“It’s a good sign that he agreed to see us right away. You’re lucky, he must need girls.” Miss K hasn't stopped talking since they left their apartment and she keeps the patter going as they climb the stairs to Jerry Burke’s office. “I know what you’re thinking, but this is the theater honey, they don’t keep banker’s hours. Don’t be bourgeois.” She glances back at Iris and stops there on the stairs. “Jesus, look at you, what’d you do, chew your lips the whole way over here?” She takes a tube of lipstick out of her purse and roughly grabs Iris’s face to reapply.

“Guys like Jerry are easy, okay? He’s not the queen of sheba so don’t be nervous. You gotta look like it don’t matter to you what he thinks. It’s late so he might have a drink or two in him, just don’t be shocked by anything he says or does, understand? Just act like you’ve seen it all before.”

Iris tries not to fidget as Miss K touches up her lips, then turns her face toward the light to get a better look. Satisfied, she releases Iris’s face and continues up the stairs. They enter an outer office, dark with an empty secretary’s desk and uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs lining the wall. The only light in the place comes from a window in the door to Jerry Burke’s inner-office. Miss K raps on it three times and an indifferent grunt is the only reply.

It smells of stale cigar smoke inside. Jazz from a small radio competes with street sounds coming in from the open window. Jerry Burke has photographs spread out on the desk and actress headshots pinned to a cork board on the wall.

“Alice!” Jerry says when he sees Miss K, “it’s been years!” He’s a trim man in his forties and Iris notes a pinky ring, a gold watch, and a red-jeweled pendant winking from a thicket of chest hair. He wears a light pink shirt with the sleeves rolled up and top two buttons unbuttoned. The shirt is neatly tucked into expensive-looking slacks. He hugs Miss K and then, holding both her hands, looks her over. “You look… terrific.”

“Oh Jesus Christ Jer, sell it a little next time.” She gestures toward Iris. “Well? Look at this treasure I found. We just got in from the coast. They wanted to put her in movies out there, but I know the routine—as an unknown, she’d be doing every bit-part in every B-movie for the next five years. No, I told her, we go to New York. Make your name on the stage in New York and then when the movie people come calling, the money will be right. She’s destined to be a star, the question is: how long’s it gonna take?”

Iris stands there awkwardly in a royal blue short-sleeved dress that comes down to mid-thigh, her bare legs cold in the drafty casting office. She’s in high heels and is constantly aware of the mask of makeup that Miss K put on her face before they left their two-room apartment. Her hair might never recover from the amount of Aquanet in it, but the bouffant near-beehive (already five years out of date) holds.

“How old is she?” Jerry asks.

“Eighteen of course,” answers Miss K.

Jerry gives her a skeptical look, then cups a hand to his ear and leans down toward Iris’s legs. “I can hear her knees knocking,” he says, then laughs at his own joke. He gets serious and inspects Iris everywhere other than her face. “Well, thin is in…What’s the stage-mom situation?”

“This one’s mine,” Miss K says, drawing an alarmed look from Jerry. “No, no, not my child—I just mean she’s unattached. God knows where she’d be if I hadn’t scooped her up. You’ll never meet a mother for this one.”

“That’s good,” he says. “Name?”

“Gabriella Cole,” Miss K says. “Gabby for short, which is pretty ironical if you know the kid. A conversationalist she ain’t.”

“Cole? We’ll have to change that,” he says. He takes Iris by the shoulders and turns her all the way around until she’s facing him again. He looks at Miss K. “What about nudity?”

“She’s from California Jer, I discovered her on a nude beach. She was twelve years old diving in and out of the waves like some kind of sexy sea otter. I knew she had something by the way all the men on the beach watched her. You cannot disguise interest on a nude beach, there was swelling all over the place. I asked the kid if she’d ever done any acting and she told me she’d seen National Velvet eight times and knew all the Elizabeth Taylor parts by heart. She did a whole scene for me right there on the beach stark naked. I had to do the Mickey Rooney lines.”

“Six years ago, you hadn’t moved to California yet,” Jerry says, “you were here—I remember because I was casting that god-forsaken Nabisco show and you were pitching me different girls every day.”

“So maybe she was thirteen when I found her, I can’t remember every little detail. My point is, nudity is not an issue and look at that face. Comedy? Drama? Glamor? She can do it all. She can dance, she can sing—wait until you hear her sing! You won’t believe it.”

“The face won’t play for my Christmas show,” Jerry says.

“Well why the hell not?” Miss K demands.

“Come on, with a schnoz like that? Everyone will know she’s Jewish before she makes her first entrance.”

“Her name’s Cole for Christ’s sake. She comes from Danish stock, right Gabby? I never met the mother, if there is one, but the father is 100% pickled WASP.”

“Even if it’s all true, it doesn’t matter. The nose reads Jewish.” Jerry looks at Iris. “I’m not prejudiced mind you, I keep a yarmulke in my coat pocket in case I run into any of my mother’s friends on the street, but I’m casting a Christmas show here.”

“There’s nudity in your Christmas show?” Miss K asks. “This I gotta see.”

“I’ve got more than one thing going, the Christmas show is just the main event. I can use her if you do something about the nose. Here.” He opens the bottom drawer of his desk and flips through files until he finds what he’s looking for. From Iris’s angle she can see it’s a file with maybe a hundred identical contracts. He takes one out and hands it to Miss K.

“What the hell am I looking at?” she asks.

“My cousin is becoming one of the best plastic surgeons in the city,” Jerry says. “I’ll set everything up and cover all the costs. That contract states that I’ll be repaid for the surgery from any future work I get for our client here.”

“Jerry, come on, look at that face. She’s beautiful. She’s got character!”

“Character you can keep, I need pretty girls. Not beautiful—pretty.”

Miss K looks at the contract, her eyebrows expressing concentration. “I dunno, I mean, it seems like this could put us in a situation where she’s working and working and we’re not seeing any money from it.”

“In that case, I wouldn’t be seeing any money either. I’m coming out of pocket to pay for the surgery, and I don’t take a commission until that money’s paid back. Look at paragraph six. When the surgery’s paid for, that’s when I start getting paid, same as you. The risk is all on my end.”

“And if you can’t find any work for the girl with the goy nose?”

“That won’t be a problem if she’s not afraid to get naked. I can always get her work as an artist’s model.”

“Jerry, the girl’s a performer. Putting her on the beaver circuit would be a crime.”

“Right, it’s just an insurance policy in case she’s not quite the once-in-a-generation talent you think she is.” He looks Iris up and down again. “Pop that dress off for me sweetheart—I gotta know if there are any scars, birthmarks, unsightly moles, tattoos, that kind of thing.”

Iris looks at Miss K who silently tells her to do as she’s told. She pulls the dress up and off and hands it to Miss K. Iris stands there in her underwear and a shiver hits her. She gets goosebumps.

“I guess that’s why they call it a wonder bra huh? Cause you always gotta wonder what kinda tits the girl really has. Take it off honey. I have to know what we’re dealing with here.”

Miss K does not object. Iris reaches behind her back and unhooks it. She hands the bra to Miss K and unconsciously covers herself with one hand then drops it knowing that modesty doesn’t fit the character that Miss K has constructed for her.

