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double make-it-up-to you.”  He was funny, I admitted to myself as I touched the fabric of the cocktail dresses, trying to imagine wearing anything that cost three month’s pay.  An overly made-up woman eyed us as Pax gesticulated with his shake. 
                  “Don’t you need to be back at your house helping Pym with the party?” I asked. 
                  “Nah.”  He plunked himself down on a tufted ottoman and leaned back.  We were the only two customers there.  “Pym’s a bit of a control freak.  Tonight I’ll do my thing.  Be Paxton Westerbrook, whatever the fuck that means.”  His face darkened for a moment.  “Hey, I can tell you’re not going to get into the swing of this.  Miss, excuse me.”  He called the anxious woman over.  “My friend, Amanda, here needs a dress for a fundraiser at my parents’ place tonight.  Can you suggest a few things?”
                  “I’d be delighted.” 
                  “Something simple,” I added, hoping that translated into cheap.
                  “Okay, fine,” he conceded.  “No feathers, no rhinestones and nothing that lights up.”
                  As I headed into the dressing room I wondered if perhaps this was what he wanted—to dress me up—and then undress me.  But he made no move to come in.  And a sliver of me was disappointed. 
                  “That’s it,” he said.  “That’s the winner.”  It was a mink brown halter, made out of silk .  It clung through the hips, then spun out into a circle skirt that ended at the knee. Elegant, classic, and sexy.
                  “Very light to pack, great for travel,” she said and I felt like maybe she was mocking me.  “Do you need shoes?”
                  “No.”
                  “Yes,” he said over me.  He was enjoying this more than I could figure out. 
                  “I feel like something horrible is happening,” I said when she left to fetch me some heels.
                  “Not the reaction I was expecting, but okay.”
                  “I mean, like, I’m going to take this and then somehow I’m saying it was okay, how Trevor behaved—how you behaved.  And I’ve been bought.  For a few hundred dollars.”
                  “Hey.”  He stood up and looked me squarely in the face, the glint in his eye extinguished.  “I’m someone who has done a lot of stupid shit.  And this could’ve just been one more thing—it almost was—that just gets stuck in my head like one of those pointy things you jab in a lobster claw, one more embarrassment.  But I—I don’t know why—I couldn’t let you be that.  So I’m trying.”  He stared in a way that paused my breath.  “And failing, clearly, but I’m trying.  Okay?” 
                  “Well, in that case, I think I also need some underwear that won’t show.”
                  “You got it.”
     
    I don’t remember what we talked about as we drove back—just that, given how different our upbringings had been, he was surprisingly easy to talk to.  Pym set me up in the pool house to shower and change and I found myself listening for the click of the bathroom lock—would he let himself in, slide in behind me under the steam? 
                  I knew that was the Delilah part of me talking.  That what I needed tonight were introductions to meet people I could never otherwise get my resume to, if I’d even had a resume.  What I had was two hours to change my life. 
                  I blew out my hair and headed up the walk, trying to channel the girls in dresses just like this one I’d seated a thousand times.  A server waiting around the hedge with a tray of champagne-filled flutes directed me to the house.  “Hello, good evening.”  Pym was standing on the