into top management of a company whose president hired her, bedded her, and praised her to the hilt until the quarterly reports disappointed investors, at which point she became his scapegoat and was fired. Armed with a comfortable severance package, she had taken refuge in Devon, licking her wounds until boredom nearly did her in. When the position of Town Manager opened up, she leapt at it, and Devon was lucky to get her. Six years into her stewardship, the town prospered.
Nina was in her fifties. She had never told me exactly where, but neither age nor sophistication could erase the jitters she felt in advance of every major meeting. Her humiliation in New York had been public, and oh, I could identify with that. The key, here, was giving her confidence. She returned to me time and again because I did that—and I wasn’t just blowing hot air. Everyone had one feature or another that was strong. Nina actually had two. I just love your hair, I said truthfully as I wove the long waves into a cluster of knots at her nape. And here, her eyes, which were an unusually dark green, the tiniest line of amethyst at the corners will make them pop.
Totally aside from the aesthetics of heavy makeup, we both knew the danger of overdoing it; what worked in New York didn’t work in Devon. But Nina had lived in the city too long to go without. My job was to find the balance between a professional look and one that said, here is Devon at its competent best.
Her meeting an hour from now was about budgeting for renovations to the elementary school. With the annual March Town Meeting—cap T, cap M, open to the public and sure to fill the church nave—coming up fast, the Planning Board had to reach an agreement on what should be done, how and when, and at what cost, prior to presenting the plan to the public. This group consisted of a dozen local business leaders, all of whom had lived in town longer than Nina had, so she had to look like one of them, but not. A business suit wouldn’t do, since not even men here wore suits. Instead, she came to me wearing tailored wool slacks, a silk sweater, and a nubby scarf clearly recognizable as the work of a local knitter. She was armed with a briefcase of printouts to bolster her proposal and now simply needed a confident face.
There was nothing complex about Nina’s makeup. She might have done it herself if she had a girlfriend for the confidence piece. But she didn’t know how to do girlfriends. Working in New York, she had never had time. Social activities had to be productive. Even here, in Devon, with me, she was marginally brusque. When I did her makeup, it was like a work lunch, woman to woman, without the food.
I knew the drill. She wanted concealer to cover mild rosacea, liquid foundation to even her skin tone, blusher blended lightly into her cheekbones, eyeliner so thin that it didn’t look like liner at all, those gentle amethyst corners, and a breath of mascara. Through it all we talked—about raising electric fees to pay for work on the school, about the recent sale of the Inn to a mysterious group, about the messy divorce that threatened ownership of the town’s leading realty company. Our tone was low and intimate, consistent with the reverent atmosphere in the Spa and its whisper-soft instrumentals. From time to time, a vibration came from Nina’s briefcase, but she ignored it until I finished. She had pulled out her phone and was frowning at it when my door abruptly opened.
2
Grace Emory was a massage therapist, one of the Spa’s most requested for her knowledge of muscles, the strength of her hands, and her quick smile. She was also a little zany, if only in ways a close friend would see. She painted her living room red on a whim, alternated beef gorging with juice cleanses, and, in the four years I’d known her, had surgically-tweaked her face twice.
We were visibly different. She stood five-four to my five-six, weighed one-ten to my one-twenty-five, and spoke in a higher voice. She had also lived in Devon for twelve years to my four. Since neither of us had been born here, though, we shared the bond that came from being other. Grace was chatty, getting me going when I might have been still. But