The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty

Chapter Thirteen

Carrying a shopping bag containing her two masks, Lily goes to Barnes & Noble for her two p.m. blind date with Strad (she tells us all about it later). Customers in the store have already been under the influence of Lily’s “beauty” music for a few minutes, so she gets admiring stares when she enters, which she finds unsettling. It’s the first time in her life she’s out in public and beautiful.

She takes the escalator straight to the third floor and hides behind some bookcases to spy on the coffee shop area. She wants to wait until Strad arrives and seats himself before she makes her appearance.

Three minutes later, she sees him ambling into the coffee shop area. He looks around, searching for someone wearing a mask, sees no one, chooses an empty table, hangs his jacket on the back of the chair, and stands in line to buy a snack.

Lily decides that she will make her entrance when he’s back at his seat. She feels more nervous than she expected.

While she waits, a young man tries to start a conversation with her. No one ever tries to pick her up, so at first she doesn’t realize what he’s doing. When it finally occurs to her that asking her what is her favorite time to come to Barnes & Noble is a weird question, she says, “I’m sorry, I can’t talk right now,” and turns back to her object of interest, who’s paying. Strad carries a hot beverage and a plate with a pastry on it to his table. He looks around again, then at his watch, and sits.

Now is the time. Her apprehension has grown. Trying to calm herself, she takes a deep breath.

She pulls out of her shopping bag the green mask of the Wicked Witch of the West wearing sunglasses. She puts it on.

Before she has a chance to take her first step in Strad’s direction, there is a tap on her shoulder and an “Excuse me” behind her. She turns. It’s the same guy again. He jumps with fright, looking aghast.

She lifts up her mask. “What?”

He holds up a book. “This is my favorite novel. Have you read it?”

She thought she’d made herself perfectly clear to this guy.

“I’m sorry, I’m in a relationship,” she lies, “and in the middle of something important. I’d really be grateful if you would leave me alone. I’m sorry.” She replaces the mask over her face, hoping it’ll frighten him away.

He raises his hands. “Shame. But okay,” he says, and walks off.

Strad is now sipping from his cup and reading a magazine.

Lily steps out from behind the bookcase just as a group of people are walking by, headed toward the coffee shop area. She goes with the flow.

Strad looks up from his paper, scanning his surroundings again. He does a double take. He has spotted her behind the approaching heads. His eyes are locked on her mask and he’s not smiling.

He rises from his chair and gives her a courteous nod as she nears. She nods back and stops in front of him. He mumbles hello, says it’s nice to meet her. He indicates the empty chair. She sits.

The first thing he says when they’re seated is, “Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate your sense of humor. But they do say first impressions are very important.” He laughs. “I guess you haven’t heard that?”

“They’re not that important.”

From the start, the fantasy is not going exactly as she had imagined. There’s a different feel to it. First off, the coffee shop is loud. More so than usual. Her soul-baring music is not easy to hear above all the noise. This worries her. She wonders if her music’s transformative power will be diminished or maybe even canceled.

As a result, the thing she has been looking forward to the most — the removal of the mask — she now begins to dread.

Her anxiety is not helped by what Strad asks her next.

“Do you know Barb well?”

“Not that well. I only started working for her recently,” she says, the first of probably many lies.

“Why do you think she wanted to set us up? I don’t entirely trust her motives. I think it’s a trick to teach me a lesson. She disapproves of a couple of my views. They all do, that bunch.” He shakes his head regretfully. “Too bad, really. I admire them.”

He will certainly feel tricked if she takes off her mask and he sees his ugly former colleague Lily sitting in front of him instead of beautiful Sondra. This could happen because of all the racket masking her music. To make matters worse, children are crying at three different tables around them. Unbelievable. It’s not romantic. What bad luck.

She suddenly wishes she didn’t have to take off her mask. Maybe she’ll simply refuse to take it off. She has a right to change her mind. Perhaps she’ll just arrange to see Strad another time, someplace safer, more familiar, such as Barb’s apartment. These thoughts are calming her. And she decides right then that, in fact, she won’t take off her mask. There. She feels much better now.

“God, it’s so loud here,” he complains.

“I know.”

“This cake is great. Here, have a bite,” he says.

“No thanks, I’m not hungry.”

“It would make me so happy if you would taste it.”

Her anxiety returns. Obviously he’s trying to get her to take off her mask.

She will give in without giving in. “Okay,” she says.

She takes the fork he’s handing her, on which rests a piece of tart, and lifts the bottom of her mask just enough to slide the bite into her mouth.

She chews and releases the mask to where it was. “Mmm. It’s good,” she says.

Lily glances at Strad. He is solemn. Clearly he’s disappointed that she hasn’t removed her mask as she’d promised she would. Well, tough.

Taking it upon herself to get the conversation going again, she says, “So, Barb tells me you’re a musician. What kind of music do you play?”

“Wait,” he says. “I’m still recovering.”

“Recovering?” she asks, puzzled.

“Yes,” he says, gazing down, looking almost pained.

“From what?”

“That glimpse of your chin,” he replies, softly.

She doesn’t respond.

“I think I’d like to get together again, based solely on your chin.”

“Ah.” She doesn’t know what else to say. All she can think about is how relieved she is that the music worked well enough on her chin. And not only that, he wants to see her again. Things could not be better.

They chat about various things. He tells her about the evening he spent having dinner with the Knights of Creation at Barb’s apartment, and how they attacked Jack and then were handcuffed for dinner to a ballet bar and then were sectioned off for dessert by a transparent plastic sheet hanging from the ceiling. Lily tries to react as though she wasn’t there. But conveying amusement and amazement while masked is not easy and has to be done entirely with voice and body language, which she does as best she can by flinging her head around and laughing loudly.

Then Strad moves on to the topic of Lily’s music. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s her music playing, right now,” he says, finger pointing up, ear cocked. “That’s if you can hear it above all this howling. God, you’d think we were in a day care center. Anyway, if that’s her music, probably before we leave here today we’ll have bought at least five books each.”

Lily laughs. “Really?”

“Oh yeah, you’ll see. Lily’s got phenomenal talent.”

Suddenly, a floor manager appears at their table.

Lily and Strad stare up at him, wondering what it’s about.

The manager leans toward them and says, in a hushed voice, “Excuse me, your mask is upsetting the children. I’ve had a few complaints from mothers. Would it be too much to ask you to please remove it? I apologize for the inconvenience.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was the cause of the crying,” Lily says.

The manager nods sympathetically, waiting for her to take it off.

Lily frantically wonders if her music is loud enough to work its magic. It did okay with her chin, apparently. But she’s gripped by an irrational fear that now the effect won’t work.

She’s tempted to tell the manager, “In my bag I have another, much more attractive mask that the children might prefer. Could I just switch masks in the bathroom?”

But why postpone the inevitable? She did not spend weeks struggling to create music that would beautify her just to keep her face hidden.

She prays that when she takes off the mask, Strad will not recognize her. If he sees Lily, the embarrassment would kill her.

She lifts the mask and puts it in her shopping bag. “No problem. Out of sight, out of mind,” she says.

Both men are staring at her. They look dumbstruck.

The manager regains his wits first, and says to Lily. “You know, you look very familiar. Do I look familiar to you?”

Lily studies his face. He’s in his late twenties, dark hair, glasses, nice-looking. “I don’t think so,” she says.

“Hmm. Could I have your number or give you mine so we can figure out where we might have met before?” He chuckles, mock sheepishly. “Otherwise I know it’s going to nag at me.”

Strad snaps out of it. “You must be joking. We’re on a date. Please leave us alone.”

“Apologies.” The manager leaves.

“Can you believe his lame pickup line?” Strad tells her.

She smiles.

“It’s so quiet now. It really was your mask causing all the crying.” He attempts to shake his head at her flirtatiously, but he seems nervous. He glances around. His smile fades. “Do you always have half the people in a room staring at you?” He adds in a whisper, “Especially the male half?” He attempts another flirtatious look of reproach.

“Let’s ignore them,” Lily says.

They talk about various things. His childhood. Hers — partly made up so it won’t match Lily’s. He asks her about her tastes in everything. He tells her about his music and acting ambitions.

Their conversation is interrupted by the approach of a distinguished older man with a warm, intelligent face who hands Lily a book. “Excuse me. I just want to give you a copy of my autobiography that was recently published. I hope you’ll enjoy it.” His accent sounds French.

Lily hesitantly takes the book, entitled This Is Not an Autobiography.

“Oh. Thank you,” she says.

“You’re quite welcome,” the man replies, bowing to her and then to Strad before walking away.

Lily opens the cover and sees a handwritten message to her: “For the stranger who spoke to me without speaking. I’d love to know your thoughts on this — or on anything. Danny.” And a phone number is scribbled underneath.

“Do you mind if I take a look?” Strad asks.

Lily gives him the book.

He reads the message, snorts, and tosses the book on the middle of the table.

Lily picks it up and reads the back cover, which seems to annoy Strad, who says, “So who the hell is this guy?”

“This says he’s a legendary French photographer.”

“Yeah, bullshit.”

“The photo looks like him,” she says and quickly puts the book down, not wanting to annoy Strad further.

They resume their conversation, which gets interrupted ten minutes later by yet another man — this time a tall and extremely good-looking one.

“I don’t believe this,” Strad mutters through clenched teeth.

The man looks down at Lily without saying a word and places a little piece of paper on the table in front of her. She picks it up. It reads: “You deserve the best. Let’s have coffee.” His phone number is underneath.

She chuckles nervously and looks up at him. He smiles at her before strolling off.

With an air of indifference (in order to calm Strad), Lily lets go of the paper. It flutters to the tabletop. Strad reaches for it, reads it, and, with scathing disdain, calls out after the man, “What are you, a male model or something?”

The man pivots on his heels and comes back to the table. “Pardon?” he says, looming over Strad.

Strad does not hesitate to stand and confront the man, even though this man is taller than he is. “I said, ‘What are you? A ridiculous male model, or something?’”

The man takes hold of Strad’s jacket lapels, pulls him close, and talks to him intimately. “And what do you think you are, you pathetic, greasy, ugly, creep?”

Strad struggles free and then charges the man. They both crash into some empty chairs. They wrestle on the floor, throwing punches. The floor manager rushes over, tries to make them stop. People shout. Toddlers resume crying. Lily is distraught. But not nearly as distraught as she is a moment later when she realizes that the music has abruptly changed. She looks at her watch. The favor-hour is over. The book music is back on. And now her appearance is undoubtedly starting to change in people’s eyes.

She springs from her chair, grabs her shopping bag, and runs to the escalator, leaving the French photographer’s book and the possible male model’s phone number on the table, far too in love with Strad to be interested in other men’s advances.

“Sondra!” Strad shouts. He loses interest in the fight, struggles to his feet, and rushes after her.

She hops onto the moving staircase and flies down the metal steps while putting on the beautiful mask I made for her — in case Strad catches up with her. She looks back and sees him leaping onto the escalator just as she’s getting onto the next one. A group of people are in his way, slowing down his pursuit.

