against her skin. It was undoubtedly the most luxurious bath she had ever taken.
Now that she was alone again, she felt a little puzzled, if flattered, by Ilissa’s kindness. “Why me?” she asked herself. Why would a woman who looked as though she should be sunning herself on a yacht off Capri or going up against Audrey Hepburn for the Holly Golightly role—Nora’s money would be on Ilissa—take it upon herself to befriend a bedraggled stranger who appeared unannounced in her backyard and spent an hour grousing about her love life? Perhaps Fitzgerald was right about the rich being different from you or me. If I lived like this all the time, Nora thought, I might be a nicer person, too.
Finally, reluctantly, she got out of the water, wrapped herself in a towel so large it trailed on the ground, and went into the dressing room next door. Her stained, wrinkled clothes were gone. On a hanger on the wall was a short red dress with a plunging neckline. Nora was examining it uncertainly when Ilissa entered. She had changed clothes, but her new outfit, a minidress made of gold disks stitched together, still looked like something from a mid-Sixties issue of
Ilissa held the red dress under Nora’s chin and leaned back to consider the effect. “No, no. Too—how shall I say it?—lurid. For you, something with more grace, more sophistication. I have exactly the dress. Just wait.” She disappeared with the red dress and came back with a long black one. “Much better,” she said, putting it up against Nora’s body.
“It’s really very sweet of you to lend me your dress,” Nora said, “but are you sure—”
“I have so many clothes, I can’t wear them all!” Ilissa pulled the dress over Nora’s head, tugging the fabric here and there to adjust it. “There!” she said, turning Nora to face the mirror. “I told you—perfect!”
As a general rule, Nora hated trying on clothes in the company of saleswomen or friends who poured her into outfits that she couldn’t afford and didn’t like, and then pronounced the effect ravishing. But there was something disarming about the way that Ilissa clapped her hands triumphantly at the sight of Nora in the black dress. And the dress was stunning on Nora, there was no doubt about that—flowing over the lines of her body, somehow making her look taller, thinner, and curvier at the same time.
“It might have been made for you,” said Ilissa. “Consider it yours, my little present to you. Now, let’s do your hair.”
Nora protested on both counts, insisting that she couldn’t accept such a generous present, that she could fix her own hair. But she found herself sitting in front of the mirror with Ilissa running surprisingly strong fingers through her hair. “Such a pretty color,” Ilissa said.
“Well, my natural color is brown,” Nora confessed. “You can tell from the roots. I need to do another rinse soon.”
“You have no roots,” said Ilissa. She began to comb out Nora’s damp hair.
Watching Ilissa work in the mirror, Nora was reminded that she still knew almost nothing about her. “What do you do most of the time?” she asked, trying to phrase the question carefully. It seemed out of place to ask someone like Ilissa what she did for a living.
Ilissa laughed. “Oh, I am always busy!” First of all, she said, there was her devotion to beautiful things. “This house, these gardens, all my own design. You like them? I thought so!” Then she had various interests to look after. Nora assumed that meant investments of some sort: Nora had never quite understood why people with money had to spend so much time managing it, but then she herself had little experience in that area.
“And then it is funny,” Ilissa continued, “but you know, so often my friends look up to me to help them and guide them. I give them advice, a little encouragement. I don’t know why they think I know anything, but they come to me afterward and say, ‘Thank you, Ilissa, you were absolutely right!’ So I really feel responsible for them! And that takes up my time, too.”
Gathering up Nora’s hair into a thick strand, Ilissa began to pile it on top of Nora’s head. “I’m going to fix your hair the same way as mine,” she said. “I love this style.”
“My hair’s not long enough,” Nora said. But somehow Ilissa had managed it, a luxuriant golden tower balanced on Nora’s head.
“Now, your face,” said Ilissa. “Shhh, you must keep perfectly still when I make you up. I am an artist at work.”
As she daubed away at Nora’s face, it suddenly occurred to Nora that this was a seduction. Of course, Ilissa had a son, but that didn’t mean anything. Nora had gotten a few passes from lesbians over the years—she wondered if it had something to do with looking younger than she was. If she makes a move, Nora thought, I’ll let her down as nicely as possible. I’d hate to hurt her feelings.
“Relax!” Ilissa said. “You are going to be even more lovely.” It was a promise and a command. Something in her voice reminded Nora of her mother’s old wine-colored velvet dress, the one she’d wear on the rare evenings in Nora’s childhood when her parents hired a babysitter and went out. Her mother would come in to kiss Nora good night, redolent of Chanel No. 5, and Nora would contrive to rub her cheek against the softness of her dress, as though it were a sort of pledge, an assurance that someday Nora, too, would grow into confident grace and beauty.
Ilissa leaned close to her, smiling. “Close your eyes.” Nora obeyed, and Ilissa rubbed something delicately over her eyes and onto her eyelids. “Open them.”
Nora gazed into the mirror. “Do I really look like that?” she asked. There had been agreeable moments in Nora’s life when she had looked into a mirror and found herself to be just as pretty as she felt, as well as less pleasant moments when she glimpsed some plain or unkempt woman out of the corner of her eye and then realized that it was her own reflection. Being startled by her own face because it was so much lovelier than she expected—that was new.
“Now you’re ready for my party,” Ilissa said.
Nora stood up, her eyes still on the glass. “Ilissa, thank you,” she said. “I’ve never had a makeover like this. It’s a transformation.” Maggie had always been after her to wear more makeup, to dress better, to take more pains with her appearance. Maggie had been right.
That reminded Nora of the call she had not yet made. “Oh, I have to use your phone before the party starts,” she said. Ilissa pointed through a doorway into a bedroom, where a pink Princess phone sat on the table beside the bed. Nora dialed Maggie’s cell. The phone rang and rang without an answer. Funny that voice mail didn’t pick up, she thought, replacing the receiver.
A pair of silver sandals was waiting for her in the dressing room. She tried them on and found that Ilissa had guessed exactly the right shoe size. Balancing on heels three inches higher than those she normally wore, Nora felt as easy as though she were wearing her sneakers. Are all really good, expensive shoes this comfortable? she wondered.
Voices and music were beginning to filter in from outside. The party had begun.
Nora had imagined that the evening would be much like the big student parties she normally attended, where it was up to the guests to find their own way in a crowd of unfamiliar faces. If anything, she reckoned, she was more likely to be invisible among Ilissa’s guests. But tonight, before she could even stop to survey the crowd, Ilissa was at her side.
“Darling, you must meet Vulpin, Lily, Boodle, Moscelle,” she said, leading Nora up to a nearby group, a man in a blue velvet jacket and three women laughing together. “My newest friend, Nora,” Ilissa announced. “I found her in the garden today.” The four turned to stare at Nora for an instant, wary as birds. Then, with a shared exhalation (of welcome? of relief?) they clustered around Nora, talking to her and past her.
“Leave it to Ilissa to come up with such a beauty.”
“Ilissa helped you dress, I can tell. She has the most perfect eye.”
“Such a thrill to see someone new, we’ve been dying of boredom.”
Their voices blew around Nora like soft breezes; she could practically feel the compliments brushing her skin.
“What would you like to drink?” asked the man (was he the one called Vulpin?).
“She wants champagne—no, a kir royale,” said one of the women (Moscelle?), who wore a vinyl jumper and matching ankle boots. She winked at Nora.
Nora had been on the verge of asking for white wine, but instantly changed her mind. “That sounds lovely,” she said. Immediately a glass was in her hand, rich and dark, a real French kir royale, not the pallid imitation that you get in American bars.
