Juliana wore the same pink silk bathrobe every morning when she met Scott at the front door to kiss him.

“It’s my birthday,” she said, when she let him go.

Scott kissed her again for good luck. “You should have told me earlier—I could have brought you breakfast in bed or something.”

“I didn’t even remember it. I suppose you should have,” she admonished him. “But isn’t that silly? I just woke up and realized, today I’m…” She frowned and pulled away from Scott.

“Today, you’re…” Scott prompted, pulling his coat on.

“Three. I was going to say three. I don’t know why. I’m obviously not.” She looked down at herself, as though making sure. “Oh, well.” She tugged on his collar and kissed him again, on the cheek. “I’ll see you at twelve,” she said.

Scott always got to the office last. He liked walking the few blocks to his office before the sun rose, when the only things he could see were solid squares of building, dove-gray or glossy black, quiet and simple and stationary. Even the neon lights were off; nobody needed them, except for him, and he didn’t want them.

He usually stopped at the Automat one block over to make the walk last just a little longer. The little café was empty except for the policeman in the corner, hunched over a congealing plate of eggs. He nodded to Scott as he passed and then returned to immobility.

Scott leaned against a booth, studying the lone apples and bananas and cellophane-wrapped muffins sitting, lopsided, in their small white cells. He fished out a quarter from his pocket and pushed it into the coin slot of an empty window. The back of the cell slid up, and a hand carefully placed a dish of carrots inside before slamming it back down. He chose another empty cell and deposited a quarter; this one earned him a cup of steaming black coffee, the hot liquid dribbling down the side of the brown mug and slopping onto the hand before it formed a puddle on the floor.

Scott took the coffee to a booth, his back to the policeman. He left the cup on the table when he was done. When he stepped outside, the sun began to rise.

The office was full of yellow light, of the suffocating perfume of the typing girls and their identical red mouths and cat-eyed glasses, slim white fingers moving in unison. He imagined them falling silent after he closed the door, fingers poised inches from their keyboards, waiting silently in the dark. It was why he’d never taken a day off; the girls would be frozen for eight hours with no dictations to transcribe, no letters to type up. The next morning, they would take hours to start up again, having become gawky and uncalibrated from hours of disuse. His personal secretary might help him to put the girls back in order, distributing correspondence to be typed up; might be frozen with them, bent over a cold cup of coffee, stalled in the process of adding three sugars and cream to it for him.

Juliana came to the office at noon, as she said she would, and as she always did. She seemed to appear in the tiny room without his knowing, suddenly looming over him with a brown paper bag in one hand. “I brought you lunch,” she said. “It’s egg salad. I made it myself.”

“You don’t have to, you know,” Scott said. “Although it’s awfully nice.” He opened the bag and inspected the contents, then closed it back up and set it on the corner of his desk.

Juliana shrugged. “It’s something to do.” She glanced back towards the room with the typing girls. “I could type something up for you, if you like,” she said. “Or bring you coffee.”

Scott waved the offer away. “It’s all right. The secretary does all that.”

Juliana’s face fell. “Oh.” She glanced towards the door. “Gladys? Greta?”

“Whichever,” Scott said. “Really. You don’t need to do anything at all. I’m sure you have things to get back to.”

Juliana leaned on his desk. “Not really. I mostly just make egg salad and wait for you to come back.”

When Juliana left, Scott went over to his secretary’s desk. “Gladys,” he said. It didn’t look up. “I mean Greta. Greta?” He felt silly. He’d had it for at least three years and had never thought to give it a name in all that time. He supposed Juliana might have done it for fun, just to have something to talk to. He wondered if it ever answered her chattering.

He cleared his throat. “I’m going to take a long lunch today. Hold all my calls until I get back.”

“Noted,” the secretary said. “There have been no calls this morning. Would you like me to ask someone to call you?”

“I don’t really care,” Scott muttered.

He wandered along the street, glancing into windows. Diamond necklaces gleamed in one; soft black lace hung in another. Everything would fit Juliana; she would coo over anything he got for her, try it on for him in candlelight.