Soon, Lily is out of sight and too far away to be caught. Strad gives up. He goes back up to the coffee shop to retrieve his knapsack with his wallet, then walks across Union Square, straight to my apartment.

When I open the door for him, he looks frazzled, frantic even.

“Barb, I’m afraid I made a bad impression. I think I scared her away. I got into a fight with a guy. It was stupid of me. But jerks kept coming on to her. I couldn’t take it anymore. She’s so beautiful. Barb, she’s amazing.”

I gaze at the few cuts on his face and hands. I won’t pretend they don’t bring me satisfaction.

I decide I will take this opportunity to explain Lily’s frequent wearing of a mask, so he won’t question it in the future. Giving him a look of concern, I reply, “Yes she’s very beautiful, but fragile.”

“What do you mean, fragile?”

“You’ll see, if you get to know her. Her beauty is taxing for her, as I’m sure you can imagine, now that you’ve witnessed the excessive attention and advances she has to deal with all the time. It’s a heavy burden to bear. As a result, she has erected certain defense mechanisms.”

“Like what?”

I answer by looking past him, into my living room. Strad follows my gaze, which lands on my large, brown, swivel easy chair with its back to us.

Slowly, the chair turns, revealing Lily wearing the white feather mask.

Strad’s eyes open wide.

I move to the stereo and turn on the special music.

“I’m sorry I made such a fool of myself,” he tells her.

Lily makes no response.

“I apologize for the fight at the bookstore. I hope I didn’t freak you out too much. I don’t usually get into fights. I’m not a violent person, I swear,” he says.

Lily languorously swivels the chair, disappearing behind its back once more. When she reappears, she is unmasked.

The music has had enough time to take effect. Her inner beauty is exposed in all its radiance.

Her lips, curved in their deliriously lovely way, spread into a mischievous grin. “You didn’t freak me out that much.”

MY FRIENDS COME over the following day for a Night of Creation. When Lily has finished regaling them with her account of her bookstore date, we work. Peter is drawing in his pad, frequently glancing at me, as usual. I’m not looking at him much, but I’m thinking about him — and not entirely happily. He seems attracted to me, and yet he hasn’t been doing anything about it. He must not be as interested as he seems, and it must be my disguise that’s preventing him from wanting to take things further. It’s disappointing. I hoped he might be different.

In Central Park at nine p.m., two days later, Strad is waiting for Lily where they decided to meet for their second date: along the edge of the lake in a secluded spot at the foot of some rocks.

He’s been waiting five minutes.

Suddenly, he sees her at the top of the rock formation behind him, wearing her white mask. She looks majestic standing there, gazing down at him. He waves at her.

With a minimal gesture of the head, she motions for him to join her. Before he can, she backs away until she’s out of sight. He scrambles up the rocks to find her.

And he does. She’s leaning against a tree, waiting for him.

“You’re wearing your mask again,” he says, surprised.

She nods.

“I guess you wear it a lot?”

She nods.

“How come?”

“I can’t talk about it now. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, that’s okay. It’s great to see you again. Or at least to somewhat see you again,” he says, as they begin to stroll. “How’ve you been?”

“Well. And you?”

“I hardly know,” he murmurs.

“Oh? Is something wrong?”

“I’d rather not talk about it right now. It is so nice to see you again.”

“Thank you. Have you had dinner?”

“No. I haven’t had much appetite lately,” he says, looking off into the distance.

Georgia had predicted that “He will barely eat and he will barely sleep. Your face is not one from which one recovers quickly.”

Lily glances at him. He does look rather tired and gaunt. She feels a surge of joy.

That’s why Lily had to ask. Curiosity. Not because she wanted dinner, which she couldn’t eat anyway, with her mask.

Eventually, they sit on a rock at the edge of the lake, in the obscurity. The side of his body is touching the side of hers.

“May I take off your mask?” he asks.

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Why not? I mean, I understand that with your looks, wearing a mask attracts less attention than not wearing one, but right now we’re alone. No one will see you.”

“Except you.”

“Why would that be a problem?”

“Now is not a good time.”

“What a shame. I don’t even remember what you look like.”

She chuckles.

“It’s true,” he says. “Hasn’t that ever happened to you — you think about someone so much, you can no longer remember their face clearly?”

“Yes, I know what you mean,” she says.

“So.” He pauses, grins at her. “When will I get to see your face again?”

“I’m not sure, yet. I often wear a mask. I wear it at many expected times, and at some unexpected times.”

“I see. And do you have an aversion to being touched?” he asks.

“No.”

“Really? Could have fooled me. You’re completely covered. Even your hands. I can’t see any of your skin.”

“That’s because it’s cold,” she laughs.

“The only part of you that’s not covered is the back of your head. Do you mind if I touch that?”

“I guess not.”

“Turn around.”

She turns her back to him.

She feels his hands softly separating her hair, pushing it forward over her shoulders.

“There’s your skin,” he notes.

He runs one finger along her part, and over her nape, sending shivers through her body. He gently kisses the back of her neck.

At the end of the date, he asks her if he can see her again tomorrow, if not sooner.

He stares at her frigid, feathery expression. He doesn’t know it, but on the other side of the mask, she’s smiling.

ON TV, I hear a line that strikes me as a perfect comeback to most of the insults my doorman throws my way. So I decide to try a new technique: give him a taste of his own medicine.

I seize my opportunity the next day, when I come back from running errands and Adam says, “The aberration of nature has returned.”

I stare at him squarely in the eyes and reply, “Whatever’s eating you must be suffering horribly.”

His face turns red, as though he’s been slapped. “That’s very insulting,” he says.

“You mean compared to all the charming things you say to me?”

“Whatever. Cocksucking bitch.”

“I’m sorry, Adam, I didn’t mean to offend you. Good night.”

“You fucking curse on society,” he says to my back.

Okay, that experiment didn’t work too well.

Now I’m back to my original plan: give him the name of my therapist.

FOR THEIR THIRD date, Lily and Strad go to a bar. They pick a cozy couch to settle themselves on, in front of a fireplace. Strad orders a glogg. Lily orders nothing.

“Because of the mask?” he asks.

She nods.

“But you could lift it slightly to sip a drink, the way you did at the bookstore when you tasted my tart. I wouldn’t see anything except maybe your chin, which I adore.”

Without her special music playing, her chin would be its hideous receding self — the last thing she wants him to see. She sticks to ordering nothing.

“It would be so wonderful to see your face in the light of this fire. Do you think that might be possible at some point before we leave?”

“Oh, no, definitely not.”

He laughs. “What does the removal of your mask depend on?”

She shrugs.

“Okay, let me guess. Does it depend on your mood?”

“No.”

“Does it require a magic word? Like ‘please’?”

“No.”

“Does the moon need to be full or absent, or somewhere in between?”

“No.”

“Does it depend on your menstrual cycle? No offense.”

She laughs. “No.”

“Do I need to give you a gift?” he asks, taking a small lily from a vase on the table and handing it to her.

She takes the flower. “No.”

“Do I need to touch you a certain way?” he asks, stroking the side of her head, just behind the feathers of the mask.

“No,” she says, leaning slightly into his hand.

“Do we need to be somewhere in particular?”

“Yes.”

“Where do we need to be?”

She shrugs.

“Okay, I do think we’re getting warmer. At least now I know I need to take you somewhere,” he says, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

“No.”

“No?”

“No. I need to take you there.”

“Really? You’re feeling an urgent need to take me there? That’s great. Let’s go!”

She laughs.

“Can we go to the place where the mask comes off?” he asks.

She studies him. “Yes.” She gets up.

Lily leads him to her apartment. Fortunately, she doesn’t have to worry about him remembering it as “Lily’s” apartment, because it’s not the same apartment he visited a couple of years ago when he lay on her floor and told her he’d fall in love with (and marry) any woman who could create music that beautified the world.

Nevertheless, she is worried. She’s afraid that something in her home will give away her true identity. She spent the last few days taking precautions, guarding against this danger. She removed her name from the buzzer. She carefully hid all her mail and documents with her name on them. She moved her piano and musical books to a tiny spare room, and locked the door.

She never in her life had kept any photos of herself on display — not seeing the point of living among reminders of her ugliness — but still, she made doubly sure before Strad came over that she hadn’t left a snapshot lying around. She had discovered, through experimentation, that the music she’d created to beautify herself also beautified photographs of herself — but as the music might not be playing during the entirety of Strad’s visit, the last thing she wanted was for a photo to be changing throughout the evening, depending on whether the music was on or off.

When Strad and Lily enter her apartment, she closes the door behind them. She turns on her soul-stripping music, which is wired to play in all the rooms whenever it’s turned on (except the bathroom, unfortunately), and waits until she’s sure the music has taken its effect before removing her mask. She opens a bottle of wine and they sit together on the couch.

Seeing him reclined there, she becomes sad just looking at him, at how beautiful he is to her, at how often she’s dreamed about him, at how much she loves him. She is painfully aware that his happiness at sitting here with her, his desire to touch her, is not something she was born to experience in the natural world.

She must have looked sad, because he finally asks, “Are you okay?”

“Not really,” she says. “I’m a bit overwhelmed.”

“I’m not attractive enough for you, right? I know I’m not good enough for you.”

“No, you’re wrong. I find your face very moving.”

“Are you mocking me?”

He looks at her and sees tears in her eyes.

“You’re not,” he says, perplexed.

She shakes her head.

He descends upon her. They kiss passionately, each with their own personal desperation. He basks in the sight of her face, running his fingers through her hair, devouring her with his eyes, and then with his mouth, and again with his eyes. Before long, they move to the bedroom. He undresses her quickly. Even though their passion is frantic, every second is slowed in her mind, and she has time to relish the caresses. She hugs the body she craved for years, the body that never wanted her and still wouldn’t if she hadn’t worked beyond sanity to warp reality.

Afterward, he notices blood on the sheets. “Oh. You have your period?”

“No,” she says.

He frowns. “That’s strange,” he mutters. And then he opens his eyes wide and looks at her. “Were you a virgin?”

“Yes.”

“Why me?”

“You’re my type.”

“No one else was your type before me?”

“Not so much.”

“I hope this isn’t some elaborate and cruel prank because I’m not so bad of a person to deserve it.”

Chapter Fourteen

During the next two weeks, Lily and Strad see each other almost every day. He treats her with tender devotion. She never dreamed he could be so gentle and loving.

He’s always touching her, caressing her, which she loves. She’s hardly ever been touched before. In fact, she was so touch-deprived that she used to derive inordinate pleasure from the handling of her hands during a manicure. And now he’s constantly grabbing her around the waist, kissing her, hugging her, cupping her breasts, and then jokingly saying things like, “Oops, I’m sorry, am I molesting you? You’d tell me if it bothered you, right?” They laugh. To her, it’s heaven.

When she’s home with a bad cold, he brings her large containers of wonton soup and urges her to drink a lot of it. He buys her homeopathic medications, takes her temperature and gives her foot rubs.

