When I first looked, I mistook her for a fashion model gliding across a stage before columnists, designers, and devotees, the flash of cameras popping and flickering all around her. This store window mannequin is dressed so elegantly and posed with such a sense of bravado, she simply stole all my attention. That the actual onlookers were merely sidewalk pedestrians crept into my awareness slowly and left me feeling as I do at the end of a film or novel that has completely transported me to another place in another body with some other personality. Now the dream is over, and I am left feeling disappointed with my familiar and ordinary surroundings.
