“Rescue time, girls,” Marjorie said. “Baby sister Kissy here just graduated from being a tomboy, and she has a hot date tonight!”

Part 2 - Wilshire

Chapter 9 - Smiles

Before we left the salon, Marjorie talked me into letting her tighten the corset again. I complained but not a lot. I had other things to think about. Besides, the tighter fit got rid of the very slight bulge there had been at my waist. When I put the dress back on, it fit better than before.

The waxing left me feeling smooth and very sensitive all over, as if I had a whole new skin I was living in. And doing my face changed the look of my eyebrows, making my eyes seem bigger. I’d never had much beard, I shaved less than once a week, and more out of hope than need, but now my face was completely smooth.

When Linda wasn’t looking, Marjorie rubbed her cheek against mine, and it felt amazing.

The ladies in the salon warned me about using any products with strong chemicals for a while. “No hairspray, no strong soap or detergent, no perfume,” they said. I thought about the bottle in my purse of stinkum and was just as glad.

I put on a pair of pantyhose, now that my nails were safe before putting the shoes back on. My legs were silky smooth, and the nylon or whatever they make patterned hose out of went on like ice, cool, and so different feeling. The pattern on this pair made black-edged hearts and diamonds.

I didn’t want to say anything, but I felt some pressure in my groin. I resisted squirming, afraid Marjorie would guess what the problem was.

We retrieved our hats and bags from where they had been stored behind a counter and headed out onto Melrose again. It seemed we got even more looks than before, guys especially. “Stop smiling at everything with a dick,” Marjorie scolded me.

“I’m not!” I protested. I put my arm through hers and turned my face up for a kiss. She gave me a peck on the lips.

“Yes, you are, you little slut,” she accused, but she was teasing.

I didn’t feel like a slut, but I wasn’t sure what a slut would feel. It was just so funny that the men, and boys, couldn’t tell that I wasn’t a girl. Or that Marjorie was obviously my girlfriend.

“Now you’re giggling,” Marjorie commented. “Cut it out. You’ll get us arrested.”

“For what?” I demanded.

“Be quiet. I’m sending a text.” She had her phone out and was pushing virtual buttons rapidly.

I considered steering her into another pedestrian, preferably a big hunk-type for maximum embarrassment. Then I got distracted wondering if I would recognize a hunk if I saw one. Well, someone who looked like Double Johnson we had seen earlier, he was definitely a hunk. I felt my face go red, thinking about him.

My giggles must have given my game away, though, because when she put the phone in her purse, she gave me a stern look and commanded, “Don’t you dare.”

That caused more giggles and nearly an existential crisis as I realized I was having fun. There I was, sashaying down the middle of a city street, in high heels, hose, dress and all the accessories, and I seemed to be enjoying myself. Way too much.

It was almost three, a little off-peak for street traffic but still busy with locals and tourists enjoying the June afternoon. “Time for a makeup lesson,” Marjorie announced.

“I—what?”

“I just confirmed our appointment,” she said, steering me right away into a shop called Venus Collection. It was filled with an astonishing variety of beauty products, and two tall, gorgeous salesladies immediately turned their attention to us.

“Rescue time, girls,” Marjorie said. “Baby sister Kissy here just graduated from being a tomboy, and she has a hot date tonight!” I wondered vaguely if they had classes in how to lie at whatever university she got her degree from.

I protested. “Not two hours ago, you were telling people in that other shop that I was your little brother trying to win some cockamamie beauty contest!”

“Well, no-one’s going to believe that one now,” said Marjorie. “You should have seen her this morning, girls. Sloppy jeans, baggy t-shirt and grass growing in her ears.”

I slapped my hands over my ears for some reason. “Hey!”

The salesgirls, Bee and Janni, loved it. “You must have made a terrible tomboy,” Bee said. “No muscles.”

Janni asked, “How did you get grass in your ears?”

“That’s actually true, I was doing yard work for spending money,” I admitted, making them laugh again.

“I want you to erase her scandalous and shameful past as a tomboy,” Marjorie told them. “But keep it light and on the casual side, and don’t cover up her freckles or granddad will disown her.” She added an aside, “She looks like him, but don’t tell her that.”

“Hey!” I protested, but I had a hard time keeping a straight face. Marjorie had mentioned her granddad a few times as well as her mother, and apparently, they were both redheads, too.

“You have lovely soft skin,” said Bee as she applied what she explained to me was called under-foundation. “You’re just like a sundae, vanilla ice cream with butterscotch sauce and a strawberry on top.”

