“Really? You’re feeling an urgent need to take me there? That’s great. Let’s go!”

She laughs.

“Can we go to the place where the mask comes off?” he asks.

She studies him. “Yes.” She gets up.

Lily leads him to her apartment. Fortunately, she doesn’t have to worry about him remembering it as “Lily’s” apartment, because it’s not the same apartment he visited a couple of years ago when he lay on her floor and told her he’d fall in love with (and marry) any woman who could create music that beautified the world.

Nevertheless, she is worried. She’s afraid that something in her home will give away her true identity. She spent the last few days taking precautions, guarding against this danger. She removed her name from the buzzer. She carefully hid all her mail and documents with her name on them. She moved her piano and musical books to a tiny spare room, and locked the door.

She never in her life had kept any photos of herself on display—not seeing the point of living among reminders of her ugliness—but still, she made doubly sure before Strad came over that she hadn’t left a snapshot lying around. She had discovered, through experimentation, that the music she’d created to beautify herself also beautified photographs of herself—but as the music might not be playing during the entirety of Strad’s visit, the last thing she wanted was for a photo to be changing throughout the evening, depending on whether the music was on or off.

When Strad and Lily enter her apartment, she closes the door behind them. She turns on her soul-stripping music, which is wired to play in all the rooms whenever it’s turned on (except the bathroom, unfortunately), and waits until she’s sure the music has taken its effect before removing her mask. She opens a bottle of wine and they sit together on the couch.

Seeing him reclined there, she becomes sad just looking at him, at how beautiful he is to her, at how often she’s dreamed about him, at how much she loves him. She is painfully aware that his happiness at sitting here with her, his desire to touch her, is not something she was born to experience in the natural world.

She must have looked sad, because he finally asks, “Are you okay?”

“Not really,” she says. “I’m a bit overwhelmed.”

“I’m not attractive enough for you, right? I know I’m not good enough for you.”

“No, you’re wrong. I find your face very moving.”

“Are you mocking me?”

He looks at her and sees tears in her eyes.

“You’re not,” he says, perplexed.

She shakes her head.

He descends upon her. They kiss passionately, each with their own personal desperation. He basks in the sight of her face, running his fingers through her hair, devouring her with his eyes, and then with his mouth, and again with his eyes. Before long, they move to the bedroom. He undresses her quickly. Even though their passion is frantic, every second is slowed in her mind, and she has time to relish the caresses. She hugs the body she craved for years, the body that never wanted her and still wouldn’t if she hadn’t worked beyond sanity to warp reality.

Afterward, he notices blood on the sheets. “Oh. You have your period?”

“No,” she says.

He frowns. “That’s strange,” he mutters. And then he opens his eyes wide and looks at her. “Were you a virgin?”

“Yes.”

“Why me?”

“You’re my type.”

“No one else was your type before me?”

“Not so much.”

“I hope this isn’t some elaborate and cruel prank because I’m not so bad of a person to deserve it.”

Chapter Fourteen

During the next two weeks, Lily and Strad see each other almost every day. He treats her with tender devotion. She never dreamed he could be so gentle and loving.

He’s always touching her, caressing her, which she loves. She’s hardly ever been touched before. In fact, she was so touch-deprived that she used to derive inordinate pleasure from the handling of her hands during a manicure. And now he’s constantly grabbing her around the waist, kissing her, hugging her, cupping her breasts, and then jokingly saying things like, “Oops, I’m sorry, am I molesting you? You’d tell me if it bothered you, right?” They laugh. To her, it’s heaven.

When she’s home with a bad cold, he brings her large containers of wonton soup and urges her to drink a lot of it. He buys her homeopathic medications, takes her temperature and gives her foot rubs.

When they go to parties, they stay in a corner, people-watching and whispering. She finds his take on everyone entertaining and witty. Much whispering is done about them, too, of course, as she’s wearing a mask. They have such a great connection. Why couldn’t this kind of connection have existed if she hadn’t become beautiful? Why is it that a connection that seems to have nothing to do with looks—because it feels so much deeper than that, like a connection of minds and souls—is actually entirely dependent on looks?

She realizes she may be in for some serious suffering once he discovers the truth about her—and she does think he will learn it, sooner or later, one way or another, perhaps even from her.

She and Strad are so often together that she doesn’t find many opportunities to work on the piece that will give permanence to her new beauty.

Much of their time is spent at her place; that’s where she feels most comfortable replacing her mask with her music.

“I love making you laugh; you’re so beautiful when you laugh,” he tells her. “But you’re so beautiful when you don’t laugh, too. And when you look sad.”

She laughs.

Strad notices she always has the same piece of music playing. Granted, it’s a very nice piece, and long, and with lots of variations, but still. He asks if he can choose the music, from time to time. She says no.

“That’s not totally fair,” he says.

“I know. But it’s my only unfair thing. You can have one, too, if you want.”

“Can I choose all the movies we watch?”

“Yes.”

“And all the TV programs?”

“Yes.”

Each night, she insists on sleeping alone in her bedroom. She gives him the choice of sleeping on her foldout couch or going home. She sees no alternative—she practiced sleeping with her mask on, but found it too uncomfortable. As for the option of letting the music play all night, she wouldn’t get any sleep, too worried that the music might stop for whatever reason.

Most nights, Strad chooses the couch. After two weeks of this arrangement, he becomes more persistent in his questioning. But Lily remains evasive.

He tells her he’d like to take her to the birthday party of a friend of his. She says okay. He says he’d like her to go without the mask. She says that’s impossible. He gently but firmly wants to know why. She says she will try to tell him soon.

He knows she’s a fragile soul—just as I had warned him—and he loves that about her. To be with a girl possessed of beauty so great that it has screwed her up to this degree is thrilling. Girls of this sort are rare. Guys lucky enough to get those girls are even rarer. Strad got lucky. He knows that. Nevertheless, he wants to understand her better. So he keeps asking questions.

On her end, Lily has been trying to come up with plausible explanations, though without much success. Narrative invention is not her forte. She knows that sooner or later she’ll have to ask the expert for some ideas.

OUR WHOLE GROUP, including Peter, is gathered at our beloved restaurant, Artisanal, for our annual holiday dinner. We’re seated at a round table.

“Strad wants to know why I always wear the mask outside our apartments. Any thoughts?” Lily asks Georgia.

“I’ll think about it and try to come up with something,” Georgia says. “But I have to warn you, it’ll have to be melodramatic and sentimental to be effective with Strad. You may balk.”