Cheapskate in Love (22 page)

“Yes,” asserted Sandra and Joan, simultaneously and loudly.

“Bill won’t be bowled over by a pretty dress alone,”
remarked Sandra. “After you get his attention—that’s just the first
step—you’re going to have to use every means in your power to hold his
interest.”

“It’ll be easy to shock him,” said Joan. “This dress looks
fantastic on you, and even he will notice. But you’ll need to pull him in with
other tricks, other allurements to keep him under your charm.”

“Yet you shouldn’t look fake or act artificial,” explained
Sandra. “A natural glamour is the most potent.”

“The French know the art of seduction best,” enthused Joan.
“And we’re going to help you out-French the French at entrapment and fill Bill
with
l’amour
fou
, crazy
love. He’ll be crazy about you.”

Joan ran to fetch a few wigs for Helen to try on, while
Sandra began to give Helen lessons on how to walk. Helen was ambivalent about
what they wanted her to do. It all seemed too deceptive, too laborious, too
unnatural, too much. It didn’t seem to her that they were giving instructions
in any true French seduction skills, either. Yet she played along with what
they advised. She practiced walking as they demonstrated, swaying at the hips
with an uplifted chest. When she put on the high-heeled shoes they selected for
her, she had to learn how to walk all over again, because they were the highest
heels she had ever worn and she wobbled with every step. The simplest task they
gave her was wearing jewelry she could never afford, but that didn’t make her
feel any better.

While they decided which wig complemented the outfit she had
on, she sat patiently at the dressing table in front of the mirror. The wig
they chose was a mass of straight black hair, which they coiled into a chignon
and adorned with a large mother of pearl hairpiece. They left some strands
loose, because they said that made her look younger. They called the look
sultry Spanish
señorita
and said that no man could
resist overt Spanish sexuality. Bill would be in flames at once. Helen thought
it more likely that Bill would mistake her for a cleaning lady, who didn’t have
time to fix her hair properly, but the wig did give her a foreign appearance,
which she thought might appeal to him.

Although Helen was still possessed by lurking reservations
about the entire endeavor, Sandra and Joan were becoming more and more excited.
They were impatient to complete Helen’s transformation, because they could see
how much she was already altered. Before they put makeup on her,
which
was the final step, they told her to turn around, away
from the mirror, because they wanted her to be surprised.

“I think I’ve had enough surprises for one day,” she
remarked. “From now on, I’m going to be more careful about what I let you two
talk me into.”

“Stop being a spoilsport,” they told her. They repeated
again and again how good she looked, how much she was changed, how sure they
were her new look would win Bill over. Helen had known them for so long she
could tell their compliments were sincere. She began to believe that maybe they
were correct in their expectations, so she turned around and let them apply makeup.
Their application was a little heavy-handed. The amount of eyeliner was
excessive; the eye shadow was too dark; and the lips were coated with too
bright a shade of scarlet. But the overall effect was exotic, with a wisp of
Spanish intolerance and cruelty to it, which Sandra and Joan thought was the
perfect ploy to attract and subdue Bill’s unruly, undeserving self. They were
both pleased at the youthful appearance of elegance and control that Helen
displayed with the complete ensemble.

“You have become another woman,” Sandra announced.

“I was happy with who I was,” said Helen.

“But now Bill will like you better, a whole lot better,”
said Joan.

“Take a look,” said Sandra. “And tell us who you see.”

Helen turned around, so she could look into the mirror. She
gazed at her image or, more precisely, at where she knew her image should be,
for at first she didn’t recognize the person staring back at her. She had never
worn such heavy makeup, but it didn’t look out of place with the wig, the
jewelry, and the outfit. She didn’t dislike what she saw, but she couldn’t say
that she liked it either. She wasn’t sure how she felt about her new
appearance.

“Bill is in for a big surprise,” she said, after a while.

“Once he lays eyes on you, it’s over for him,” Sandra said.

