"But I can still see the wrinkles," the woman said.

Grace studied the woman's face, the dry, aged-parchment skin tight over the bone structure, pulled back taut like a slingshot. A broad smile, she speculated, would detach it from the skull and shoot it like a Halloween mask over the makeup counter. Grace bit her lip to keep herself from grinning at the bizarre image.

She knew who the woman was by reputation, Mrs. Milton-hyphen-something, a world-class champion shopper. Clerks fawned over her as if she were the Queen of Sheba dispensing largesse to the peons. For a big commission Grace, too, could fawn with the best of them, hating the process but, like the rest of the salesclerks, eager to accept the rewards.

Having never before waited on Mrs. Milton-hyphen-something, she saw the moment as pregnant with income possibilities. Besides, she needed something to take the edge off what had started out to be a very unpromising day.

"Perhaps a bit more of this," Grace said, dabbing at the spidery corner of the woman's eyes with the brush. Even in the flattering stage light of the makeup mirror, carefully wrought to wash away the telltale clues of aging, the skin ruts could not be made to disappear.

A hard and hopeless case, Grace sighed to herself, knowing it would be impossible to satisfy the woman's insistence on appearing, at least in her own mind, wrinkle free. Makeup creates an illusion, she wanted to explain, her standard lecture to women who came to her for either a new look or lessons in the art of beauty enhancement through cosmetics.

For the younger women, the lesson was easier to impart. Besides, with them, she used a more magnified and, therefore, more revealing mirror, one that enlarged the pores. These younger ones who bellied up to her counter all seemed to suffer from rampant insecurity, as if they didn't truly believe in the essential beauty of youth and needed the paints and smears to feel attractive.

Somehow it didn't jibe with the ideal of the modern woman currently in vogue, the contemporary ideal, the confident, independent, able-to-have-it-all female touted in the media. Oh, they were out there, all right, like Mrs. Burns, who managed the store. Grace saw them everywhere, admired their wonderful, cool arrogance, their I-don't-need-a-man-to-make-me-whole-and-happy attitude. She granted hopefully that such observations could be an illusion, a false positive, and that, in reality, those cool numbers prancing about were just as insecure as she was. Fat chance.

She knew in her heart exactly where she stood, one among many still barely on the sunny side of forty, an anonymous grunt in the vast army of female also-rans, the powerless majority, stuck in some weird limbo, dismissed by their more successful sisters as congenital losers, who could not, for whatever reasons, respond to the clarion of the gender's call to arms. The truth of the matter was that most of those in the ranks of these defeated battalions, like her, were unlucky, battered by inexplicable circumstances, mismanagement or, perhaps, just too dumb to find the right doors to open. Others were irrevocably stuck in yesterday's female mind-set, hopelessly old-fashioned and totally unaware of the possibilities in the new world.

Ironically, for purposes of social comment, advertising reach and political posturing, her group was statistically in demand. Not like the single females in the fifty-to-seventy category, that army of the divorced and widowed who had walked over the hill to oblivion, the cruelly cast-off, doomed by chronology, aging flesh and diminishing opportunity to a kind of loneliness and sexual limbo.

Her group was always cited as that demographic female baby boomer segment with subcategories like working poor, single mother, marginally educated and, above all, semiskilled. She was all of the above. Trans lated to class, she figured herself to be lower middle, very lower and, therefore, downwardly mobile, now in speedy descent. Jackie, her daughter, would undoubtedly agree, although for her sake, Grace maintained a razor-thin facade of hopefulness and optimism. By some miracle of genetics she still had her looks and figure. Small comfort since, so far, it hadn't done her much good.

Considering her status, she took some satisfaction in the irony of her occupation. Cosmetics, creating false illusions through facial paint, was, inexplicably and thankfully, exempt from prohibition by the so-called "new woman," a possibility hardly on the agenda of the woman who stood before her.

Women like Mrs. Milton-hyphen-something, well north of sixty with unlimited funds, weren't even pretending to buy the concept of cosmetic beauty enhancement. They wanted camouflage. They were dependent more on the plastic surgeon's knife than the chemist's dubious magic for their attempts to defeat or, at the least, stalemate time's relentless destruction.

"I don't think you know your business," the woman snapped, her head moving on her neck like a puppet's in a desperate attempt to find the wrinkle-smoothing reflection. To make visibility more authentic and truthful, the woman had put on her reading glasses and was squinting unhappily into the mirror.

