The Costume Shop at Night

The town's costume photo studio keeps its lightbox burning after closing: a tower of glowing portraits, dozens of women in Tibetan festival dress, turquoise and coral and brocade, smiling out of the dark street like an archive that refuses to sleep. I stood across the road in my unglamorous black, arms crossed, and studied it the way I study card catalogues.

Every frontier town I have crossed this trip runs one of these studios, and I have stopped reading them cynically. People come here to be photographed as a grander version of where they are, and the lightbox is the town's shared album of that wish. Borrowed identity as public utility. I have worn two dynasties myself this month; I am in no position to condescend.

The street stayed grey and cold and the box stayed warm and lit, and that contrast is the whole business model, and possibly the whole human condition, but it was late and I had been driving all day, so I filed the thought and went to find dumplings.