S.E.C.R.E.T. Revealed (Secret 3)

d soon. Well maybe not we. I needed to bring him before he got too old to want to travel alone with his boring, old mother.

I was never much of a shopper, but I could see how Paris could ruin a woman. I started to covet things I had never looked twice at before—dramatic hats, expensive purses, even a stunning cream-colored wedding dress with lace sleeves and a satin sash that was the same price my dad paid for our house on State Street, back when he bought it in the ’60s. It was all too much, too beautiful and too heady.

I grabbed lunch at a café under a vivid yellow-and-white awning. Next to me was a table of shopgirls on break, smoking and gossiping in French. How was it possible that Parisian women could make such a filthy addiction look so damn chic? All day it was hard to find a woman in Paris who didn’t have it going on, whether it was a perfectly placed scarf, or good bangs or just the right shoes. Women here seemed to enjoy and know how to be women. Even the older ones I saw laughed loud and long, their wide-open mouths displaying a crooked tooth here and there. Gray hair abounded, lipstick was smeared, shoes were scuffed, and yet they all seemed so feminine and so beautiful. Could I do that? Could I have the courage to age beautifully and honestly without Marsha’s frets about being a woman working in television and struggling to remain young-looking forever? I hoped so. Again, I thought about the women in S.E.C.R.E.T., marveling at Matilda’s striking agelessness and that of the other women I remembered from my induction, none of whom seemed the type to lose much sleep over wrinkles or gray hair.

On my way back to the hotel, this time taking the crowded Champs-Élysées, I wondered what Gus and his dad were doing and if Gus would go to bed without a fuss. I missed them, and yet slipping naked between the cool sheet and the heavy duvet, I couldn’t have felt more serene.

The serenity didn’t last. After that decadent nap and a long bath, the kind I hadn’t enjoyed since before Gus, there was a knock on my door. This time it wasn’t the bellhop but a tiny, very pretty black woman with a short red afro. She looked vaguely familiar, standing there holding heavy garment bags slung over one arm, and in the crook of the other, a big doctor’s bag of sorts. If she let go of either, she’d tip over.

She screamed by way of saying hello. “Ahh! You probably don’t remember me,” she said in English, stepping around me into the room.

I did recognize her. She was followed by a bellhop rolling in a tray of cheese, bread, fruit and champagne on ice.

“Oh, you have a suite!” she squealed. “Not that I’m complaining about my room.”

She hoisted the bags onto the bed, then turned and noticed my mouth was still agape.

“Jeez. You don’t remember me.” She handed the bellhop a fist of euros, and waited for him to disappear before continuing in a dramatic whisper. “I’m Bernice. We met when you—I’m from S.E.C.R.E.T., hon. I’m here to prep you. For tonight!”

“Right!”

I could have kissed her. It was so nice to have someone from “home” here, and I was enveloped by an overwhelming sense of calm. She hung up the garment bags, then threw open the valise.

“Makeup and hair now, dress later. I brought a few for you to choose from.”

“What’s the scenario?”

She made a sad face. “Oh, Solange. We’ve had to warn you about so many of your fantasies ahead of time, because of your job and being a mom and everything. Let’s have some surprises, shall we?” she said, lowering me to the seat in front of the dressing table mirror.

I’d had hair and makeup people hovering around my head for most of my professional life, but it had never felt like this, so loving and caring. I was Bernice’s personal work of art, and my hair and makeup wasn’t just a job or a task; it was her artistic mission to make me beautiful.

Normally I wore my hair in a conservative kind of bob—“newslady hair,” Julius affectionately called it. It wasn’t the sexiest choice, but it was good for work and easy to maintain. But Bernice asked me how I used to wear my hair back in my college days.

“Big,” I said, making a motion to indicate out to here.

“Yes!” she said, wetting and spraying and teasing and cultivating and curling my hair into a masterful homage to Miss Ross herself. My hair was so big and wild when she finished I swear she added weight as well as height to my dense curls. I hadn’t worn my hair like this in decades, and it seemed to shave years off my face.

“Now, let’s pick the dress. Then lipstick. Yeah?”

There were a half-dozen couture dresses and they all fit perfectly. The low-cut navy number was made with this shimmery Lycra material that felt incredible on my skin, but I was all nipples and ass in it. You could even see the outline of my belly button.

“Nope.”

The gold lamé minidress made me gasp it was so unbearably sexy. But then I bent to check how much it covered while sitting.

“That’s gorgeous, Solange.”

I gave her my best are you fucking kidding me face and strutted back to the bathroom to change. The silver dress was too Dynasty in the shoulders, though I loved how it scooped down the back. Both the little black dress and the puffy pink one did nothing for me. Last was a deep red satin gown that didn’t just fit, it encased me. It held me. It made my body appear taller and stronger than it really was, my arms longer, my legs endless.

“Stunning,” Bernice said, adjusting the spaghetti straps, zipping the dress up the back.

The finishing touch was red lipstick so glossy my mouth looked like it’d been dipped in a pot of slick candy-apple glaze.

The front desk called to tell me my limo was waiting. I turned to Bernice.

“Here we go.”

“Knock ’em dead, Solange,” she said with a wink, hugging me good-bye loosely, not wanting to crush any aspect of the glittery masterpiece she’d created.