The third man was Ray. I met him in secret in big-city hotels, he sat in the bar with his sad face, and I would come in in a white linen suit with black-tipped shoes, my hair back in a chignon, a scarf tied to my purse. "I wasn't sure you'd come," I said in a deep, slightly humorous voice, like Dietrich. "But I came anyway."
I heard Marvel calling to me, but she was in another country, too far away. She didn't mean me. She meant some other girl, some drab hopeless thing destined for the army or else beauty school. I lay with my legs wrapped around Ray in a room with tall windows, a bouquet of full-bloom red roses in a vase on the dresser.
"Astrid!"
Her voice was like a drill, penetrating, relentless. If I had a choice, I'd rather be a man's slave than a woman's. I pulled myself out of bed, stumbled into the living room where Marvel and her friends sat on the flowered couch, their heads pressed together over sodas tinted space-alien colors, hands in the snack mixture I'd made from a recipe on the cereal box.
"Here she is." Debby raised her horsey face under her curly perm, eye shadow layered like strata in sedimentary rock. "Ask her."
"I'm telling you, the car," Marvel said. "You come back and you're still living in the same dump, still driving around the same old shitbox. What good does it do?"
Linda took a hit on her cigarette, fanning the smoke away with a pearl-nailed hand. A blond with blue eyes perpetually wide with surprise, she wore shiny eye shadow like the inside of shells. They all went to Birmingham High together, were bridesmaids at each other's weddings, and now sold Mary Kay.
It was the new Mary Kay brochure, illustrating the prizes they could win if they sold enough mascara wands and lip liners and face-firming masques, that they'd been arguing about. "They used to have Cadillacs." Linda sniffed.
Marvel finished her soda, smacked it down on the coffee table. "Just once in my life, I'd like a goddamn new car. Is that too much to ask? Everybody's got a new car, the kids at the high school. The slut next door's got a goddamn Corvette." She handed me her glass. "Astrid, get me some more Tiki Punch."
Debby handed me hers too. I took them back to the kitchen, and poured Tiki Punch from the big Shasta bottle, getting momentarily lost in its irradiated Venusian pinkness.
"Astrid," Linda called, her feet tucked under herself on the flower-print couch. "If you had a choice between two weeks in Paris France, all expenses paid, or a car —"
"Shitty Buick," Debby interjected.
"What's wrong with a Buick?" Marvel said.
"—which would you take?" Linda picked something out of the corner of her eye with a long press-on nail.
I brought their drinks, suppressing the desire to limp theatrically, the deformed servant, and fit all the glasses into hands without spilling. They couldn't be serious. Paris? My Paris? Elegant fruit shops and filterless Gitanes, dark woolen coats, the Bois de Boulogne? "Take the car," I said. "Definitely."
"Smart girl," Marvel said, toasting me with her Shasta. "You always had a good head on your shoulders."
"You know, we should do Astrid," Debby said.
Three sets of eyes, all those circles, looking at me. It was unnerving. Invisibility was my normal state in the turquoise house.
They seated me on a stool in the kitchen. Suddenly, I was a valued guest. Was the gooseneck lamp in my face too bright? Did I want something to drink? Linda turned me from side to side. They were examining my pores, touching my skin with tissue to see if I was oily, normal, or dry. I liked being the center of so much attention. It made me feel close to them. My freckles were a matter of concern, the shape of my forehead. The merits of foundations were discussed, samples streaked along my jaw.
"Too ruddy," Linda said.
The others nodded sagely. I needed correction. Correction was important. Pots and tubes of white and brown. Anything could be corrected. My Danish nose, my square jaw, my fat lips, so far from ideal. And I thought of a mannequin I saw once in a store window, bald and nude, as two men dressed her, laughing and talking under her nippleless breasts. One man, I remembered, had a pincushion stuck to his shaved head.
"You've got the perfect face for makeup," Debby said, applying base with a sponge, turning me back and forth like a sculptor turning the clay.
Of course I did, I was blank, anyone could fill me in. I waited to see who I would be, what they would create on my delicious vacancy. The woman in first class, reading French Vogue and sipping champagne? Catherine Deneuve walking her dog in the Bois, admired by strangers?
Linda outlined my eyes on the inside, rolling back my lids, dabbing tenderly at my tears with the corner of a Q-tip when it made me cry. She gave me four coats of mascara, until I was seeing through a tangle of spiders. I was going to be so beautiful, I could feel it. Marvel redefined my big lips smaller, penciling them inside the lines and filling in Piquant Peach.
"God, she could be Miss America," Debby said.
Linda said. "No shit. Go look in the mirror."
"Hair," Debby said. "Let me get my curling wand."
"We don't have to get carried away, now," Marvel said. She'd suddenly remembered who I was, not Miss America at all, only the kid who did her wash and set.
But Debby overrode her objections with the phrase "total effect." Heat and the smell of burning hair tangled in the spikes of the curling wand, section by section.
Then I was done. They led me into Marvel's bedroom by both arms, my eyes closed. My skin crawled with anticipation. Who would I be? "And here, representing the great State of California — Astrid!"
They pulled me in front of the mirror.
My hair curled and frizzed around my shoulders and rose three inches above my scalp. White stripes raced down my forehead and nose like Hindu caste marks. Brown patches appeared under my cheekbones, white on the ridges, dividing my otherwise dead beige face into a paint-by-number kit. Blusher broke out on my cheeks like a rash, my lips reduced to a geisha's tiny bow. My eyebrows glared in dark wings, protecting the glistening bands of eye shadow, purple, blue, and pink, like a child's rainbow. I never cried, but now tears sprang unbidden to my eyes, threatening a mud slide if they were to break out of their pool.
"She looks just like Brigitte what's-her-name, the model." Linda held me by the shoulders, her face next to mine in the mirror. I tried to smile, they'd been so nice.
Debby's brown eyes went soft with pride. "We should send Mary Kay her picture. Maybe they'll give us a prize."
At the thought of reward, Marvel quickly rummaged in her closet, found her Polaroid, and arranged me in front of the mirror. It was the only picture she ever took of me. You could see the unmade bed, the bureautop clutter. They congratulated themselves and went back out to their sodas and Chex mix, leaving me in front of the mirror, a toddler's fussed-over Barbie abandoned in the sandbox. I blinked back my tears and forced myself to look in the mirror.