Jerry shakes his head at the paltry display, then snatches the contract out of Miss K’s hand. “A woman's body is supposed to have a shape to it,” he says. “She might be a carpenter’s friend, but she’ll be no friend to my bank account.”

“But look at the gams Jerry, the gams.” Miss K turns Iris around, grabs hold of a calf muscle and squeezes. “Look how toned she is. Her stocking stuffers are the main attraction here. And look how they go up and make an ass of themselves,” she releases Iris’s calf and gives her butt a slap. “Do you honestly believe any meat-eating American male wouldn’t buy a ticket to that?”

Jerry shrugs. “The kid has nice long legs,” he says. “Okay hon, get your clothes back on.”

Miss K hands Iris her clothes and she starts getting dressed. She feels like she’s all elbows and right angles, but luckily Jerry is focused on Miss K, who pulls up a chair and sits. “So what? You only work with the mamarily-gifted of the female species?” she asks.

“Alice, the market dictates, you know that. If I let my cousin operate on her, I’d be taking a big risk. Unless…”

“No new tits, no way,” Miss K says. “Even the most expensive operations look terrible. No, that’s where we draw the line.” Jerry shrugs and sits at his desk. His look says they need him more than he needs them. Much more. “This is a trouper here, Jer, an artist of the stage. This isn’t some sex-object designed in a laboratory to appeal to creeps. Those are a dime-a-dozen.”

He sighs heavily. “Okay, what the hell, I’ll give her a shot.” He slides the contract across the desk and hands the pen to Iris.

She looks at Miss K in a panic. She can’t remember what her name is supposed to be.

“Just sign here honey,” Miss K says, pointing to a line at the bottom of the page. Iris doesn’t move. “Gabriella Cole.”

“Wow, we’re off to a great start,” Jerry says.

********************

Miss K pulls Iris into the first bar they come to. She’s elated from the meeting and wanting to celebrate. Iris feels overexposed in her short dress. The bar is dark and filled with smoke, music, and loud talk. There’s some kind of wood-paneling on the walls that gives Iris the impression of being in a cave. No one looks at them as they cross to a booth on the back wall.

Miss K pushes Iris in, sits next to her on the bench and hails a waitress with her hand like she’s hailing a cab. Iris’s thighs stick to the worn vinyl upholstery. The waitress comes over and asks what they’re drinking.

“Double Seagrams neat, and could I have some matches?”

The waitress takes a book of matches out of her apron pocket, tosses them on the table, then looks at Iris. “What about you, hon?”

“She’ll have seltzer with lime,” Miss K says with finality. The waitress leaves and Miss K fishes a cigarette out of her waning pack. “We have a contract with Jerry Burke,” Miss K begins, then pauses to light up. She exhales smoke through her nostrils and mouth at the same time, an extravagant display of pleasure. “Do you know what that means? He’s the biggest casting director in the city—well, one of the biggest—and he’s investing in us. We’re going to be famous darling. See all these people in here? They’re nobodies, y’hear me? Nobodies! But we’re coming up in the world.”

She stops talking because a tall man in a cheap suit has appeared. His belly sticks out over the edge of the table and his neck and face are without border. “Hiya,” he says, “I saw you two and thought I’d come over and see if I could dispel the air of melancholy.” He waves his hands around as if there was a bad smell coming from Iris and Miss K.

“Get lost,” Miss K says without looking at the guy.

“Aw, I’m just joshin’. That’s my name: Josh.”

Miss K finally looks up at him and stares hard for a moment. “Listen, Josh. Why don’t you find yourself a nice dark closet and hang yourself in there. Could you do that for us, Josh?”

“Jesus, what a bitch,” he says. He stands there trying to come up with something better to say but can’t think of anything and finally wanders off shaking his head.

Miss K looks at Iris. “Nobodies,” she says.

********************

Iris’s new name, or new new name, courtesy of Jerry Burke, is Vanessa St. John. That’s the name of the woman who has the surgery, but it’s Iris who wakes with a scalding hot poker stuck in her face. The formerly offending appendage is covered in bandages so huge that Iris can barely see over them. Iris has two black eyes the next day, and throws up when she tries to eat some spaghetti. She takes the pain meds that make everything fuzzy and warm and she feels, for hours at a time, like Vanessa St. John. But it’s Iris who has the nightmares.

Two weeks later, Iris and Miss K arrive at the twelfth floor office of Dr. Paul Rasher to have the bandages removed. It’s a residence that has been converted into a professional space. The receptionist is a middle-aged woman in an ill-advised shade of burgundy lipstick. She tells them to wait and they sit on a black leather loveseat between two large plants. There are multiple copies of a glossy magazine called Aesthétique on the glass table in front of them.

“Is there an ashtray around, honey?” Miss K asks the receptionist.

“Sorry, this is a smoke-free office,” she says. “It’s not good for the skin.”

They wait and wait and wait. Miss K is a collection of raw nerves; it’s been two hours and her hangover is not pairing well with nicotine withdrawal. “Oh, don’t mind us,” she mutters. “Our time isn’t worth a kopeck. Just leave us in your waiting room all afternoon. I’m sure he feels like a real big-shot in there. Iris, you think show business people have egos? Show business is scientifically designed to crush egos, but the medical field is the opposite. There are towering infrastructures in place to make any idiot with a medical degree feel like he’s reached an exalted, god-like status.” She shakes her head and lets her volume rise just enough so that the receptionist can hear. “Don’t ever be impressed by doctors because, and I’m letting you in on a dirty little secret here honey, medical degrees are for sale. Half the doctors running around acting like they’re too important to keep appointments bought their way through medical school. It’s all a cheap con from top to bottom. If I’m sick and a doctor makes me feel better, then I’m impressed. But if I meet someone who says they’re a doctor? I consider them a crook until proven otherwise.”

The receptionist clears her throat pointedly and Miss K looks up.

“Darling,” Miss K says, honey dripping from her voice, “do you think the doctor will be much longer?”

“I really don’t know,” the woman answers.

“It’s just that our appointment was for eleven o’clock. It’s almost one-thirty. Should we maybe come back tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s fully booked. He’s with his last client now, he’ll probably see you afterwards.” She sees the hope flash in their eyes and quickly adds, “he often sees clients for hours at a time. These types of procedures can bring up a lot of emotion.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Miss K says. “I’m gonna pop down to the street for a smoke.”

Almost as soon as she’s gone, Dr. Rasher comes out with a short sixty-something woman in gloves and a pearl necklace—a cartoon rendition of a rich lady. The doctor is a fat man in a white coat, white shirt, and coral tie. He wears a gaudy bracelet with a red jewel in it that reminds Iris of Jerry Burke’s pendant. He attends to some paperwork at the desk, then the rich lady thanks him and leaves. He turns and looks at Iris and motions for her to follow him.

He leads her to a small examination room next to the room where they did the operation and has her sit in a wooden armchair. He pulls a big industrial light down, extending its metal arm, and turns it on, temporarily blinding her. He puts on latex gloves then gets to work taking off the outer wrapping. He removes two hard pieces of foam that kept Iris’s new nose in place, peeling them off the sticky antibacterial-smeared surface of her face, then discards it all in a metal trash can with a pedal that lifts the lid.

