Mistletoe Over Manhattan

'Good luck,' he muttered.

She left her briefcase in the hall outside the conference room door and stepped down to Phoebe's office, where she heard voices through the not-quite-closed door. Just one voice, actually, Phoebe's.

'I'm doing my best, Father,' she was saying. 'I don't like it, though. It's not ethical, and I-'

Mallory could just barely see Phoebe as she paced her office, a phone to her ear and her hand clasped to her forehead.

'I know,' Phoebe said after a long listen. She sounded beaten.

'Yes, Father, I know. Tough and practical,' she said a moment later. 'I'll keep trying, of course.'

Mallory slipped away. Alphonse Angell was controlling Phoebe's decisions from Minneapolis. She just wondered what he wanted his daughter to do that she considered unethical.

'Did she agree?' Carter asked when she returned to the conference room.

'I'll talk to her later,' Mallory said. 'She was busy.'

'You chickened out.' His eyes glittered devilishly.

'Did not!'

'Bet you did.'

'If I did, may my teeth turn green,' Mallory said, 'and hush. Here's our witness.'

'What I don't unnerstand,' Maybelle said, 'is why that woman don't just have her teeth whitened.'

'What I don't understand,' said the makeup artist, 'is why she opened her mouth to the max and flung her head back in the middle of dyeing her hair.'

Mallory stifled an impatient breath. She stifled it to keep from blowing the makeup artist in the eye. Maybelle had decreed they would meet at Bergdorf's at seven, and Mallory had arrived nearly in tears, wanting to tell Maybelle that in spite of the red jacket, pants she could hardly sit down in and flirty snow boots, nothing whatever had happened last night. In fact, the first thing Carter had done when they'd gotten home was call Brie and remake their date for tonight.

She had actually wept a little as she took the tags off her new clothes and hung them up, had wept for Carter and had wept at the money she'd spent. Or not spent, since she hadn't actually paid for them yet. And then, to top everything off, Carter had taken Phoebe Angell out to lunch.

Here she was in her darkest hour and all Maybelle could do was obsess on the woman with green teeth, that is, after telling Mallory her next step was to jazz up her makeup a little. So while Maybelle extolled the wonders of whitening, Mallory sat on a high stool at the Trish McEvoy counter in Bergdorf's Level of Beauty-a fancy name for a fancy basement-getting stuff brushed on her eyelids, her cheeks, her nose, along with a steady stream of instructions from a woman so elegant, so perfectly groomed that Mallory wondered how she ever got anything else done. Later, she'd get to spend a few hundred dollars more on makeup. Tonight, Maybelle had assured her, she wouldn't have to spend a dime, just had to sit still, be quiet and she'd have a whole new image in no time flat.

'I mean, those whitnin' jobs are incredible,' Maybelle was saying now. 'I talked the president into one.'

The makeup artist came to a halt with the lip pencil. 'The president?'

'Not ours,' Mallory said, proud to be able to add something to this conversation. 'The president of an emerging nation who needs to change his image to get reelected.'

'Yay-yuh,' Maybelle drawled. 'And there was somethin' a little threatnin' about these here teeth.' She parted her lips to grasp tiny white incisors. 'We had 'em filed down some. I told him if he looked less vicious he might act less vicious.' And then she was right back to her obsession. 'Course, I realize this woman you're talkin' about would be waitin' 'til after the trial-'

'There's not going to be a trial,' Mallory cut in.

'Hold still,' said the makeup artist.

'Course there's not gonna be a trial, but jes' supposin' there was a trial, she'd want to wait 'til after, but Kevin's tellin' me she says it's permanent.'

'She has caps,' Mallory said through closed lips. 'That's the problem.'

'But why'd she open her mouth and throw back her head?' the makeup artist persisted.

'Because,' Mallory whistled through her teeth, 'she was dyeing her hair red-'

'You can open your mouth now.'

'-dyeing her hair red for the part of Annie Ado in a community theater production of Oklahoma, and she took a sudden notion to rehearse 'I Can't Say No.''

'Thanks. I feel better knowing.'

'What about the caps?' Maybelle was sticking to the topic.

'You can whiten teeth but you can't whiten porcelain caps,' Mallory said.

'Way-ell, I'll be danged,' Maybelle said. 'Sure am glad the president has all his own teeth.'

'There,' said the makeup artist, 'look at yourself.'

Mallory had to admit the colors were subtle. The Be Prepared Pink kit had instantly struck a chord with her. The only thing she minded was that a lot of the kit had been transferred to her face, layered on top of moisturizer, concealer and brush-on foundation. She felt filled and frosted like a cake.

Buying them-she would hate that, too, when the time came to reimburse Maybelle. But her eyelashes were the worst blow. 'People will think they're fake,' she hissed to Maybelle, not wanting to hurt the makeup artist's feelings.

Maybelle sighed. 'Oh, hon, you are nearly hopeless. You really are. But if you think I'm giving up on you, forget it. We're going to hit on something that makes you feel sexy, and that's all there is to it.'

Mallory turned slowly to face her instead of the mirror. 'What did you say?'

'Why, that's all this is about. You're as cute and feminine as you can be. I'm just lookin' for something that will make y'all feel that way.'

'But I-'

'How'd y'all get to be like this anyhow?' Maybelle went from exasperated fellow-woman to counselor in a split second. 'I don't usually get into the Freudian stuff, but I'm thinkin' in your case it might be intrestin' to know how you got your idea of what a woman was s'posed to be.'

It stunned Mallory. Slowly she reached deep into her voluminous handbag, the handbag of an efficient woman who believes in Being Prepared. Carter had found her credit card before he'd gotten down to the bottom, where for some reason she'd been carrying her mother's latest book. In case she needed it, she supposed, and she needed it now. She pulled it out and thrust it at Maybelle.

'Read this,' she said. 'It will save us a world of time.'

'Goody, bedtime readin'. Who wrote it?' Maybelle said, holding the book away from her, apparently to see it better.

'My mother.'

'That should be intrestin'. Thanks, hon, I'll read it for sure. Here's your makeup.' Although Mallory hadn't seen money or plastic change hands, the salesperson had produced a bag filled with makeup, which Maybelle handed to Mallory. 'Go home and hit this guy with your new face. See what happens. Let's meet here again tomorrow night. We seem to be doin' better here than we do at the office.' She frowned. 'It maybe them horns. The president looked a little scared when he saw 'em, too. Maybe I need me a less fancy desk.'

And she was gone. She hadn't worn the llama coat tonight. The coat that was slowly receding up the escalator looked more like panda bears sewn together. Mallory watched until the last sliver of pansy-tooled boot vanished, then turned back to the makeup artist. 'Don't I need to pay you for these?'

'Oh, no. It's taken care of.'

'I can't let her go on buying things I'll have to pay for later,' Mallory said, losing her natural need for discretion in the panic that set in. 'I don't know the price of anything I've bought in the last two days. I could be bankrupt and not even realize it.'

'Oh,' the girl said, dismissing this idea with a wave of a perfect frosted-copper-tipped hand, 'don't worry about it. Let Maybelle have her fun.'

'I can't help liking her,' Mallory said even more desperately, 'but there's a limit to how much fun I can afford to let her have.'

Now the girl actually laughed. 'You may end up not paying for anything,' she said.

'What?'