"I am a graduate cosmetician," Grace said in defense of herself, citing her ninety-day course.

"Big deal," the woman huffed.

"And I've worked here in Palm Beach at Saks Fifth Avenue for three years," Grace countered calmly, pasting her best customer's smile on her lips, hoping to unload the crone's wagons. "I've never had a complaint." She paused, realizing she wasn't making a dent in the woman's unhappiness. "Sometimes cosmetics are designed to bring out a woman's character and tell the story of life well lived."

The woman eyed her suspiciously over her half glasses.

"What does that mean?" she sneered, her lips twisted as if she were having gas pains.

"I was merely commenting that your face shows extraordinary character. There is great beauty in character. After all, you've earned those wrinkles. Why try to hide them?"

"Are you crazy?" the woman said.

"None of these preparations are designed to hide the real you."

"Jesus. Are you trying to say that it's attractive to look like a wrinkled old fart? I don't have to come here for that, lady."

"You're misinterpreting my remark. I only meant..."

"I know what you meant."

Just one more nail in the coffin, Grace sighed, listing in her mind the day's toll so far, beginning with her morning battle with Jackie, sixteen years of seething anger and perceived needs. It was growing worse each day. Money for this. Money for that. It was a breakfast staple. Money! Damned money and the shortage thereof. It was the bane of her existence.

Worse, in a life of irony this one had sharp spikes. She had named her daughter after the late Jackie O, as if the name could be an inspiration for taste, gentility, elegance and fine aspirations. Now it seemed like an adolescent myth gone sour. Like her namesake, her Jackie was acquisitive, indiscriminately so. Unfortunately her taste had a split personality. She thirsted for the high end, yet seemed mesmerized by the low end, the lowest end.

"Can I help it if I like beautiful clothes, Mom? You promised that you would get me the Donna Karan when it got reduced."

The Donna Karan plaint was at the root of the latest skirmish on the clothes front. Jackie had seen the outfit one day when she had met Grace at Saks, where she often wandered through the designer clothes areas while waiting for Grace to get off from work. The slacks outfit was priced far out of line for their pocketbook, but Grace had promised that if it got to the sale stage, she would definitely buy it for her with her employee discount, which meant 40 percent off.

She had even begged the salesclerk in designer dresses to downplay it so that it would hang around unsold and be a candidate for reduction. It was on the verge, and Grace calculated that she could get it within the week, which would be a great surprise and, perhaps, a peace offering for Jackie.

This morning, in addition to the ritual of the clothes, it was the never-ending litany of the car. "A car is a must, Mom, an absolute must."

"I thought the Donna Karan was a must."

"That, too."

A "must" was condoms, Grace had countered, reiterating her own litany, which included getting good enough marks to get into Florida State, which was Jackie's only affordable option for college. Another "must," in Grace's standard lecture, which she had delivered that morning with almost hysterical passion, was realizing one's potential and developing a sense of personal responsibility. This meant, in addition to safe sex, avoiding drugs and booze, bad company and, above all, showing some respect and appreciation for her hardworking efforts to give their lives, despite the obstacles, a semblance of dignity.

Dignity, she had discovered, was a word being used by her with increasing repetitiveness. It was for Grace the ultimate fallback position, the last refuge of the working poor. It was not easy to be dignified living on twenty-five thousand dollars a year before deductions.

"I'm going to be seventeen, Mom," Jackie had reminded her, as if she were about to enter some mythological geographic environment requiring special equipment to survive. "I'm not like the other girls in school. I don't want to be a K mart person for the rest of my life. I am a Saks Fifth Avenue person, not a clerk like you, a potential customer. I am in my heart a Bendel person, a Bonwit, a Cartier and Tiffany person, with a body that craves Valentinos, Versace, Ferragamo, St. Laurent, Givenchy, not Gap, Wal-Mart or K mart. I want expensive things. Not bargain-basement shit. Is it a crime to love nice things? You should be proud of my champagne tastes. You're the one who taught me that. Remember who I was named after."

"Now you're blaming me," Grace said, troubled by her daughter's awesome yearnings and eloquence beyond her years. More and more she was feeling inadequate to Jackie's daily challenges. It was, after all, Grace who had taken her on those window-shopping forays on Worth Avenue, who had subscribed to the fashion magazines that cluttered the apartment.

