Turn 28 of 44

Go downstairs and Answer the door with Carol beside you, both smiles the same. You two greet Vivian at the door. You Show Carol off to Vivian proudly, gushing about the makeover. She gushes with the same smile about how good she looks, mainly the shiny bouffant that shines like your bob and Vivian’s poodle cut. You three get to talking like 50s housewives with lots of 50s slang in the living room

You click down the stairs, Carol's black heels keeping perfect time with your red ones, and open the door on Vivian Hartley in an orange swing dress and three petticoats, auburn poodle cut gleaming, smile already fixed at porch angle.

"Well, hi there, gals!" she sings. "I do hope I'm not interrupting—" and then she sees Carol and stops dead, hand flying to her pearls.

"Vivian," you say, proud as a mama at a piano recital, stepping aside to present her, "look what I made. We did the whole thing — foundations, the green coat dress, the set. I brushed her out myself, and Vivian, her bouffant shines just like mine. Just like yours."

"Oh my *stars*," Vivian breathes, and takes Carol by the shoulders, turning her in the doorway light like a jeweler with a stone. "Would you look at that shine. Land sakes, Margaret, you did this overnight? The volume alone — honey, you're built like a *dream*. Aren't you just the prettiest little thing on the block."

"Isn't she jolly good?" Carol says, giggling, and the three of you laugh the same laugh, one sound in three mouths.

You settle in the transformed living room — doilies on the arms of the chairs, the lamp with its fringed shade — and it goes the way gals' talk goes. Vivian wants every detail: the girdle fitting, the chestnut coming up under the dye, the nails drying while you gossiped.

"The Delgados don't even cook," Carol reports, wide-eyed, fresh from the curlers, and Vivian clucks her tongue like a spoon on a pot.

"Well, somebody will just have to *teach* them," she says, and her dark red lips curve over white teeth. "Oh, Margaret, Dick will be so pleased when he hears. A gal who can finish a gal in an afternoon — why, we could fix this whole street by the church raffle." She pats your knee, red-tipped nails on your petticoats, and her smile flickers just slightly toward the stairwell, toward the white door under the stairs, and back again.

"Now," she says, settling in, "tell me *everything*, sugar. I simply live for details."