It’s the end of February, and Laura’s in bed recovering from her surgery. It’s cold and grey out with the dusting of snow from last night still on the sidewalk and she’s feeling that familiar urge for dramatic physical improvement. Dramatic physical improvement with the least amount of pain and suffering and effort and work, that is.
Last week, when she had plans to go to New York before she got sick fighting off Ben and Brendan’s week-and-a-half-long flu and had to cancel, she went and had a manicure. She can’t remember when she had her last manicure which is kind of sad since manicures really aren’t that big a deal.
A few weeks before when Laura was feeling the urge for dramatic physical improvement she went and got her hair colored. This was long overdue, too, and because it was so long overdue she decided to get highlights. She can’t remember the last time she got highlights which is also sad since getting hightlights really isn’t that big a deal, either. Because it had been so long since her hair had seen a piece of foil, when the stylist asked her if she wanted caramel-colored highlights Laura told her she wanted something more dramatic than caramel. She wanted blonde highlights. So at her suggestion the stylist went a little overboard but Laura definitely got her fix and felt like she’d improved herself, even though she kind of looks like one of those middle-aged brunette women who’s trying too hard.
Today Laura’s wishing she were tan. Beach-tan, that is, the kind that makes your feet and hands and forearms all smooth and brown. Of course, nowadays you’re not supposed to be getting tan and instead are told to use self-tanning creams, but she’s been down that road before and it wasn’t pretty.
It happened about a year and a half ago when Nia Vardalos, creator and star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, emailed Laura to see if she wanted to finally meet in New York for lunch. Their email friendship had started some time before when Piece of Work was sold to Warner Books (now Grand Central Books). That was back in the fall of 2004, and right before the book was sold to Warner, Laura found out that Playtone Productions, Tom Hanks‘ production company, had optioned Piece of Work. That was great news, of course, for all the obvious reasons, but the even greater news was to come the next day when a friend called to tell her that Nia Vardalos was going to adapt Piece of Work and star in it and that it was on the cover of Variety.
At the time it was a big deal, not just because it had been awhile since Laura had had any good news like that, but mainly because at the time Nia hadn’t done a film since Connie and Carla, which followed My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The world (<--and Laura doesn't feel like she's exaggerating when she says that) was waiting to see more of Nia, and Laura couldn't believe that Piece of Work was one of the next projects she was going to do. It goes without saying that she was a huge fan and couldn’t have thought of anyone she’d rather have cast to play Julia Einstein. (Which is to say Laura couldn’t think of anyone she’d rather have play her since Julia Einstein was basically the thinly-disguised autobiographical version of herself.)
OK, so back to their lunch date in New York. It was the end of June, sunny and warm, when Laura packed her bag for her day trip to NYC. The day before as she was walking through CVS she stopped at the display of self-tanning cremes and lotions. Suddenly, Laura was struck with the desire to look really good when she met Nia for the first time — really healthy and active and normal to make it seem like she actually went outside once in a while and didn’t spend all of her time inside her house Googling people and pretending to write. Laura would never have wasted her time with self-tanning products since years and years before she’d turned orange trying one of them, but all she’d been reading for years and years since was how great these new products were and how turning orange was a thing of the past.
[Laura could probably stop right now since the disastrous nature of this story is obvious but she’ll continue since she’s sitting here branting anyway.]
At home, before she went to bed the night before her big trip, she put the cream on — on her arms, legs, hands, ankles, feet — even a little on the neck and face — following the directions so that she wouldn’t get streaks or stain the sheets brown when she went to sleep and her bedding acted like a kind of heatless rotisserie. She couldn’t wait to get up and see the results and feel worthy of meeting her NBF Nia who was Greek and thus perpetually tan and healthy looking!
Needless to say, things didn’t work out quite as Laura had planned. When she woke up she saw that her skin had turned orange. A deep bronze burnished orange — like a big pan of braised glazed carrots — but orange nonetheless — and she panicked. She’d tried to self-tan every part of herself that would show — her hands her feet her ankles — so sandals were out of the question as was the short sleeved blouse she’d planned on wearing. And so it was in head to toe black — long black pants, her French black ankle boots, a long-sleeved black tunic — that Laura met Nia the next day, showing up in the hotel lobby where they were supposed to meet sweating and looking unseasonably attired, and as they walked across Central Park South toward Madison and then up to Barney’s to have lunch at Fred’s, Laura couldn’t help wondering if Nia thought there might be something wrong with her — psoriasis? extreme eczema? — for dressing so warmly on such a warm day. Laura wasn’t sure if there was a name for that — some sort of phobia associated with showing one’s skin (dermaphobia?) or a psychological condition that necessitated the wearing of long black clothes at all times (ebony-philia?) — but she knew she looked weird enough that she was going to have to say something to explain herself.
And so she did. The minute they sat down, before they’d opened their menus and before a steady stream of restaurant patrons had approached the table to say hello to Nia and shake her hand, Laura came clean about why she was dressed like an old Italian widow on such a beautiful warm day. She confessed that no, she didn’t have some strange skin disease that she was trying to cover up — all she’d wanted was to make a really good impression, and that instead she’d made the trip a nightmare of insecurity. Nia, of course, thought it was hilarious, and they had a good laugh, and an even better lunch, after which Laura swore to herself that she’d never use self-tanning creams again, no matter how great they said the new ones were supposed to be.
