly. After the next paycheck. I need them for a wedding. My best friend’s wedding.

Well, they’re a good choice. And a good price, given how much they sometimes go for online. I don’t make a commission, I added. So I’m telling the truth.

I hope it works out.

Me too.

She smiled. Thanks.

I heard Josh close the deal back there. From afar, he winked.

I was in love with Josh. When he was a teenager, he’d run away from a rural town called Misty Wagon, after his pastor dad found out he’d paid for a girl’s abortion. I’d felt so jealous when he described that girl⁠—⁠she’d had heterochromia, one green eye and one brown. Josh and I had sex one time at the staff Christmas party, thrown by Jeff, the owner of Marvelous Martha’s, and then never again. There was no Martha. Jeff was a retail mogul, and once a year he let us choose one optical and one sun to keep, then bought out a rooftop bar⁠—⁠bottle girls, aerial silks, henna tattoos⁠—⁠and everyone got obliterated. Seventeen negronis. I’d gotten a lotus mandala inked cold and wet on the back of my wrist by a lady in a sequined fedora. Later, under flashing blue rave lights, Josh had leaned over and picked off each bit of dried dye, revealing a warm, orangey shape.