The Roaring Days of Zora Lily by Noelle Salazar EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Noelle Salazar
- Language: English
- Genre: 20th Century Historical Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Washington, DC, 2023
The fluorescent lights blinked on in a domino effect, one after the other, a
faint buzzing sound filling the room as I stood squinting in the unnatural
light.
I inhaled, taking in my small slice of heaven within the storied walls of
the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. The long room
with its high ceiling, soothing taupe walls, and wood floors—weathered in
spots from years of conservators standing and pacing as they labored over
the works of great minds—brought a sense of peace as soon as I stepped
inside.
The museum had been my happy place since I was a little girl, when my
mother would walk with me from our baby blue–painted row house on
Capitol Hill, her slender fingers wrapped around my pudgy ones. We’d
wander past sprawling parks, melancholy monuments documenting history,
to the austere but magical facade housing wonders my six-year-old eyes
could barely comprehend. By the age of eight I knew all the regular exhibits
like the back of my hand, and waited anxiously for the monthly newsletter
that arrived in our mailbox, telling us what traveling exhibits we could
expect next. It was one such exhibit, a gallery of gowns worn by British
royalty, that had burrowed itself inside me in such a way that a dream was
born.
“I’m going to work here one day,” I’d told my mother, pushing back a
strand of dirty-blond hair as I stared up at a jewel-colored gown once worn
by Queen Elizabeth the Second.
I was twelve.
I wanted to exist within these walls. It was my church, and I believed in
its teachings wholeheartedly. I had drunk the water. Read the great books.
And prayed to the gods of knowledge and creativity. I wanted to be part of
whatever it took to bring history to life for others. And for the past nine
years…that’s exactly what I’d done.
I stared at the scene sprawled out before me.
“Sanctuary,” I whispered, tucking a blond-highlighted strand of hair
behind my ear.
Gleaming table after gleaming table sat covered in silk, satin, lace, and
velvet. Gowns and dresses and blouses previously only seen on movie
screens and in photographs now lay delicately in wait of tending to, their
sparkle and sinew in contrast to the stark lights and tepid surroundings.
Mannequins, my constant companions, stood at the ready, waiting for their
moment.
Thread in every color imaginable, like a rainbow of rotund spool soldiers
on a rolling rack, waited to be chosen. Needles in pincushions, strips of bias
tape, shimmering appliqués, ribbons, seam rippers, clear drawers filled with
buttons and clasps and snaps, and boxes upon boxes of straight pins, their
colorful heads a happy bouquet of tiny plastic globes, were scattered across
every surface, peeking from where they’d fallen to the floor, rolled beneath
furniture, and stuck—I bent to pull a pink-headed pin from the rug beneath
my feet—in a variety of inconvenient places.
The door clicked open behind me and I smiled.
“Good morning, Sylvia,” a familiar voice said.
“Morning, Lu,” I said to the one member of my team who, like me,
couldn’t wait to get to work
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