He takes a square of medical gauze and starts to gently wipe away the brown iodine concoction. Pain swells, as if her nose is rebelling against being exposed to the open air. The doctor gets another wad of gauze and pours some distilled water over it, then goes back to work, cleaning Iris’s face. Finally, he steps back and looks at her, smiling. “Yes,” he says, “I think it turned out very well. Better than I could’ve expected.”

He reaches to the counter for a hand mirror and gives it to Iris. She holds it up and looks at the face of Vanessa St. John. A horrible expanse of naked flesh fills the oval mirror. There is just a shriveled little white horror where her nose is supposed to be. She watches her face blanche and everything feels like it's upside-down for a moment and the mirror drops and lands on her knees and slides off. Dr. Rasher catches it before it hits the ground.

“Wow, I saved you some bad luck there,” he says, smiling his oily smile. Tears well up in her eyes and the doctor’s expression transforms into a studied approximation of sympathy. “It can be quite a shock. It’s not healed yet and can take a month before you feel that your new nose has assimilated to your face. The nose will change, and you will become accustomed to it, and soon you’ll feel 100% whole again, I promise. I’ve seen all sorts of reactions when the bandages come off, but when I do my follow-up, months after the procedure, everyone tells me the same thing: they’re glad they did it.”

Iris listens in a fog as Dr. Rasher explains how she’ll have to clean and treat it, and how to apply the smaller bandages. He puts some goop on a q-tip and is smearing in on the inside of her nostril when Miss K arrives. She cannot hide her intense revulsion when she sees Iris. “Oh!” she says. “Wow. It’s really a new you, isn’t it? It looks…fantastic, really. It’s an adorable little button nose, the most beautiful kind.”

Iris feels like she might throw up at the phrase button nose, but she cries instead. The doctor tsk-tsks her. “You must try to get a hold of yourself, Miss St. John. Tears are one thing, but we can’t have mucus production. You’re not allowed, under any circumstances, to blow your nose, understand?”

“Don’t worry doctor,” Miss K says. “She’s tough, right honey? She’s just a little shell-shocked at the moment. Hungry too; we didn’t have any lunch. Once we get some food in her belly, her whole outlook will improve.”

Iris follows Miss K out to the street with a cardboard shell taped over her nose and stands by, limp and ashamed, as Miss K hails a cab. Once they’re in and riding uptown, the tears return. “Stop it now, it looks great, really! I thought it would still be swollen, but it’s almost healed. Good thing too, because Jerry got you in with the producers of his Christmas show in eleven days. What are you crying for? It’s brand new, he just removed the goddamn bandages. It doesn’t look now how it’s going to look. You have to break it in like a new pair of boots. I saw it too, and you know what? It looked great. See, you’re used to your old nose, that’s all. Of course it looks like a sculpted thing to you right now. Once you’ve had it for a while you’ll get used to it. Actresses with noses like that get all the good parts, you’ll see. Those should be tears of happiness. Dr. Rasher has given you an incredible gift: the gift of a face. We should call Jerry and thank him, he was really right about that nose! Imagine your career being held back by a little bit of flesh and cartilage. We did the right thing. Come on now, no tears. Even if it was bad, there’d be nothing we could do about it, but it’s not bad. It’s perfect! Look at you crying because you’ve got a perfect nose. When we’re the toast of Broadway, we’re gonna laugh about this. Now come on, no more crying. Your nose will start running. Let’s get something to eat. What are you in the mood for?”

********************

The pain in her nose goes in cycles—aching to throbbing to stabbing and back again depending on the time of day and how long it’s been since she’s taken a pill. The pain wakes her up every night at around midnight and she has to wait until two o’clock to take another pill. Then, she can usually sleep until five or five-thirty in the morning. It’s not enough, and even after the black eyes have healed, dark bags remain. On the day of the audition, Miss K has to do a lot of work with the pancake to make Iris look like a well-rested young ingénue.

“Listen,” Jerry says, “let me do the talking alright? This guy is old-school. He doesn’t appreciate assertive women like I do.”

Miss K laughs as the cab pulls to the curb to let the trio out. Iris climbs out, or rather, she’s shoved out by Miss K, while Jerry Burke pays the cabby. “Don’t touch it!” Miss K hisses at Iris, whose hand has unconsciously come up to her nose for the hundredth time since they removed the bandage. They had to bend the doctor’s orders and take it off a week early for the audition. “If you keep fiddling with it, God knows what will happen!”

Iris’s face feels weirdly light and naked and some animal part of her wants to cover it up, as if in shame.

Jerry gets out of the cab and leads them to a nondescript door under a small black awning. He holds the door open and the women go into a tiny vestibule with a wall of metal mailboxes, a narrow staircase, and a single elevator at the back. Once in, Miss K takes a pair of high-heeled red dance shoes out of her big quilted bag and hands them to Iris.

“You don’t want changing your shoes to be the first thing you do in there,” Miss K says. Iris holds onto her shoulder and pulls off her flats, replacing them one at a time with the dance shoes. “You want to walk in, take off that coat, and shimmy.”

Jerry watches impatiently then goes past them and holds open a door. There are stairs going down to a sub level, and Iris goes down first. At the bottom is a long hallway with wooden benches on one side and a bulletin board on the opposite wall with schedules, cast lists, and audition notifications. It smells like a dance studio—sweat, wood, old shoes.

There’s a single closed door and behind it someone is belting out “Hernando’s Hideaway” to piano accompaniment. The trio stand there and listen.

When the song is over, Jerry Burke smooths his hair. “Wait here,” he says, pointing to the benches. He opens the door just enough to slip in and it closes behind him. Iris and Miss K sit close together and Miss K starts in on a hushed coaching session in Iris’s ear.

“Now listen, babe, you’ve got a winning lottery ticket in your pocket, understand? It’s worth millions, and you haven’t told anyone yet. It’s a secret, a wonderful secret, and it means you’re going through with all this on a lark. You could buy and sell these people, and the fact that they don’t know it makes the whole thing delicious, understand? You’re an actress. You can play the scene like that, right? They think they’ve got something you need, but the joke’s on them. Now smile, honey. I wanna see if there’s lipstick on your teeth.”

The door opens and a short, heavyset woman and a taller girl of about fifteen in a summer dress with a big red bow on her head come out. They take in the sight of Miss K and Iris but say nothing and go down the hall. “Oh you gotta watch out for these Lolita-types,” Miss K whispers. “Men can’t resist ’em. See what her mom did there? Dressed her up like a twelve-year-old and had her sing a whore song. Basically telling them, you can have my daughter, but you can’t have her cheap. Ooh, I despise women like that.”

“Vanessa, Alice, come on in!” Jerry shouts from inside the room.

“Okay, your hair looks fine. Let’s go show these bums what real class looks like.”

The dance studio is smoky and Jerry stands beside two men who are seated at a table with their backs to the mirror that covers the wall. The table has headshots and résumés spread out on it. The floor is wood and the other walls have ballet barres bolted into the bricks. There’s an upright piano in the corner and a white-haired old woman sitting there ready to play whatever someone hands her.

