Nic Tatano - The Wing Girl - A laugh out loud romantic comedy

My picture wasn’t up there. Geez, I wonder why.

She draped a purple smock over me and clipped it behind my neck. Then she did something that scared me to death.

She swung the chair around so my back was to the mirror.

“Hey, I wanna see what you’re doing,” I said.

She shook her head. “Sorry, no backseat driving on this.”

“Roxanne, if I come out of here looking like some freak on the subway … I do have to work on TV, you know.”

She kneeled down and looked at me. “Will you please trust me? Half the movie stars in this town do. And I’m going to make you look like one of them.”

***

Two hours later she shoved the comb into a pocket in her smock, stood back, crouched down, and moved her head side to side as she checked out the finished product.

“Well?” I asked.

“Shhhhh,” she said, putting one finger to her mouth. She moved around behind me. I felt her fingers lightly touch the back of my head, fluff my hair a bit, then she walked around where I could see her. She looked at the top of my head, then the sides, without ever looking in my eyes. Like I was some inanimate object. She put her hands on her hips and smiled. “My work here is done.”

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense.”

She leaned forward and swung the chair around so I faced the mirror. She stood behind me, then handed me my glasses.

I put them on and my vision cleared. I didn’t recognize the woman in the mirror.

My hair shone like a beacon, with shimmering highlights amidst my strawberry red. The soft tangles lightly dusted my shoulders. I lifted my hand and touched it. It was as soft and thick as the Persian I’d petted this morning.

It had never looked so good in my life. Sorta slutty, but really good.

“You like?” asked Roxanne.

I couldn’t stop staring. “It’s spectacular,” I said. And right then and there I knew my trusty black-rimmed glasses had to go.

She reached into my purse, pulled out my sizable collection of hairpins and shook them at me. “And if I ever see you with your hair up again, I’ll stab the shit out of you with these.”

***

The contact lenses were surprisingly comfortable, as there had apparently been great improvements in the past fifteen years.

But they didn’t conceal the fear in my eyes as I stepped out of the changing room in my bra and panties.

“Okay, hop up,” said James, the bald, green-eyed wizard known as New York’s best fashion consultant from its most expensive department store. A tiny man around forty, he probably weighed less than I did.

I wrapped my arms around my waist as I stepped onto the pedestal in the middle of what had to be the largest fitting room in the city. No bathroom stall-sized cubicles here: this was at least twenty-by-twenty, complete with a beautiful cream-colored sofa, a few matching chairs and a credenza filled with champagne, a bowl of fresh fruit salad, and a large silver tray of cucumber sandwiches.

“Stand up straight, honey,” he said, as he whipped out a tape measure. “Arms down.”

“Just relax,” said Ariel, sipping a glass of champagne. “There’s no one else here. This is a private fitting room.”

I shivered, but not from the temperature. James deftly swung his tape measure around my chest, waist and hips, then wrote something down on a clipboard.

“You are blessed with a perfect body, young lady,” he said.

I scrunched up my face. “Huh?”

“Classic hourglass, perfect size four.” He picked up my stretch pants from the chair in the changing room and looked at the label. “Why are you wearing a size seven?”

“I like things baggy. More comfortable.”

He shook his head, rolled his eyes and tossed the pants into the trash, then turned back to me and patted me on the stomach. “Those toned abs are to die for.” He moved behind me, slid one finger under my waistband, pulled, took a look inside and snapped my underwear.

“Hey!” I slapped away his hand. He’d better be gay.

“And such a spunky little ass under the granny panties. Goes well with the attitude.”

“Thank you … I think,” I said.

He ran the tape measure inside my leg, getting my inseam.

Ariel put up her hand. “Please, James, no more pants.”

“You already told me. But she will need some jeans. I’ve got a line that will make her ass really pop.”

A knock on the door startled me. I wrapped my arms around my chest and lifted one leg in front of me like a flamingo as the voice came through.

“It’s Serena!”

“Come on in,” said Ariel.

The door opened and I relaxed as I saw Serena’s face. “So, how we doing?”

“I apparently have a spunky little ass,” I said.

“Good to know,” said Serena, giving me the once over.

James finished writing notes on the clipboard, picked up the phone and gave whoever was on the other end a laundry list of items I apparently needed. Then he hung up and handed me a thick terry robe with a gold crest. “Have some champagne. Your new wardrobe will be here shortly.”

***

The lacquered blonde makeup artist with the ice-blue eyes had been working on me for twenty minutes, slapping stuff on my face that had never been there before. Mascara, foundation, eye shadow, you name it. Her brush danced around my cheekbones as my audience surrounded the high chair upon which I was sitting. Once again I’d been wrapped in a smock, white this time. I twisted my ankle to get another look at the bottom of my brand-new, four-inch heels. “I still don’t understand why these shoes with the red soles cost so damn much.”

“Because,” said Serena, “they’re Christian Louboutins.”

“And the shoes you were wearing looked more like they belonged to Christian Bale,” said Roxanne.

“Who the hell cares what color the soles are?”

“They stick out,” said Ariel. “Get you more attention. And men love red.”

“How is anyone gonna see the bottom of my shoes?”

“Well,” said Roxanne, “if you’re sitting on a chair like this one in a bar, swinging your leg a bit, that red is going to catch the eye.”

“Be cheaper if I just wrote my phone number on the soles of a pair of sneakers,” I said.

The young makeup girl, who in my opinion looked as though she’d put on foundation with a trowel, leaned back, smiled, and turned to my friends. “What do you think?”

“Excellent job,” said Ariel.

“Yes, terrific,” said Serena.

“Really spectacular,” said Roxanne.

“Uh, could I have a look?” I asked.

“Oh, sorry,” said the makeup girl, who handed me a heavy silver mirror.

The face I saw in it was a stranger, but a beautiful stranger. I looked like a magazine ad. Vincent was right about one thing. I could do eye makeup commercials. The pale-green eye shadow had turned me into an Egyptian goddess. “Wow,” I said, looking at the makeup girl. “You’re a true artist.”

“You’re very kind,” she said.

Ariel reached into her purse and slipped the girl a fifty.

“Thank you!” she said, and pulled off my smock. “You’re good to go.”

“Great,” I said. I hopped off the high chair and started to reach for one of the many shopping bags, but Roxanne playfully slapped it away. “We’ve got these.”

“We’re going to do a little experiment first,” said Serena.

“I thought I was done. What now?”

“We’re going to prove to you that you are now one of the most desirable women in New York,” said Ariel. “Well, physically, anyway. Still got a lot of work to do on the attitude.”

“If I look as good as you say I do, I can now get away with being a bitch, right?” I asked.

“But you’re not,” said Roxanne. “You are as beautiful inside as you now are outside.”