“I almost feel sorry for him,” remarked Joan. “Not because I
care about him—sorry, Helen—but because he won’t be able to escape.
You’ll cast a spell, unbreakable, on him, like in a fairy tale.”

Half an hour later, all three women were standing in Sandra’s
bedroom, which was finely furnished with French flair, in front of a tall,
three-sided mirror. There, Helen could better see the full effect of another
complete makeover, which she had been given. She wore black leather pants, a
florescent-pink top with a deep V-neck, a beaded jean jacket, spiked shoes, a
long, gold-chain necklace with a big cross, and the blond, centerfold-style
wig. Her makeup was very light in comparison to the previous ensemble. She
looked like a young rock star. It was the first time in her life that she had
ever looked that way. In her youth, her parents had dressed her in modest,
traditional clothes, and she had kept that style. She had never aspired to be a
rock singer or play in a rock band. She had rarely listened to that type of
music at any point in her life.

As she stood silently in front of the mirror, turning to the
right and left, critically examining
herself
, Sandra
and Joan were standing a little to the rear. She could see from their
reflections that they were shaking their heads again and again in approval.

“This outfit is perfect for church,” joked Sandra. “You
should wear it tomorrow.”

“I don’t think so,” replied Helen.

“The cross gives it the ecumenical touch that is so popular
with young people today, just like it was in the middle ages,” continued
Sandra.

“If Jesus were alive today, he’d dress like a rock star,”
said Joan, picking up where Sandra’s irreverent wit left off. “Although he
probably wouldn’t wear clothing as nice as this.” Dressing up Helen had
stimulated Joan and Sandra’s creativity, and their imaginations were taking
flight.

Helen let them talk on, while she examined her image some
more. Her new appearance was becoming less strange to her, and she could
imagine the probable effect that it would have on Bill. He was the type who was
dazzled by appearances of youth, and the height of current fashions for the
young was a rock-and-roll sensibility, a casual, sexual identity, formed out of
unrestrained self-indulgence. What she wore channeled that sensibility.
Perhaps, she was drawn to these clothes and the life style they implied,
because they were so contrary to her usual conventional, rather conservative
behavior and dress. Whatever she felt about them though, she was certain that
they would be very attractive to Bill.

“I like this,” she said. Still looking at herself in the
mirror, she began to play with the cross on the chain.

“I’m going to try something on,” blurted out Joan. She had been
amazed for a while at how different Helen appeared and wanted to see what would
happen, if she dressed up as well.

“You’re married,” Sandra told her. “You don’t need to nab
someone.”

“So? Can’t I have some fun?” replied Joan. “Why should I
have to look like a grandmother, while Helen gets to look like she’s
twenty-five again. Really, she looks better now than when she was twenty-five.”

“I do not,” denied Helen. She looked carefully at her
cosmetically enhanced face. “Maybe thirty-five.”

“This is unfair,” insisted Joan. “I want to look
thirty-five, too. I want a new guy running after me.”

Sandra was about to tell her she had enough to be satisfied
with, but she paused. After a moment’s consideration, she said, “You’re right.
Helen shouldn’t be the only one who gets to look young again and have a good
time.” Although Sandra was ashamed at how much her daughter had spent on
clothes and accessories, there had been times when she’d seen her daughter in
one of her extravagant outfits and thought how good she looked in it. Joan’s
words had unleashed her secret desire to try on a young persona. “Let’s find
some stuff for ourselves,” she said to Joan. “There’s plenty to choose from.”

Together Joan and Sandra hurried back to the other bedroom,
leaving Helen in front of the mirror, twirling the gold cross, looking at her
image and imagining what the effect would be on Bill.

She yelled after them, “You two better not take anything
that I want. I’m the one who needs it, not you copycats.” Pulling herself away
from the mirror, she ran after them.

