Wish Upon a Star. Olivia Goldsmith

no matter how uplifting the program, would alter nothing.

      Yet she couldn’t think of an alteration she could make. She wasn’t a badly cut pair of trousers. She was simply a rather timid young woman with solitary interests. She didn’t know if she read and knit because she had never been social, or if her social failures had driven her to her isolated life. And what could she do to change it? Go out with Tina’s cousins and in-laws and the brothers of her friends, all men she had nothing in common with and who saw her as a plain brown wren? What was the point?

      Go back to school? How would she pay for it? Travel? Alone? And to where? Join a club? A book circle? Go online to find friends, or even a soul mate?

      Claire cringed at the thought of all of it. She simply wasn’t a joiner. She crawled back into her bed. Even if she did put herself ‘out there’ the same thing would happen as always had. If a local hitter approached her she’d be bored, and if someone intelligent and attractive (by a miracle) spoke to her she’d freeze tighter than a jammed photocopier. No one would notice her and she would stand – or sit – on the fringes with nothing to do or say. She even considered, but only briefly, taking Tina up on her invitation to go on vacation but quickly – really quickly – got over that. She might have had a fever but she wasn’t delirious. What she did instead was call Tina and ask if her mom would do her hair. ‘Come right the fuck over,’ Tina said.

      ‘Tonight?’ Claire asked. ‘It’s late.’

      ‘Hey, you’re only about five years late. My mom figured we’d have to wait until you went gray before she could do you.’

      So Claire dressed and went over. Tina and Annamarie, her mom, fussed over her. ‘Worst haircut I ever saw,’ Annamarie said. ‘It’s like three cuts on one head.’ So, mostly out of wounded pride, Claire let them cut and streak her hair.

      She was surprised by the result. Instead of the brassy colors that Annamarie – the queen of Big Hair – usually favored, she used subtle honey blondes that blended with Claire’s natural light brown. And the feathering gave her fine hair some body. ‘The secret to this cut is Product,’ Annamarie told her as she held up a mirror. ‘You need a conditioner, a thickener, and a finishing gel.’ Claire couldn’t imagine putting more things on her head than she had members in her family but, looking in the mirror, she was pleased.

      

      Monday morning she was dressed and composed when Tina came by to go to work.

      ‘You look much better. The haircut, and I think you lost a little weight in your face from the flu,’ Tina reported.

      It was an unseasonably warm day, and the two of them were sitting in the sun on the benches on the side of the ferry protected from the wind. Claire had her knitting out but it lay, untouched, on her lap. She felt as weak as a convalescent and held her face up to the sun as if she needed to drink in vitamins.

      ‘Though you sure could use a little color,’ Tina added. ‘Last chance for Puerto Rico.’

      Claire couldn’t withhold a sigh. Gone for a week, but the conversation continued without a stitch dropped. She closed her eyes and remained silent wondering, not for the first time, why Tina wouldn’t want to be alone with Anthony. Claire couldn’t imagine wanting to take Tina away on a trip with a lover – if she ever had the chance to make such a trip. She wondered if that made her a less loyal friend or less co-dependent. Or, perhaps, both.

      ‘So guess what happened with my boss?’ Tina asked. Claire was grateful she had her eyes closed. It made it easier to keep her face blank.

      ‘He’s at that ultimatum stage again,’ Tina was saying. ‘He wants to keep Katherine around but she’s found out about the on-again-off-again with Blaire and she’s insisting he break it off with Blaire or else.’

      ‘And will he?’ Claire asked, her tone neutral.

      ‘Get a grip,’ Tina said and laughed. ‘And even if he did, he’s obstinate and doesn’t like to be told what to do. If it wasn’t Blaire it would be someone else. His big mistake is being honest with them when they ask and theirs is asking.’ She shook her head. ‘Courtney hung onto him for almost a year because she never asked him what he was doin’ on the nights and weekends he didn’t spend with her.’ Tina shrugged. ‘But he ditched her anyway, in the end.’

      ‘That’s the fate of all his women, isn’t it?’

      ‘Yeah,’ Tina agreed. ‘He’s the bomb. The only difference is how long they last and whether or not there’s a scene at the end.’

      ‘Speaking of the end, we’re about to dock,’ Claire said and rose.

      ‘God, I’m hungry!’ Tina said, as always moving like clockwork to the next item on the agenda. ‘I hope Sy saves the biggest Danish for me.’

      Claire gave her a forced smile and filed down the gangplank with everyone else, and they made their walk up Water Street along with a portion of the crowd. A helicopter hovered overhead and Claire imagined from that height all of them must look like ants purposefully streaming into their anthills.

      Claire sighed. After her week off, the commute and the job seemed more oppressive than ever. She thought again about going back to college, getting a BA in library science, but what was the point? Libraries were closing down every day in New York. Her own Staten Island branch was only open three days a week – and only in the mornings on Saturday. She simply had to face the fact that she was a caterpillar – albeit a thinner one than she had been – and wouldn’t even graduate to moth, much less butterfly. Claire Bilsop, the social caterpillar.

      And now she no longer had her pathetic, secret little crush to dream about, to keep her from loneliness. Nor would she let herself take on a new one, not that she admired any of the other swaggering investment bankers. What was the point? She would deceive and distract herself no longer.

      So in a way, the incident with Mr Wonderful had had a salutary effect. It had been a kind of vaccination. A little bit of deadly Mr Wonderful in her blood stream had had its toxic effect, but after a brief illness she had built up Mr Wonderful antibodies.

      

      As they all sat over the lunch table later that day, the conversation drifted back and forth in its usual desultory way. When Tina contributed anything about her boss, Claire was relieved to find herself no longer hungrily grabbing at each syllable, filing it away for future contemplation. She blocked it.

      ‘Jeez, you look skinny,’ Marie One said to Claire. ‘It must be the new cut.’ They had, of course, focused on Claire’s new hairstyle and everybody approved, except Joan, which made Claire feel certain that it suited her. She didn’t welcome the attention, but she had expected it. She had borrowed a dress and matching jacket from her mother – a black knit with flecks of beige. She felt that after her absence she might as well look good, but Joan narrowed her eyes as if she suspected Claire had never been ill at all.

      ‘Hey. She was sick. Lay off,’ Tina said.

      ‘You want some liverwurst?’ Marie Two asked. ‘I got plenty.’

      ‘Now that would make her puke,’ Michelle said, to be rewarded with a look from Marie Two. Michelle always felt she was better than Marie Two because she had worked for Smithers longer than Marie had for Crayden.

      ‘Like you can cook,’ Tina replied.

      The talk moved to recipes and Claire was glad she was no longer the focus. She was concentrating on chewing and swallowing her egg salad sandwich, though it tasted like sawdust.

      ‘Vic wants us to go to Vegas, but I said fagetaboutit,’ Marie One said. ‘Last time we went to Atlantic City he dropped six hundred bucks cash,’ she continued as she nervously twirled her diamond ring around her tiny finger. ‘I didn’t know it, but he also got cash advances on our Visa and MasterCard.’

      ‘I don’t believe in gambling,’ Joan said. ‘Not even the lottery.’

      ‘Then you won’t get a share of mine when I