The men regard Iris disinterestedly. One is old, fat, and bald, and the other is younger, thin with clear-frame glasses and longish wavy hair. It’s obvious who represents the money and who’s calling the shots artistically. “Where’s her headshot, Jerry?” the fat one asks.

“Tell him Alice,” Jerry says.

Miss K walks up to the table shaking her head. “We just flew in from the coast and TWA, damn them, lost our luggage. We’ve got an appointment to get new ones done by Bert Stern next week.”

“Here’s her résumé,” Jerry says, flapping a hand at Miss K. She takes a manila envelope out of her bag, retrieves a paper with Vanessa St. John’s bona fides, and gives it to Jerry who gives it to the thin man.

He scans the paper, then looks at Iris skeptically. “Alright honey, what have you got for us?”

“She’s singing ‘Too Darn Hot,’” Miss K says, taking the sheet music out of the same manilla envelope.

“We’ve looked at a million singers already,” the man says dismissively. “Can she dance?”

“Look at her résumé, Don,” Jerry says. “She trained for years with a Russian ballet master. She was one of the dancing children in that Gene Kelly movie. They cut her big scene, but she’s there in the ensemble.”

“Show us some dancing, sweetheart,” the fat man says.

Miss K traverses the room and hands the piano player the sheet music for the song Iris isn't going to sing. Iris fumbles with the knot on her trench coat and Miss K comes over to help. “Just do some stuff from your talent show routine, but make it pornographic,” she whispers. She helps Iris out of the coat. “Throw in some hip-thrusts and shake ’em.” She walks back to the other side of the room and puts the coat down next to her bag.

Iris has the men’s attention now. She wears a thin, flesh-tone, strapless bodice with red ribbing on slight angles, giving her the illusion of an hourglass figure—albeit an hourglass that doesn’t measure much time. Across her hips are black flaps with red jewels on them that form a hint of a skirt, over sheer black nylons. The pianist looks at Iris in the mirror. Iris looks at Miss K, who pinches her thumb and forefinger together and mouths, “Lottery ticket.” Iris nods to the woman behind the piano.

The old woman starts to play and the notes come out surprisingly lively and quick. Iris thinks five-six-seven-eight and goes into the opening section of the choreography from her old routine, a series of pas de bourrées in both directions with the opposite arm reaching out. She lets her head flop from side to side, channeling the attitude of Vanessa St. John.

She’s glad she’s not singing, because if she were, she’d hear her own voice and it would remind her of Iris. Dancing, she can become someone else, someone sophisticated, sexual, worldly. She knows how women like that move; she’s studied it since before she can remember.

She locks eyes with the fat man as she goes into the chasés, but they end with a fan-kick which seems like kid stuff. Instead, she slides into a deep lunge on her upstage leg—more or less a blatant crotch-shot—and shakes her shoulders burlesque-style as she drags her back leg up until she’s standing again. The fat man’s eyes light up. His blood is pumping now.

She looks at the thin man with his wavy hair, whose glasses make him harder to read. She does the chasés the other way, and they’re supposed to end in another fan kick, but Iris knows she needs to up the lewdness, so she does a quick drop to the knee, her arms out, and slams herself up, pulling her hands into tight fists next to her hips. It’s a quick one-two, and she’s grabbed the man’s attention with her hands and forced it toward her crotch. She can’t read his eyes, but his lips part a little—an unconscious admission of sorts.

She starts the strut section, going across the floor raising her upstage arm and tracing it down with the fingertips of her other hand, as if she were putting on long silk gloves. She feels an audacious confidence as she turns, rocking her hips back and forth with every step. She’s not faking it. She’s having a sensual experience made more intense by the fact that she’s being watched. She wonders if Vanessa St. John has any shame at all.

She can feel them hanging on her every move as she struts halfway back then stops in a wide fourth position and flops her upper body down, folding herself in half, and then shimmies back up. She knows that her talent show routine is too long for the music and decides to cut the vamp section but she’s in the wrong place to start the circle that comes after it.

An image flashes through her mind: a ballet she saw when she was little that had can-can dancers in it. They’d done something that had shocked her young mind and she knows by pure instinct that it will fit.

She runs up to the table where the two very-important men sit, turns around and bends all the way forward with her ass out, reaches back and flips her little flap-skirt up. She can feel the surprise behind her as she playfully jogs to her spot in time to start the circle.

First are alternating high steps and kicks, then she turns and does a fast shuffle backwards while her arms, relaxed and soft, gather up an imaginary bolt of fabric off the floor, rolling it up. She gets to the back and it seems like she should repeat the high-step-kicks, but this time it has some rhythmic skips into chainé turns. Three of those and some more backwards shuffles, and she’s ready for the piqué turns across the front. She does them in a low coupé to facilitate speed and keeps her arms loose and expressive. Ballet positions won’t impress this crowd.

She can feel the music wanting to end, so she goes into the final chainés early. They’re fast, ridiculously fast, and the piano player—bless her—finishes with a loud chord of finality as Iris slams her body into a dramatic wide open position, head back and arms out, completely splayed. She’s surprised at the complete control she feels. She stays there until the vibrations from the piano dissolve and then stands upright casually.

She knows they want to clap but their professionalism won’t allow it. A real smile comes from inside Iris as she looks at the stunned duo. Jerry looks stunned too, and even Miss K seems surprised, though she barely shows it.

“Well,” the man with the glasses says, “you can dance and you’re the right height, so I’m sure we can use you. Carlo is going to stage the dance numbers and he picks who the leads are. You’ll certainly be in the running. If you’re a lead, it’s an extra twenty-five dollars a week. Have you ever seen the Clowes Christmas Pageant?”

The fat man says something under his breath to the thin man, who looks at Iris’s, or rather Vanessa’s, résumé.

“Oh right,” he says, “you’re from the west coast. Well, it’s a big to-do around here. It runs the last three weeks of December, six shows a week, packed houses at the Atchison on 63rd.”

A sharp pain stabs at the center of Iris’s face and she winces, then tries to bring her expression back to normal.

He thinks she’s reacting to the name of the theater. “Yeah, okay, it’s not technically Broadway, but it’s a fine old theater that seats a cozy two thousand.”

“She’s Californian,” Miss K says, “she don’t know the Atchison from the Met. She spent her first eighteen years on a beach or in a ballet studio.”

Jerry glares at Miss K and the man with the glasses studies Iris’s face. She feels him wondering why something looks off with her nose and fights the urge to cover it. The sharp pain returns and Iris tries not to show it. Miss K, sensing something is wrong, comes over with the trench coat. She helps Iris put it on while Jerry suggests they wait outside so the men can discuss business.

Iris knows Miss K wants to object, but she’s afraid of upsetting whatever delicate balance has been established. Miss K gets the sheet music back from the pianist, picks up her bag, takes Iris’s hand, and they leave.

