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which Faïence either didn’t see or ignored.
    â€œYou’ve gone for too long without a change. A person can lose track of all that he’s capable of.”
    â€œI haven’t done
anything
,” he said too fiercely. He kept his eyes on the mirror, looking first at her attractive face, then at his own unrecognizable one. Nearly unrecognizable. In their new context, his familiar wrinkles looked full of character. “Have you ever changed yourself this much?”
    â€œHoney, last week I was a blonde. Now, quit ogling yourself or you’ll be late for your own show. You don’t want to disappoint your wife.”
    He also didn’t want to be disappointed by her, a thought that shamed him as soon as it appeared. It was a thought that belonged to this man in the mirror—this corporate superstar, this mover and shaker, who found in his dressing room a suit in three parts, with pinstripes. The shirt had French cuffs, and on the little dressing table sat gold cuff links the size of dimes. “You can’t be serious,” Frederick said.
    â€œIt’s Corbin,” said the woman assigned to his clothes. She wore black glasses, black skirt, black stockings. He worked on a joke about mourning, although a woman with a face like this wouldn’t laugh.
    â€œIt looks like you’re making me the president of Chase Manhattan.”
    â€œBank presidents dress a lot better than this.”
    â€œI teach college. The most formal event I go to is dinner when my daughters talk me into Long John Silver’s. Where in the world would I wear a suit?”
    â€œOn television.” She pushed her heavy black glasses up her nose. He waited for her to step back before he took off Faïence’s smock and put on the shirt, whose crispness felt foreign but not unpleasant. He would remember to tell Pat that.
    He had supposed himself finished after he put on the shoes—formal and shining, “cap toed,” according to the handler, in for a dollar—but then she made him stand on a small dais and rotate before her. Pulling straight pins from a cushion on her wrist, she tightened the seat of his pants and the shoulders of the suit coat, and Frederick felt his tiny store of patience give out. When she fussily tugged on his cuff, he actually slapped at her, though he missed. “Jesus
Christ
, that’s enough.”
    From the other side of the green curtain a woman said, “Oh!” His handler pulled down his cuff again, and then again. Again.
    Â 
    At the cued music, action swooped down in a rush. The audience applauded and the trumpets repeated their flourish and the host said that no one would ever believe the changes. He’d said so three times already. Then Frederick was on the stage, feeling an embarrassed smile strain at his mouth while the women in the audience—there seemed to be only women—cheered. The host drew him to the edge of the stage and made him turn around, showing off the suit. Audience members stamped the floor. Somebody catcalled, and to Frederick’s horror his eyes dampened. Where was Pat?
    The host wanted to chat. How did Frederick like his new hair? Wasn’t that a fine suit? Did he feel like a whole new man?
    â€œYes,” Frederick said, and hoped that the host could overlook the acid that filled his tone. “I’m eager to see my wife.”
    â€œPat,” said the host, sliding his eyes to the TelePrompTer. “She’s had quite a day.”
    â€œIs she all right?”
    â€œPat Weiler,” the host mused. “Wife, mother, activist.” On the screen at the side of the stage, a video clip showed Pat standing with an unhappy smile in a dressing room, her long hair straggling over her shoulders and her hands hidden in her jumper pockets. She kept them there as she turned around, and Frederick noted for the first time how the soft fabric bagged across the seat and how her flat sandals made her ankles