“I have something you’ll die for,” Norine said. She snapped her fingers and pointed to her assistant, Julee. “The gold lamé, please.”

“The golf outfit?” Julee asked. She was a frail girl with spindly blond hair and the fearful eyes of a rabbit.

“Yes,” Norine said with faux patience. With her assistant, Norine appeared to be on the edge of snapping at any moment. But when she turned back to Annalisa, it was with all the solicitude of a merchant presenting his wares to a grand lady.

Julee held up a clear plastic hanger from which hung a tiny gold top and matching miniskirt.

Annalisa regarded the garment with dismay. “I don’t think Paul will like that.”

“Listen, sweetie,” Norine said. She sat down on the edge of the four-poster bed with the pleated silk canopy that had recently arrived from France, and patted the place next to her. “We need to talk.”

“Do we?” Annalisa asked. She didn’t want to sit next to Norine; nor did she want one of Norine’s lectures. So far, she had forced herself to tolerate them, but she wasn’t in the mood today.

Annalisa looked from Norine to Julee, who was still standing there, holding up the hanger like one of those girls on a game show. Her arm had to be tired. Annalisa felt bad for her. “Fine,” she said, and went into the bathroom to try it on.

“You’re so shy,” Norine called after her.

“Huh?” Annalisa said, poking her head out the door.

“You’re so shy. Changing in the bathroom. You should change in here so I can help you,” Norine said. “You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before.”

“Right,” Annalisa said and shut the door. She turned to look at herself in the mirror and grimaced. How the hell had she gotten herself into this situation? It had sounded like such a good idea at first, hiring a stylist. Billy said everybody did it these days, meaning everyone with money or status who had to go out and be photographed. It was the only way, Billy said, to get the best clothes. But this was out of control. Norine was always calling or sending e-mail attachments of the clothes, accessories, and jewelry she photographed while shopping or visiting designer showrooms. Annalisa had had no idea there were so many lines. Not just spring and fall but resort, cruise, summer, and Christmas. Each season required its own look, and getting the look required as much planning as a military coup. Clothing had to be chosen and ordered months in advance, otherwise it would be gone.

Annalisa held the gold lamé up to her chin. No, she thought. This has gone too far.

But perhaps everything had gone too far. Despite the progress she’d made on the apartment, Paul was unhappy. The lottery had been held for the parking space in the Mews, and Paul hadn’t won. Coupled with this disappointing news was a letter from Mindy Gooch, officially informing them that their request for through-the-wall air-conditioning units had been denied.

“We’ll make it work without them,” Annalisa had said, trying to soothe him.

“I can’t.”

“We have to.”

Paul glared at her. “It’s a conspiracy,” he insisted. “It’s because we have money and they don’t.”

“Mrs. Houghton had money,” Annalisa said, trying to reason with him.

“And she lived here without any trouble for years.”

“She was one of them,” Paul countered. “And we’re not.”

“Paul,” she said patiently. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m making real money now,” he said. “And I expect to be treated with a certain amount of respect.”

“I thought you were making real money six months ago,” she said, attempting to lighten the situation.

“Forty million isn’t real money. A hundred million is getting there.”

Annalisa felt queasy. She knew Paul was making a lot of money and planned to make more. But somehow it had never hit her that it was going to become a reality. “That’s insane, Paul,” she protested. But it also excited her, the way looking at dirty pictures excited you even though you didn’t want to feel turned on and felt guilty about the excitement.

Perhaps too much money was like too much sex. It crossed the line and became pornographic.

“Come on, Annalisa. Open the door. Let me see you,” Norine said.

There was something pornographic in this, too. In this being seen, this unrelenting demand to be constantly seen everywhere. Annalisa felt worse than naked, as if her private parts were on display, open to all for examination.

“I don’t know,” Annalisa said, coming out. The gold lamé golf suit consisted of a skirt cropped mid-thigh and a shirt cut like a polo shirt (they’d been Lacoste shirts when she was a kid; she’d called them “alligator shirts,” a testament to how blissfully unfashionable she’d been growing up), pulled together by a wide belt slung low on the hips. “What am I supposed to wear under this?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Norine said.

“No underpants?”