They sit on the bench in the outer hall and Iris puts on her shoes while Miss K fumes. “You know what they’re doing in there, right? They’re fucking us. We’re getting greeked in there right now. You know what that means, honey? To get greeked?” She looks at Iris and frowns. “What’s wrong? Pain? We’ll get you home and you can take your pills. I wonder when our first paycheck will come through. I haven’t eaten at a decent restaurant in a month.”

********************

Miss K is told in no uncertain terms that she will not be allowed into the studio to observe rehearsals. Carlo Rivette, master choreographer of the Clowes Christmas Pageant, has a strict closed-door policy. He also has a lot of experience repelling stage moms, and he seems to view Miss K as a cousin to that breed. He’s an intense little man in his forties with black hair and dark eyes and an accent that might be Hungarian.

The work day is ten to five, with a half hour lunch break, in a cavernous dance studio on the sixteenth floor of a very old building in midtown. The dancers all take a morning ballet class at a studio around the corner for a professional rate of two dollars a class. Miss K bristles at the extra expense, but the daily class allows her to watch from the lobby and see the other dancers in the cast. The opposition research is worth the money.

By her assessment, none of the other dancers hold a candle to Iris—an opinion Carlo Rivette seems to share, because he casts her in the lead of all three dance numbers. When she dances, she’s Vanessa St. John, and the pain in her nose—or, the pain in her face where her nose used to be—goes away. She learns how to look in the mirror and only see her body, her eyes studiously avoiding her face and all that bare skin that makes her stomach churn.

During working hours, while she’s away from Miss K, Iris feels human. Carlo casts one of his students as Iris’s understudy and she can hear Miss K in her head, screaming to watch out, but the girl is so young and sweet that Iris doesn’t listen. She even helps her learn some of the trickier sequences.

She’s paired with a tall handsome man for the Currier and Ives number, a guy named Brian Bloom whose smile goes about three times wider than you think it will. The setting for the dance is a frozen pond and the dancers are supposed to be ice skaters in a late-nineteenth century village in Massachusetts or somewhere. The dream ballet is challenging, and Iris feels rusty in pointe shoes for the first week or so, but by week two, she’s her old self and doing fouetté turns that make the other dancers burst into spontaneous applause. Her favorite number is the kick line—the finale of the whole show. It’s fun, fast, and easy.

By the third week of rehearsals, the pieces are all set and Carlo becomes a harsh taskmaster, running the numbers over and over until everyone’s ready to fall on their faces. Iris has never been so tired in her life but she doesn’t mind. She’s part of a group and they’re all in it together.

********************

Their first day in the theater is for photoshoots and Miss K is happy. They can keep her out of the rehearsal studio, but they can’t keep her out of the theater. She’s there in the costume shop, suggesting they take Iris’s skirt up an inch to show more thigh. She helps Iris with hair and makeup and stands in the wings as Carlo and the photographer arrange the dancers in front of the snowy backdrop.

After a series of group shots, the photographer moves in for closeups on Iris, but he frowns into his viewfinder. “What’s happening with her nose?” he asks Carlo.

“What do you mean?” Carlo answers.

“It’s an odd color, don’t you think? It’s like a pale purple or lavender.”

Carlo marches up to Iris, who stands at the center of a group of dancers who are supposed to reach in and frame her face with their hands. He leans close and inspects her nose which throbs in pain, embarrassed to be the center of attention. “Yeah,” Carlo says, “what’s going on here?”

“Well Jesus Christ, it’s forty-five degrees in this theater,” Miss K says, bustling onto the stage. Everyone turns to look at her. “What do you expect? We’ll be lucky if they don’t all have pneumonia by opening night.” She opens her bag and takes out a jar of pancake. She turns Iris’s face toward the light and roughly smears the makeup onto the guilty nub. She puts the pancake back and gets out a jar of powder and uses a puffy brush to dust Iris’s nose. She repeats the process, rendering the new layer of makeup all but invisible, then scrutinizes her protégé’s face. “There,” she says, “how’s that?”

The photographer looks at Iris, then looks at her again through his camera. “Works for me,” he says.

The photoshoot continues, and continues, and continues. Eventually Iris wishes she was back in the studio doing the numbers over and over endlessly. They take hundreds and hundreds of photographs, and the dancers aren’t allowed to go until late at night. Miss K is not happy.

“These people are slave drivers!” she says as soon as her and Iris are on the street, bundled up for the long walk back to their apartment. “No lunch break, no dinner break. I’ve never seen such an abuse of a performer’s time in all my years in show business.” A freezing drizzle starts to fall, and Miss K takes a moment to adjust her scarf. “And that child! Your understudy, Sarah Warren—creeping around watching everything! My god Iris, you should’ve told me he cast an understudy. And she’s his student! You can’t see the setup here? Do I have to do everything? Hey, don’t touch the nose. You keep fiddlin’ with it all the time. You think people don’t notice? It’s a tell, touching your nose. You play poker? You know what a tell is? Well every time you touch your nose, you’re telling on yourself. You probably rubbed all the makeup off. You think those bitches in the chorus or Carlo Rivette’s very talented student doesn’t notice? They’re looking for any sign of weakness, believe me. She might’ve just gotten her pubic hair, but I guarantee you her sense of a rival’s weakness is highly developed. You think you’re part of some kind of supportive, surrogate, theater family? Honey, wake up! It’s a Machiavellian snake pit. You’ve been elevated above them and they hate your guts for it. You’ve gotta remember that.” She shakes her head in disgust and looks at Iris. “Stop touching your nose!” she shouts.

********************

Back at the apartment, Iris wipes the cold cream off her face, looks in the mirror, and screams. Miss K comes in annoyed, then sees it. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” she shouts. Iris’s nose is dark purple. Iris starts to sob. “Oh, shit. Honey, come on now, don’t cry. I’m sure it’s not as bad as it looks. I’m going to get that doctor on the phone.”

Iris slumps down onto the floor of the bathroom, crying and holding her head. Snot builds up in her sinuses, but it won’t use her dead nose. That’s how she thinks of it, as a dead thing on her face. A dead thing that’s supposed to be cute but is actually grotesque.

“Jerry?” Miss K says into the phone in the bedroom. “What kind of Frankenstein show is your cousin running? Her nose, it’s purple. I need the man’s home number. No, this cannot wait. Well then I guess we’ll have to drop out of the show and go into a new business venture as plaintiffs in a medical malpractice case. Okay, that’s better. We’re dealing with a major issue here, so we need to hear from the doctor immediately.” She hangs up and sighs loudly. “These men!” she hisses while returning to the bathroom.

She stands in the doorway and looks down at Iris. “Don’t touch it!” she shouts. Iris lowers her hand and swallows hard. “Get up. Come on, off the floor, now.” She pulls Iris to her feet and leads her out to the living room. “You can’t have a nervous breakdown now, we open in a week. Come on, sit down. Once you’re famous and a proven draw at the box office, then you can have a nervous breakdown and spend a couple of weeks at one of those expensive sanitariums. Right now, you can’t afford to have an artistic temperament. You know what they call poor people with artistic temperaments? They call ’em nuts. They run electricity through them or drill holes in their heads. Only poor people can be crazy, honey, remember that. If a rich person goes crazy, they say they're eccentric. Just hang on for a few more years and people will be forced to use pretty euphemisms when they find you weeping on the bathroom floor obsessively touching your nose like a little girl who just discovered her special button.” She snatches three tissues out of a box on the floor and hands them to Iris. “There, now wipe up those tears.”