Something tattered and rusted reached out to touch the hem of his overcoat. “Spare change?” it mumbled. Sometimes he would throw coins to them, if he needed to be in a giving mood, but otherwise they were a bother. He kicked it away absently, thinking about Juliana’s skin, about her sitting quietly in their apartment hour after hour, rising only to make him egg salad.

He stood outside of the window of Morgan’s for what seemed like hours, entranced by the tiny things in the display. He thought they were just what Juliana needed.

Scott took Juliana out to dinner that night just so he could watch her get ready. He leaned against the doorway of their bedroom, one hand behind his back, the other caressing the doorframe as though it was her skin. He loved watching her draw a mouth on herself, shiny and red as candy. Her reflection opened its eyes wide for him as she brushed her eyelashes on. It disappeared momentarily as she leaned forward and kissed it, but when she drew back, it winked at him and smiled.

When she was done, Scott thought she looked like a piece of curled ribbon, polka-dotted and edged with lace. He told her she was beautiful and that he was going to take her to the most expensive restaurant he could afford, someplace with candles and violin music—somewhere he could show her off. She would glisten in the candlelight.

Fastening on a pearl earring, Juliana glanced up at Scott. “What’s that behind your back?”

“I was going to give it to you at the restaurant,” Scott said. “I just bought it for you today. I know you always wanted one.” He presented it to Juliana. It was limp and soft in his arms.

“Oh.” Juliana took it from him gingerly. It lay in her arms like it lay in his arms, and she cradled it. “It’s beautiful,” she cooed at it. “Absolutely gorgeous.”

Scott beamed. “I knew you’d like it. Shall we go?”

“To dinner?” Juliana did not stop gazing at the doll. “We can’t just leave her here alone, can we?”

“It won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t drag it everywhere,” Scott said. “Just leave it on the bed. It’s all right.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve made reservations, dear.”

“Can we take her with us, then? That’s all right, isn’t it?” Juliana held it closer to her chest.

“I just wanted to show you off,” Scott said, helplessly.

At the restaurant, Scott couldn’t figure out how to work the host. He watched it flail, diners pulling the strings on its arms from all directions, but could not find a way to get it to talk to him. At last, in frustration, he folded up a twenty-dollar bill and slipped it into the host’s mouth.

It suddenly came to life, bowing to them, asking if they wanted smoking or non, table or booth, and did they need a high chair for the third? Scott said non, and table, and Juliana giggled and said yes please, just pull it up beside her.

“You could just put it on the table,” Scott said. “Or on another seat. We don’t need special arrangements.”

Juliana snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.” She ordered wine for herself and a cup of milk for the doll. “I’m not nursing her,” she said, “so I can drink. But you’re driving home, you hear?” She pointed a spoon at Scott.

“Fine,” Scott said. He ordered mineral water with lemon and watched Juliana ferry milk to the doll’s painted-on mouth with the spoon. The milk ran down its chin and soaked into the fabric of its face and neck. “That’s going to smell terrible when it dries,” he said. “You’ll wish you hadn’t done it.”

“I can wash her,” Juliana said. “Don’t worry.”

“Don’t you think you’re acting a little like a child?” Scott asked. “Feeding it like you’re a…a five-year-old holding a tea party?”

“She needs to eat,” Juliana said matter-of-factly. “Anyway, it’s fun. I’ve never had one before, did you know that?” She hummed as she fed it.

Scott flicked the squat crystal candlestick with his fork. The flame danced for him. “You could have just left it home tonight,” he said. “Started acting like a mommy tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Juliana said, “but she needs a mommy tonight, you know.” She picked up the doll and kissed it on the nose. “Doesn’t she? Yes she does, pretty thing,” she murmured to it.

Scott took a long sip of his water and glanced around the restaurant. The diners were all bent, faces locked downward. For once, he was relieved. He could hear the soft clacking of their limbs as they moved over their meals, almost in unison. He kept an ear out for the creak that would accompany the turning of a neck, or the marble-like sound of eyes swiveling in their sockets.

“Will you stop playing with that thing?” he asked crossly.