When they go to parties, they stay in a corner, people-watching and whispering. She finds his take on everyone entertaining and witty. Much whispering is done about them, too, of course, as she’s wearing a mask. They have such a great connection. Why couldn’t this kind of connection have existed if she hadn’t become beautiful? Why is it that a connection that seems to have nothing to do with looks — because it feels so much deeper than that, like a connection of minds and souls — is actually entirely dependent on looks?

She realizes she may be in for some serious suffering once he discovers the truth about her — and she does think he will learn it, sooner or later, one way or another, perhaps even from her.

She and Strad are so often together that she doesn’t find many opportunities to work on the piece that will give permanence to her new beauty.

Much of their time is spent at her place; that’s where she feels most comfortable replacing her mask with her music.

“I love making you laugh; you’re so beautiful when you laugh,” he tells her. “But you’re so beautiful when you don’t laugh, too. And when you look sad.”

She laughs.

Strad notices she always has the same piece of music playing. Granted, it’s a very nice piece, and long, and with lots of variations, but still. He asks if he can choose the music, from time to time. She says no.

“That’s not totally fair,” he says.

“I know. But it’s my only unfair thing. You can have one, too, if you want.”

“Can I choose all the movies we watch?”

“Yes.”

“And all the TV programs?”

“Yes.”

Each night, she insists on sleeping alone in her bedroom. She gives him the choice of sleeping on her foldout couch or going home. She sees no alternative — she practiced sleeping with her mask on, but found it too uncomfortable. As for the option of letting the music play all night, she wouldn’t get any sleep, too worried that the music might stop for whatever reason.

Most nights, Strad chooses the couch. After two weeks of this arrangement, he becomes more persistent in his questioning. But Lily remains evasive.

He tells her he’d like to take her to the birthday party of a friend of his. She says okay. He says he’d like her to go without the mask. She says that’s impossible. He gently but firmly wants to know why. She says she will try to tell him soon.

He knows she’s a fragile soul — just as I had warned him — and he loves that about her. To be with a girl possessed of beauty so great that it has screwed her up to this degree is thrilling. Girls of this sort are rare. Guys lucky enough to get those girls are even rarer. Strad got lucky. He knows that. Nevertheless, he wants to understand her better. So he keeps asking questions.

On her end, Lily has been trying to come up with plausible explanations, though without much success. Narrative invention is not her forte. She knows that sooner or later she’ll have to ask the expert for some ideas.

OUR WHOLE GROUP, including Peter, is gathered at our beloved restaurant, Artisanal, for our annual holiday dinner. We’re seated at a round table.

“Strad wants to know why I always wear the mask outside our apartments. Any thoughts?” Lily asks Georgia.

“I’ll think about it and try to come up with something,” Georgia says. “But I have to warn you, it’ll have to be melodramatic and sentimental to be effective with Strad. You may balk.”

“I won’t.”

As soon as my friends start digging into their cheese fondues, they perform their usual gesticulations and noises of ecstasy.

Peter looks at them, startled. “Oh, my. What a beneficial group to be with.”

“What do you mean?” Georgia asks, munching happily.

“Years ago I met a tribe in Africa who believed that you can derive more benefits from being in close proximity to someone experiencing pleasure than you can from experiencing pleasure yourself.”

“How could that be?” Penelope asks.

“They claimed that people who experience physical pleasure emit vibrations — pleasure vibes — that are beneficial to people around them. Anything that pleases any of your five senses or that simply makes your body feel good will cause your body to exude these invisible pleasure vibrations that are therapeutic to others.”

“So having sex must be the most beneficial,” Jack says.

“No, actually, sex is the one pleasure that doesn’t work that way.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I can’t remember exactly the reason. It was something about pleasure vibes staying within. They claim that’s what makes orgasms so powerful: the vibes are trapped, and so the pressure builds and builds until it explodes. But it’s an internal explosion. Nothing escapes. Except fluids, of course, but no vibes.”

“So, what specific benefits does the tribe believe one gains from being exposed to someone’s pleasure vibes?” Penelope asks.

“Every benefit you can think of. They say you’ll feel better, look better, sleep better, think better, be happier and more energetic,” Peter says. “And maybe that tribe does benefit from practicing this philosophy because they were possibly the healthiest, most charming and appealing people I’ve ever met. Present company excluded, of course.”

“Well then, let’s indulge, for the sake of bettering each other!” Georgia exclaims. She dunks a potato into the melted cheese.

“You should know, though, that the tribe believes that the pleasure vibes work even better if one person is emitting them, and another person is completely passive, just receiving them. That’s because if both people are experiencing pleasure simultaneously, then their outgoing pleasure vibes will tend to get in the way of each other’s incoming ones.”

Peter changes the topic, asking us what we’re all doing for Christmas. We go around the table, answering this question.

When it’s Penelope’s turn, she says, “I don’t know. Christmas Eve is in three days and I still haven’t heard from my parents. And yet my rent has been paid. Clearly my dad hasn’t stopped supporting me.”

“You should call them,” Georgia says.

“I don’t feel like it.”

“What will you do for Christmas?”

“I don’t know.”

Jack suggests that she spend Christmas with him and his mother at the senior center where he works. “If you’re lucky, you might even get to see me break up a fight,” he adds.

Penelope has tears in her eyes — perhaps at the thought of spending Christmas at a senior center.

“Or you could spend it with me and my family!” Georgia and Lily offer, almost in unison.

“That’s very nice of you guys,” Penelope says. “Maybe I’ll spend it at the senior center. A little volunteer work might make me feel better. Thanks, Jack.”

Georgia barks at me, for the whole table to hear, “Why are you staring at Peter so intensely?”

“I’m not staring,” I lie. She caught me.

“Yes you are,” she says. “You look like you’re devouring him with your eyes. Especially when he’s not looking.”

My face feels hot.

“Plus,” she continues, “you’re as red as a tomato right now, which I think is a sign that I’m correct.”

I feel the roots of my hair prickling under my gray wig.

Peter gazes at me.

“So? Are you going to explain?” Georgia asks.

I’m too flustered to resort to anything but the truth. “I was just wondering how much pleasure Peter was deriving from his food and whether he was emitting any pleasure vibes.”

“Why only Peter?” Georgia challenges, still loudly. “Why not the rest of us?”

Not knowing what to say, I finally, lamely answer, “I guess because he was the teller of the story.”

Peter startles us by taking out his wallet, placing a few large bills on the table, and rising.

“Hey, Peter, what’s going on?” Georgia asks, chuckling uncomfortably.

Peter walks over to my side of the table and extends his hand to me.

Addressing my friends, but looking down only at me, he says, “I hope you all don’t mind if Barb and I leave. She’s in need of a demonstration, and I, being the teller of the story, want to give it to her.”

“You mean you’ll do something pleasurable to yourself while she watches?” Georgia asks.

Peter laughs. “Yes, something like that.” His hand is still waiting for mine.

I glance at my friends, hesitant to leave them in the middle of dinner. But they don’t seem to mind. They’re smiling at me.

I finally accept Peter’s hand and we leave the restaurant.

Once in his apartment, he gestures for me to sit on the huge white couch. I do, admiring the sumptuous living room with lots of glass surfaces.

He takes care of a few things in the kitchen and comes out with a small tray. He positions a chair right in front of me, very close, and sits on it. His seat is slightly higher than mine, so he is looking down at me somewhat, his legs open to accommodate mine between his. Our calves are touching.

He picks up a chocolate truffle and bites into it and chews it slowly, looking at me like I’m the next truffle he’s about to relish.

He then takes his iPod, puts the buds in his ears, and makes his musical selection. He goes back to gazing at me intently, while I hear the faint tinny noise emanating from his earbuds. It sounds like classical. Something passionate. Wagner, perhaps.

After about three minutes he selects another piece of music and another piece of chocolate and consumes both while we stare at each other for another two minutes.

“Do you feel anything?” he asks.

I chuckle and say, “Yes,” though I doubt the excitement I’m experiencing has as much to do with his emanating pleasure vibes as it does with my anticipation of what might happen next.

He switches off the iPod and pulls his earphones out of his ears.

He stares at me for a few more seconds and says, “I saw you bite into a bruschetta, once, during one of our Nights of Creation. You closed your eyes and leaned your head back, reveling in the taste. As I observed you, a feeling I’ll never forget coursed through me — a feeling so spectacular, it felt like a drug. And I thought, Our world doesn’t pay enough attention to that feeling. Almost as though it hasn’t been discovered yet. Maybe that tribe really was onto something.”

I smile. We are silent, our eyes locked. Now is the time. He will lean toward me. He will touch me. He will kiss me. He will be the only man who has ever done this since I started wearing my ugly disguise after Gabriel’s death.

He starts moving. He picks up his iPod, searches for another song, and puts his earbuds back in his ears, saying, “I bet this one will sound great to the sight of you.” He listens to it while staring at me.

He is trying to torture me. That must be it. I am so drawn to him that were I to move toward him, it would simply feel as though I’m letting gravity take me. But my policy specifies that he has to make the first move because I need to be utterly convinced — I need irrefutable proof — that he wants me in spite of how I look to him with my disguise on.

When the song ends, he places his iPod on the coffee table next to his chair and says, “That was very pleasurable, listening to music while staring at you.”

“Great. I look forward to reaping the fruits of your pleasure,” I joke.

He nods. “Now, during this session I’ve derived pleasure from each of my senses.” He pauses. “Except for one.”

“Is it an important one?”

“Yes.”

“So what are you going to do?”

This is the moment. This is the very moment when he is going to make a move to indulge his sense of touch.

He answers, “I’ll make sure it’s not neglected next time.”

How it is that he brings the evening to an end without anything having happened is a mystery to me. It must be my teeth. Or my fat, my gray, my frizz, my brown contacts, my glasses. Perhaps I should take them all off. No, I can’t believe I’m even thinking this, after my resolution — after Gabriel. My throat tightens at the memory of him.

Peter says he’d better call it a night because he has to get up early the next morning. He offers to escort me home. I tell him that won’t be necessary. He kisses me on the cheek and I leave.

I decide to walk home to clear my head. My apartment is 45 minutes away, but the air isn’t cold for December and I’m wearing a big coat over my bloat wear.

“You look a bit hot and sweaty,” Adam notes, opening the lobby door for me. “When you get upstairs, why don’t you cool off by opening your window and sticking your head out, feet first?”

Of course, he doesn’t know that my best friend killed himself by jumping out a window. I doubt he would have made that comment if he’d known — despite his disorder.

THE FOLLOWING EVENING, Strad and Lily are walking to his friend’s birthday party when he suddenly takes hold of the edge of Lily’s mask and tentatively begins to lift it off her face.

She grabs his wrist. “Never,” she says.

“Oh, come on, won’t you let me?” Strad pleads.

Lily shakes her head. “No one ever takes off my mask. Only I do that, when and if I choose to.”

“I think I’m going to go home. I’ll see you tomorrow, maybe.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m feeling a bit sad.”

“Why? Because I won’t take off my mask?”

“That’s just a symptom. The spot I take up in your heart seems… so small. It’s hard for me to get used to that.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Your unwillingness to be truthful,” he says, leaning against a lamppost. “You allow me to believe things that are completely inconsistent with ways that you act, and you don’t bother explaining the inconsistencies, as though I’m not even worth the trouble.”