"Champagne tastes are okay if you have a champagne pocketbook. Which we don't."

"And never will," Jackie snorted.

"Never say never," Grace replied.

"I hate being without," Jackie told her, which was yet another perpetual mantra that she was exposed to on a daily basis.

"We're not exactly without, Jackie," Grace sighed.

"I know, Mom. I do appreciate your twenty-five-dollar weekly allowance," Jackie said sarcastically.

"I'm happy you remembered its source."

"Daddy would if he could."

"Daddy's entire life has been based on wish fulfillment, potential events that never happen."

After six years of divorce, Jason rarely surfaced, except in periods of acute financial desperation. At times, Grace had obliged his entreaties for her daughter's sake.

"Daddy is a dreamer. The world has to make a place for people like him."

"Just as long as it's not with us," Grace shot back with barbed sarcasm. Defending Jason, her ex-husband, was an arrow in Jackie's quiver of annoyances. She had protested vehemently her mother's dropping of the Lombardi name.

"Why would he want to be here with us? Come on, Mom. We live in a dump. Nothing here but losers. And don't be so high-and-mighty about my allowance. I couldn't get by if I didn't have that job in the multiplex."

"I'm doing the best I can."

It was always Grace's last refuge.

"I know. That's what hurts the most, knowing that this is the best you can do."

Weekends Jackie worked as a ticket cashier at the multiplex. Grace had actually increased her allowance so that she could devote more of her time to schoolwork. Financially it was still not enough, and Jackie had to keep her job. Grace was absolutely paranoid about seeing her daughter get into college and, so far, Jackie had barely managed to eke out a passing average.

Grace's disintegrating relationship with her daughter, long on a downhill slide, was now accelerating rapidly. Grace's best efforts, she realized, would never be good enough, not for someone with Jackie's unrealistic expectations. Had Grace planted these ideas in her daughter? Was it wrong to point out the good things in life, to inspire a higher taste level than their pocketbook could afford? Maybe so. Whatever the reason, Grace was losing control over her daughter.

Jackie was too attractive, too sexually precocious, too manipulative and financially ambitious to accept the present condition of her life. Grace had no illusions about where it would lead. Jackie was an explosion waiting to happen, and that morning's confrontation merely reiterated that possibility.

Then, adding insult to the injury of the day, just as a pouting Jackie left for school, Jason, Jackie's father, called from parts unknown with his repetitive plea. "Help me out till I get on my feet, Grace."

She had been particularly harsh. "The only way to get on your feet is to nail them to the ground, Jay. You're a fuck-up. Never call me again. Ever."

Angry, she had slammed the receiver into its cradle.

She had had fifteen years of good looks and empty promises from this brainless mannequin who could conjure up more impossible dreams than Don Quixote. Finally she had shown him the door, shouting, literally "and take your windmills with you." In retrospect, she had come to enjoy that line, which she had heard once in a movie.

Back home in "Ballimer," they were once the golden couple. She, the cute and very popular Grace Sorentino, the barber's daughter, with the jet-black hair, soft pink skin and Wedgwood blue eyes. The movie star look. He, Jason Lombardi, a walking double for Robert Redford. Of course, one didn't make a living being a walking double for Robert Redford, as she was to find out later. And there was limited mileage in being a cute knockout with a great figure. Someone had once said she had a walk that could raise an erection on a dead man. She had taken that as an insult back then. Now, at thirty-eight, she read it as a kind of compliment, although doubtful that the description was still operative. Jason's call had brought back the hated memory of her wasted years.

Also that morning, she had learned that her bank balance, hovering somewhere around a paltry eight-hundred dollars, was frozen, lost in computer hell, and she was getting turn-off notices from the telephone and power companies. Taunting her further, she had painfully banged her big toe kicking the ATM machine, which had swallowed her bank card after the third try.

The good news, a highly exaggerated rendition, was that she had just put the monthly car payment for her three-year-old, bottom-of-the-line Volkswagen into the mail, which meant that she had merely one year to go before she owned outright what was destined at that time to be a pile of junk. She had also paid down just enough of her Visa and Master cards to restore her credit, a mixed blessing.

But these were mere details, which ignored the total State of the Union of her life, which was abysmal, not to mention the harsh fact of marching time. Her thirty-ninth birthday was just three months away, an event that promised a day of unrelenting self-pity.

