"I had no idea there were so many different creams," Vida commented, wondering how that already perfect skin could be improved.
The beautician was scandalized. "Every part of the face needs special care, that is why Madame Elaine has registered nurses which the other shops don't bother about. This is pore cream for the nose, this to tighten the skin under the eyes, this for the forehead and cheeks, and that for under the chin," she salestalked, and put a cloth over Lucy's face for a five-minute rest.
"You're learning all sorts of things," came from the hidden Lucy.
"And how!" Vida said bitterly.
"I'll drop you at home and you tell Cleo to make you lunch, because I have to go to the bank and do one or two errands," Lucy ordered.
Vida sat staring out the window unable to read the book in her lap.
"Don't you feel good?" asked Cleo who thought any silence unnatural.
"I feel fine," Vida said.
"I gotta get some butter," Cleo said, thinking of that Clara Bow flaming youth movie over on Lexington and 49th.
It was a relief to cry alone. Lucy returned at six.
"Who do you think I met?" she said cheerily.
"I've no idea," Vida said, glum at having been forgotten.
"Tessie! She knows more about those doctors than anyone so I told her a friend of mine was up against it. She told me of one and I went to see him and you're to be there tomorrow before office hours. Eight sharp. Everything's settled, so don't let him charge you anything."
Two days later Vida awakened feeling faint and taxied in a steaming grey rain for a second visit to the decrepit high-stoop brownstone.
"You girls want to have all the fun and then complain," the short grizzled coatless doctor was saying when she returned to consciousness.
She left bolstered with instructions for Lucy to phone him the moment there were signs and to remember about sterilizing. The taxi driver half carried her to the apartment and in some way she reached the sofa.
