It is with a mix of apprehension and joy that I head for the cupboard that holds the booze. I’ve got gin. I’ve got vermouth. I’ve got us covered.

• • •

“Now,” Diann says, putting down her empty martini glass with exaggerated care. “I am ready.”

I eat the last of my five olives. “Me, too.”

“Let’s go in the bathroom,” Diann says. Then, standing, “Where is it?”

We head for the upstairs bathroom, laughing. Inside me is a small figure holding her hand over her mouth. Frank follows us, lies outside the bathroom door.

Diann takes down the floral cosmetics holder she has hanging on the back of the bathroom door. “Wash your face,” she tells me, digging through her supplies. She hands me a stretchy headband. “And put this on.”

I put the handband on, splash off my face, sit down on the closed seat of the toilet. “Hey, Diann.”

“Hmm?” She’s got a couple of pencils clenched between her teeth, and her eyebrows are furrowed as she sorts through various bottles and tubes.

“Diann.”

She looks up. “What?”

“Do you think we need a permit for this?”

She smiles, returns to her foraging. “Do you know how much this would have meant to me in high school?”

She turns to me, hand on her hip. “Ha! Do you know how hard a time you would have given me if I’d asked to do your makeup in high school?”

“I would not have!”

“Yes, you would.”

I consider this. She’s right. I would have been too afraid. I’m still too afraid; I’m just drunk now.

Diann comes over to me, serious-faced, a woman with a mission. She lines up a handful of products up on the counter. Gold tops on frosted bottles, long black tubes, plastic cases in various sizes. Another kind of pharmacy. She picks up a bottle, shakes it. “Close your eyes,” she tells me, and I sit still while she puts dots of foundation on my face.

“I would like to be really beautiful for one day,” I say quietly. And then have the odd feeling that I haven’t really said it.

Silence. She’s working, concentrating on me, and I like it. She’s gentle, she rubs upward on my cheeks in a way I can just barely feel.

When she pencils in my eyebrows, I say, “I’ll bet it’s great to be so beautiful. I’ll bet you get everything you want.”

“It’s not so great,” she says. “It’s a prison.”

I open my eyes, look at her.

“It is.”

It’s an awfully nice prison, I want to say, but don’t.