The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (4 page)

“Oh, he wasn't good enough for you,” Ilissa said dismissively, when Nora paused after describing Adam's move to Chicago. “He didn't know his own mind. Most men don't, of course—I've learned that all too well. He got scared and lonely and he grabbed the nearest woman, this Celeste person. Men! What can you do?”

Nora couldn't imagine Ilissa ever having trouble with men straying or not knowing whether they were in love with her or not. She said so, and Ilissa burst into a fit of giggles. “You're so funny! If you only knew!” she said.

Then she looked more seriously at Nora. “But the important thing now is to enjoy yourself. A broken heart doesn't heal until you lose it to someone else. You need diversion. You should simply play, play, play—surround yourself with men until one of them makes you forget all about this poor, childish, confused Adam.”

“Surround myself with men?” Nora smiled wryly. “As though it were that easy.”

Ilissa arched her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “As it happens, I am having a party this very night, and I can assure you there will be all sorts of delightful male creatures there. It is exactly what you need. My parties are famous. Everyone always has a marvelous time, they dance, they laugh, they fall in love—sometimes twice or three times in one night. People ask me, ‘Ilissa, what is your secret?' I tell them, ‘There is no secret. I simply invite my friends, the most beautiful and charming people in the world.'”

No party was ever so perfect, in Nora's experience—obviously Ilissa was a bit vain about her gifts as a hostess. Nonetheless, Nora felt tempted. Then she remembered that she was due at the wedding at five. Probably she had already missed brunch. What time was it? Her own watch said 2:38 a.m.—hopeless.

Ilissa wasn't wearing a watch. Smilingly, she shook her head when Nora explained that she needed to get back for the wedding. “I forbid it!” She laughed. “I tell you, you have never been to a party like one of mine. You cannot miss this for the world.”

Nora considered for a moment—this way, she'd avoid both Adam and Dave—then smiled daringly. “All right! I'd love to come. But I should call my friend Maggie, so that she doesn't think I've fallen off the mountain. Would it be okay if I used your telephone?”

A beat passed before Ilissa answered. Then she raised her hand and made a lazy gesture in the air, indicating something in the distance behind Nora. A jewel on her finger flashed in the sunlight, making Nora blink. “Please, make yourself at home,” Ilissa said.

Nora twisted around to look in the direction that Ilissa had pointed. “Oh, I didn't see the house before,” she said. It was a low-slung, modern structure half-hidden behind the tall hedges. She could make out sliding glass doors under a jutting slab of roof. The style complemented Ilissa's outfit, Nora thought.

“If you don't mind, I think I should call now,” Nora said, getting to her feet. To her relief, she wasn't as unsteady as she had feared. The glass pitcher was empty now, she noticed abashedly. She couldn't remember whether she had seen Ilissa drink any of the punch. Then Nora looked down at herself and cried out in dismay.

“I'm sorry, I can't go to your party!” she said. “I'm a mess.” Her jeans were still muddy from her fall on the path. She could feel patches of damp in her T-shirt, while her hair must be a haystack after getting soaked in the rain. “I look like a refugee,” she said. “What must you think of me?”

“That's easily remedied,” Ilissa said. “I'd love to lend you a dress, and of course you can freshen up inside.” She touched Nora's shoulder lightly, guiding her toward the house. “I'm so thrilled that you can stay for the party,” she added. “I promise you, you'll have a wonderful night, and I'm sure that you will find plenty of admirers. Perhaps even my son,” she said, with a half smile. “He will be there tonight, and I should warn you, he's very susceptible to beautiful women.”

Then I'm safe from him, was Nora's first thought. Aloud she said, “I'm sure he's a little young for me. You can't have a son who's more than eight years old.”

Ilissa gave Nora a little squeeze around the shoulders. “You are too kind! No, I assure you, he is quite grown up. Of course, I was much, much younger when he was born. I will introduce you to him, and you must tell me if you can see the resemblance.”

“Oh,” said Nora awkwardly, as they passed through the sliding door into the house, “if he's anything like you, I'm sure I'll like him very much.”

S
ilver fish with trailing fins hovered and flickered behind a wall of glass tinted the cool, reassuring green of a dollar bill. Nora regarded them thoughtfully as she rinsed her hair, thinking of the bathroom in “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.” The slate tub was so large that she could lie back and float full-length without touching the sides. As she sat up again, a few of the rose petals drifting in the warm water clung to her body, a crimson stippling 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
Vogue
.

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.

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.”