“I need your help. Your fashion help.”

That perked her up.  “Oh?”

“I’m going to this thing with Edward tonight.  It’s a semiformal outdoor dinner party, but the real challenge is the company I’ll be keeping.  Physicists.  And some other scientist types.”

“So that low-plunging number won’t do.” Elisabeth was being facetious.  By low-plunging she was referring to a scoop-neck dress I wore to one of her parties.  For me, it was risky, because I didn’t like my neck exposed.

She followed me into my bedroom where I opened my small closet.  “How do you get by?” Elisabeth lamented. “And why is everything black?”

“It’s an artist thing.”  It wasn’t. It was actually an insecurity-about-color-and-the-attention-it-drew thing, but I kept mum.

“None of these will do,” she finally said after scooting every hanger contemptuously down the line.  “We have to get you a new dress.”

“New?  In case you haven’t heard, playwriting isn’t the lucrative business it used to be for me.”

“Come on.  I know where to find all the bargains.”

How ridiculous.  I didn’t need a new dress.  Any of these would suffice.  “Okay.”

***

Glavier had a deceivingly fancy name.  Inside it looked more like a warehouse that had potential for conversion but hadn’t been converted.  The dressing room, I noticed immediately, was a sheet strung from one empty clothes rack to another.

“Don’t worry,” Elisabeth said.  “I know it looks a little scary, but I’m telling you, one of these days you’ll hear about Glavier in all the best fashion magazines.  Kitty has a real vision for what’s in style.”

“Kitty?”

“She owns the place.”

In place of a meow, the petite middle-aged woman came around the corner and greeted us with an exquisite politeness.  Elisabeth got busy explaining my desperate need for a new dress.  But Kitty seemed more interested in me.

She took me by the hand and guided me toward a collection of dresses.  I didn’t see anything black.  I was seeing a lot of pastels.  She pulled me along, and with her free hand gathered four dresses and then took me to the suspended sheet.

She pulled it to one side and hung the dresses on what looked like a meat hook on the wall.  “Here you are.”

I looked at the dresses.  Not one resembled anything I would ever dream of wearing. But as she pulled the sheet again in an attempt to create a place for some modesty, I realized that I was lying to myself. These were the kinds of dresses I dreamed of wearing.  I fingered my way through each one, trying to imagine myself by Edward’s side.  Trying to imagine the looks on the other professors’ faces.

I pushed the sheet aside and stepped out, only to be greeted by two eager faces.

“I’m sorry, these aren’t going to work.”

“Leah, you didn’t even try them on!” Elisabeth said.

“How do you know?”

“We can see through the sheet.”

I knew my instincts were right.  It was time to leave. But each woman grabbed one of my arms and swung me back in front of the dressing room.

“Just try them on,” Kitty said.  “There’s no pressure.  Just see how you feel about them.”

“I can already tell how I feel about them.  They’re not really me.”

“How do you know,” asked Elisabeth, “without trying them on?”

“If you didn’t notice, I don’t have anything mint or pink in my closet.”

Both of their faces indicated they might die of sorrow if I didn’t give this a shot, so with a sigh I went back in, yanked the translucent sheet behind me, and tried on mint #1.

“Kitty went to get you some shoes.”

“Oh. Good.”  Mint #1 had some cleavage issues.  Actually, I had some cleavage issues, but nevertheless, mint #1 went back on the hanger.

“I’ve been thinking about your plays,” Elisabeth said, filling the silence.

This was startling.  It actually sent a chill down my spine.  My friend who hadn’t been to the theater before she met me had been pondering my plays.  Not that I was desperate for approval and attention, even from nonpeers, but I was curious.

Oh, who are you kidding?  You’re desperate.

Elisabeth wasn’t offering up further information, so I asked, “What about them?”

“Maybe it’s a coincidence, I don’t know, but it seems like something out of all three of your plays has come true.

I pondered this while nearly throwing out my back trying to reach the uncooperative zipper of mint #2.

“Like a prophet.  Think about it. In The Twilight T-Zone you have a cosmetics company go bankrupt.  Just last year Lyla went out of business.  Then in Spint, doesn’t the vice president have an affair with his secretary?”

Yes, and it was dogged for being too unrealistic.  Everyone shut up after the Clinton scandal.

“Okay,” I said.  I could see where she was going.

“The third one, two words:  Kobe Bryant.”

I flung uncooperative mint #2 to the ground, then returned it to the hanger.  Pink #1 was next, and I could already tell the Lycra was going to be a problem.

“Doesn’t it freak you out that everything you write comes true?”

“What’s freaking me out is that I feel like I need to be in an aerobics class to wear all this Lycra.”

“You have one more, don’t you?”

I pulled pink #2 on.  It was just above knee-length and, all straps considered, fairly modest.  The neckline was square and high, and the back didn’t even reveal a shoulder blade, much to my surprising disappointment.

I stepped out.  Elisabeth gasped.  Kitty, a pair of heels in hand, smiled in pleasure.  But so far I hadn’t seen a mirror.  Kitty rectified that situation by turning me to the right.  I gasped too.

Elisabeth pulled my hair up and out of my face, and Kitty slipped me into a pair of strappy silver heels.  I began to understand that Kitty was quite talented because so far I hadn’t revealed a single one of my sizes.

“Leah!  You look amazing!  I never knew you could wear pink.”

“Me either,” I said, looking myself up and down.

“It looks like it was made for you,” Kitty said.

The dress put a particular innocence on me and took about ten years off my age.  I found myself spinning and grinning and imagining Edward gushing at the sight.  It wasn’t exactly pastel, but it stopped short of being hot pink.

After a few moments, Elisabeth asked, “How much is it?”

“Three hundred and forty dollars,” Kitty said.

“Whoa,” Elisabeth said.  “Oh well.  Listen, Leah, surely we can find something similar that will fit your budget.  Kitty has lots of different dresses and styles and―”

“I’ll take it.”

“You will?” they both asked.

“And the shoes too.”

Elisabeth’s mouth was hanging open.

I turned to Kitty.  “I’m going to need a handbag.”