“Why? Nobody’s looking,” Juliana said. “Darling, nobody cares. She’s not making a fuss.” She pressed the doll’s painted lips to her cheek. “This is fun, isn’t it? Isn’t she sweet?”

She barely looked at Scott for the rest of the meal, pressing pieces of breadroll to the doll’s face, whispering into the side of its head. Scott imagined the meal as it should have been, dozens of eyes on Juliana and Juliana’s eyes on him.

Juliana put the doll onto the bed when they got home. “She needs a crib,” she said. “And a name.”

Scott sat on the bed and inspected the doll. The milk seemed to have soaked into its face; the fabric was dry to the touch. “Juliana Two,” he said. “Little Juliana. Why can’t we just put it on a shelf or something?”

“She’ll roll off,” Juliana said. Scott didn’t watch as she peeled off her underclothes. “I’ll go tomorrow and get a crib and all sorts of baby things. Really, Scott, I don’t know why you didn’t at least get a diaper bag or something for her. They need things, you know.” She reappeared on the bed in a flutter of silk.

“Right,” Scott said. “Accessories. Why don’t we both go back to the store tomorrow, after work?” He patted her leg. “I like this, actually. You’ll look rather cute taking that thing out in a stroller.”

“After work, then,” Juliana said. She stretched out on the bed and closed her eyes, pulling the doll closer to her.

“Perfect.” Scott leaned down and kissed her neck. It was perfectly smooth, perfectly white, and tasted of nothing.

Juliana pushed him away gently. “Darling, not while she’s in the bed with us. That sort of thing is supposed to be terribly traumatic.” She curled up with the doll in her arms, her back to him.

“Tomorrow night, then,” Scott said to her back. “When we’ve gotten a crib for it.”

Juliana’s voice was muffled through the doll. “Sure.”

When Scott woke up the next morning, Juliana was still sprawled over the bed, her eyes closed tight. He climbed over her to get out of bed, careful not to jostle her body, and stepped on something soft. The doll had slipped out of her grasp and was lying on the floor, its yarn hair a tangled halo around its head. He left it there.

She came to his office at one-thirty, with a paper bag in one hand and the doll in the other. The doll had a bandage wrapped around its head. “She fell out of my arms,” Juliana explained. “The poor thing! Her crying must have woken me up. That’s why I’m late; I had to make her stop crying, and do you know how much time feeding a baby takes? We really have to go get a crib and a bottle and things for her right after you get out of work.”

“Sure,” Scott said, chewing through the egg-salad sandwich she had brought. He glanced at the doll. “Crying?”

“You didn’t hear her?” Juliana shifted the doll in her arms. “Oh, it must have been after you left. She was really kicking up a fuss.”

“She’s pretty quiet now,” Scott said.

“After I calmed her down, yes,” Juliana said. She put the doll on the desk. “Say hello to Daddy,” she said to it.

“She’s just quiet in general, isn’t she?” Scott ran his finger along the doll’s floppy foot. “She’s not laughing.”

Juliana sighed and scooped the doll up. “You’re tickling the bottom of her shoe,” she said.

“Ah-hah.” Scott flicked at the lump of cloth. “That would explain everything, wouldn’t it?”

“Anyway,” Juliana said, “I’m taking her back home for the moment. Shall I pick you up after work?”

“Five sharp,” Scott said, and stood to kiss her on the cheek. Juliana accepted the kiss, then held the doll out to him. “Oh,” Scott said, “right,” and pressed his lips to its head.

After Juliana left, Scott went to talk to his secretary. He watched it clack monotonously away at a letter, the fingers and keys almost blurring with speed as they reached the end of each line. “You noticed my wife today, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” the secretary said. “She came through here like she always does.”

“Did you notice what she was carrying?”

“Your lunch,” the secretary said. “Like she always does. And the baby. Sweet little thing.”

“Ah,” Scott said. “The baby. Did its cheeks look painted on? Were its eyes made out of buttons? Was the hair a little yarnlike at all?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the secretary said, and sped up its typing again.

“That’s all I wanted to know,” Scott said. He gave a false, bright smile. “When you’re finished with that letter, compose one to Morgan’s Toy Store about their policy on returning defective merchandise.”