Elizabeth wrapped a lock of hair around the curling iron and waited for it to set into a long corkscrew curl. Her hair was stick straight and never could hold a curl. She expected that the curls on the left side of her head, where she had started, would have all fallen out by the time she worked her way around to the other side. Even so, the glory of her period costume demanded an attempt at an ersatz period hairdo.
She admired herself in the old and spotty mirror of the vanity. The blue silk robe suited her wonderfully, even with straight hair. She had a linen shift next to her skin, over which went the stays and petticoats, and the robe over it all with the stomacher fastened in front. The top of the shift formed a lacy white border above the bodice and its billowing sleeves showed like clouds at her elbows from beneath the robe's short sleeves. The robe did not go up past her shoulders; without the shift, she would have had quite a délletage.
She carefully unwound her hair from the curling iron and smoothed the warm curl before starting another one. This was going to take forever. She sighed, or tried to. Alice had insisted on lacing up the stays much more tightly than she would have preferred. Elizabeth was starting to feel slightly dizzy from her reduced oxygen intake. She wondered at the fortitude of her forebears.
"How could they stand to wear these everyday?" She spoke aloud as she rapped her knuckles on the stays.
"They didn't necessarily," said Penrose. He looked up from his book. "At home a lady might wear something rather like a dressing gown, and without stays."
"Why didn't you find me one of those in the trunk?" she asked pettishly.
"I don't think there is one, actually. You'll just have to manage with that. It's only for a few hours, after all."
"Easy for you to say," she said and started another curl.
Dirk wandered into her room to ask her advice about some accessories. "I found this sword in the umbrella stand. How do I fasten it on my belt?"
She looked helplessly over at Penrose who gave her the information she needed, adding, "That's a Civil War saber. It doesn't quite go."
Dirk was going for the cavalier look. He had on a wig of long, dark, curly hair and, tucked beneath one arm, he carried a plumed hat like the one Alice had found for herself. A luxuriant mustache, courtesy of Alice's eyeliner, curled across his upper lip. He wore an open jerkin over a doublet with the petticoat breeches rounding out the outfit below. The white linen shirt was the only plain item. The doublet was blue and embroidered with gold, and his breeches were pink and trimmed with red and yellow ribbons.
The saber now hanging beside one thigh, Dirk cocked a hip and pretended to twirl his mustache. "What do you think? I look like the king?"
"Certainly. It's too bad we didn't find a crown for you."
Bob and Alice came in, Alice swaggering in her boots. She too had found a cavalry saber and between that and her cat's tail she was having trouble fitting through the doorways. Between her clumsiness with the accessories and the sniffles she had developed over the last day, the valiant effect was rather diminished. Bob wore his plain russet doublet over jeans and a T-shirt.
"Aren't you done with your hair yet?" Alice demanded.
"Obviously not." Elizabeth indicated the hank of straight hair that still hung down to her shoulder on one side. "I'll be done soon."
"I hope so. It's starting to get dark and the trick-or-treaters will be coming around any minute now," she snuffed and wiped her nose with a handkerchief the size of a flag.
The others hung around for awhile to keep Elizabeth company, but when the doorbell rang they all ran downstairs and left her with the curling iron. And Penrose.
At last she had a complete set of curls all the way around her head. She switched off and unplugged the curling iron. Rising from the low seat before the vanity, she shook out her skirts. "What do you think?"
He put down his book and came over to her, making mocking critical sounds. "All you're missing is a big lump of false hair on the back of your head. And proper shoes."
Elizabeth raised her skirt a few inches and pointed a toe shod with a very twenty-first century pump. Penrose had found some seventeenth century ladies' shoes, the sight of which made her feet ache. They were high-heeled and straight-lasted, meaning that the left and right shoes were the same shape. She said, "The stays are bad enough. I'm not going to suffer sore feet and sore ribs both."
"You couldn't pass for a princess without sore feet." Lips twisting in a wry smile, he asked, "If your sister's Puss in Boots, Dirk is the king, and so on, then who am I?"
"The ogre in the castle," she said, holding out her hand playfully.
"You are too kind, my lady." He reached out his own hand. When his fingertips brushed hers, she pulled her hand back with a start at the cold. It was like touching dry ice. Putting his hands behind his back, he went on, "Of course, if I'm the ogre, then that means your sister gets to eat me." He leered at her and vanished.
To the space where he had been, she complained, "Asshole! Yeah, it's easy to get the last word when you can disappear into thin air."
"Uh, Elizabeth?" Bob was standing in the doorway.
"I'm all ready now," she said brightly, wondering how much of that last exchange he had heard. "How do you think my hair turned out?" She tossed her head and patted the bottom of the curls with the palm of her hand.
"You look nice," he said. He tilted his head to one side as if he were about to speak further.