She hated birthdays. Her thirty-fourth, the day she threw Jason out from her bed and board, was supposed to mark a new beginning. It did; the beginning of another phase of the downward spiral. On the horizon, on the cusp of her fortieth year, was yet another harsh reality, the onset of early menopause (she was sure of that) and a future of emotional and financial insecurity.

She'd light the birthday candle in a Twinkie and make a wish for some imagined act of deliverance to lift her out of her marginal existence. After all, she could never allow herself to abandon hope of some miraculous windfall.

"What I meant was," Grace said in a desperate effort to assuage the frowning scarecrow in her pink Armani silk pants outfit and diamond-studded clawlike fingers on the other side of the counter, "...that you should lead with your best shot. Play to your strength." It was a thought that barely made sense to her, but somehow, under the circumstances, it seemed appropriate.

"You mean emphasizing my wrinkles and thereby illustrating my character, right? How well I lived my life, right?" Mrs. Milton-hyphen-something said.

"Exactly," Grace said hopefully. "Present to the world an honest look."

"I don't need you for an honest look, lady. I see it every morning in the mirror. What I need you for is to find me a dishonest look, which means hiding my wrinkles."

"I've already tried the best we have to offer," Grace said. "They're too..." She was tempted to say "too fucking deep." Instead she added: "...well-established."

"Well-established. Good. I like that. Cosmetics were invented to soften and hide them, to make you look better, not worse. To do it right takes talent," the woman sneered sarcastically. "In your case, the talent is missing."

"Perhaps one of my colleagues..."

"Colleagues, you call them. That's a good one. Clerks, you mean."

Grace failed to find either the humor or decency in this confrontation with a seventy-plus gnome who had wandered in from creamy Palm Beach's Worth Avenue determined to either find youth in a magic vial or, barring that, validate her alleged superiority by kicking the most accessible and vulnerable unfortunate in her range of motion, which was her, Grace Sorentino, the failed daughter of the barber Carmine and the silent, fanatically devout Mama Rosa, the Sicilian papal groupie from "Ballimer," Maryland.

"You people just don't know what you're doing," the woman said, frowning at her feral image in the mirror.

"It's in the eye of the beholder," Grace said, the pasted smile faltering.

"What is that supposed to mean?" the woman snapped, her face frozen, her eyes still searching for the magic light.

"It means," Grace said, sucking in a deep breath, determined to show a patient, pleasant visage, "that you might be noticing things that others would overlook. We normally don't observe each other with reading glasses."

The woman shook her head in exasperation and looked around the store, filled now with the army of mostly middle-aged bottle blondes with considerable disposable income, relentlessly avoiding the skin's mortal enemy, the ultraviolet ray.

"Do you always insult your customers?" the woman asked. "I detest salesgirls with an attitude."

"I hadn't meant to be..."

"Hadn't meant. Hadn't meant. People do atrocious things and then retreat into hadn't-meants," the woman snickered. Beneath her bleached-white look, Grace could detect the hot flush of anger.

Whoa there, Sorentino, Grace cautioned herself, valiantly holding her pasted smile, although her facial muscles were beginning to hurt with the effort.

"I'm sorry," Grace whispered. "There's just so much that can be done with makeup."

"Are you calling me an old crone?" the woman snapped.

"Old is a state of mind," Grace said.

"And crone?"

"You're putting words in my mouth," Grace said, feeling her smile collapse.

The woman's eyes blazed with anger.

"Do you know how much money I spend at Saks?" the woman said. The anger had forced her face to express itself. Nests of wrinkles emerged everywhere. Her skin seemed prunelike.

"I'm not privy to such information," Grace said.

"You needn't be sarcastic," the woman said.

At that point, the woman stood up from the high stool in which she had been sitting, removed her glasses, shook her head and sneered.

"I can't let this arrogance pass," she muttered, turning abruptly and moving through the crowd.

"I need this job, you old cunt," Grace muttered, wondering if anyone had observed the confrontation. She had no idea what she had said to tick off the woman. Not that words were necessary to convey the truth of the encounter. The woman was a miserable, unhappy, frustrated bitch, determined to cause pain. Grace had been as good a target as any. Wrong place, wrong time, she sighed, preparing herself to be figuratively taken out and shot.