The phone rings and Miss K gets up and goes into her room, shutting the door behind her. Iris looks at the closed door with a sense of doomed foreboding. She fights the urge to touch her nose and instead tries to disintegrate herself. When she was a kid, she sometimes thought she could do it if she really wanted to, but she’d always stopped, unsure if she’d be able to pull herself back together afterwards. Now, she feels ready to go all the way.

But Miss K emerges and breaks her concentration. “He said, and I quote, discoloration is a normal part of the healing process. See? You’re all upset for nothing. I have his number now so we can call again if it doesn’t get better. All we have to do is make sure you’ve got some foundation on it and no one will know the difference. There now, I’ll get you a glass of water. It’s been a long day and we’re both tired. We’re going to be in the theater all day tomorrow, so you’d better get some rest.”

********************

On day two in the theater, Iris realizes just how enormous the Clowes Christmas Pageant really is. There are hundreds of costumes, giant sets, an army of stage hands, a thirty-piece orchestra in the pit, a children’s choir, an adult choir, camels and sheep for the opening “Silent Night” number, a troupe of acrobats, actors, a crooner, and a stand-up comedian. There are twelve drops, some with matching legs, dry ice machines, two different fake snow effects, huge fans to ripple a shredded silk scrim which, with the right lighting, looks like a sandstorm, a fog machine/projector combo that makes a convincing Holy Ghost, and god knows how many props and flats and gobos, et cetera, et cetera.

Iris is surprised to find herself in the middle of an old-fashioned circus.

For the next three nights, the company works right up until the moment the stagehands’ union would start to get overtime, 11pm. No one cares that Miss K is always there in the wings with pancake and powder to fix Iris’s nose. All three nights, when they get back to their apartment, Iris removes her makeup and her nose has gone one shade darker than the day before and Miss K says the same thing: “It’s normal, it’s normal. The doctor said it’s normal.”

But one morning, Iris wakes up to Miss K sniffing her. “Ugh!” she says, a look of horror on her face. “I’ve been wondering what that smell was! Don’t touch it! God, I thought it was your shoes or something. It’s that awful funk, like B.O. mixed with shit. No, this is wrong. We need to get you to that doctor. Don’t start crying, that’s not going to get you anywhere. Obviously, you can’t miss rehearsal, but I’ll call the doctor and see if we can get you an off-hours appointment. Get up and get some Raisin Bran. No crying now, you still have to work today. Don't worry, the doctor will fix it. He does this for a living.”

But the receptionist says Dr. Rasher can’t possibly see Iris outside of regular business hours. “Well then I hope he’s all paid up on his insurance!” Miss K shouts. She slams the phone down and growls, then seems to remember that Iris is there. “Don’t worry, no one’s going to notice honey. This apartment is close quarters. We’re living right on top of each other here. A big open theater like that? It’ll be fine. And I’ll keep calling that doctor. I’ll force him to make a house call tonight or see us early tomorrow morning. If we weren’t opening in two days, I’d just call you off sick, but we can’t do that. Hand an opportunity like that to Sarah Warren, can you imagine? No, honey, you’re just going to have to be a trouper and make it through today.”

Iris’s strategy is to keep moving around, not staying in any group of people long enough for them to identify where the stench is coming from. She also wears too much of Miss K’s perfume and reapplies it when she has to spend a significant chunk of time around the same people, like in the dressing room or when she’s waiting backstage with her partner before the Currier and Ives routine.

It’s a technical rehearsal day, moving through the show in order and finding problem areas when it comes to scene-changes and issues of lighting and sound. None of the dancers are surprised when they’re waiting to go on for the dream ballet and a shouting match erupts on stage. The orchestra stops playing. They can all hear what the fight is about: the acrobats’ Ferris wheel is too wide and the top of it, without fail, catches on one of the legs of the dream ballet’s snowy forest drop. Finally, this time, it’s ripped the thick canvas, and the scenic designer is not happy. The acrobats’ manager, a Frenchman with movie-star good looks, is berated by a short sinewy woman who looks like she’s spent her whole life hunched over a drafting table. The stage manager and a few stagehands come out to try to cool tempers and offer solutions.

The wavy haired director finally climbs onto the stage and hears out both sides of the conflict. The final verdict, after this impromptu production meeting, is that the Ferris wheel has to be rebuilt at least a foot and a half narrower. The problem is that the acrobats can’t transport it to a workshop to do the work and get it back in time. The conversation doesn’t end, but it moves off stage and the dancers finally get on with their number.

At 10:52pm, after the whole company, minus the children, has practiced the order of the bows three times, the director’s voice comes over the stage monitors. “There is a schedule change for tomorrow. Our acrobats will need the stage all day to modify their Ferris wheel, so your new call time will be 6pm.” The company erupts in spontaneous applause and laughter. “Yes, I’m sure you could all use a bit of rest,” he continues, clearly annoyed by the jubilant reaction. “We were hoping to get at least one more run-through in before the preview tomorrow night, but it’s not going to happen. There will be members of the press and special guests in the audience, so please treat it like a real show. Hopefully we can get all the way through with no stops. Go home and get some rest, and I expect to see you all fresh-faced and ready tomorrow night.” The company breaks up in good spirits.

On their walk home, Miss K says the day off is a godsend. “The doctor will have to see you now,” she says. “We’ll get to his office the moment it opens and sit you right there in his waiting room, no makeup, so that everybody who comes in can see the kind of work he does.”

********************

The receptionist takes one look at Iris’s nose and leads them to the small examination room where Dr. Rasher took Iris’s bandages off. The doctor comes in a half hour later, and if he’s surprised by the state of Iris’s nose, he doesn’t show it. He brings down the huge light from the ceiling and turns it on, then gets low to look up Iris’s nostrils with a pen light. “Hmm,” he says. He gently pushes on the tip of her nose. “Yes, it’s a good thing you came in today. It’s definitely going necrotic, but we should still be able to reverse the process.” He looks disapprovingly at Miss K. “I take it you removed the bandages early?”

“She had an audition,” Miss K protests. “You think she would’ve gotten the part with a bandage covering a third of her face?”

But he’s not listening, he’s inspecting the nose. “Yes, I think we can save it. You’ll have to treat the nasal passage with antibiotic jelly constantly, like five times a day. And we’ll have to get the whole thing back under bandages.”

“Bandages? She’s got a preview tonight!”

“It’s very important that her nose remain completely immobile. Any kind of movement will re-tear the underlying tissue. It must be held still.”

“December 28th is her final show,” Miss K says. “After that, you can wrap her up like a mummy and put her head in a sarcophagus if you want.”

He snaps the pen light off and looks from Iris to Miss K. “Well there is one alternative if she’s determined to perform in this show.”

“She is,” Miss K says.

