Fatal Reaction

your mother’s going to be wherever you’re going, otherwise you wouldn’t be torturing yourself like this. What disease is it tonight? Muscular dystrophy? Cancer?”
    “Modem art. It’s the Benefactors’ Dinner for the new Museum of Contemporary Art.”
    Claudia responded by making snoring noises.
    “So what are you doing tonight?” I asked.
    “Packing. I’ve got an interview at Stanford on Monday for their fellowship program.”
    “Eye surgery?”
    “Surgery.”
    “I can’t see you in California.”
    “I can’t see you in an evening gown, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to put one on.” She eyed my dress that was hanging from the top of my closet door. “Is that what you’re going to wear?” she asked, rolling up the last section of hair.
    “Yeah.”
    “Can I see it?”
    “Sure. How long am I supposed to keep these things in for? My head is starting to get hot,” I complained.
    “Just be quiet and put your makeup on,” she said, climbing up on a chair to take down the dress. It was a deep copper color and the fabric had a dull metallic sheen to it, not enough to be shiny, but enough to catch the light when the fabric moved. It was off the shoulder with a set-in waist and a full skirt, much more dramatic than what I usually wear.
    “It’s gorgeous,” sighed my roommate, “but you didn’t buy this, did you?”
    “No, Mother ordered it for me when she was in Paris for the couture shows.”
    “How much does something like this cost?”
    “I don’t know for sure,” I said, concentrating on my mascara.
    “Ballpark?”
    “It’s better if you don’t know. I don’t want you throwing up right before you leave for your trip.”
    “I know it won’t fit me, but could I try it on?”
    I turned and looked at my roommate in surprise. “Of course.”
    Claudia quickly stripped out of her scrubs and kicked off her running shoes.
    “I don’t think I’ve ever worn a long dress,” she confided, slipping it off its hanger and holding it up to herself in front of the mirror. “That is, if you don’t count the times I wrapped an old tablecloth around my waist to play princess when I was little. It used to make my mother furious.” She undid the zipper and stepped into it.
    “Here,” I said, setting down my lipstick and turning to help her. “Let me zip you up.”
    The dress was so long it pooled around her ankles. I grabbed my evening pumps from the floor of my closet. “Put these on,” I instructed. Claudia slipped her tiny feet into my shoes. They were so big, she looked like a little girl playing dress-up. I stepped behind her and pulled the extra material back so that the dress appeared to fit smoothly in front.
    Claudia took her glasses off, revealing dark circles from hours spent in the OR, and squinted at her image in the mirror. “I feel just like Cinderella,” she announced.
    “Believe me,” I informed her sagely from over her shoulder. “Four hours in those shoes and you’ll feel like a tired old cleaning lady with arthritis waiting at the bus stop.”
     
    A city like Chicago erects a new museum perhaps only once a generation. As Stephen and I pulled up to the new Museum of Contemporary Art I felt fairly certain our grandchildren would someday stand on this very spot and wonder what on earth we must have been thinking. From the street it looked like something out of a scary Bauhaus dream. Everything about the building was hard and forbidding, from the mountain of knife-edged stairs leading up to the second-story entrance, to the cast-aluminum panels that covered the building like high-tech graham crackers.
    Even though the building had been lit up for the evening’s festivities and a red carpet laid down like a slash against the sharp limestone steps, I still felt like I was about to pay a visit to Dr. No. The building seemed as welcoming as a twenty-first-century jail—a feeling that was only reinforced by the phalanx of black-clad security guards with arms clasped behind their backs and black earpieces plugged into their ears. They looked like extras in a futuristic thriller.
    It was, I noted as we passed through the doors, not your usual benefit crowd. Besides the smattering of the old guard who’d turned out for Skip’s wife, and the lawyers from Callahan Ross and their sullen wives, it was definitely an arty group. There were lots of grayhaired men sporting ponytails, no doubt telling themselves that their black collarless shirts not only made them