“What inconsistencies?”

“You let me believe that you absolutely have to wear a mask in public so that you won’t be harassed by strangers, but then why do you put it on when I go to the bathroom in your apartment? It insults my intelligence. Also, you refuse to take off your mask to go to this private party, and yet you took your mask off at the bookstore on our first date. So why can’t you take it off now as a special favor to me? My friends aren’t going to pester you the way those jerks did at the bookstore.”

Head hanging, shoulders drooping, Lily says nothing. She can’t explain to him that she puts on her mask when he goes to the bathroom because there’s no music in the bathroom and when he emerges from it, he’ll see her in all her ugliness; he’ll instantly recognize her as Lily until the music’s power takes hold of his brain again.

He continues. “I want to help you find another way to deal with the problems you’re struggling with that make you wear the mask.”

“That’s not likely to happen. I’ve been wearing a mask for fifteen years.”

“You have?” He pulls her to him and tenderly whispers in her ear, “I knew there was more to it. Things didn’t quite add up. Please open up to me. I want to know you.” He kisses the edge of her ear. “Will you tell me? Let’s forget about the party and go home.”

She nods. They walk back to her place. In her mind, she’s rehearsing Georgia’s concoction. She dreads using it. When she first heard it, she cringed and was tempted to ask Georgia to make it more literary, but Georgia had already made it clear she wouldn’t, that it wouldn’t be effective on Strad.

Strad and Lily go straight to her bedroom. She turns on the music. A minute later, she takes off her mask. She lies next to Strad on the bed.

He strokes her hand. “Tell me everything.”

She gazes at him for a long moment and then takes the plunge into Georgia’s fabrication. She describes at length a torrid history of sexual abuse that supposedly happened up to and including the age of eight, and that involved many pedophiles: her swimming instructor, her neighbor on vacation one summer, an art teacher, etc. The offenses were never genital penetration — because, as Strad knows, she was still a virgin their first night together — but it was everything else. Lily tells him she had an uncle she adored, who’d never laid a finger on her, until one day when he became one of the others. He couldn’t bear the guilt of what he did to her, and what he did to her again twice, and what he knew he would continue doing to her, so he killed himself.

Strad looks too shocked to respond.

“And that,” says Lily, “was when I started wearing the mask.”

Strad puts his arms around her and seems very distraught.

She, too, is upset, though over the fact that this crazy story was what she had to resort to. And it’s not even over.

She pulls away from Strad. “He left a suicide note confessing to my mother that he’d been molesting me and that he was killing himself mostly for this reason. I couldn’t believe he would do that to me — that on top of traumatizing me with his abuse and traumatizing me with his death, he was exposing our disgusting secret. He himself was conveniently escaping the shame of it through death, leaving me to bear it. I wanted to die, too.”

Strad is staring at her, looking quite upset.

Lily continues. “I refused to take off the mask. I wasn’t only wearing it to stop attracting sexual abuse, I was also wearing it out of shame. When my parents tried taking it off by force, I had a fit. I told them that if they didn’t let me wear it, I’d find another mask and glue it to my face with Superglue, or I’d cut up my face. They were horrified. They sent me to therapy, which was useless. Finally, there was one shrink who did help, though only a little. Now I’m going to explain to you those inconsistencies that offended you.”

“Okay. Thank you,” Strad says.

“After three months, the psychiatrist found an alternate way to make me feel safe. I was only eight years old, keep that in mind. He made me listen to a piece of music and said that whenever that piece was playing, I’d be protected. He claimed the music had properties that would make people around me inoffensive and relatively normal-acting in the face of my looks.”

Strad strokes Lily’s hair.

She continues. “My parents were thrilled, at first, that the therapist was able to add the musical piece to my derangement. They thought I was on the road to recovery. What they didn’t realize was that my progress toward mental health would stop right there. They had to learn to live with their daughter either masked or accompanied by music, and they got so tired of both that sometimes it was hard for them to decide which they could bear. To this day, things haven’t changed. I can live either behind the mask or behind the music. I can choose between my two prisons.”

“But now, as an adult, I assume you know the music doesn’t protect you.”

“On some level I know that. But on an emotional level I still believe in it. I need it.”

“What a sad story.” He pauses. “I don’t mean to sound nitpicky, but I still don’t understand the bookstore. You took off your mask, yet I assume your special music wasn’t playing.”

“Yes, it was, actually.”

“How did you manage that?”

“Connections.”

Strad nods.

“Now you know. I’m very screwed up,” she says. “It’s hard for me to have a normal life. That’s why Barb thought we might be a good match. Most men wouldn’t stand for my lunacies, but she thought that you — because you value physical beauty so much — might be willing to… or be able to… overlook these huge psychological aberrances.”

He hugs her. “Thank you for being open with me about your past. It all makes so much sense now.”

Georgia never fails, Lily marvels to herself.

OVER THE HOLIDAYS, I spend a few days with my mom in her house in Connecticut, just the two of us. We have a nice time. She hasn’t mentioned my fake fat since I went to the Excess Weight Disorders Support Group, that one time. I can tell it takes some effort on her part, but I appreciate it. Instead, we talk a lot about her upcoming trip to Australia in March, which is a topic I much prefer.

I devote a large portion of each day to working on some designs for the dream sequence of a new movie. And I dedicate the rest of the time to fantasizing about Peter. I’m feeling optimistic. He said he would not neglect his sense of touch at our next meeting. Who would say that if they weren’t interested? Only a sadist. I think he’s interested.

In the end, my mom can’t help herself. Right before I’m about to go back to the city, as we’re standing at the living room window staring out in silence at the countryside, she says, “Barb, you’ll never find a worthwhile guy if you keep wearing that disguise.”

I’m sure my mom would find Peter Marrick worthwhile. In the window, my own reflection is staring back at me with a tiny, hopeful smile.

Chapter Fifteen

Strad tells Lily it’s been three years since he’s been with a woman who made him want to take a vacation with her. He suggests they go on a trip for two weeks to the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. Then he says, “Why not leave tomorrow?”

Excited by his spontaneity and enthusiasm for her, Lily agrees to go on vacation with him the next day. Worried that the airline might not let her wear a mask, she insists they take separate flights. She says she always travels alone.

MY FRIENDS SANS Lily come over for a Night of Creation. I’ve been daydreaming about Peter a lot since he gave me that frustratingly incomplete demonstration a few days ago, so it stirs me even more than usual when he walks through the door and kisses me on the cheek.

While we work, the room is quiet without Lily here playing her piano. Half an hour into our session, I go to the kitchen to get some juice. Peter joins me.

Softly, so the others can’t hear, he says, “Can I see you tomorrow evening?”

I don’t answer right away, wondering how I’ll survive twenty-four hours until then.

“Please say you can see me tomorrow,” he whispers, leaning against the island, his back to our friends. His smile is so seductive I nearly drop the knife I picked up to cut a lemon. He adds, “We need to finish that demonstration I started. One of the five senses was missing, remember?”

“Yes, I remember.” I clear my throat. “Okay, tomorrow.”

“Thank God,” he says. “Otherwise we’d have to wait a week because I’m leaving after tomorrow to visit my dad in California for five days.”

“Oh.”

“And that would be too long to wait, don’t you think?”

That he’s showing this much interest in me moves me deeply. My gray curls shield my face as I lean over my lemon and answer “Yes,” casually.

“We can hear you!” Georgia hollers, and then mutters to herself, “Where is Lily when we need her to mask the noises of love?”

She resumes her typing, but louder.

I LOOK FORWARD to Peter’s visit with utmost anticipation. But he calls me in the morning to let me know that sadly he will not be able to come over tonight because of unforeseen work obligations. He says he’s very disappointed and can’t wait to see me when he returns from his trip, in six days.

After we hang up, I wander from room to room, stunned, like a human being dying of thirst having just been told the water will not arrive today as promised, but possibly after I’m already dead.

I get back to my work in a daze. It takes me a while to regain my focus.

AS LILY REPORTS to me later, the first few days in Vieques are heavenly for her and Strad. She wears her mask by the hotel pool and on the beach. She even swims with it a few times, trying not to wet it too much.

People stare, of course. But Strad and Lily don’t care. In their rooms, she doesn’t wear the mask, only the music.

Strad feels protective of her. He’s attentive to her psychological and emotional needs. The more she gets to know him, the more she loves him.

BACK IN NEW York, I’ve been having an intense e-mail correspondence with Peter while he’s away visiting his dad. Our exchanges are flirtatious and titillating. I can hardly sleep. I spend most of my days smiling or snickering to myself while working, reminiscing about the last message sent or received.

I can’t wait for him to get back, can’t wait for him to indulge his sense of touch. I wonder what first move he has planned, how he will touch me, how he will kiss me, how he will undress me, how surprised he’ll be to encounter my fake fat under my clothes, how astonished — though not overly ecstatic, otherwise that would make him shallow — he’ll be to discover I’m attractive by every conventional standard, not only by his open-minded, evolved, and big-hearted one. For the first time, I will take off my disguise out of love, not out of hate, like I do in bars. And then I can keep it off, because I will no longer be searching for my soul mate. I will have found him.

My friends have remarked that since I’ve met Peter, I’ve stopped going to bars and doing my stripping ritual. It’s true, I’ve lost the urge to rub shallow men’s faces in their own superficiality.

PETER RETURNS FROM his trip, and our long-awaited reunion is that same evening, during which he will complete his demonstration by delighting his sense of touch. I’m very excited, imagining his caresses.

When he walks through my door, right on time, he gives me a big hug and smiles at me, saying, “I missed you.” He’s lightly stroking my gray curls with the tips of his fingers. I’m glad my wig is made of real hair.

We position ourselves just like we did at his apartment, with me on the couch and him on a chair facing me, close.

He opens his bag and pulls out a piece of fabric. He begins stroking the fabric — red velvet — while staring at me.

Needless to say, this is not the kind of touching I expected.

After what feels like ten minutes (but maybe it was just one), I say, “Is it still good?”

“Remarkably.”

“You’d think the pleasure of touching that thing would wear off after a few minutes.”

“Hasn’t yet. It’s really very soft.”

I nod. Maybe if I act ever so slightly bored, that will nudge him in the right direction. So I lean my head back and gaze past him, as though momentarily lost in thought.

After another minute, he says, “Well, that was great.” He puts his piece of velvet back in his bag.

I smile and nod again. And wait. He does nothing.

“So, is the demonstration complete?” I ask.

“I think so. At least for now. I mean, one can always do better, I suppose. There are always more pleasures one can come up with.”

I wait a moment, hopeful, but he still does nothing.

I laugh, worn out. I could try to nudge him a little more, but I’m tired of it, so instead, I say, “You know, you’re a bit strange.”

“I know,” he blurts. “The reason is… there’s something I need to tell you. But I don’t want to, because it’s something about me I’m not sure you’d like.”

Everyone has secrets these days — I think of KAY’s secret identity, whoever KAY is, of mine, of Lily’s.

“Really? You’d be surprised, I’m very open-minded,” I say.

