Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes. Lauren Baratz-Logsted

my new favorite thing to say. “I can’t afford this. If I get a French manicure and…and…and a…pedi—” the word was so foreign to me “—half my stake money will be gone…and that’s if I don’t leave a tip!”

      “I’ve got you covered on this one,” Hillary said, waving her Amex gold card in the air.

      All I had was a regular Amex card, no gold for me, and as I’d shown when we went to Manhattan, I never used the damn thing, not even to buy something I wanted as much as the Ghost. For an addictive personality like me, that way, the credit card way, madness lay.

      “I already told you when we were in New York,” I told her. “I won’t accept charity.”

      “It’s not charity,” she said. “It’s my birthday present to you.”

      “My birthday’s not for another five months. It’s in January, remember?”

      “So? Just don’t expect anything else on January 10.”

      It was the same at Now We’re Styling!, the salon where Conchita and Rivera regularly got their hair done. Hillary had suggested The Queen’s Coif, where she got her own hair done, but had been outvoted. Still, she paid.

      “Christmas present,” she said, surrendering her Amex card again.

      “Christmas isn’t for another four months,” I pointed out.

      “So?” she said. “Don’t expect anything on December 25.”

      “She looks sooo…not like her,” Stella said when the hairdresser was done and we were all admiring the new me in the mirror.

      It was weird because my hair didn’t look radically different than it usually did. It was the same short, dark hair, kind of spiky. But whatever magic the stylist had performed on it, using paste artfully as well as a razor to create tiny little jagged wisps all around my face, well, it made me look like I was styling.

      “You’ll need to get your makeup done, too, of course,” Stella said. “You can’t have hair like that with no makeup.” Sighing, she extracted her own Amex gold card from her purse.

      “What are you doing?” I asked.

      “It’s your early Halloween bonus,” she muttered. “You can get it done here. They do makeup, too.”

      “Boss has got a he-art! Boss has got a he-art!” Conchita and Rivera singsonged.

      “Ohh…shut up,” Stella said.

      “She still needs the right clothes,” Rivera said.

      “We still need to get a car big enough,” Conchita said.

      “I’ll get the clothes,” Rivera said.

      “I’ll get the car,” Conchita said.

      The clothes turned out to be items from Rivera’s own closet.

      “I wore these black slacks the night Flavia fell in love with me,” she said, holding up a pair of black capris.

      “Flavia?” I asked.

      “Long gone.” She shrugged. “And don’t worry about the length. I’ve got Hollywood tape in my bag, works like a charm.”

      She pulled a silver lamé tank top out of her bag.

      “And I wore this,” she said, “the night Emmanuella fell in love with me.”

      “Emmanuella?” I asked.

      She shrugged again. “I think she’s with Flavia now. We can use the Hollywood tape to tuck up the hem of the tank, too.”

      As I put on the clothes, I tried not to think about the fact that I was being clothed wholly in garments that had loved and lost a lot of girl-on-girl love.

      In the beginning I’d felt resistant to their efforts. Why, I felt, bother trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse? But, and here was the strange thing, as the day wore on, a feeling welled in me, the same Cinderella feeling I’d had when I’d slipped the Ghosts on at Jimmy Choo’s in New York. Here were all these women—Hillary, Stella, Conchita, Rivera—doing everything in their power to help me achieve my moment. I was like the real Cinderella, with the Fairy Godmother and all the creatures in the house helping her get ready for the ball. I felt magical. There was still one thing missing, though…

      “Who would have guessed you could look so good?” Rivera admired her own handiwork when I was done dressing, when she was done taping me. “But shoes—” she put her finger to her lips “—that’s the big problem.”

      “That’s how this all started,” I pointed out. “Remember? Once I get those Jimmy Choos, I’ll have great shoes.”

      “Right,” she said, all business, “but you don’t have them now.” She looked in my closet. “All you’ve got right now are a pair of flip-flops, some winter boots and those stupid Nikes you’re always wearing.”

      “Stupid—?”

      “I know,” she said, cocking an ear. Yup, the shower was still running. “While your roommate’s in the shower, we’ll raid her closet.”

      “Oh, no,” I said. “No, no, no, no, no. I’m sure she won’t like—”

      “Come on.” Rivera yanked on my arm.

      I was right: Hillary didn’t like it…At All.

      “Those are my New Year’s Eve shoes!” she shrieked, towel still wrapped around her head, another around her body, when she glimpsed my twinkle toes five minutes later.

      “I know,” I said.

      They were her New Year’s Eve shoes, the same shoes she’d worn every New Year’s Eve for as long as I’d known her. Shaped like a simple high-heeled pump, they were covered in glittery silver, kind of like Dorothy’s red slippers, only a different color and without the bow but with a big heel. Hillary claimed they were good luck and that wearing them on that one night, and only that one night, ensured her a great year ahead.

      “You look great in those towels.” Rivera winked at her.

      “Shut up,” Hillary said. “My shoes! But wait a second. Your feet are much smaller than mine.”

      This was true.

      Extracting one foot from one shoe—really, that expensive pedi was wasted inside a closed-toe shoe—I revealed Rivera’s handiwork: wadded tissue paper. Honestly, it was hard to feel like a glam winner when there was Kleenex cuddling my piggies before going to market.

      “But it’s such a good cause, Hillary Clinton,” Rivera said sweetly, enunciating each word of my roommate’s name silkily as though she were trying to sell rich cordovan leather. “And it’s not like it’s as bad as it could be, like if her feet were bigger than yours and there was a danger she might stretch them out. And you really do look great in those towels.”

      “Ohh…what…ever,” Hillary conceded with poor grace, going off to dry her hair.

      “Where the hell did you get that thing?” I shouted down to Conchita from the balcony of the South Park condo.

      A minute before, a white stretch limo had pulled into the parking lot and Conchita had emerged from the driver’s seat, opening one of the passenger doors from which emerged Elizabeth Hepburn. Seeing the four of us out on the balcony, Elizabeth Hepburn did a little red-carpet curtsy.

      Conchita smiled up at me, shielding her eyes against the blaze of sun going down behind us. “You don’t want to know, chica.”

      “Ready to roll?” Elizabeth Hepburn asked. “You know, John Wayne used to always say that to me. Count Basie, too, come to think of it.”

      “But wait a second,” I said. “Don’t you all need to get dressed?”

      I