Read Online The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty by Amanda Filipacchi - Free Book Online

in one another’s company. We cherish that sense of camaraderie and companionship. Everyone’s art mixes with and affects everyone else’s.
    Tonight, as usual, Lily, Georgia, Penelope, Jack, and I busy ourselves with various activities. I’m working on a pair of fantasy pants for a play. Georgia is mourning the loss of her novel by slowly flipping through the pages of her last novel. Penelope, hammer in hand, is finding new and delicate ways to break pots and balance their pieces back on one another in a deceptive appearance of wholeness. Jack is browsing through psychology magazines. And Lily is throbbing away at the piano, but today, instead of looking at her hands or at nothing in particular, her gaze is fixed on Jack, which I find peculiar. Jack notices it and starts making faces at her in an attempt to snap her out of her hypnotized stare.
    “Don’t mind me. It’s my new project,” Lily tells him, interrupting neither her playing nor her gazing.
    “Does your new project involve me, somehow?”
    “Yeah, I’m just practicing on you. I’m trying to beautify you.”
    He blinks quickly as he processes this information. “You don’t find me good-looking enough?”
    “Of course I do. I’m just trying to make you even better-looking. So get back to your reading and let me work.”
    Lily continues her playing and staring.
    After another half hour, Jack says, “It’s starting to hurt.”
    Lily stops playing. “You’re kidding!”
    “No.”
    “What hurts?”
    “My ego.”
    “Oh.” She instantly resumes playing.
    He adds, “To watch you trying to beautify me while wearing that frustrated expression makes me feel self-conscious and unattractive.”
    I KNOW I’M acting like a mother hen, but I call Lily before going to bed to make sure she’s okay. I keep thinking of Gabriel.
    “How are you holding up?” I ask.
    After a pause, she says, “Okay.”
    Her tone is odd. I don’t buy her reply. “How are you doing?” I ask, more slowly. “Really.”
    She’s silent, and then says, “Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing. It’s just . . .”
    “What?”
    “My hands . . . They’ve been strange today.”
    “Strange? How?”
    “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
    “That’s okay.” I add, “No, I won’t.”
    “Okay . . . After I saw you in the park this afternoon, I came home and I started playing the piano. As you know, I was really depressed. Well, I gave in to that feeling, I sank into it. And something scary happened.”
    “What?”
    “My hands started changing,” she says.
    “They did?”
    “Yes. They became gray and shiny. And they felt different. Sort of empty. Or hollow.”
    Now I’m the one who’s silent. I finally say, “Gray and shiny?”
    “Yeah . . . Kind of like silver.”
    “Are you exaggerating?”
    “Do I ever exaggerate?”
    I think about it. “No.”
    “I’m actually understating it,” she says. “Because then my hands became worse. They got shinier, until they were very reflective, like mirrors.” She is silent, as though waiting for me to react. But I don’t know what to say, so finally she asks, “You do believe me?”
    “Yes,” I say, not technically lying. Sure, I believe that her hands were reflective—reflective of her mental state, a mental state which concerns me greatly. “And do you have any idea what triggered this?” I ask.
    “I think my mood.”
    “What was your mood, exactly?”
    “I told you. Extremely sad.”
    “Do you know what the reflectiveness was?”
    “It felt like death. As though it was trying to take hold of me. And the worst part was, I was tempted to let it, because it was a welcome relief. But then I resisted it and it went away.”
    THAT MAKES ME think of Gabriel, of course. I’m still thinking about him the next day when I check the mail and, to my surprise, I have another letter from him:
    Dear Barb, Georgia, Lily, Penelope, and Jack,
    One of you, in addition to Barb, was my very close friend. Our friendship