Page 127 of Frankly, My Dear

“But your skin always looks so…natural.”

“Oh, Lord, spare me from the blindness of men. Of course my skin looked natural. That’s the point of makeup.”

“It is?”

Selene exhaled loudly with impatience. “The bottom line here, James, is that I no longer have any makeup, and I’m probably going to be”—she gulped—“homely.”

His lips twitched with a smile.

“And you probably won’t love me anymore when I’m homely.” Her voice cracked with what was undoubtedly going to be the onslaught of another bout of tears.

“Selene, sweetheart, I think you’re beautiful, even without artifice.” He reached out, about to take her into his arms.

“How do you know?” she asked cautiously. “You’ve never seen me without makeup.”

“We could go to the bayou stream and wash your face. Then I could give you an honest appraisal,” he offered.

She lifted her eyebrows mockingly. “The bayou stream, huh? You wouldn’t be thinking of that spot with the herons, now would you, James? Really! You’ve got a one-track mind.”

“You liked that track last night,” he reminded her, moving closer.

“And I’m not blonde, either,” she commented irrelevantly, slipping out of his grasp.

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“If I were blonde, that would make up for not having makeup,” she said.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Did you hear about the seventy-five-year-old blonde woman who walked into a tavern with a pigeon on her head?”

“Now? You are going to tell blonde jokes now?”

“Don’t interrupt. Where was I? Oh, and then the seventy-five-year-old blonde with the pigeon on her head shouted, ‘Whoever can guess the weight of this bird gets to make love to me.’” Selene paused dramatically. “Way in the back of the tavern, a drunk shouted, ‘One thousand pounds.’”

“Oh, good Lord!”

“And the blonde said cheerfully, ‘Close enough!’”

Selene’s voice sounded thready and almost hysterical. Over makeup, for God’s sake!

James grinned and shook his head. “What’s the point, Selene? I don’t see a pigeon on your head.”

She laughed and backed up with a loud clang into the scales behind her.

“What are these?” she asked.

“The scales that we use to weigh the hogsheads of sugar.”

“Scales?” she said, eying them oddly. “Could a person weigh herself on one of these?”

“I suppose.”

Selene stepped up onto the scale, almost as if approaching a guillotine. “I guess I might as well get all the bad news in one day.”

He adjusted the weights and moved her so that she stood in the center of the scale. “One hundred and twenty-five pounds,” he announced.

“That’s impossible! Check again.”