Annie felt almost sick, as she turned back to her friends, to have belittled her mom in front of them. Nora’s face was slightly flushed and the boys had averted their eyes. Only Evy seemed oblivious.

“We’ve got them now.” Annie spoke quickly and enthusiastically to clear the air. “We’re going to make them look super-delish.”

“Not again,” Raj keened, as Nora took hold of his wrists to stop him from escaping. The boys were forced to sit on the bed, and the makeup box was pulled out.

“Evy, you help me with Raj,” Nora said. “He’s still struggling.”

He wasn’t, but Nora clearly wanted to take the opportunity to keep holding both his hands behind his back with her body pushed up against his.

“You can’t even see the makeup on him,” Evy protested. “I’m going to do Lew.”

Evy tried to make this seem a lighthearted refusal, giggling and girlish, but Annie knew it was because she didn’t want to touch Raj. She never joined into any conversation about Raj, and when he was around she never looked at him or called him by his name. She acted as if he were an imaginary person in whose existence she wasn’t willing to participate. Crowding Annie out of the way, she began to work on Lew’s eyes. Nora applied herself to Raj, apparently becoming so shortsighted her face had to be practically pressed against his. Annie just sat back on the bed. Still feeling horrible about treating her mom so rudely, she had slipped out of the mood for all this. Once more everything was grating: Nora’s single-minded pursuit of Raj, Evy’s girlish flirtations with Lew.

When they were done, Raj resembled a clown. Lew, though, looked profoundly beautiful and strange, his thick male neck in vivid contrast to those lovely feminine features. All of them were stunned into silent awe, unable even to laugh.

There was a thumping of feet up the stairs and Annie’s brother came in. His gaze was drawn immediately to Lew. “Jeez-Louise, what are you guys doing?”

Like all of them, Annie could see that he was both captivated and disturbed.

“We’re making them beautiful,” Annie said.

Jumping off the bed, Evy snatched up Frankie’s hand. “Now we’re going to do you.” Pushing him into Annie’s vanity chair, she threw herself into his lap and began to apply lipstick. Though Evy was being silly and almost manically flirtatious, the playful mood had vanished from the room: a process begun with the way Annie had treated her mom, exacerbated by this annihilating beauty that Lew bore with a kind of hopeless clairvoyance, and finished off by the stench of beer coming from her brother. He was clearly half drunk, sleepy and soggy, and his hand had fallen across Evy’s thighs.

“I thought you were going to drive Evy home?” Annie said.

“’S what I’m here for.”