He goes to a cupboard and removes a large gray padded envelope, about the size of an open newspaper. “Inside this is a very thin sheet of plastic,” he says. “We heat it up with a hairdryer, believe it or not, and it becomes malleable. When it cools down, it’s stiff and will not soften again at any temperature. It becomes a very thin, transparent layer of plastic and will hold everything exactly in place until the nose is all healed.” He sits on a small stool and wheels over to Iris, the envelope under his arm. He points at Iris’s face and speaks to Miss K. “We can make a mask that goes from the bridge of her nose down over her cheekbones. It will end at the tip of the nose, here, so that you can apply the cream inside her nostrils and so that she can, you know, breathe.”

“But she’s got three different hairstyles in the show,” Miss K says. “How would this mask be held in place?”

He puts the envelope down, opens a drawer and takes out a silver tube with no label or writing on it. “Adhesive,” he says. “This is powerful stuff. With this, I could attach a five pound weight to her face and it wouldn’t come off for a week. A thin plastic mask, attached with this adhesive will basically meld to her skin.”

“Can we put makeup on the plastic?” Miss K asks.

“I don’t see why not,” he says.

********************

Miss K daubs and daubs with the pancake, but then switches to a thicker foundation which seems to do the trick. From up close, it’s obvious that the makeup is not on her skin, but at even a distance of six or seven feet, it’s hard to tell.

“Just stay away from people backstage,” Miss K says. “Keep your back turned as much as possible. If Rivette wants to do one of his group meetings, just stand in the back. He never has any notes for you anyway. From the stage, it’ll be invisible, I’m sure of it.”

Iris knows she can’t hide it from the other dancers, but she thinks maybe people will be too polite to mention it. At least, that’s what she hopes.

In the dressing room, Miss K continuously fusses over Iris's hair and costume so no one can get close enough to notice the mask. Finally, "Silent Night" starts to play over the monitors, quickly followed by the stage manager calling Currier and Ives to the stage. Iris finds her partner Brian waiting in the hallway to walk her down. He smiles, greets her, then stares at the mask for a long moment. He almost says something else, but sees Miss K glowering behind Iris, and decides not to.

Backstage, the dancers wait while the nativity scene is struck in blackout and the animals are dragged into their mobile pens. The dancers move out behind the Currier and Ives sets and take their places in the wings. The whole changeover happens in under six seconds. Soft blue lights come up, projecting a tree-branch gobo pattern on the white stage floor, which suggests a frozen pond bordered on one side by a real fence and a small snowy incline. On the backdrop, there’s part of a quaint village next to a meadow and forest all covered in sparkling snow.

Three kids from the children’s choir, appropriately dressed in antique winter wear, run across behind the fence, pretending to have a snowball fight. The first skater comes on and does some practice turns as a bass line burbles up from the pit accompanied by vibes, and then some tinkling percussion as more and more dancers come onto the pond with hand muffs and scarves.

Finally, Brian and Iris enter, and everyone starts to move in sync to the orchestra’s jazzy, three-quarter time rendition of “We Three Kings.” Iris is tossed into the air and Brian catches and spins her around sliding her feet across the stage floor. They lunge and charge in a flirtatious back-and-forth under the watchful eye of the spotlight. The other skaters move from a big circle to a background corps behind Brian and Iris.

They’ve just started the main section of their duet when shouting can be heard. They chug across the stage in alternating arabesques, arms crossed and holding hands as the shouts get louder and more defined. It’s not directed at them, Iris thinks, it’s someone yelling at the orchestra to stop playing, which it eventually does. The dancers go on in silence for a few counts and then stop too.

Iris holds up her hand to block the spotlight and see what’s going on in the pit, but it’s just musicians staring at Carlo Rivette, who climbs onto the stage, red-faced. He stands and walks toward Brian and Iris, actually trembling with rage. He stops in front of Iris and stares at her for a second or two. “What…in the name of God…is on your face, Miss St. John?”

Iris’s knees buckle and she takes hold of Brian’s shoulder to keep from collapsing. Everyone stares at her. Her mouth opens but nothing comes out.

The furious choreographer is too impatient to wait for an answer. “Why are you wearing something on your face that reflects the spotlight like a goddamned mirror? This is the preview performance of the Clowes Christmas Pageant, not the time to try some newfangled beauty mask! No! Off now! Get that thing off your face so that we can continue.”

Iris’s fingertips find the edge of the mask at her cheek and they try to dig in underneath it without success. There’s some murmuring among the dancers behind her as her fingernails finally get under the edge of the mask.

“Is that thing actually glued to your face?” Carlo asks, shocked and outraged. “Get it off Miss St. John.” He watches her tug at it for a moment, then steps toward her shouting, “OFF! NOW! GET IT OFF!”

She hears Miss K’s voice objecting from backstage, but Iris has a good grip on the mask now and she rips it off her face. A blast of pure pain shoots through her head and a long moment of silence passes and then she hears applause. Or, no, it’s a splatter sound. It takes her a moment to realize that it’s blood—her blood—hitting the stage.

One dancer screams and another collapses to the floor. Iris looks down at the inside of the mask and sees a bloody hunk of flesh in the nose-pocket. She looks up at Carlo, whose face is no longer red but a withering shade of white. He steps back. She looks at Brian, but he doesn’t seem to be able to process what he’s seeing.

Iris drops the mask and notices that she’s gotten blood on her costume. She leans forward so that it will fall directly onto the stage instead and everything seems to tilt. Hands take her shoulders and steady her. It’s Brian, coming out of his trance. Miss K is there on stage shouting, barking orders at people.

The curtain closes.

********************

The next forty-eight hours are a fog of pain, doctors, drugs, lights, injections, and sterile rooms. Iris is vaguely aware of Miss K lying to hospital staff to get her out. She tells them that the very-wealthy St. John family wants to fly Vanessa back to the west coast to see specialists. Her face is almost entirely wrapped in bandages with a huge wad of gauze and antibacterial-soaked pads in the hole where her nose used to be.

Miss K gets Iris out of the hospital and into a cab, but they’re not going to Laguardia, as she told the hospital administrator, they’re going back to their dingy two-room apartment. Iris can tell, even in her drugged state, that Miss K is drunk.

They somehow make it up the stairs and Miss K puts her in the bed, not on the couch where she usually sleeps. Pain wakes her and she doesn’t know what day it is or what time of day. She thinks she’s alone in the room, but when she climbs out of bed and opens the curtains, Miss K groans. She’s on a chair in the corner, an empty bottle on the table beside her.

“Close the curtains, would ya? Jesus Christ, I can’t face the sunlight today. I’ll tell you what I want to do, I want to sit right here in the dark. It’s all over, honey. Let’s call this our tomb, huh? Seal it up and put up a plaque. Here lie two schmucks who believed, for one glimmering moment, that they could get somewhere in life. They were wrong. Close ’em all the way, would ya? I mean, my God, the light looks wrong doesn’t it? It looks like liquid contempt.”

Miss K rubs her face with both hands then props her head up, her elbows on her knees. “Your pain pills are on the dresser there,” she says. “The doc said to take two at a time.” Iris opens the bottle and shakes two capsules into her hand, then goes to the bathroom to get a glass of water.

