The others tossed questions at her, smiling playfully. Was she married? Engaged? Not even in love, at least? Impossible. Perhaps she was just about to fall in love and didn’t know it yet; perhaps this very night. . . . Where did she live? How did she get here? How did she spend her days, when she wasn’t getting lost? Her companions seemed much amused at the notion of graduate school.
“Four years already?” asked the woman in a top hat, who Nora decided must be Boodle. “How exhausting! You must know everything by now!”
“Well, no. And I don’t study all the time,” Nora said.
“Of course not,” Vulpin said. He caught her gaze and held it. “You don’t strike me as a woman who’d be satisfied spending all her days in the library. I can tell you have a taste for adventure, you have a warm, passionate nature, you live life boldly.”
He sounded a bit like a fortune cookie, but Nora nibbled at this flattering description of herself and found that she liked it. “How can you tell that?” she asked.
“You’re here with us, aren’t you?” Moscelle said, giggling. She took Nora’s arm. “Come on, I want to introduce you to more people.”
The party was in full swing by now, dusk thickening into night, the terrace around Ilissa’s swimming pool thronged with people. Nora could hear music, bossa nova, coming from somewhere else in the garden. A girl in go-go boots and silver leather waved them over. Moscelle air-kissed her, once on each cheek, and introduced Nora—“Ilissa’s latest find.”
“I love your outfit,” said Nora to the girl in the boots, whose name sounded something like Oon. “Theme parties are so much fun. I went to a Sixties party at school last year, but the costumes weren’t half as good as this.”
“Oh, Ilissa likes to do different things,” said Moscelle vaguely. “Where is Gaibon? I’m dying for him to meet Nora.”
Oon, if that was her name, gave a languid sigh and rolled heavy-lashed eyes upward. “He’s hiding right now. From Amatol. Ever since she heard about last night.”
Moscelle laughed. “Is she still upset about that? I’d better stay out of the way, then.”
She steered Nora over to a loose-knit circle near the pool and began more introductions. By now Nora knew that it was going to be impossible for her to keep names and faces straight tonight. There were more names that sounded familiar but slightly out of context—Nora could have sworn she met someone named Pixel, could that be right?—while every person she met seemed to share the same exotic, slightly feline good looks. Perhaps it was the period makeup, the creamy lips and the huge, astonished eyes, that made the other women seem to blend together, although that didn’t account for the men looking so similar, too, as though they had all ordered their sculpted cheekbones from the same catalog.
“Everyone here is beautiful,” she said to a man with a lock of dark hair falling into his eyes. “Not just pretty or handsome, but beautiful. Are you all models? Movie stars?”
The dark-haired man thought that was tremendously funny. “No, but I was wondering if you were,” he said.
She lost track of Moscelle, but others took her in hand and kept her circulating. She picked up a lot of gossip about people that she hadn’t met yet and some that she already had. Rapid coupling and uncoupling seemed to be the norm. In spite of all the kir royales she’d downed by now, she was deliciously clearheaded, just more buoyant than usual. After a while, the people she met started to say things like, “So you’re Nora! I’ve been hearing so much about you all evening!” She felt as though she were moving through the party like the silver ball in a pinball machine, hitting every corner just right, setting off noise and lights, racking up points.
Nora was on the dance floor, doing the twist with one of Boodle’s friends, when she saw Ilissa again, talking to a blond girl who had a boa constrictor wrapped around her shoulders. Her eyes kept a steady bead on Nora’s gyrations. When the music stopped, Nora went over.
“Nora! You’re the hit of my party,” Ilissa said, giving her a peck on the cheek.
“I’m having a wonderful time! I’m not tired at all, and it must be almost midnight,” Nora said. Something struck her, and she laughed. “Oh, will the magic wear off at midnight? Will I turn back into a pumpkin when the clock strikes?”
Ilissa smiled and reached out to tuck a stray wisp of blond hair behind Nora’s ear. “No, the magic doesn’t wear off at midnight. It’s much more powerful than that. It comes from you. You wanted something, and so it came to be.”
Nora was puzzled by the seriousness in Ilissa’s voice. “It’s that easy?”
“Yes, of course! Look at yourself. You’re already a lovelier, happier, more confident woman than the miserable little girl who turned up in my garden this afternoon. It’s because you dared to laugh and be beautiful.”
“I think you had something to do with it. I can’t thank you en—”
Ilissa made a dismissive gesture. “A dress, a little chitchat, a party—it’s nothing. I love it when I can help someone. And this is just the beginning, my dear.” She looked appraisingly at Nora again. “Pearls, I think, next time. Your skin has such a lovely golden tone. We ought to do more to set it off. I should have thought of pearls tonight. What a scatterbrain I am!”
I
“I am even more scatterbrained than I thought,” Ilissa announced. “Did I not introduce you to my son?” She called out a long name that seemed to include some vowels and consonants that didn’t occur in English, and out of the crowd Nora saw a dark head set on a pair of broad shoulders turn and move toward them.
“Like me, he has a terribly long and confusing name,” Ilissa said. “Raclin is what we call him for short. Darling,” she said to him, “this is Nora. You remember I mentioned her earlier.”
“But we’ve met already,” Raclin said, holding out his hand to Nora, a lock of hair falling into his eye. “Nora asked me if I was a movie star.” His hand felt very strong as it closed around hers.
“And you said no, but I’m sure I’ve seen some of your films,” Nora said, smiling. James Bond, the Sean Connery years.
“Well, if I were in a movie, it would have to be one with some very beautiful woman in it,” he said. “Perhaps we could read through a few scenes together.”
On second thought, maybe a little
“And I would direct!” Ilissa said. “It would be so much fun! I can already tell you two have, what is it called, screen chemistry.”
“Then it’s all set,” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m wanted over there. Lolly insists on getting into a grave misunderstanding with Carnassus, and I think I shall have to peel them apart.”
“Oh, the wretch,” said Ilissa, watching him move away. “Not Raclin—Lolly. I may have to—but that’s not important. So you’ve met my son. Do you like him? I can tell he likes you.”
“He’s the best-looking man at this party,” Nora said. It was true.
Ilissa looked pleased. “That’s what I always think, but then, I am his mother. I see Moscelle coming this way—she’s looking for you.”
The night flowed faster and faster. Nora had a long, earnest conversation with Moscelle about Gaibon and whether he loved Moscelle or Amatol more. “Really, the way it started out, it wasn’t that serious between us,” Moscelle said. “But she’s so possessive, she’s driving him away.” Nora squeezed into a snub-nosed red Ferrari with four or five others and they went racing down narrow roads lined with poplar trees, until they had drunk all the champagne that Vulpin had brought and had to go back to the party. More dancing, then Nora wound up talking to the girl with the boa constrictor, whom she realized after a while must be Moscelle’s rival, Amatol. “I’m Nora,” she said. “Lovely to meet you,” said Amatol. “Charmed,” said the snake, lifting its head from the girl’s shoulder and showing its fastidious, forked tongue.
Nora wandered out by the swimming pool with Amatol and a tall, bald black man. He had small, round Lennon glasses, and he was telling them, in great detail, about a love affair that he’d once had on the planet Jupiter with one of the gaseous women there, whose skin felt like silky smoke, whose kisses were explosions. What has he been taking? thought Nora. She looked down into the pool and saw a naked couple making love at the bottom. They moved rhythmically, wrapped around each other like eels. Nora marveled at how long they could hold their breath.