Fearing that he would ask her why she had been talking to herself, she did not give him a chance and walked quickly to the door, her heels tapping as she passed from the carpet to the pine boards. She smiled up at him and he offered her his arm. She was grateful for the support when she walked down the front stairs. The stays forced her body into an unyielding posture and made it difficult to keep her balance. She had to descend with a slow stately gait.
The front door was open and crowded with a group of children who squirmed and cried out at the sight of her. "It's Lady Luck!"
Alice was holding a basket of candy and she rapidly distributed a piece into each pillowcase and paper bag held up before her. The children were so overwhelmed at the sight of Elizabeth that they forgot about moving on to the next household. Alice could not shoo them from the porch to make way for the next crowd until Elizabeth came to the doorway so they could see her better.
Elizabeth walked out onto the porch and looked out over the shadowy park. Herds of children were going from house to house all around the edge of the park. Some were in costume as superheroes and their favorite cartoon characters and others, who had probably come down from the housing projects, were simply bundled up in their coats and had their faces painted.
Many of the houses were in costume too, with ghosts and polyester cobwebs draped across the porches and glowing jack o' lanterns sitting on the steps. In their own front windows, Dirk knelt beside the jack o' lanterns they had carved two nights before and carefully placed votive candles inside them.
Another wave of children flowed up the front steps and Alice and Bob began distributing candy and complimenting the children on their costumes. A little boy with Frankenstein's monster scars painted on his face giggled when Alice hid here eyes in mock fright before dropping a handful of Sweet Tarts in his plastic pumpkin.
Elizabeth was overcome with shyness when the eyes of the children lit upon her. She gave them a royal wave, the light bulb twisting kind, and they all waved back. The children were similarly struck speechless. The fancy dress was more intimidating than her sister with cat ears and a sword.
"We're almost out of candy already," Alice wheezed. "Can you run back and get some more? There's about ten pounds of it in the butler's pantry."
Elizabeth squeezed past the others and walked back to the kitchen as hastily as her clothing allowed. She paused to catch her breath in the dining room.
"I wouldn't last ten minutes in the seventeenth century," she said out loud.
Someone chuckled in response. As she turned around, she heard a catlike tread upon her stealing, something heavy and soft moving across the floor. When she stopped moving, the noise stopped. She saw nothing in the darkening room. Suddenly she felt a pressure against her side, as of a heavy hand on her waist. The pressure began to move upwards. She slapped away the unseen hands.
"This isn't funny, Penrose," she said, knowing somehow that this wasn't his style. She rubbed her thumb against the tips of her fingers, remembering how they had been frosted by the chill that always enveloped Penrose. The pressure had felt warm.
Her ears strained to hear anything, even the sounds of the other's voices in the front of the house, but the dining room was dead to all sounds from outside its walls. It was not dead to smells, however. Her nostrils flared when she caught the scent of something organic, like vegetation baking in the sun on a hot summer day, only a less healthy, petrochemical sort of smell.
She looked up at the velvet Elvis in its shadowy spot beyond the ping-pong table. His white jumpsuit glimmered palely. This time it did not flap in an invisible draft, but she was willing to blame it for everything anyway.
"You're looking a little plumper, Elvis," she said as she walked slowly towards it, "or more like Andy Kaufman, either one. Are you the one who's been eating our food? Oh!" Remembering her original errand, she left Elvis to his textile musings and scurried back into the kitchen.
The butler's pantry was as empty as it had been that morning. She turned on the lights and checked in each cupboard and under the desk. No candy. For good measure, she looked around in the kitchen and on the back porch, but not a single Sweet Tart was to be found.
Elizabeth hurried back to the front door, this time not cutting through the dining room and taking the hallway instead.
"We just ran out," Alice greeted her. "Couldn't you find the candy? It was out on the shelves."
"There isn't any candy," Elizabeth said. "Are you sure you got any?"
"I got, like, five pounds of Reese's Cups. It couldn't possibly have disappeared. Oh no!"
Another wave of children approached the house. They all dashed inside and shut off the porch light.
Dirk scolded Alice. "I told you two pounds would not be enough. You probably forgot to go get more."
"I did so get more!" Alice defended herself. "Like two weeks ago. The candy's been sitting in there all this time."
Their voices rose and Dirk began to lapse into the Mr. Hyde persona that had intermittently afflicted him since their shoe disposal escapade. "Somebody has to run and get more now," said Dirk. "If we're the only house on the block that's not giving out candy, they'll get vicious. And go take a decongestant, for heaven's sake!"
"I'll go," said Bob. He started to pull off the doublet.
"Don't bother with that. Just go," said Alice. She tried to push him towards the door.
"I'm not going out in public like this."
"I'll go with you," offered Elizabeth. "With me in this getup, no one will look twice at you."
Bob grabbed his keys from the hall table and they hurried out to his car, a battered green Chevette. Elizabeth was doing better with the stairs now, but still had to catch herself on the railing when she would have fallen headlong into a crowd of trick-or-treaters. He opened the passenger side door and helped her bundle her skirts inside, then ran around and hopped into the driver's seat.