“I’m not that sweet,” I warned her, and she laughed.

Bee explained what she was doing at every step: foundation, contour, highlighter, blush, setting powder. She deepened the shadows under my cheekbones and made them look sharper with highlights. She drew attention towards my eyes with a subtle halo of light surrounding them.

Then she worked on my eyes, shaping and filling in my brows with pencil, defining things with eyeliner, bringing out color with the light use of brown, green and orange cream eyeshadow and finishing up with mascara that was a rich chocolate red.

“Are you wearing colored contacts?” she asked at one point.

I know I blushed. “Um—yeah?”

“Green is a great color for you, but what color are they without?”

“Uh—hazel. A light hazel, almost the same color as my freckles. I thought they sort of disappeared, so...so when I got contacts, I asked for colored ones.”

She nodded. “That’s pretty girly for a tomboy,” she teased. I blushed again and heard Marjorie laugh.

Bee did my lips last, drawing around the outline, then painting them with actual little brushes. She used three different colors of red, orange-red and a brighter gold for highlight. She finished with a gloss and powder that she assured me would last the night. My lips looked full and luscious: kissable, no other word for them.

“We couldn’t do anything less for someone named Kissy,” she assured me with a giggle. Then she showed me how to repair any damage done from kissing (or eating) and had me do it myself a few times with Marjorie supplying the damage. It wasn’t hard, but painting my lips had to be even less masculine than wearing a dress.

Janni built a makeup kit of my own, putting at least one of everything Bee used in and more besides. I never knew there were so many kinds of makeup, not to mention makeup applicators. Some of the little brushes were actually tiny sponges on sticks.

“I’ve really got three kits here,” she told me. “One little repair kit to carry in your purse, a larger kit to take with you when you travel and the stay-at-home collection that has everything.” She put the small kit into the purse that held my IDs and it was almost too big to fit.

I nodded and thanked her to be polite, but privately my reaction was: no way will I be using this stuff. I still thought of this as something Marjorie was doing for an afternoon of fun.

But I saw some of the prices. This was hella more expensive than the clothes Marjorie had bought for me at Le Trend. “You’re spending a lot of money. I’m not going to keep or use all this stuff.”

She waved away my objection. “You’ll have it if you need it and want it.”

I snorted but let her have her fun. The cost didn’t worry her, why should it bother me?

I didn’t really recognize myself in the mirror now. I still looked like me, but it was so obviously the face of a beautiful, sophisticated girl who might be a model or an actress, that it didn’t connect in my brain with how I expected myself to look.

Marjorie put her arms around me from behind and looked over my shoulder at my new face in the mirror. “Do you think you could learn to do that?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Bee put in, “It’s not that hard, you just need to practice. This is only a casual party look, a daytime look would be simpler, and a full evening look would be more dramatic. But there are video tutorials on the internet to show you how.”

Janni cautioned. “There’s a lot of crap on the internet, too. So, remember, we’re always here if you need another lesson or help separating out the bogus lessons from the real ones.” She told me which brands had real internet classes on how to use their products.

Bee nodded. “We don’t even charge for helping regular customers.”

“I’m—it’s—you…,” I tried to explain, finally settling on, “Thanks.”

We got out of there with another large bag to carry. “Let’s go get the car,” said Marjorie. “Or at least put these bags in the trunk.”

“Okay,” I agreed. The one from VC was particularly heavy, and Marjorie had swapped with me, so I carried the bigger, but lighter, bag from Le Trend.

But if I’d thought I was getting looks before, things had gone up a notch. Now, it wasn’t only men and boys, but women and girls were looking at me, too. And did I detect a bit of jealousy? I giggled nervously as we made our way to the crosswalk and back to the valet stand. Some of these women looked dangerous.

At one point, I did a bit of a double-take. Had I just spotted a familiar wall-like outline at the end of the block? Armand Gower again? False alarm, I decided after watching carefully. Super-nerd, his nickname in our group, was nowhere in sight, I could relax.

Marjorie had already texted ahead, and they had the white Mercedes convertible waiting when we strolled up. The valets checked us out as we slid into our seats, and I think I accidentally gave one of them a panty-shot.

I was giggling about that as we sped away. I’d have to practice getting in and out of a car with a skirt on to avoid that in the future. The future?

I was mulling that thought over when Marjorie derailed me with another train-wreck she’d apparently had planned. “We’re just going to have time to get you to your doctor’s appointment,” she said.

Uh-oh.