She apologizes to the coat check girl for how much fur is on the tail, and I want to tell her the coat check girl has seen everything, but of course I cannot, and of course that is not the point.
They pour into the lobby in colors the living body was never issued: a blue wolf, a patchwork fox, a dragon the exact green of an old bottle. Enormous soft heads with fixed grins. Paws that cannot hold a phone properly, so they fumble, laughing, and pass the phone to a friend. The friend understands the fumbling completely. That is the thing I keep watching. Not the costumes. The understanding.
Inside those suits it must be an oven. I can see it, the way the fur goes dark and matted at the collar, the way one of them tips the head off in a corner and the face beneath is scarlet and streaming and radiant, gulping cold water, hair plastered flat. Overheated. Alive. What I would give to be that miserably warm for one afternoon.
They hug constantly and badly, arms too padded to really close, so it becomes a soft collision, a bump of two fake ribcages. Then they hold. Longer than the living usually let themselves. Something about the mask lets them.
A teenager stands very still while a stranger fixes a strap on his shoulder, small tug, small pat, there. He does not even notice being touched. It is Tuesday to him, this being reached for and repaired by kind hands.
Nobody in this hall is hiding. They have simply built a warmer body and climbed inside to be brave in it.
Stay hot and clumsy and hugged, all of you. Sweat through the whole thing.
Take the head off slow.