Saturday, after an hour the salon with Luis, the most beautiful man in the world who I am glad is gay because I couldn't bear another woman to have him. I've marched up and down Fifth Avenue like the grand old duchess of yuck, avoiding all the stores that I can neither afford nor fit into, languishing instead in Crate and Barrel where everything fits (not so much of the barrel though, please) where, after a morning at the other station of the cross - Williams Sonoma - I indulge my habit for kitchen porn.
A brownie dish shaped like stars, on sale after the 4th of July holiday (though I draw the line at star spangled napkins and red, white and blue cookie sprinkles); silicone cup cake holders (the only silicone thing in my house is bakeware, everything else is a hundred percent natural); tiny little knives and tiny little spoons for tiny little condiments that we don't have and wouldn't eat if we had (but you just never know when they'll come in handy); a sugar thermometer (for all those times we boil sugar - in the ex's culture the only time women did this was to make toffee to remove the hair from their limbs - sweet mother of God); and seafood scissors. I know. When you've cracked open the crab claws and you're cutting them up, who know you were supposed to use special scissors? But now I own them. As well as a honey spoon. I was in food heaven. Replete with cook's tools. Who could ask for anything more?
And then as I walked back to the salon to pick up Audrey who was still under the lash of the blow dryer, drunk with dinner napkins on sale for $1.95 each, I stumbled into Bendells. Youngest had instructed me to buy a brand of cosmetics that she thinks is cheaper in the USA than it is in Britain (it's all cheaper if your mother is paying for it), and so in I trotted.
And then I looked in the mirror.
This is not a good idea.
Ever.
Especially in a store devoted to cosmetics.
Especially when you have just been coiffed and curled and your hair, damn it, looks fanglossytastic, and you've started tossing it, and tucking it behind your ears, and smiling at yourself, and trying out a little red lippy from the stand while you're waiting for the sales 'associate' to ring up your purchase and...
'Why don't you hop up on a stool ma'am and let me show you some of our products,' said Larette, sneaking up behind me, and effectively blocking off my exit.
'Oh no, I don't really wear make up...'
This would be evident from the shine on your cheeks, the red blotches on your chin, the freckles and the circles under the eyes, Marion.
'Mmm, hmm,' said Larette, 'You will... When I've finished with you ma'am you'll see how wonderful you look. Set yourself down, and let me work my magic.'
'It'll take a bit more than magic, I'm afraid,' I stammered, trying to edge closer to the cash register so I could get the youngest's 'Smoky Eyes Kit' and get the hell out of there but Larette already had the chair pulled out for me. And so it came to pass I did the thing I swore never to do.
I let a store beautician make me up.
'I'm going to give you a bit of a Marylin Monroe look, light on the eyes, heavy on the lips, starting here with this eye cream that fades dark circles and freckles,' she said, heaving her considerable bosum into place and pinning my arms to my ribs... Concealer, foundation, primer (primer for gawd's sake, what am I - skirting board?) eyebrow highlighter, eyebrow pencil, a mini brush to sweep the eyebrows (ma'am they frame the face you need to keep them tidy -oops sorry I'm an eyebrow slut, apparently. I never sweep) so much mascara that I couldn't open my eyes, eyeliner, lipliner, lip highlighter and then last of all the dreaded bronzer. The girl on the YSL desk kept grinning at me and nodding.
'Why is she laughing at me, does it look that bad?'
'Ma'am, she's not laughing, she's smiling. You look terrific. Look up. Look down. Look over there. Look back over there. Look at me.' I looked everywhere except in a mirror. Another woman from the Laura Mercier counter came over to watch.
'Mmm hmm,' she said, and nodded.
'What about the lips?' asked yet another girl who wandered over from Nars.
'Red. Very red.' said Larette.
'Mmm hmm,' the three of them agreed at once.
This is what happens in Manhattan on a July weekend when everybody slopes off to their summer homes in the Hamptons and you, the hick from out of town, become the entertainment. I was praying for customers. My prayers went unanswered. It was just like being on stage at the (excellent) play we had seen the night before (Ruined, about Congolese prostitutes) where the audience, being mostly African American, commented on the storyline as though they were in church: 'Aint that the truth sister!' and 'You got that right.' Except that I had half of Queens as my audience.
Eventually Larette announced she had finished and finally turned me to face the mirror. Well, folks - Narcissus died for his vanity. I got off lucky. I was merely embalmed.
'What do you think?' she asked, smiling with delight at her handywork.
'Lovely,' I said, recoiling inwardly but being too British to say 'Holy Crap I look like a transvestite.' However, after I tactfully got her to blend in the odd sort of milk moustache of make up on my top lip that was supposed to make my pout look full and luscious, and I had arrived home and washed off all the brown stuff from the place that my non existent cheek bones were supposed to be with a flannel, it did look more or less okay. If I avoided natural and overhead light. And didn't smile. And got my hair unglued from my lipstick.
'Your eyes look amazing!' Said Audrey later. 'What have you done to them?'
'Went to Bendells and had a girl paint the inside of my eyelid with black stuff that smelled like nail varnish on a very pointy brush.'
'Well it looks great.'
'Really?'
'Really. They look beautiful.'
'I was thinking of wiping it...'
'No, don't you dare. And take off the damn sunglasses.'
So that's how I came to be standing self-consciously on the garden terrace of the Rockerfeller Centre like a store window dummy with lips so red they could be seen from space, having taken the plea on the invite to 'wear something red' a little too literally in my scarlet polka dot dress; sore thumb and standing out being an understatement. Audrey is beside me, half my body weight, and wearing an elegant navy blue floor length gown with a Grecian theme going on, and whose only nod to the dress code is red fingernails and a ruby the size of a chicklet. It took a lot of courage for me even to leave the house.
The Style Guru enters and though I try to hide which, frankly - unless I jump off the ruddy building - is impossible, he eventually comes up for a mwa mwa.
'I'm a bit red,' I say, once again with my gift for understatement.
'Darling, you make my eyes bleed,' he said, and gave a sniff that was supposed to be mock irony but still made me deflate like the Hindenberg.
'Oh frock off.' I snapped, and flounced off back to the comfort of canapes.
I was only partly mollified when he asked me to dance later and proved to be much better at leading than he is at tact. He twirled me and my polka dots round and round the dancefloor where I pirouetted and waltzed, swung and swayed, finally proving that those salsa lessons have made some impact, if only that I tried to dance three beats out of every four when it was a two-step.
'You made me feel just like Ginger Rogers,' I said in the small hours of the morning when we finally left the party.
'You looked like Ginger Rogers, honey, you were working it...' He replied, trying to make up for the 'eyes bleed crack earlier'. But there's no coming back from that.
We both know that the only chance I had of looking like Ginger Rogers would have been if she had been exhumed.
Really, I was dead glamorous.