Like a whirlwind that picks up and mixes together whatever
lies in its reach, the women stormed through the closet, trying on and tossing
aside pieces of clothing. Sometimes they even fought playfully over an article
in their quests for the most flattering, unusual, youthful costume they could
find. They jostled each other in front of mirrors, while they were arranging
wigs, applying makeup, and posing. Sandra and Joan did not fit into the clothes
as easily as Helen did, but their body types were similar enough to that of
Sandra’s daughter that they could wear most of the clothing. To compensate for
their reduced choices from the wardrobe, they searched harder and made more of
a mess.

After an hour of changing and exchanging outfits, each woman
had found the wildest, yet most suitable, vision of youth for herself. They
glowed with intense satisfaction at their metamorphoses. Calmly, all three
stood in front of the large mirror in Sandra’s bedroom, with Helen in the
middle, admiring their reflections. They were like three butterflies, perched
on flowers, gently moving their splendiferous, multicolored wings in the air,
gems of nature in summer on display.

“It’s time to talk strategy for tomorrow,” declared Sandra,
with a determined glint in her eyes. The ominous note in her voice was a
jarring contrast to their marvelous makeovers, which made them seem fancy,
fun-loving
, and free.

Helen and Joan nodded their heads darkly in agreement, and
the eyes of all three locked together in conspiracy.

Chapter 24

The next morning, after a long night of dancing with Donna
in his dreams, Bill awoke in his studio. He sat up in bed, feeling a bit
groggy. Sunlight was streaming through the cracks between his window blinds,
scattering the lingering gloom in his apartment. It was the usual hour at which
he awoke on Sunday to prepare for church, but that morning he was puzzled about
the purpose of his normal routine.

“What am I going to do at church today?” he asked himself
out loud. “All my prayers are answered. I met Donna. We’ll soon be together. I
should sleep some more now, for I’ll be up late a lot before long.”

With a clear conscience and a smile, he lay his head down
again on his pillow and pulled the covers over his head, planning to sleep till
noon. After a few minutes of calm relaxation and a steady descent to a
slumbering state, where the specter of Donna awaited, beckoning him with all
sorts of suggestive body language, he suddenly threw the covers off and shot up
into a sitting position, as if a siren had sounded.

“Donuts,” he exclaimed. “There’s free donuts today. How
could I forget? I have to go to church.”

Now fully alert and invigorated by his insatiable appetite
for free food, he hurried to get out of bed. He was forced to slow down and act
with more caution when he felt a twitch in his lower back. While he stood next
to his bed, rubbing the spot where the twitching had occurred, his Blackberry
rang. He walked carefully to the couch to pick it up. There was a text message
from Linda: “Lets go hike, lazybones. You should.
Im
waiting.”

“She needs a dog,” he said in disgust. “A big, hyperactive
one. Two dogs would be better.”

He deleted the message and tossed the Blackberry back on the
couch. While he showered and dressed for church, he hummed swing dance tunes
that he had played yesterday and sang snatches of lyrics. The lyrics he
returned to most often were those for “Boogie
Woogie
Bugle Boy.”

When he had dressed and had a cup of coffee, skipping any
solid food since he would be having plenty of donuts later at the church’s
expense, he left his apartment. He continued to hum dance tunes, while he
walked toward the lobby. He wore a nondescript short-sleeve polo shirt and
khakis, like he would wear to work.

Since the front desk wasn’t staffed on the weekends until
the afternoon, Bill didn’t expect to see anyone in the building before he
exited. The complex had only two floors and less than ninety apartments. Very
few residents appeared to him to leave their apartments on Sunday morning for any
reason, especially before nine, which was about half an hour away. Merrily, he
hummed along, thinking primarily of donuts, although Donna was a close second.

As he turned into the lobby and looked ahead toward the
door, he came to an immediate, involuntary, hum-halting stop. He stood
immovable, soundless, speechless, stunned. He didn’t know
who
that was standing near the exit. He had never seen such a stranger in the
building or the town. He completely forgot about Donna. Even the free donuts
slipped from his mind. He lost control over his body and mind. He could only
stare and barely breath, transfixed by what he saw.