“Maybe not as much as you think.”

“What is it? I’m sure I’ve heard worse.”

“If I tell you,” he says, “I don’t think you’ll want to see me again.”

“Now I’m intrigued. Why don’t you tell me?”

“The consequences could be dire.”

I don’t insist because I don’t believe him. I think it’s the classic: It’s not you, it’s me.

And I’m starting to think he’s the classic guy, like all those guys I’ve met at bars. He can’t get past my teeth, my fat, my gray, my frizz. I suspect that’s the secret thing he knows I won’t like about him — the fact that he’s not attracted to me.

He says he should be getting home because he has an early day tomorrow, and that it was lovely to see me. He leans forward and gives me a kiss on the cheek, and then he’s gone.

ON LILY AND Strad’s seventh morning in Vieques, they are sitting on her balcony, her legs resting on his. Her music is playing just inside and is very audible from where they are, so she’s not wearing her mask. But she’s holding it on her lap, just in case.

The empty breakfast dishes are on a low table in front of them. Lily is staring out at the ocean.

“You seem melancholy,” Strad remarks, brushing a strand of hair from her face.

“No, I’m fine,” she says, smiling.

But that’s not quite true. What she’s thinking about is the one flaw in their happiness: her dishonesty.

Yet what can she do? Nothing, if she wants their relationship to continue.

Looking down at her beautiful mask, she thinks about how much she hates it, about how much she wishes she didn’t have to wear it. And she thinks about the guilt. And the fear. Guilt about lying to Strad. Fear of being discovered. Plus, the mask is uncomfortable to wear. And the music is annoying.

Her confidence has been soaring lately — foolishly, she knows. She’s been thinking that perhaps he’d still love her if she revealed she’s Lily. After all, their great times together seem based on so much more than just her looks. Maybe beauty matters only at the start of a relationship, when it sparks the initial interest. But each time she formulates this thought, she beats herself up about the stupidity of it. The thought, however, comes back: Strad was very nice about her childhood sexual abuse story. Very supportive and understanding. Isn’t there a chance he might be equally understanding if she revealed her true story, which in a way is no less tragic: extreme ugliness, no romantic or sexual interest from anyone, ever. And once again she can’t believe how dumb she is to think he’d be understanding. He already knows Lily. Has he seemed charmed by her plight? Did he court her? No.

They go parasailing together over the ocean, both under the same parachute. People stare at Lily in her white mask. Afterward, they lie on chairs on the beach, reading and people-watching, commenting to each other about the beachgoers’ swimsuits, flirtations, affectations, and reading material. They laugh and play in the water, touching each other naughtily, and return to the hotel.

Lily heads for her room, which is adjacent to Strad’s. She’s the one who insisted they have separate rooms so that she could sleep without her mask or the music on.

Strad stands behind Lily as she slides her electronic key in the lock. She pushes her door open and gasps when she sees what’s inside. The room is filled with flowers, bouquets resting on every surface. A little dinner table that wasn’t there before is beautifully set for two.

She looks at Strad. He admits responsibility and tells her a bath has been run for her if she feels like one before their dinner here at eight.

Strad goes back to his room. Enchanted, Lily steps into the hot bath. She’s never had rose petals floating on her bathwater before. She takes off her mask and places it on the floor, within her reach. The music is off. She closes her eyes and enjoys the silence.

After her bath, she dons a pretty yellow chiffon dress and lies on her bed, waiting for dinner. No further preparations are needed. Her music is the only makeup she wears. Applying regular makeup on top of her musical makeup mars perfection, as she discovered recently when, out of curiosity, she tried it.

Strad knocks on her door at eight. She turns on the music, puts on her mask, and opens the door. He’s dressed in an off-white linen suit. Very charming, she thinks. Once his brain is certain to be under the influence of the music, Lily unmasks.

Dinner is brought to them, and when they are finished eating and laughing about the fun day they had, Strad leans back in his chair and says, “A big part of who I am, as a bastard, is my desire to show off my beautiful girlfriends to my friends, acquaintances, and enemies, in order to arouse their envy.”

This takes Lily by surprise, and she half expects him to say, “Therefore, it’s not going to work out between us, and we better call it quits.”

Instead, he says, “But I’m so in love with you that none of that matters anymore.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a little black velvet box, which he hands to her. She opens it. Inside is a beautiful diamond ring.

He goes down on one knee and says, “I would love to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”

Lily is shocked by the proposal. And happy. But something is holding her back from giving him an answer.

Nevertheless, the awkward silence is not painfully long, because Strad has more to say. He sits back in his chair and declares he wants to help her get over her mask-wearing. He says he’ll go with her to therapy if she wants, because he’d like to help her achieve a normal, mask-free existence — for her sake. If she doesn’t want to, that’s fine. He will happily marry her and spend the rest of his life with her masked and put to music.

Lily still doesn’t know what to say, except, “Thank you. I’m incredibly honored. Would it be okay if I gave your beautiful proposal a little thought?”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“So… you’re not sure?” he asks.

“It’s just… that… my situation is very complicated, as you know. I have issues I need to consider.”

“Of course.”

WHEN LILY IS alone later that night, she calls me. She doesn’t want to talk about herself yet, she just wants to be distracted from her problem. She asks if things have progressed between Peter and me. She’s the one person to whom I’ve confessed my attraction to him.

“Not really. He says there’s something about him he thinks I won’t like,” I tell her.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. But I suspect it’s just an excuse and that the real problem is my disguise.”

“That would be disappointing,” Lily states softly.

“I’m tempted to take it off.”

“That’s major. And funny because I’m tempted to take mine off, too.”

“Why?”

“Do you disapprove?”

“No, I’m just surprised.”

“Why would you be? You’re thinking of taking yours off.”

“Yes, but I’d be doing it to see if his lack of interest is due to my appearance. And if it is, I can forget about him. You’d be doing it to… I’m not sure why you’d be doing it.”

“To see if his love can survive my appearance.”

I refrain from pointing out that if she puts her happiness at risk, she might also be putting Strad’s life at risk. I don’t remind her that there is a killer among us who’s had trouble tolerating Lily’s unhappiness and whose promise not to try harming Strad again may not hold as much weight as we’re all hoping it does.

THE NEXT DAY, Lily and Strad try to have a good time, but they’re both so tormented for their own reasons that they can’t enjoy themselves. They drive around the island in their little white Jeep. They aren’t able to take much pleasure at the sighting of wild horses roaming like stray dogs along the sides of the roads.

They stop at a deserted beach and sit, in silence, on a rock. The ocean is calm, barely making a sound.

Strad speaks. “I have a surprise for you the day after tomorrow, in the evening. It’s something I’ve planned since I booked this trip. It’s one of the most extraordinary things you could ever imagine.”

Lily smiles. “Sounds exciting.”

A few minutes pass.

Looking out at the ocean, Strad gently says, “So, do you think you might be getting closer to making a decision about my proposal?”

“There’s something about me you might not like if you knew it,” she says, inspired by Peter’s words to me.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure I feel comfortable talking about it.”

“Well, then, don’t tell me. Just accept my proposal.”

“It’s something you’d want to know.”

“The only thing I want to know is if you’ll marry me.”

“You wouldn’t feel that way if you knew what it was.”

“I can’t imagine anything you could possibly reveal that would change my mind or lessen my enthusiasm.”

“And yet, that’s exactly what I’m afraid will happen — your enthusiasm will be lessened. To put it mildly.”

“And you know what I’m afraid of? That that’s just an excuse. That you’re the one who’s not very excited about marrying me.”

“What I’m not excited about is the prospect of accepting a proposal that might not exist if you knew the truth.”

“Then why don’t you tell it to me so I can prove you wrong?”

Lily doesn’t know what to do. There are so many good reasons to tell Strad the truth, such as: How can she fool him forever? Does she really want to live that way? And is it fair to him? Isn’t it better that they deal with the truth now? And isn’t it better that she be the one to tell him rather than risk having him find out some other way?

Sometimes she’s on the brink of telling him, such as when they’re lying tensely on towels on the beach.

She succeeds in talking herself out of it.

As a way of discouraging herself further from entertaining such a self-destructive notion, she considers asking him what he thinks of Lily, physically. His answer — if it doesn’t outright kill her — is bound to ensure her silence. But she doesn’t ask him for lack of courage.

She tries to be more upbeat about her circumstances. She reminds herself that it’s not really so bad having always to wear a mask or to play the music. Plenty of people are still able to enjoy life despite having to live with a cumbersome piece of equipment like a wheelchair, an oxygen tank, or how about a pouch attached to a hole in the abdomen through which they defecate? Lily saw a documentary on that, once. Even though the show convinced her that colostomy pouches are not as terrible as most people think, wearing a mask is better, Lily reasons. Many people with colostomy pouches find true love, she is certain of it — and no, not necessarily only with another person who has a colostomy pouch.

So she does nothing.

MY FRIENDS COME over for our scheduled Night of Creation. In the middle of the evening, when everyone is working and I go to the kitchen to get some coffee, Peter joins me there as usual and whispers, “Now that I’ve given you a full session of my pleasure vibes, I believe it’s your turn.”

He doesn’t cease to surprise me.

“Can I come and collect tomorrow after lunch?” he asks.

“Uh, okay.”

“Will you arrange to have pleasures you can indulge in while I bathe in your vibes?”

“Sure.”

LILY AND STRAD make love that night, but it’s a quiet affair, tinged with sadness.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“No.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Give me the bad news, if that’s what it is. I can’t take it anymore. I need an answer. If you don’t want to marry me, please just say so. Put me out of my misery.”

“I can’t just say yes,” she says, pulling away. “I lied to you.”

“About loving me?”

“No.”

His face lights up. “Well then nothing else matters.” He embraces her again. “I’m very forgiving of liars, being a great one myself. I’ve lied to countless girlfriends. Never to you, of course. But I know that lying doesn’t always come from bad motives. I don’t hold it against you. What did you lie to me about?”

“My mask.”

“Is that all? I don’t care. What was the lie?”

“Everything I told you about it. The reasons why I wear it.”

“You mean you weren’t sexually molested as a child?”

“No.”

“So why do you wear it?”

“That’s the thing. That’s what I’m having trouble telling you.”

“Then don’t tell me. I don’t care why you wear it, and I don’t care that you wear it. And plus, I’m sure the truth is not that bad.”

“No, it’s not that bad. But to you it may be worse than to most.”

“I don’t know what sort of misconception you have about me, but I’m very average.”

THE NEXT DAY, Peter comes over to my place at three. I was hoping to get a lot of work done before that so that I wouldn’t feel guilty about taking the rest of the afternoon off, but I was unable to focus on my work. I was in a trance, completely stoned on the love hormones coursing through my body. I got almost nothing done.

“Did you stock up on some pleasures?” he asks.

“Yes, I have a couple that could do the trick. And I skipped lunch so that I’d experience maximum pleasure during the session.”

“That’s very nice of you.”

I don’t mention that skipping lunch did not succeed in making me hungry. The stronger my feelings for Peter have become, the less appetite I’ve had. As a result, I’ve lost weight recently, which was not something I especially needed.

