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

“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.