No Eliza Doolittle
I delivered a crisp white Avon bag to Eliza, the Kilt Man's "whatever" last Thursday. I wore my best black low-cut sundress for the occasion, the one with spaghetti straps and a built-in bra and a slit up the left side clear to the panty line. I don't have towering height or cascading glamour locks or freckles and dimples like Eliza, but I do have an advantage in one department. Cleavage. I added lipstick the color of black cherries and smudgy blue eyeliner and electric blue seashell Avon flip-flops and those new dangly pink teardrop earrings from Avon's Mark jewelry collection. And yeah, I looked hot, for a big-nosed mom of four.
I drove to Eliza's house and wondered why I took the trouble to look like an Avon Red Light District makeover, why I left my kids with the neighbor, why I spritzed her bag of goodies with Today fragrance and stuck a butterfly sticker on the thank you card inside. Ah, who am I kidding? I knew exactly why I did these things.
I drove to the neighborhood bordering the north lagoon, and maneuvered, map in hand, to her house. It was a small brown house, almost a cottage, between two identical homes, but the simple exterior didn't fool me. I knew these homes among the reeds and pelicans of the north lagoon cost nearly a million dollars. I walked past the eerie witch twisted juniper trees and knocked.
Eliza took her time answering the door. I could hear someone walking around the house, footsteps on wood or tile floor, one way, then another, not a straight beeline for the knock. I knocked again. She opened the door, in a simple navy shift, which for all of it's shapeless wonder looked tens times more classy and elegant and yes, even ten times more sexy, than my KMart sundress. I still have the better cleavage, I thought, and held out her bag of blush and sundries.
"Hey! Thanks for ordering these things at my wing ding. It was nice to meet you. Sorry about all the commotion. Right before you arrived one of the neighbor's dogs got loose and we were just cleaning up." I looked up at her face as I spoke. My eyes were at the height of her neck bones, and she licked her teeth as I spoke, once, twice, three times. Man, what a bad habit, I muttered to myself. Maybe this is why she's not living with Kilt Man. I don't even know his name, I thought, I don't know his name and have seen him three times and I dressed like one of those women who tries to look twenty years younger and fails, not in the lipstick or dress or earrings, but in the combination, the way they don't add up to Audrey Hepburn or Sharon Stone or even the third runner up at the county fair. Eliza licked her teeth once more and took the bag from my hands.
"How much do I owe you?"
So cool and collected and charming and demure, and damn, I just wanted to de-Pygmalion her into someone more like me, someone who would have laughed and tried to make a joke and invited me in all too hastily, tripping on the way. But Eliza just picked up a cultured leather pouch of a purse and extracted the most sleek bronze checkbook in the world, and wrote out the exact amount due in a measured flourish while I stared at her alabaster skin and tried to determine the vanilla scent of her tasteful cologne. She handed the check to me, licked her teeth, and gave me a gentle grin.
"Eric says you seem like quite the enterprising woman."
Eric! His name is Eric! He talked about me!
"So, how long have you two been dating?" I asked, putting the check in my purse, trying to sound like I didn't give two rips about their dating history, as if asking a virtual drop dead beautiful stranger about her relationships was normal small talk.
"No honey, you misunderstand. I'm his ex-wife."
I grinned all the way home, doing a little butt dance and shoulder shimmy in my car, singing along to the 80s hits playing on the radio. I stopped at a light and glanced in my rear view mirror, ready to wink at my lovely Avon reflection, and realized just why Eliza had that bad habit. Red dark cherry lipstick smeared along my top teeth, in a Rorschach blotch of lust and wonder.
1:32:39 PM 
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