The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

“My clothes—” Nora began. Someone pushed her into the car, a cave of rich green leather. “Don’t worry, darling,” she heard Ilissa saying. “You’ll be changed before you know it.” Gaibon winked. Nora discovered she was holding a champagne flute and that Vulpin was filling it. The car sped through a world of black velvet; Ilissa said there was no time to waste, and wasn’t night so much more lovely and romantic?

Suddenly they were going over a bridge; an electric grid blazed ahead of them, the serrated skyline of New York. “How did we get here?” Nora wondered.

“Oh, we drove much too fast,” Ilissa said with her fizzy laugh.

There was something odd about the other automobiles they passed—their spoked wheels, their headlights like round-rimmed spectacles—but after a moment Nora decided they looked right, somehow. Their vehicle pulled up next to a striped awning, a length of red carpet.

Nora stepped out, carefully, because of her heels, and smoothed her skirts. The car ride hadn’t wrinkled the silk at all; the dress rustled deliciously against her skin.

“You see?” Ilissa said. “I promised you pearls. Like milk and honey, with your complexion.”

Nora looked down. The creamy strand fell almost to her waist. “They’re beautiful. Thank you so much.”

“Ah, at last.” A deep voice next to her. “Even prettier than last night.”

Looking up, Nora met Raclin’s gaze, and felt a sudden confused warmth at the nearness of his white smile, his looming, well-tailored shoulders. She thought of the kiss he’d stolen in the garden the night before, and the sweeter one afterward. Watch out, a voice said inside, something wrong here. It said other things that she couldn’t quite discern. Raclin’s dark hair gleamed, combed back more carefully than the night before, but she could tell that the stray lock was still threatening to tumble down onto his forehead.

She was suddenly impatient to see it fall; she wanted to tuck it back for him.

Inside the hotel there was dancing, the crowd moving back and forth to the syncopations of a jazz band tucked behind potted palms. Nora recognized faces from last night, the men in black and white, the women in loose dresses that showed off slender legs in silk stockings.

“Another theme party, isn’t it?” she said to Raclin, hoping she sounded more collected than she felt. “How does she do it, your mother?”

“My mother lives to entertain,” he said. “It’s her art form, really. And she finds this particular setting intriguing. There’s something very playful about it. She thought it might appeal to you.”

“Oh, I’ve always had a thing for the Twenties. The clothes. The Algonquin Round Table. Gatsby. But why would she want to please me in particular?”

“She’s taken quite a fancy to you. Ilissa’s good at sizing people up. She can see their possibilities.”

“What possibilities does she see in me?”

“They’re not hard to see.” Raclin put out his hand to steer her toward the dancing. On the small of her back it felt assured, possessive. His touch was a pledge: I’m just beginning with you. Only wait.

* * *

Once or twice over the days that followed—or was it weeks?—Nora woke up and wondered seriously what kind of strong drugs she had ingested the night before. There seemed to be no other explanation for the parade of marvels every evening, the dazzling, incongruous things that could not possibly be true.

“Was I really talking to Oscar Wilde last night?” she asked herself sleepily. No, you idiot, Oscar Wilde died in Paris in 1900, said some weary secret voice. But there he had been, holding court in the drawing room, tall, corpulent, the clever, mournful face that she knew from postcards and book jackets. Nora almost dropped her fan. He spent quite a long time talking to her, gazing at her with that rapt attention to which she had already become accustomed.

She could tell that Oscar Wilde was not attracted to her, or any woman for that matter, but she had discovered by now that her beauty had a life of its own, that it could arouse a sort of greedy fascination in people, even the people at Ilissa’s parties, who were all beautiful themselves. She felt the same way whenever she looked in a mirror now, a mixture of wonder and suspense that sometimes held her in front of the glass for long stretches of time, examining her face at different angles to see if the perfection was real, scanning in vain for some hidden flaw.

There was something sympathetic in the way Wilde spoke to her, as though he sensed her puzzlement. She felt emboldened to confide in him. “I don’t think I always looked this way,” she said hesitantly. “I wasn’t always beautiful.”

“I am glad to hear it,” he said with a smile. “Natural beauty is always tiresome. It lacks that careless touch of artifice that is the hallmark of true originality. There is nothing so overdone and vulgar as unspoilt simplicity.”

She laughed. “But sometimes I look at myself and I wonder, well, if it’s real.”

“My dear young woman, appearances are the only true reality. I thought you would have learned that by now.”

Then Raclin was taking her arm to lead her into the ballroom, and she forgot all about Oscar Wilde. It was the same every time: When she looked into those deep blue eyes, every clear thought went out of her head. And that lovely, lazy smile that he saved for her alone, as though they shared some secret joke. But for the life of her, she couldn’t say what the joke was.

On the tennis court the next day, she started to tell Moscelle about her conversation with Wilde, but the details were already fading. She sliced the ball and watched it skim the net to bounce just out of reach of Moscelle’s racquet. Wonderful how much her game had improved lately. If only her memory were as good as her backhand. The one other thing she could recall from the night before was Vulpin’s friend Lysis complaining that someone had taken his horse. At sword point—that was the oddity that made it stick in her mind.

“Game,” said Moscelle, and Nora realized that she had lost track of the score, too. “Darling, you win again!”

“My brain is so fuzzy these days,” Nora said to Moscelle as they walked off the court. “I don’t know if it’s the late nights or the champagne.” She balanced the racquet on her shoulder with attempted insouciance. “Maybe I’ve had enough fun for now. Maybe it’s time to go back to the real world.”

“The real world?” Moscelle asked lightly.

“Well, school, if that counts as the real world,” Nora clarified. “I do have to teach summer school, whenever that starts.” Next week? Had it already started?

“But we love having you here.”

“I love being here, but I don’t want to overstay my welcome.” They went up the steps and into the entrance hall. Their white-clad figures floated through the silver depths of the tall mirrors flanking the staircase. Then Nora looked again, puzzled. “Moscelle? I just noticed. My hair is short today. It was long last night, I’m sure it was. I was wearing it up.”

“Oh, short hair is the style now, darling.”

“But when did I get it cut?”

“You don’t remember?” Moscelle smiled at her kindly—almost too kindly, Nora thought suddenly, as though inwardly Moscelle were laughing but trying to hide it. “There was so much going on last night, and you were having so much fun, that it just slipped your mind, that’s all.”

So much fun. “I’m losing my mind, that’s all.” Nora tried to sound casual, humorous, and it didn’t come out that way at all. She moved a little faster up the staircase, almost running, but Moscelle was right behind her, following her into her bedroom.

“Darling, don’t cry!” Moscelle put an arm around Nora’s shoulders. “Please! You’re perfect!”

That was the problem. “How the hell did that happen?” Nora felt Moscelle stiffen slightly. “I’m sorry. But— what’s going on? How did I get to be a natural blonde? Where did I learn to play tennis like that? I can’t remember. I can’t think straight. My friend Maggie—I was supposed to meet up with her sometime, but I don’t even know what day it is.”

“Oh, honestly, who wants to remember everything?” Moscelle’s voice was calm and friendly in Nora’s ear. She smoothed Nora’s hair. “You were so unhappy when you came here! After that awful love affair. Do you ever think about that man now?”

“No,” said Nora. His name came back to her after a moment: Adam. She turned away from Moscelle and