I arrange my pleasures on a tray. We settle ourselves in the same way as last time — me on the couch, Peter on a chair facing me.

I first take my iPod from the tray and start listening to the French pop song “Un Jour Arrive,” which I happen to be fond of at the moment. I open my bottle of Petite Chérie perfume and hold it under my nose, feeling the intoxicating scent of pear and spices dance under my nostrils to the romantic melody.

Peter is watching me carefully. I don’t take my eyes off him.

There is only food left on my tray of pleasures. Before the end of the first song, I put down the perfume and transition to goat cheese on a cracker. I don’t generally like cheese, but that particular goat cheese is one of my favorite foods. Even though I’m not hungry, I do my best to savor it, luxuriating in the delicious sharp flavor. Peter’s gaze is intense and seductive. I try not to let my attraction to him distract me from my task.

“Am I any good?” I ask.

“Remarkable,” he says.

He says nothing more. And neither do I. We are sitting motionless, looking at each other. Now is the time, the ideal time, for him to kiss me.

I wait. But nothing happens.

I start feeling sick with disappointment. He is toying with me.

Or maybe he does want to make a pass at me, but can’t bear the look of me.

I can’t take it anymore. He has almost passed my test. He is almost there. He is clearly interested in me romantically.

That’s why I get up and bend down to kiss him on the cheek — a pass so slight it can hardly be called a pass at all. It’s more of an encouragement, a nudge, to help him cross the finish line.

Looking alarmed, he pulls away before my lips touch his skin.

I’m shocked. I clearly misread him. He had no intention of making a move, ever.

Humiliated, I decide to put an end to his little game right now. I will take off my disguise and present him with his own shallowness as I have done countless times to men at bars.

I start unbuttoning the top buttons of my large man’s shirt that covers my gelatinous jacket.

When Peter sees me about to undress, he leaps out of his chair and grabs my wrists — not out of passion, as I imagine it might be for a second — but, to my horror, out of panic, to restrain me from proceeding. He is that disgusted. Well, I’m glad I found out now instead of letting it drag on.

“Don’t do that,” he says, rebuttoning my top buttons. “Please. Not right now.”

“Okay, forget it, Peter. I get it. I’m not your type. Perfectly understandable.” I pull away, confounded by his aversion and too sad to complete my punishing procedure.

“No, you don’t get it,” he says. “It’s just that there’s something I must tell you before—”

“Yes, I know, something you’re afraid I won’t like about you.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“So tell me.”

“Can I tell you tomorrow? It has the potential of upsetting me very much. If I tell you now, it might be hard for me to anchor the news tonight, whereas tomorrow I’ve got the whole day free. I could come over for dinner and tell you. We could order takeout.”

I agree to let him come for dinner the next day.

IN LATE AFTERNOON the following day, on my way out to Whole Foods to get a few delicacies for our evening, Adam the doorman says, “Oh, Barb, I’ve been meaning to ask you, are your parents siblings?”

Every time he insults me, which is every time he sees me, I feel guilty that I have neglected to give him the name of my therapist. It’s just that there’s always so much going on in my life, so many friends to be concerned about, and Adam is never at the top of my list of priorities.

AT SIX, LILY goes to the lobby of the hotel to meet Strad for the surprise he has planned for her. She’s wearing a bathing suit under a casual outfit, as he instructed. And of course, her white feather mask.

As she waits for him, she paces the lobby, lost in thought, again wondering if she should tell Strad who she really is. Fortunately, he has seemed willing to wait a bit longer for an answer to his marriage proposal, now that he understands the situation is less simple than he thought.

A van picks them up and takes them to an electrically powered pontoon boat. A few passengers board the boat. Lily and Strad join them at the bow.

The boat promptly departs, carrying them over the black sea, along the coast, and into a bay.

The guide tells them that this is the biobay — one of the most magnificent bioluminescent bays in the world. He explains that the water glows around anything that moves because it’s filled with microorganisms that light up when disturbed. He says the glow is only visible on a very dark night with no moon, such as tonight.

The passengers start gasping and shrieking with delight at the beauty of the natural light effects in the water.

Unfortunately, Lily is unable to see anything because of the dark glass covering the eyeholes of her mask. It’s like wearing sunglasses at night. The glass is not detachable, but even if it were, she would not, for anything in the world, remove this important part of her mask which prevents the ugly proximity of her eyes to each other from being seen.

Squeezing Strad’s arm affectionately, Lily gently informs him of the problem, apologizing for her mask spoiling the surprise he had planned for her.

Strad slaps his forehead and curses himself for his oversight. “What a shame,” he says. “But come here. Let me at least describe to you what you’re missing.”

He turns her toward the water and stands behind her, gently pressing himself against her. He’s holding onto the railing on either side of her.

In her ear, he softly says, “As our boat advances, the fish are darting out of its way, causing the water to light up in blue-green streaks. It looks like bolts of lightning tearing through the water. They create wild jagged patterns.”

Lily is saddened by the startling description she can’t see.

She can hear the other passengers saying things like, “It’s just extraordinary! I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Strad guides Lily to the back of the boat.

“Wow,” he marvels, looking at the wake. “Can you see this at all?”

“No. What?”

“The wake glows.”

The boat stops to give passengers a chance to take a swim.

Many of them jump into the water, creating luminescent splashes.

Lily wishes she could see it, swim in it, marry Strad, tell him the truth, take off her mask. She would love to dive into the luminescent water like a carefree person who can experience the beauty of life even though she herself is not beautiful.

“You should go for a swim,” she says.

“Are you sure?”

She nods.

He strips down to his bathing suit and jumps into the bay.

People cheer at the glowing splash he creates. Lily sees nothing except black on black. She remains motionless, gazing down, lost in thought.

She hears a young woman in the water exclaim to her friend, “Oh, look at all the tiny sparkles trickling down my arm!”

And that’s the moment Lily makes a decision.

Strad comes out of the water, dripping. “I was doing water angels. They glowed,” he says.

Lily smiles, forgetting that her smiles are never seen behind the mask.

“Strad,” she says, with a solemnity that gets his full attention, “tomorrow I want to have a wonderful day with you. And tomorrow night, I will keep my mask on all night so that we can sleep in the same bed for the first time. And the next morning, I will tell you the truth.”

Strad lifts her up in the air and twirls her around. “That’s fantastic! Thank you!” He gently lowers her. “And after that will you agree to marry me?”

“If you still want me to.”

I SOAK IN a hot bath, trying to relax before Peter’s visit. I then slip into my fake fat and put on some attractive clothes in very large sizes. By attractive, I mean a huge pair of beige pants made of a dressier fabric than my usual sweat pants. And an extremely large turtleneck made of a silkier cotton than my everyday ones. I then put on my gray frizzy wig, my yellowish crooked teeth, my brown contacts, and my fake glasses.

When Peter arrives at eight p.m., he looks a little tired and pale. He says he has no appetite and asks if I would mind if we waited to eat. I say fine, since my stomach happens to be in knots, too.

We’re standing at the small island that separates the kitchen from the living room, and I decide to get something off my chest before we even sit down: “I’m sorry I got annoyed yesterday. The truth is, I love our friendship. So if things stay the way they are between us, I’ll be more than happy.”

He looks at me seriously, gives a brief nod, and says, “I won’t be.”

“Oh no?” I ask, genuinely surprised.

“No. At least… it wouldn’t be my preference.”

A smile escapes me. “I see,” I say, “but at the same time you shouldn’t force yourself. If you feel more comfortable with things the way they are, I understand.”

“I’m not more comfortable. I’m uncomfortable.”

I chuckle. Joy and relief unwind every muscle in my body. “What is your dark secret?” I ask.

“Telling you will be disastrous.” He pauses. “But… much as I’ve enjoyed our relationship the way it’s been, I really can’t go on like this. I have to tell you the truth.”

He goes over to the window and gazes down at Union Square. I follow him there. He moves close to me until the space between us is small and intimate. Looking at me sadly, he says, “I want you to know that this thing you don’t know about me is substantial.”

“So what? There’s something substantial you don’t know about me,” I say.

“Unfortunately, no. I don’t think so. That’s my secret, you see. My secret is that I know yours.”

The tension snaps back into my body. Barely breathing, my pulse racing, I carefully ask, “What secret is it that you think you know?”

“I know that when I touch you, like this,” he says, putting his fingertips lightly on my shoulders and running them down my arms, “you feel nothing.”

He walks behind me. “That when I bring my lips this close to your hair and whisper to you, you don’t feel my breath in your gray curls.” He puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me around. “That were I to wrap you in my arms, you would hardly feel a thing because you’ve created a partition between you and the world.”

He lets go of my shoulders.

“How long have you known?” I ask, my eyes filling with tears.

“Since I found Georgia’s laptop in a cab.”

Stunned, I listen as he explains how he allowed himself to open Georgia’s diary document and stumbled upon descriptions of me and my friends and saw photos of me without the fat suit. He says since meeting me, he fell for me like he’d never fallen for anyone, and that’s why it didn’t feel right to let our relationship progress without my being aware of everything.

I don’t respond.

“Is this problematic?” he asks.

I nod. Tears start running down my cheeks.

“You see, I knew it.”

I say nothing.

He says, “I could easily have fooled you by pretending I didn’t know the truth about your true appearance and—”

“You mean as you have done?”

“Uh… yes. Except, I could have continued and allowed things to progress. But as my feelings for you deepened, it became harder for me to choose this dishonest option.”

He pauses, waiting for me to say something, but I can’t. I’m too upset.

“My conscience was getting in the way, you understand?” he says softly.

I nod, unable to speak.

“Because you mean so much to me,” he says.

I quickly nod as tears keep spilling, and I finally manage to say, “Can we continue this another time?”

“Really?” he asks, concerned.

“I’m sorry, I have to lie down now. I don’t feel great.” I start walking out of the living room. “Please let yourself out.”

“Barb, can’t we talk about this a little more?”

“Sure, later,” I call out, going to my bedroom.

But he comes after me. “No, wait, Barb.” He takes my arm before I reach my bedroom door. Touching my gray curls, he says, “I admire the system you’ve devised to ensure that your beauty won’t be the cause of your happiness. And I know I didn’t meet you the right way, but isn’t it better to have met you the wrong way and to love you the right way than the reverse?”

I say nothing.

Not giving up, he says, “I’m sorry I found out about your real appearance. I’m sorry because it robbed me of the opportunity to prove that I could pass through your filtering system.”

After hesitating a long time, I gently say what I know to be the truth: “You wouldn’t have passed. If you had believed I really was fat, gray-haired, and the rest, you never would have become interested in me.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because of my years of experience.”

“If I’d gotten to know you as I have, I would have fallen for you. As I have.”

“You wouldn’t have had the slightest interest in getting to know me in the first place. And even if you had, you wouldn’t have been able to think of me as anything but a friend.”

“My feelings for you now have nothing to do with your looks. In fact, I don’t care if I never see your physical beauty again. You could wear your disguise all the time if you wanted to.”

“I do.”

“Yes, but I mean you could keep wearing it if we were involved. And I mean all the time — even during the most intimate times.”

