Devin vanished, and Pagan was left in her parents’ bathroom, made unfamiliar by a large hair dryer set up over a hard chair next to a serving table covered with rollers and twelve different shades of pink nail polish. Linda was already mixing something that smelled like peroxide in a little bowl.
“First we make you blonde, then we do a wet set, and Carol can do your nails while you dry,” Linda said. “How’s that sound to start?”
Pagan caught sight of herself in the mirror—the stiff, bedraggled, ash-colored hair, the unruly eyebrows, the chapped lips and too-big brown eyes that looked lost without mascara. Her mother would never have approved.
“That sounds like heaven,” Pagan said.
Linda, who couldn’t have been much older than Pagan, popped her gum and offered her a pack of Fruit Stripe. “The studio told me to do your hair exactly the way it was in The Bashful Debutante, just so you know. Chin length, curled under and blondest of the blond. Sorry if you were hoping for something else.”
Pagan unwrapped a cherry-striped stick and bit down on it slowly. The sweet, fake-fruit flavor flooded her mouth. She would have killed to have a pack of gum just a few hours ago in Lighthouse, and here it was now, offered to her freely. Funny how reform school made you appreciate things everyone else took for granted. “Anything will be better than how it is now.”
Linda chewed her gum with a casual sassiness that was fun to watch. Maybe Pagan could use the mannerism for her character. “No offense,” Linda said, “but it’s a mess. So you just relax. Magic Linda can fix anything.”
“Oh, so you’re my fairy godmother,” Pagan said. “I’ve been waiting for you to show.”
“Bippity boppity shampoo,” Linda said with a grin, pointing at a tube of Lustre-Crème. “Right after we make you a real blonde again.”
As Linda brushed and sectioned off Pagan’s hair, readying it for the peroxide, Carol came in and lifted Pagan’s right hand to examine her fingernails. “I like to keep them short,” Pagan said. She probably wouldn’t need to scratch anyone’s eyes out on the movie set, but prison habits died hard.
As Carol set her hands to soak and Linda began painting peroxide into her hair, it took her back to being in the makeup chair early in the morning before the day’s shooting began on a film. Makeup artists knew everyone’s secrets—who had acne and who had a toupee, whose red eyes were due to too many uppers and whose were caused by an all-night argument with their spouse. All the best gossip happened there.
“So I’m dying to know what’s hot on the radio now,” Pagan said. “Last new song I heard was ‘Georgia on My Mind,’ for crying out loud. What’s Ray Charles’s latest?”
Carol shrugged. “Search me, but that Pat Boone is dreamy.”
Linda made a face. “I like that Bobby Lewis song you hear all the time now, ‘Tossin’ and Turnin’,’ even if he can’t move like Jackie Wilson.”
“Nobody moves like Jackie Wilson,” Pagan said. “Elvis tries, but…”
“Oh, Elvis!” Linda wiggled happily, snapping her gum. “That boy is killer diller. I’d play backseat bingo with him any day of the week.”
“Linda!” Carol admonished with a grin and began filing Pagan’s nails.
“What’s the latest from Nicky Raven?” Pagan asked, her voice bland, her face a study in casual.
Linda inhaled sharply, her hand with the peroxide-loaded brush stopping in midstroke. Carol’s grip on Pagan’s hand tightened.
“Nobody cares about that guy anymore,” Carol said a bit too forcefully, and ducked her head down to keep filing.
“Yeah,” Linda chimed in. “He’s no Elvis.”
So much for any attempt to fish news of Nicky out of them. She had thought they’d be eager to get the “real” story on her famous thwarted romance, but that pesky Devin Black must have given them a gag order. Fine. She could play that game.
Carol gestured at the bottles of nail polish and said into the awkward silence, “I hope you like pink, ’cause that’s what they told me it had to be. But you can pick which one.”
“That one’s pretty.” Pagan pointed to a rosy shade with her free left hand. “So, was it Devin Black who told you how to do my hair and nails?”
“No.” Linda had finished applying the peroxide solution and was folding Pagan’s laden hair into a plastic cap to sit until it lightened. “It was the head of makeup at Universal, Josie McIntyre. She said she’d discussed your look with Bennie Wexler.”
“Oh, of course,” Pagan said. “I remember Josie.” She did, too—a nosy, middle-aged woman with an amazing ability to make your nose look slimmer or your eyes bigger. Pagan had been hoping these girls could give her more insight into the role Devin Black was playing in her life. But it sounded like Neither Here Nor There was being handled like any other movie.
So the evidence continued to support the fact that Devin was just a junior publicity flack charged with ensuring Pagan didn’t make any trouble for the film. But Pagan had met a lot of executives in her time, and Devin Black was from a different planet entirely.
“Oh, my God, have you seen the clothes Helen is laying out for Pagan to try on?” Linda took the cap off Pagan’s hair and prepared to wash out the peroxide and apply the toner. She placed a hand on Pagan’s shoulder and looked at her in the mirror. “The studio got some special designer things for you. I heard Helen telling Devin. Didn’t hear which designer, but he told her to get something specific for you, and the head of costume pulled a lot of strings to get it.”
Carol let out a little squeal. “Oh, can’t wait to see what it is.”
“Oh, me, too!” Pagan widened her eyes to look excited and kept her fingers splayed so as not to mess up her manicure as Linda guided her to stand and go over to the sink.
The next couple hours with Linda and Carol crawled by as Pagan racked her brain, trying to figure out why Devin Black would ask for a particular outfit for her, and what it could be. If it was from a well-known designer, it couldn’t be something too strange or revealing, though her mind went to all sorts of weird places trying to picture what sort of clothes a sleek, well-dressed man like him would have demanded for her. She tried not to tap her fingers and ruin the polish as she sat under the dryer with her newly platinum hair pinned up in big rollers.
Finally, her eyelids were lined with winged black and her eyebrows were darkly penciled high at the arch over her wide brown eyes. Dots of foundation and blush had been blended over her moisturized face, then a quick fuss with the contouring brush, new pink coral lipstick from Lournay, and lots of powder.
Pagan stared at herself in the mirror. It was as if she’d gone back in time. Her cheeks had lost some of their baby roundness in the past year, but they were gently flushed, and once again her hair glowed softly white gold against her pale face, setting off her dark eyes and brows.
It all looked so natural, so real. All the illusion needed now was the right clothes. She thanked Linda and Carol, then let them follow her toward her own bedroom, where Helen waited with a movable rack of clothes on hangers and several things laid out on the bed.
Pagan glanced around the familiar room. She hated its pale lilac walls, the high white canopy bed piled with pillows and stuffed animals, the shelves lined with pretty dolls in frilly dresses, classic children’s books, and official portraits of the family taken over the years.
What if I just painted everything black? she thought, and immediately felt guilty. How disrespectful to wipe away all of Mama’s efforts to showcase the perfect little girl’s life.
Her eye landed on the last family photo Mama had been in. They were all smiling dutifully in front of the Christmas tree. Next to