I glared at her, though she probably didn’t notice because the lighting was so bad.
“Maybe we should take turns, then,” said Ella.
I shook my head, and banged it against the flimsy wall. “No. We need each other to zip up and put on our make-up.” I fell on to the toilet as the train took a sudden bend. “And, anyway, we’re already half undressed. We may as well keep going.”
We kept going, but, unfortunately, the train kept going, too. My memory of the route to the city was that it was pretty straight, but either my memory was wrong or the route had been changed to take in every bend between Dellwood and New York. It was lucky the toilet was no bigger than a broom closet or Ella and I would have spent a lot of time on the floor.
Bruised and exhausted, we finally got our regular clothes off and our party dresses on.
“What do you think?” asked Ella.
“It’s a little hard to tell when we’re practically touching noses.” I wedged my make-up bag behind the taps. “Let’s do our faces, and then we can check ourselves outside.”
As I always say, you live and you learn. Changing in a moving train turned out to be nothing next to putting on make-up in a moving train. Putting on make-up in a train that’s weaving through the sleepy suburbs at a rate of knots is like trying to eat a bowl of hot soup on a roller coaster. And no less painful. If I wasn’t poking myself in the eye with my liner, I was poking my elbow in Ella. And it was no more successful than eating soup on a roller coaster, either. In the end, we took turns bracing ourselves against the door while the other one very carefully applied the mascara and the blush.
“That’s going to have to do,” said Ella. She pulled back as far as she could to examine her handiwork. “I’m afraid I’m going to blind you.”
“Do I look sophisticated and enigmatic?”
Ella cocked her head to one side. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “You do. Of course, you also look like you’ve been crying a lot.” Mascara can really sting.
“It’ll clear,” I said dismissively.
“And the eyeliner’s not totally even.”
“I can live with it for now. I”ll fix it when we’re on
Once we got out of the toilet, we took a long critical look at each other.
“You look fantastic,” said Ella. “Even though your eyes are still bloodshot.” She nervously licked her lips. “What about me?”
It had been a Herculean task, but after months of trying I’d finally managed to talk Ella into wearing her hair down. I’d also convinced her to buy something for the party that wasn’t plain, tailored and so basic you could wear it to church in the morning and a cocktail party in the evening: a full black taffeta skirt and a black lace bodysuit. Simple but effective. The transformation was astounding. Henry Higgins couldn’t have been half as pleased with Eliza as I was with Ella. In her regular clothes and with her hair up, Ella looked like she was practising for middle age; in the black ensemble with her hair down she looked like the mysterious heroine from a gothic novel.
“You look spectacular,” I assured her. “Eat your heart out, Carla Santini. Your day of reckoning has come at last!”
Ella and I found two seats facing backwards, so that we watched New Jersey disappear rather than New York City approach.
“I can’t believe this!” Ella kept saying. She was practically vibrating from excitement. “We’re really doing it. We’re really going to see Sidartha!” She squeezed my arm. “Lola, we’re really going to see Sidartha!” She was smiling so much that even though it had started to rain, it seemed like a sunny day. “Me! I’ve never even been on a train before without my mother.”
Inside, my heart and soul were in ecstatic turmoil, but on the outside I was trying to be cool. All of the other passengers were dressed as you would expect people to be dressed on a Saturday afternoon: you know, normal. Ella and I were attracting a lot of attention. I don’t usually mind attracting attention, but I was worried that one of the anonymous women with her bag on her lap and a paperback in her hands might be a friend or acquaintance of Mrs Gerard who would recognize Ella and want to know what she was doing on a train without parental supervision.
“Keep it down, will you?” I hissed. “The whole car can hear you.”
But it was too late for caution.
The woman behind us leaned over the seat and tapped me on the shoulder.
As soon as I felt her hand on me I started thinking of excuses: my mother was in the next car, we were going to a masquerade party, Ella who?
“Excuse me,” she said, “but where are the cameras?”
Ella groaned. “Oh, my God, Lola. We didn’t bring a camera!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” The woman laughed. “It’s the clothes…” She laughed again. “I thought you must be shooting a commercial.”
A commercial! Ella and me! Carla Santini was going to
I had no trouble imagining Carla Santini’s arrival in New York City. Except for the lack of ticker-tape and cheering crowds, she glided into the metropolis like visiting royalty, watching the teeming multitudes from behind the tinted windows of her father’s Mercedes while she thought about how awful it must be not to be her. The pearl-grey sedan silently slid to a stop behind Madison Square Garden. A uniformed doorman opened a solid-steel door and Carla Santini stepped out into the rainy evening, cool and relaxed, her dress unwrinkled, her make-up flawless, her press pass in her hand. The doorman held an umbrella over her head as he led her inside, lest one small drop should mar her perfection. “Miss Santini,” he cooed. “Please step this way.”
At about the same time that I imagined Carla Santini, all teeth and curls, was being offered refreshment in the Garden’s VIP lounge, Ella and I made our own, less auspicious arrival in New York.
“I’m sure I read somewhere that Stu Wolff’s a very regular, down-to-earth guy,” Ella was saying as we fought our way out of Penn Station. “His dad’s a truck driver or something like that, and he loves baseball and beer. He doesn’t like all the show-business hype. He’s a real man of the people.”
I grabbed her arm and pulled her past a few of “the people” – the ones who didn’t dress as well as Stu Wolff and who were begging for money.
I didn’t want to talk about Stu or what was going to happen any more. We were there, in my favourite place on the planet, about to meet one of the greatest – and sexiest – poets who’d ever lived. I wanted action, not words.
We hurled ourselves through a herd of travellers trying to get into the building, and then ground to an abrupt halt. It was raining a lot harder in New York than it was in New Jersey.
I let out a heartfelt moan. “Oh, no. We’re going to get soaked.”
If the storm kept up, we’d look like bag ladies by the time we got downtown. And Eliza’s gown would be ruined. For the first time I realized what incredible potential for disaster our project had. Mrs Baggoli would kill me if anything happened to the dress. And after she killed me, my mother would probably burn my remains in her kiln.
“It’s karma,” said Ella. She might look like a Pre-Raphaelite model, but she was still her mother’s daughter. “You should never have borrowed the dress.”
By now even I knew that I shouldn’t have borrowed the dress. “Thanks,” I muttered.
Ella linked her arm in mine. “Come on,” she said with her usual cheerfulness. “We’re here now. Let’s enjoy ourselves.”
I looked at the unmoving traffic and the steady stream of pedestrians and the blur of lights in the downpour. I heard the horns and the shouts and the sirens weaving through the cauldron of sound. I smelled the pretzels and hot dogs and stale urine of the streets. I breathed deeply. New York City! I was back where I belonged. My fear