I can’t help laughing through my tears. “It wouldn’t be very practical.”

“I wouldn’t care.”

I shake my head and quickly enter my bedroom and lock myself in, saying, “Please let yourself out.”

I hear the front door close, and then for a long time I hear nothing but my sobs.

Chapter Sixteen

I’m at home, up late working on costumes for a historical drama. Deeply depressed by Peter’s revelation, I’m doing my best to lose myself in work, which is not going well, when the phone rings. I pick up because this time the caller ID says “Out of Area,” not “Peter Marrick,” as it did three times today already.

I answer Lily’s question with the truth: yes, Peter has now told me his secret. And no, I cannot accept him.

In the silence, I hear her breathing. And in her breathing, I hear her anxiety.

“What’s his secret?” she asks.

I tell her what it is.

“Maybe you just need a little bit of time to think about it, and you’ll come round to accepting it,” she says, full of hope, almost as though she’s arguing her own case.

“You know I can’t, Lily.” I wish I could add something to comfort her. But I can’t, because I feel dead.

After Lily hangs up with me, Strad joins her for their first night of sleeping in the same room.

They make love, snuggle, and Strad drifts off to sleep. But Lily lies awake, weeping silently inside her mask.

Strad wakes up to the sound of her crying. He’s kind and gentle. He says, “Are you sure you don’t want to get it over with now, and just tell me what this big skeleton in your closet is? I hate to see you like this.” He’s hugging her, stroking her hair.

“No, no,” she says. “Not yet.”

She feels suffocated by her mask, so she turns on the music and takes off the mask. Strad has no trouble going back to sleep, but she only briefly dips into slumber. The hours pass and the music is becoming unbearable to her. Unlike the mask, which asphyxiates only her lungs, the music is suffocating every pore of her being. And yet, the thought of its elimination tomorrow — and of the mask’s — is even worse.

She rushes to the bathroom, overcome by a surge of nausea.

When she emerges, pale but no less ravishing, Strad is awake, propped up on one elbow, watching her with concern. He taps the mattress. She sits. He pulls her to him, holds her in his arms. Using much patience and reassurance, he tries to convince her not to tell him the truth about her mask, since it’s clearly making her so miserable; not to worry about anything, and to just accept his marriage proposal.

She finally agrees.

LATER THAT MORNING, they drive around the island with the top down, her hair and her music blowing in the wind. Reclined in the passenger seat, her head relaxed against the headrest, she’s holding the mask firmly on her lap, just in case. It caresses her hands with its soft feathers made alive by the breeze. And she caresses it back, no longer hating it — at least not today, not right now. She’s engaged to Strad and she’s rarely been happier. He was right; not telling him her secret was the correct decision. All she had to do was embrace this state of things.

They stop for a picnic on a deserted beach, settling down in the shade of a cluster of palm trees. Lily positions her travel speakers next to them and puts a heavy rock on her mask to prevent it from flying away.

Strad looks blissful, feasting his eyes on her exquisite face framed by the turquoise ocean behind her.

THEY SPEND ALL afternoon in her hotel room with the music playing. They make love, they laugh, they talk about their future. He then settles himself in the easy chair and takes a couple of old magazines out of his beach bag to browse while he waits for her to get ready to accompany him to the pool.

“I love you. I adore you,” he says to her.

“I love and adore you, too,” she says, smiling at him.

As she rubs sunscreen into her arms and legs, she notices that something in one of the magazines grabs his attention. He places it down on the ottoman and pores over it. Lily sees him scratching the page with his thumbnail, as though he’s trying to get something unstuck. He’s frowning.

“What in the world is this,” he mutters. He picks up the magazine again to look at it more closely, and that’s when she sees its cover.

She freezes. She knows what he’s looking at.

As vividly as the previous moment represented a life of romantic bliss for Lily, this moment embodies its end.

Strad is looking at a picture of his transcendentally beautiful girlfriend, Sondra, in the magazine, and clearly wonders why the picture is in an article about Lily Stanton, his supremely unattractive musician friend, and why even the caption under the photograph so confusingly reads: Lily Stanton at her piano.

It’s not as though she hasn’t known the risk of photos — hasn’t known that photographs of herself get beautified by the music just as effectively as her physical self does, and that when the music stops, her beauty on paper fades just as quickly as it does in the flesh. She knew she could never let Strad have a photo of herself because as soon as he took it home with him, away from the music, it would no longer look like the woman he loves but like his ugly ex-colleague. She has guarded against this risk by hiding all photos of herself and forbidding Strad to snap any new ones, ever. But it hasn’t occurred to her that one day, on his own, he might stumble upon a photo of her in an old magazine, and that this might happen while the music was playing. That day is today. That time is now.

Strad tries one more time to remove what he thinks must surely be a photo of his girlfriend Sondra stuck on top of Lily’s photo, because he saw the original photo on this very page before packing the magazine in his suitcase and it was unmistakably a photo of Lily. “I don’t get it. Am I dreaming?” he asks.

“In a sense, you are,” she answers.

They stare at each other wordlessly for a long while. Finally, he says, “I don’t want this to be a dream.”

“It was the only way possible.”

He slowly turns his gaze to the music player, and she can see in his face that he finally understands. He reaches for it. He’s about to stop the music, but she says, “No, please don’t. Not like this.”

And so he doesn’t. Instead, he gets up and says, “I need to be alone for now.”

“I understand.”

He goes to the door.

“Strad,” she says.

He turns to her.

“Don’t take the magazine.” She knows that if he does, he will gawk at the hideous photo as it emerges in the silence outside her door.

Guessing her fears, he says, “I’ve seen Lily before, you know.”

“I know. But never through the eyes of her lover.”

He places the magazine on the bed and leaves.

AN HOUR LATER, she knocks on Strad’s door. No answer. She calls the front desk, asks if he’s checked out. He hasn’t. She goes looking for him. She finally sees him, alone, in the business center, gazing at a photo of her — as Lily, not Sondra — on the Internet. And while he’s staring at the screen, he’s humming her music. She’s tempted to tell him it’s nearly impossible to activate the illusion by merely humming the melody. But she steps away from the door without saying anything and without having been seen.

She goes back to her room, buys a plane ticket so she can depart the next day for New York, packs, checks out, and takes a taxi to spend the night at a different hotel.

That night, she goes on the pontoon boat to the biobay. She swims in the luminescent water, looking down at the shine of her movements. She floats on her back, sinking her ears under the surface so that people’s shrieks of joy are silenced. Tears run down her temples and disperse in the liquid light as she stares at the black sky. She lifts one arm out of the water and admires the glitter sliding down her skin.

Even after she leaves the bay, she will try to continue bathing in the beauty of existence. She will let the universe embrace her, since no man will.

ON THE PLANE back to New York, Lily tells herself that if Strad e-mails her or leaves her messages, perhaps she won’t return them. Perhaps it’s for the best. Their relationship might have worked out for a while, but now that he knows, how can it?

THERE ARE NO e-mails or messages when she lands. Nor are there any later that evening.

She calls me and we talk about her trip.

Worried about her, I suggest we get together. Lily says she’s tired and will visit me tomorrow evening instead.

WHEN LILY ENTERS my apartment the following evening, I scrutinize her. In addition to her customary ugliness, there are lines of stress on her face, and an expression of resignation that amplifies the overall sorry effect.

The first thing she says to me is, “Strad doesn’t care.”

“What do you mean?”

“He hasn’t called.”

“It’s only been two days. And plus, you left suddenly. Maybe he’s afraid you might not want to talk to him after the way he reacted. Maybe he thinks he has a better chance of explaining himself in person.”

“He’s made no attempt to see me in person either.”

“Maybe he needs time to think about things, figure out what he’ll say, especially if he happens to want to continue the relationship. It’s possible,” I tell her.

“Why are you trying to get my hopes up? You usually do the opposite.”

“It’s for your own good when I do the opposite. To manage your expectations.”

“And you no longer care about my expectations?”

“Yes I do.”

“So why are you doing this?”

I answer by looking past her, into my living room. She follows my gaze, which brings her to the large swivel easy chair with its back to us.

Slowly, it turns.

And Strad is revealed.

In Lily’s ear, I whisper apologetically, “He persuaded me to let him do this.”

I tell them I’m going out for an extended errand. And I leave.

What happens then, I’m told later:

Strad gets up and walks over to Lily. She has an urge to hide her face, but she remains motionless.

Without saying a word, he gently kisses her lips. And then he kisses her more passionately. He envelops her and buries his face in her hair.

“Isn’t this great?” he whispers. “We can go to my place and listen to some of my music, for a change.”

She laughs, crying a little.

He gives her another long kiss and takes her hand and pulls her out of the apartment. They fly out of the building.

AT LEAST THAT’S how Lily describes the scene when she calls me the next morning. She says last night was the happiest of her life. “And to think that just the night before, I was so depressed I almost died.”

I grunt sympathetically until I realize she’s not just using an expression. “You almost died?” I ask.

“Yeah. I was playing at my piano, feeling devastated, and my hands started turning reflective again. Clearly it’s the depression that triggers it. It hadn’t happened in a long time, many weeks. The reflectiveness spread up my arms. I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t have the will. And when it got past my shoulders and started spreading onto my chest, I could feel I was dying. And part of me just wanted to let go, let it take me, and be released from the burden of living. I can’t tell you how difficult it was to muster the will to stop the process. I managed it this time, but barely. If it ever happens again, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop it. Hopefully, I’ll never be that unhappy again.”

THE NEXT DAY, I’m finally ready to return Peter’s calls. I’m still just as disillusioned by his secret and by the fact that he’s not a valid exception, or if he is, there’s no way to be certain of it now.

But in early afternoon I gather my courage and dial his number.

He picks up. I ask him if we can see each other, to talk.

He comes over an hour later.

We sit at my dining table, nothing to drink before us. Neither of us wants anything.

I begin with, “I can never bypass my rule.”

“I know. You told me,” he says.

“But I miss you. And I was wondering if we could be friends. Just friends. But good friends.”

“It won’t be easy for me.”

“I’m not sure I believe you. And actually, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“What?”

“Why did you torture me?”

“When, specifically?”

“All the time. Like when you came over with your piece of red velvet.”

“Yeah.”

“And when you kept canceling or postponing our appointments.”

He nods. After a pause, he says, “It was all very calculated. And very difficult.”

I stare at him.

He says, “You’re sort of right that I was trying to torture you. It was an elaborate ploy to get you to…” He seems unable to finish.

“Get me to what?”

He looks embarrassed. “I thought that if I could increase your desire and your frustration you’d be more likely to forgive me for knowing what you really look like, once you found out I knew. It didn’t work, of course.”

We talk for hours. When we get tired, we lie on the couch, one of us at each end of the sectional. We keep talking for most of the night, covering countless topics.

The last thing he says to me before we finally fall asleep on the couch is, “Okay, I guess we can be friends. I’ve missed you. Having you in my life in whatever capacity is better than not having you at all.”

Even though I can’t be his lover, I love him more than ever.