Miss K keeps talking, she can’t help it. “I suppose the papers have come out with the reviews of the Christmas Pageant. Jesus, I hope it’s a flop.” She groans as Iris comes back into the dark room. “While you were unconscious, I called a lawyer. Two actually. They both told me the same thing. We don’t have a case because you did it to yourself. In front of hundreds of witnesses no less. Why, honey? Why’d you do it? Did you do it to spite your face? Or to spite that so-called choreographer?” Miss K laughs bitterly as Iris gets back under the covers. “Did you see the man’s face? I thought he was going to piss his pants. Well, you showed him, sweetheart. You should’ve taken a bow.” Miss K goes on chattering but Iris comprehends none of it.

********************

The phone wakes her awhile later and she’s dimly aware that Miss K is speaking with Jerry Burke. Their conversation seems all mixed-up to Iris, but it’s something about her career and fulfilling the terms of their contract and about “nurturing new talent.” Miss K says she’ll be at the theater in fifteen minutes and hangs up the phone. Iris sits up trying to clear the cobwebs from her mind. She pulls the covers back and puts one foot, then the other down onto the carpet. She stands on shaky pins.

“What are you doing?” Miss K asks when she notices. “No, no, no, you lie back down. You’re not going anywhere. Jerry wants me to go to the theater to work with that girl. Your understudy. I guess she’s got no one to help her with hair and makeup and quick changes and all. Poor kid, she’s only sixteen-years-old and I guess she’s a little overwhelmed. Jerry says she needs mentoring—whatever that means. You stay put and rest.”

She gently pushes Iris back into the bed. “I’ll be back later, don’t worry,” she says. “Just lie back down. That’s it. Now listen to me carefully. Your pain pills are right there at the bedside table with a big glass of water, but only take two! There are enough pills there to kill you dead, but don’t even think about it. I know the future looks bleak, being penniless and deformed and all, but ending your life on purpose is a sin. It’s like telling the whole world that you hate it and everyone in it, and you don’t want to do that, do you? You never know, some miracle could happen that would make your life tolerable again. Just take two of those pills when the pain gets to you and pray for a miracle. I don’t want to come home and find you’ve done something stupid, okay?”

Iris watches Miss K bustle around, trying to get herself together, and something about it strikes her funny. Miss K stops cold and stares at Iris until her laughter subsides.

********************

“Jerry Burke is our hero, darling! He just swept in and saved the day,” Miss K comes in with a cigarette burning, bubbling over in a state of what Iris immediately identifies as post-performance euphoria. “It’s all settled. From now on, I’ll be managing Sarah Warren. She’s a raw talent, not a seasoned performer like you, but she’s very good. Her personality shines through. You feel like you know her just from watching her dance. And the best part of this new arrangement is that Jerry has given us the opportunity to get clear of everything we owe him. Don’t look so surprised—we hadn’t paid back a tenth of what that surgery cost. I can’t carry that debt into this new venture with Sarah Warren, it wouldn’t be fair to her. But it’s okay, you can pay Jerry back with one night’s work. He’s falling back on the nudity angle, it’s true, but the beautiful thing is that this show is just about your body, not your face. You’ll be in a mask the whole time. It’s not even a performance really, they just want a sort of human prop at a big to-do full of rich men. It’s a private party and they’re paying top dollar. No rehearsals either. You just stand there nude in a mask and all our debts disappear. I know it’s disappointing, but you’re hardly the first girl to come to the city with dreams of stardom only to see it all turn to shit. After this one, single performance, you’ll be free. Then you can go back home to your father and rebuild your life. I’m sure some surgeon somewhere will be able to help. I mean come on, don’t look at me like that. It’s a hard world and we’ve all gotta bear up. When someone throws you a life preserver, you gotta grab it with both hands. Eventually you’ll see, it’s lucky this whole thing. You’re really a very lucky girl. You could be working as a waitress to pay back that debt for the next ten years. This way, you pay it all off in one night!”

********************

The next day, the pills run out and Miss K switches to injections. She administers them twice a day—one at mid-morning, and one when she gets back from the theater late at night. It makes time plastic and Iris has no sense of what day it is or how long she’s been in the room. Interrogating her memory, she thinks she’s gotten over twenty shots.

“This is the last one,” Miss K says to her one night as she prepares the syringe. “Tonight’s the night.” She’s come from the theater with a shopping bag. Inside is a white mask that looks like a doll’s face and a long black robe. Miss K lays them out on the bed.

She injects Iris and then gets the bathwater running as Iris lays back and blinks into a deep slumber. She wakes to Miss K pulling her clothes off. “Come on, we’ve gotta clean you up and get you into a presentable state. I don’t think Jerry’s friends are paying thousands of dollars to look at the naked body of a sasquatch.” She half drags, half limps Iris into the bathroom and helps her into the soapy hot water, careful not to wet the bandages covering her head.

Iris seems to revive a bit and lets Miss K shave her legs and armpits. “You really need a shampoo, but we’ll leave it alone. They probably won’t be looking at your hair.” She helps Iris out of the tub and sits her on the closed toilet and dries her with a towel. She leads Iris back to the bedroom and gets the black robe on her, cinching the sash tight but leaving the hood down. She sits Iris on the edge of the bed. “I’m taking the bandages off,” she says. “You just sit there and do nothing, okay?”

As Miss K unwraps Iris’s head, she gags at the smell. The large pad is stuck and she has to hold Iris’s head in place with one hand while she peels it off. She looks at Iris and an involuntary noise escapes her lips.

Iris gets up and moves toward the bathroom, but Miss K won’t let her pass. “What’s the point of looking, huh? It’s not good, but I’m sure it’s not as bad as it looks either. Come on, we’re late. Put the mask on—there’s a car waiting for you downstairs.” Miss K gently places the mask over Iris’s face and ties the ribbon in back. “There, does that hurt? Don’t cry, honey. If you start to cry, I’ll start to cry. I’m sorry things didn’t work out. You could’ve been one of the greats, I mean that. I’ve seen a lot of performers but you were the best of ’em. Really. You had a tough break—I don’t deny it for a second.” She pulls the hood up over Iris’s greasy hair and sighs. “But look at it this way: after tonight, you’ll be debt free. Not many people can say that. Afterward, get them to take you to a charity hospital—New York has a few—and they’ll fix you up. Just please, for everyone’s sake, use your real name. We’re retiring the name Vanessa St. John, okay? If the story ever got connected back to the Clowes Christmas Pageant, it would upset people.”

Miss K locks arms with Iris and they leave the apartment. They go down the stairs together, Iris barefoot, and out onto the cold sidewalk. There’s a big black Buick idling at the curb and a man in a chauffeur’s uniform comes around and opens the back door.

As Miss K helps Iris in, she notices a couple watching from across the street. She’s nervous about them for a second, but then remembers it’s New York City. A barefoot woman in a hooded robe and doll mask probably won’t be the strangest thing they see that night. She watches as the driver gets into the car and pulls away into traffic. A light snow begins to fall and a shiver goes through her whole body. More cold weather is coming, and she wonders if Sarah Warren has a heavy winter coat. She’ll have to ask the girl. If not, she’ll run to Macy’s between tomorrow’s shows to get her one.