Emily Barker: The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

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.”

Silver 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.”