PETER AND I get together frequently. It’s usually my initiative, sometimes his.

It comforts me to be with him. So I keep asking him to come over.

When he points out, pleasantly, the abundance of my invitations, I simply say, “I like to be with you.”

He never turns me down. The few times he can’t make it, he makes a counterinvitation, usually for earlier or later the same day.

I CATCH MYSELF staring at him when I think he’s not looking. But sometimes he catches me. Like the time we were sitting on my couch, watching a movie, and I thought the angle would make it impossible for him to know I was gazing at him, and he said, “Why are you staring at me like that?”

Blushing, all I could say was, “You have good peripheral vision.”

“Yeah. So why are you?”

“Just looking at what a good friend you are.”

His eye twitched.

WE MAKE A point of not getting together on Valentine’s Day to avoid the romance aspect. But we make up for it by seeing each other five evenings in a row after that.

I don’t know what Peter did on Valentine’s Day. I don’t ask. As for me, I stayed home working.

FINALLY, ONE DAY, when I call Peter — as I often do to ask him if he wants to come over and hang out — he tells me, “You don’t understand. It’s very difficult. I am practically delirious. I could get killed crossing the street because I have fantasies and I don’t see the cars.”

“Fantasies?”

“Yes, fantasies!” he barks. “Fantasies of running my fingers through your gray curls until your wig falls off. Of peeling that strangely erotic gelatinous monstrosity off you and enlacing you in my arms. I even have fantasies of not peeling that thing off you and enlacing you in my arms anyway and making love to you with that thing still on.”

To this, all I say is, “Please come over. I miss you.”

“Okay, I’m here,” he says, an hour later, covered in snow and carrying takeout sushi.

We watch a movie chastely on the couch. We eat, and chat for an hour about this and that. He goes home.

AND THEN, I feel it slipping. A sadness sets in. He’s less talkative. More pensive. Our frustrating nonsexual relationship seems to be taking a toll on him, and I get a sense it’s affecting other areas of his life as well. He’s less interested in his job. He skips network meetings. His anchoring of the news is detached and glum. I’m worried. I don’t want to be responsible — even indirectly — for any damage to his career, health or happiness.

Maybe it’s selfish of me to want a friendship from him. Maybe I should let him go.

But I can’t. I tried it, didn’t like it.

A COUPLE OF days later, when I’m in Peter’s neighborhood, I call him to see if he’d like me to stop by and say hello.

He hesitates. “Yes, actually. Why don’t you come over. I’d like to talk to you.”

At Peter’s place, we sit on the couch. He looks at me sadly and says, “The time has come for me to stop seeing you.”

I’m taken off guard. “But, you’re not ‘seeing’ me. We’re not dating. We’re just friends.”

“I know. I gave it my best effort, but friendship with you doesn’t work. Not for me.”

I don’t respond.

“It’s better for us this way,” he says. “My frustration at wanting more from our relationship outweighs the delight of your company. In fact, the more delightful your company is, the more unpleasant it is for me to be in it.”

Even though I’m heartsick, I decide to respect his decision.

As I head back home, I try to persuade myself that he’s right and that it was too hard for me, too. I’m so downtrodden that when I enter my building I hardly hear Adam the doorman telling me I’m a shameless display of genetic deficiency. And he throws in “Vile serpent” for good measure.

I KNOW I should move on with my life, try to forget Peter, but I keep pondering our situation, wishing we could remain in each other’s lives.

And that’s not the only thing I’m tormented by. I’m also saddened by Lily’s relationship with Strad, which hasn’t been going well for quite a while now. Since Vieques, he remained nice enough and adequately loving and affectionate, but there was a faint sadness that hung over him most of the time, that Lily couldn’t help but sense. And he hasn’t mentioned marriage since Vieques.

He sometimes makes insensitive comments, which Lily tries not to take personally because she knows she’s not the only one he’s done this to. She often heard him complain about having to walk on eggshells around various customers, friends, and family members, even way back when she used to work with him in the musical instruments store. When she mentioned this to Georgia, Georgia replied, “Walking on eggshells is what stupid people call the effort required not to offend someone. For smart people, not offending takes no effort.”

Lily knew Strad wasn’t stupid, otherwise she couldn’t have fallen in love with him. But as for his emotional intelligence, it did seem a little higher when she was beautiful.

Lily has gone back to trying to compose a piece that will beautify her permanently. But her heart’s not in it. The prospect of manipulating love through unnatural means doesn’t appeal to her as much as it once did.

Even though she fails to compose that piece, in the process of trying she ends up developing a different and hugely significant musical skill: the ability to beautify — and create a desire for — things even when they’re not there.

Yet Lily is barely interested in her new stunning accomplishment. She’s preoccupied by her relationship with Strad.

Georgia, on the other hand, is very affected by Lily’s achievement. “You dwarf me, Lily,” she tells her. “It’s demoralizing. Every time I get over it, you come up with some new and even greater accomplishment that makes all of my accomplishments seem even punier than before. For example, today I was going to tell you guys that last night I finished writing my novel, but now it hardly seems worth mentioning.”

We explode with congratulations and cheer. We ask her if we can read it. She says not yet, but soon. She says she e-mailed it to her agent this morning and wants to wait and hear her reaction.

GEORGIA DECIDES THAT she will throw a party at my apartment in two weeks to cheer Lily and me up. She says she’s also secretly throwing this party for herself to celebrate the completion of her novel and because she hasn’t had a party in a while and it’s overdue.

Georgia has mixed feelings about the parties she throws, which she always holds in my apartment because of space considerations. She invites lots of people from the literary world, yet she has trouble tolerating them. But she can’t help inviting them. It’s a compulsive need — wanting to be in the loop while loathing the loop.

LILY’S RELATIONSHIP WITH Strad continues to go downhill.

There is one thing, especially, that really bothers her.

One night, before they go to bed, she brings it up. “I see you, sometimes, staring at a photo of me while listening to your iPod.”

He looks uncomfortable, feigns not knowing why she’d point that out.

“I know that on your iPod you have the music that changes my appearance. Is that what you were listening to?”

Doing some quick thinking, he answers, “Yes, actually. I find it exciting that my girlfriend is such a virtuoso.”

“Really? It didn’t seem to do much for you that time we went to the Building of Piano Rooms and I — as Lily — beautified the pen. It didn’t make you interested in me romantically.”

“It did do a lot for me. But we’d been friends for so long… I didn’t think of you romantically back then…”

“And now?”

“Let me show you.” He kisses her and takes it from there.

She’s touched by his effort to be nice, but it feels forced.

Lying in bed afterward, she wonders if maybe she’s simply spoiled. After all, up to about a month ago she’d been made love to by a man who thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. It makes a difference.

She’s grateful at least that he doesn’t ask her to go back to the way things were: with the mask or the music on always. She’d find it humiliating.

But Lily knows their problems have to be faced. Therefore, she decides she will confront him with the beautiful version of herself one last time. She hopes his reaction, whatever it will be, will help her figure out what should be done about their relationship.

So the next day, she takes Strad to the Building of Piano Rooms, pretending it will be fun to redo that old afternoon that didn’t go the way she’d hoped.

At the front desk, Lily asks for the same room as before. It happens to be available. It’s just as small and bare as she remembers it. Strad sits in the white plastic chair, much closer to her than that first time.

For a few minutes, she plays him various short pieces, nothing special. And then, she launches into the piece that beautifies her — the one so familiar to them both.

She watches his face. She can practically see, reflected in his eyes, the hideous mask that is her external appearance lifting from her face.

His eyes fill with tears. He’s clearly devastated by the sight of the girl he was in love with.

Instead of stopping, Lily continues playing passionately until his tears have been running long enough that he won’t be able to deny them.

When Lily stops, she turns her back to Strad, not wanting him to gape at the gradual return of her ugliness.

“I’m sorry to be crying,” he says. “I don’t know why you had to play that piece.”

“Because we have to face things.”

“What things?”

“The fact that you’re unhappy.”

“I’m not unhappy. And I love you.”

“I don’t think it’s the right kind of love.”

“It’s a deep love.”

She turns around and looks at him. “It’s not a helpless, passionate love. It’s a responsible love.”

“So what? I love you.”

“But not the way you did.”

After a long pause, he finally murmurs, “Maybe not exactly the same way.”

Gently, she says, “And it’s because of how I look.”

He flinches. “The way you look makes no difference.”

“Oh? Because you don’t want it to? Or because it really doesn’t?”

“Because you’re the same person.”

“Not visually. And I know that matters to you a lot. You can’t change your nature.”

After a long while, he replies, barely audibly, “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. I feel I’ve lost the person I was in love with. As though she vanished or died.”

Lily nods, resigned.

Suddenly, Strad seems to backtrack. “But it doesn’t matter because you didn’t vanish. You’re here, the same person. In fact, the beauty I saw and fell in love with was your soul.”

“But you no longer see it.”

“Maybe not with my eyes, but I see it with my heart, with my mind.”

“But it’s not the same, is it? For you, it’s not the same.”

He can’t speak, can’t contradict her. He looks miserable. He lets his head drop, in complete abjectness.

Softly, she adds, “I think it might be best if we stop trying to make our relationship work. We should accept that it’s over.”

Hardly raising his head, he nods.

They leave the piano room — she feeling many times worse than she did upon their first disappointing exit.

When they step out onto the sidewalk, he hugs her. In a choked whisper, he says, “I’m so sorry.”

When he releases her, she smiles at him weakly and walks away.

Strad doesn’t move. He watches her go. From the back, she looks the same as when he loved her.

HEARING ABOUT LILY’S breakup sinks me deeper into the dumps. Having finished reading Georgia’s novel only adds to my sadness, even though I loved the book. It’s a funny yet pessimistic novel about a love triangle — a one-directional triangle of unrequited love. It explores attraction, appeal, and desire. It’s about how even the most obsessive love can be fickle, as illustrated when the direction of the love triangle changes.

The book’s final message is that no one ever really finds true love, because such a thing doesn’t exist, but that people can have happy lives anyway, thanks to good friends.

It’s called Necessary Lunacies.

It left me more hopeless about ever getting over my romantic block regarding Peter, though more hopeful that he might be open to resuming contact with me.

I call Peter and invite him to Georgia’s party tomorrow night, even though I know I’m disregarding his wishes.

He says he doesn’t want to go.

I plead with him gently, tell him I’d like to see him.

“I don’t know,” he says.

I ask him to at least think about it.

But he won’t commit to doing even that.

After hanging up, feeling powerless, I decide to turn my attention to something I’ve been neglecting for too long.

I pick up my therapist’s business card and go down to the lobby.

I hand the card to Adam the doorman and tell him he should see this therapist, that she’s very caring. (I should probably see her again myself, but I’m always too busy.)

He strokes the card thoughtfully between his thumb and forefinger and says, “Thank you, but I prefer a softer kind of toilet paper.”

“I just want to help you, Adam.”

“You have helped me, actually, by giving me this card. I know I can stop trying to prove myself wrong.”

“About what?”

He doesn’t answer, but his face looks flushed and his eyes look slightly wild.

I say good night uneasily and go back upstairs.