Fran, the owner, who grew up in the tony suburb of Wellesley, Massachusetts, but sounded as if she came from the streets of South Boston, was a genius when it came to clothes (fit, fabric, sense of style) and people (assholes, asswipes, everything in between). And in the year I’d been visiting her store, looking often, buying infrequently, she’d decided, somewhat reluctantly I think, to become my friend—partly because I wore her down, coming in every few weeks and fawning over all the clothes and her impeccable taste the way I did since it reminded me so much of Manhattan; and partly because I plied her with all the big best-selling trashy novels Anne sent me for free, which Fran wasn’t at all embarrassed to admit she loved. Friend or not, though, neither she, nor a visit to her store, was for the fainthearted: with her mane of tight blond curls, her heavy tough-girl accent, and her been-there-done-that-and-it-wasn’t-very-good-anyway attitude, she was, always, brutally and painfully honest.

Having suffered, and survived, my two half-days of beauty with the French, however, I figured I could handle Fran.

And even if I couldn’t, at this point I had no choice.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she said, when I walked into the store Friday morning, seconds after she’d opened. Her coat (subtly aged brown leather, belted, perfect) was still on and she was on her way back outside to have three cigarettes (Merit) and her cup of coffee (double skinny latte).

“I have an emergency,” I said, heavy on the melodrama. “A fashion emergency.”

She looked me up and down, from my white thermal-underwear shirt and old chinos to my favorite brown hiking boots. “Obviously. You look terrible.”

I looked down at myself, avoiding the mirrors. Never, in a million years, would I have worn any of these clothes in New York.

“I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m here. I need something to wear.”

She waved her hand: Go on, go on.

So on and on I went—explaining to her about Donald and Adrienne, about what I was up against, even about my attenuation session that morning. “I might be a different size than I usually am,” I said, by way of explanation. “You know, taller.”

She stared at me for a second and a half too long, pitched her cigarette across the sidewalk, then turned and went inside her store, located in the heart of high-end retail real estate, suburban Chevy Chase. The little customer-warning bell went off once, then twice, as I followed right behind.

She sat down on a stool at her desk; Olive, her French bulldog, was at her feet.

“What kind of look do you want?”

I cocked my head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what do you want your clothes to say?”

I had no idea.

“Like, do you want your clothes to say, ‘Fuck you, Adrienne’? Or do you want your clothes to say something more subtle, like, ‘I’m an asswipe for offering to take you, my fiancé’s ex-fiancée, around my city to help you look for an apartment when I’m basically jealous of you and hate your guts’?”