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She hated the new look When they had turned her to theto pass for a pretty, vivacious young thing The styled hair was simply not her It only emphasized that she was basically a plain, drab wo, with-it, or any of the other things that the new hairstyle tried to say she was It was rather like fastening a brightly colored feather duster to the back end of a turkey and atte to pass it off as a peacock

Because she did not want to hurt Travis’s feelings, she pretended to like what had been done to her But that night she washed her hair and brushed it dry, pulling on it until all the so-called style had been tugged froht and lank as it had previously, but she did the best with it that she could

The next day, when Travis picked her up for lunch, he was clearly startled to find that she had reverted to her previous look However, he said nothing about it, asked no questions She was so es that, for the first couple of hours, she was not able to meet his eyes for more than a second or two at a tiorous de for a new dress, a bright and summery frock that she could wear to dinner at Talk of the Town, a dressy restaurant on West Gutierrez, where he said you could sometimes see some of the movie stars who lived in the area, members of a film colony second only to that in Beverly Hills-Bel Air They went to an expensive store, where she tried on a score of dresses,andof the way everything looked on Nora, and she kept telling Nora that her figure was perfect, but Nora couldn’t shake the feeling that the wo at her

The dress Travis liked best was from the Diane Freis collection Nora couldn’t deny that it was lovely: predoround of other colors soht in combination than they should have been (which apparently was a trait of Freis’s designs) It was exceedingly feminine On a beautiful woman it would have been a knockout But it just was not her Dark colors, shapeless cuts, simple fabrics, no ornamentation whatsoever-that was her style She tried to tell him as best for her, explained that she could never wear such a dress as this, but he said, "You look gorgeous in it, really, you look gorgeous"

She let hi , and that she would never wear it As the dress was being wrapped, Nora wondered why she had acquiesced, and she realized that, in spite of beingclothes for her, to have a man take an interest in her appearance She never drea would happen to her, and she was overwhel Her heart pounded She felt dizzy, but it was a good dizziness

Then, as they were leaving the store, she learned that he had paid five hundred dollars for the dress Five hundred dollars! She had intended to hang it in the closet and look at it a lot, use it as a starting point for pleasant daydreams, which was all fine and dandy if it had cost fifty dollars, but for five hundred she would have to wear it even if it made her feel ridiculous, even if she did look like a poseur, a scrubwo, during the two hours before Travis was to pick her up and escort her to Talk of the Town, she put the dress on and took it off a half dozen tih the contents of her closet, searching frantically for sobecause she had never before needed clothes for a dressy restaurant

Scowling at herself in the bathroom mirror, she said, "You look like Dustin Hoffhed because she knew she was being too hard on herself But she couldn’t go easier on herself because that was how she felt: like a guy in drag In this case, feelings were hter quickly soured

She broke down and cried twice, and considered calling hi to see hi to be She used Murine to get the red out of her eyes, and she tried the dress on again-and took it off

When he arrived at a few minutes past seven, he looked handso a shapeless blue shift with dark-blue shoes

He said, "I’ll wait"

She said, "Huh? For what?"

"You know," he said, e

The words came out in a nervous rush, and her excuse was limp: "Travis, I’m sorry, this is terrible, I’m so sorry, but I spilled coffee all over the dress"

"I’ll wait in here," he said, walking to the living room archway

She said, "A whole pot of coffee"

"Better hurry Our reservation is for seven-thirty"

Steeling herself for the ahter of everyone who saw her, telling herself that Travis’s opinion was the only one that ed into the Diane Freis dress

She wished she had not undone the hairstyle that Melanie had given her a couple of days ago Maybe that would help

No, it would probably just ain, Travis smiled at her and said, "You’re lovely"

She didn’t knohether the food at Talk of the Toas as good as its reputation or not She tasted nothing Later, she could not clearly reh the faces of the other custo the actor Gene Hackman-were burned into her , they were staring at her with amazement and disdain

In the middle of dinner, evidently well aware of her discolass and leaned toward her and said quietly, "You really do look lovely, Nora, no matter what you think And if you had the experience to be aware of such things, you’d realize that most of the men in the room are attracted to you"

But she knew the truth, and she could face it Ifat her, it was not because she was pretty People could be expected to stare at a turkey with a feather duster trying to pass itself off as a peacock

"Without a trace of makeup," he said, "you look better than any woman in the roo at her When a Woman put on a five-hundred-dollar dress to be taken to an expensive restaurant, she ood as possible with lipstick, eyeliner, makeup, skin blush, and God knehat else But Nora had never even thought about h surely delicious, tasted like library paste to her and repeatedly stuck in her throat

She and Travis had talked for long hours during the past couple of weeks, and they had found it surprisingly easy to reveal intihts to each other She had learned why he was alone in spite of his good looks and relative wealth, and he had learned why she harbored a low opinion of herself So when she could not choke down any more of the ht away, he said softly, "If there’s any justice, Violet Devon is sweating in Hell tonight"