The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty by Amanda Filipacchi Page B

going?”
    “Next Friday.”
    “Why not today? Today’s a Friday.”
    “I can’t. My friends are coming over.”
    “Every day, every hour that you wear your disguise is an hour when you could be meeting a nice guy you could love spending the rest of your life with, but he won’t notice you because you’re hidden within that mountain of horror.”
    “If he doesn’t notice me, he’s not a nice guy.”
    I WASN’T LYING. My friends are in fact coming over for a Night of Creation.
    Our Nights of Creation take place in the evenings, not at night, but Georgia’s publicist didn’t care about this inaccuracy when she dubbed them that and each of us a “Knight of Creation.” Her goal is fame for her authors at any cost.
    These creative evenings of ours started four years ago when Georgia and I decided to throw a party as a way of meeting each other’s friends. Lily and Gabriel were among the friends I brought. Penelope and Jack were among the friends she brought. Georgia had met them a couple of years earlier when she interviewed them for a magazine article she was writing about Penelope’s kidnapping and her deliverance from the coffin by Jack, who was the cop who had rescued her.
    The party Georgia and I threw was successful. People stayed late. But the six of us stayed the latest. We were engrossed in conversation. We talked about our lives and ambitions. We confided in each other. Most of us were in the creative fields and we lamented the loneliness of the artist’s life. Georgia said she found the isolation so unbearable that she often went to coffee shops to write. She liked the noise and bustle. It helped her concentrate. But she said it had gotten more difficult each year as she’d grown to dislike the feeling of anyone looking at her screen or reading over her shoulder. As she was telling us this, she suddenly had an idea: she suggested we try getting together to work on our separate arts in one another’s company.
    It probably wouldn’t have worked for most people. For some reason, though, for us it did. Everyone being industrious was inspiring. We felt like family—which for some of us was very appealing, our real families leaving much to be desired. Georgia’s embarrassment over the name made the rest of us even more eager to embrace it facetiously. Over time, of course, it stuck.
    Our Nights of Creation take place once or twice a week in my large living/dining room. Lily plays and perfects her compositions at a piano she keeps at my apartment for this purpose. A few feet away, at one end of my dining table, Penelope makes hideous little ceramic sculptures. At the other end of that same table, I design and construct my masks and costumes. Sitting between us, at the long side of the table, Georgia types her novel on her laptop (or at least she did, before she lost it). Gabriel would cook up delectable creations in my kitchen and bring them quietly to each of us while we toiled.
    Jack doesn’t do anything creative. If he’s not lounging on the couch, reading psychology magazines, he’s lifting weights, enjoying himself watching us work. Some of the injuries he sustained while freeing Penelope from the coffin were permanent and serious enough to prevent him from ever returning to the police force. Even though he’s an invalid, he’s more athletic and stronger than any of us. He walks with a limp and can’t run, but there are plenty of things he can still do that we can’t, such as walk on his hands and do back handsprings (as long as he lands on his good leg). Financially, he’s okay, thanks to a huge anonymous gift of money he received after the rescue—perhaps from Penelope’s father, no one knows. He makes extra with a part-time job at a senior center, which leaves him with plenty of free time—much of which he spends with us.
    Even though it was wonderful working to the scent of Gabriel’s culinary inventions and our evenings have never been the same since he died, we still enjoy working