“Call them panties, please,” Norine said. “If you want, you wear gold lamé panties. Or maybe silver lamé. For contrast.”

“Paul would never allow it,” Annalisa said firmly, hoping to put an end to the discussion.

Norine took Annalisa’s face in her hands, holding it between her manicured fingers, and squeezed Annalisa’s face like a child’s. She shook her head, pursing her lips. “You mustn’t, mustn’t say that again,” she said in a baby voice. “We don’t care what Daddy Paulie likes or dislikes. Repeat after me: ‘I will choose my own clothes.’ ”

“ I will choose my own clothes,” Annalisa said reluctantly. Now she was stuck. Norine never seemed to understand that when Annalisa said Paul wouldn’t like something, it meant she didn’t like it but didn’t want to offend Norine.

“Very good,” Norine said. “I’ve been doing this a long time — too long —

but the one thing I know is that men never mind what their wives are wearing as long as the wives are happy. And look great. Better than the other men’s wives.”

“But what if they don’t?” Annalisa said, thinking she’d had enough of this exercise.

“That’s why they have me,” Norine said with unbridled confidence.

She snapped her fingers at her assistant. “Photo, please,” she said.

Julee held up her phone and snapped Annalisa’s picture.

“How is it?” Norine asked.

“Good,” Julee said, clearly terrified. She passed the phone to Norine, who peered at the tiny image.

“Very good,” Norine said, showing Annalisa the photograph.

“Ridiculous,” Annalisa said.

“I think it’s fabulous,” Norine said. She handed Julee the phone and crossed her arms, preparing for another lecture. “Look, Annalisa,” she said. “You’re rich. You can do anything you want. There’s no bogeyman around the corner who’s going to punish you.”

“I thought God punished us,” Annalisa said under her breath.

“God?” Norine said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Spirituality is only for show. Astrology, yes. Tarot cards, yes. Ouija boards, Kundala, Sci-entology, and even born-agains, yes. But a real God? No. That would be inconvenient.”

In her office, Mindy wrote: “Why do we torture our husbands? Is it necessary or the inevitable result of our inherent frustration with the opposite sex?” She sat back in her chair and regarded the sentence with satisfaction. Her blog was a success — over the past two months, she’d received 872 e-mails congratulating her on her courage in addressing topics that were off-limits, such as whether a woman really needed her husband after he had given her children. “It’s all about the existential question,” Mindy wrote. “As women, we’re not allowed to ask existential questions. We’re supposed to be grateful for what we have, and if we’re not, we’re losers. Can’t we take a break from imposed happiness and admit that despite what we have, it’s okay to feel empty? It’s okay to feel that something is missing and life may be meaningless? Instead of feeling bad about it, why can’t we admit it’s normal?”

This same unsentimental eye was applied to men and relationships.

Mindy’s conclusion was that marriage was like democracy — imperfect but still the best system women had. It was certainly better than prostitution.

Mindy reread her opening sentence for the week’s blog entry and considered what she wanted to say next. Writing a blog was a bit like going to a shrink, she thought — it forced you to examine your real feelings. But it was also better than a shrink, because you got to do your navel-gazing in front of an audience of several thousand as opposed to one. And in her experience, that one — the shrink — was usually half asleep and expected money. “This week, I realized I spend at least thirty minutes a day nagging my husband,” she wrote. “And to what end?

There are no consequences.” She looked up and saw that her assistant was standing in front of her desk.

“Do you have an appointment with a Paul Rice?” the assistant asked, as if Paul Rice were a thing as opposed to a person. Catching the surprise on Mindy’s face, she said, “I didn’t think so. I’ll have security send him away.”

“No,” Mindy said a little too eagerly. “He’s from my building. Send him up.”

She put her feet back in her shoes and stood, smoothing her skirt and rearranging her blouse, over which she was wearing a woolly vest. The vest was not sexy, and she debated taking it off but wondered if it would be obvious that she had made an effort. Then she realized she was being ridiculous: Paul Rice wouldn’t know she’d been wearing the vest all day. She took it off. She sat down behind her desk and fluffed her hair.

She rummaged in the top drawer of her desk, found an old lip gloss, and rubbed a dab on her mouth.