Dear Diary,
It’s crazy how much personal grooming has changed over the centuries. Back when respectable young women couldn’t show so much as a glimpse of ankle, or leave the house without gloves, or do anything to their faces beyond the pinching of cheeks, there was no reason to shave or exfoliate or moisturize or trim your cuticles—never mind the concept of “contouring,” which I still find too daunting to try, no matter how many videos Arden shows me.
Obviously I’m glad corsets have gone the way of the hoop skirt, but sometimes I think it would be easier to keep more of yourself under wraps, at least from a skin care perspective.
M.P.M.
had been submerged in a bubbling basin of magenta-tinted water to drop her bombshell. “Mission accomplished.”
Lydia lowered her magazine. “The mission of getting us to pay someone to paint our toenails? Even though it’s not sandal weather?”
Halloween had passed, and the weather was chilly enough to make my feet flex with relief in the warm water. A little color and sparkle would not go amiss now that the world had taken on the brown and gray palette of late autumn. Even if that hint of brightness would mostly be hidden by socks.
“I found him,” Arden said, ignoring Lydia’s jab. “Our George.” She paused to confer with her nail technician about which shade of turquoise she’d settled on. “The opposite of Will, who was really a what’s-his-name,” she explained, lifting one foot from the water and propping it on a towel.
When I called to explain the idea, Arden had leaped immediately into planning mode, pausing only long enough to congratulate me on this stroke of genius. It seemed simpler not to muddy the waters by introducing Alex Ritter’s name.
Lydia still looked confused.
“Since Mary said we needed more of a Nature Boy type,” Arden reminded her.
A picture formed in my head of one of those feral wolf children with the really long fingernails and matted hair.
“Where did you find him?” Terry’s voice vibrated with the pummeling of the massage chair.
“It was right after school. I happened to be walking past his car. Nature Boy’s, that is. Which of course was a Prius—”
“Where was I?” Lydia interrupted.
“Talking to your mom.” Arden held her hand to her face like a phone. “So he’s at his Prius, and I notice a big bag in back.”
Terry leaned forward in her chair. “Were you worried?”
“Not really? It was just a bag.”
“You never know,” Terry pointed out, in her most reasonable tone. “It could have been full of ropes and duct tape.” The young man towel-drying her foot paused to stare.
Arden shook her head. “I know it wasn’t anything weird because when we were talking he mentioned he was going to play disc golf in the park.”
“You talked to this rando?” Lydia cut in.
“He’s not a rando. My brother’s friend Tony used to play soccer with Jeff—a.k.a. Nature Boy—before he hurt his knee.”
This explanation did not satisfy Lydia. “Didn’t he think it was weird having you suddenly chat him up for no reason?”
“I did have a reason,” Arden informed her. “I was inviting him to our party.”
“What party?” I asked, afraid I’d missed something.
“The one I was going to plan if he said yes. But he was like, ‘Parties are not my scene.’” Arden relayed this in a rumbling bass before switching back to her normal voice. “I told him they weren’t necessarily our thing either. We just go to be sociable.” She smiled at her own cleverness. “Not bad, eh?”
Lydia gave her a look. “That he’s not coming to your pretend party?”
Arden waved this off. “There are plenty of other places we can hang out with him. For example, you know how Jeff is really into the environment?”
The three of us glanced at each other before shaking our heads.
“Remember, like the guy who swims naked outdoors? He’s all earthy and natural?”
“Tell me you didn’t invite him to go streaking through the forest,” Lydia said, giving voice to my private fear.
Arden sighed. “Give me some credit. While we were talking, I noticed that his car is covered with bumper stickers about saving the animals and clean water and ‘oh no, the trees’—that kind of thing. That’s where I got the idea, which by the way has nothing to do with public nudity.”
The nail technicians weren’t even pretending not to hang on every word.
Lydia fiddled with her remote control, turning up the setting on her chair. “What does it have to do with?”
“Our club.”
“We’re not in a club,” Lydia pointed out.
“Yes, but Jeff doesn’t know that. Trust me, I made it sound convincing, but also casual. Oh hey, if you’re not doing anything Thursday, maybe you can stop by our amazing save-the-world club.” She fluttered her lashes aggressively.
It took Terry several tries to regain control of her jaw, which had fallen slack. “Is that the actual name?”
“I kept that part vague,” Arden assured us. “We can fill in the details later. He looked like he was trying to figure out how to say no, so I was like, ‘It’s just a few blocks away, at Mary Porter-Malcolm’s house.’ And it totally worked, because he got quiet for a second—probably thinking about baby seals—and then he was like, ‘What time?’ I said four o’clock,” she added, before we could ask. “Also, joining a club is totally on my list for Mary’s season.” She blew on her fingernails before pretending to buff them on her sweater. “That’s what you call multitasking.”
“Sounds like you thought of everything,” Lydia muttered.
Arden chose to ignore what sounded suspiciously like sarcasm. “All you have to do is make the flyer,” she told Lydia.
“Our imaginary club needs an actual flyer?”
“Just throw something together—pictures of animals, that kind of thing. Keep it vague. It doesn’t have to be your best work.”
The look on Lydia’s face said she was about to object.
“Or we could go to the coffeehouse where he plays guitar on Thursday nights,” Arden mused. “Apparently he’s working on a song cycle called ‘The March to Extinction.’”
“Over my dead body,” Lydia snapped.
Arden’s smile was just visible above the rim of her paper cup of tea. “Mary’s house it is.”