My Mrs. Brown by William Norwich

had belonged somewhere, even as unlikely as it was given the difference in their ages and lifestyles. She’d been helpful, and kind, and the courtesy, and concern, had been reciprocated. Was there any need, any pressing need, to wonder why or how or what it meant?
    Alice didn’t think so. Not tonight. Acceptance and understanding were plenty explanation enough, at least for now.

F EAR IS CRIMINAL. IT steals from life. In the planning and plotting for her perfect dress, Mrs. Brown remembered a story she’d heard told in church many, many years ago.
    The pastor, who was given to referencing the early-twentieth-century spiritual leader Emmet Fox, no relation to her friend and neighbor Sarah Fox that she was aware of, was preaching that one needed to realize that fear is a bluffer. “Call its bluff, and it collapses,” he exclaimed, and continued quoting Fox verbatim.
    He described an amusing incident that allegedly took place at a town in the countryside in Holland. A lion escaped from a traveling circus. Not far away a housewife was sewing near the open window of her living room. The animal suddenly sprang in, dashed by her like a flash, rushed into the hall, and took refuge in the triangular cupboard under the staircase. The startled woman supposed it to be a donkey and, indignant at the muddy prints it left on her clean floor, pursued it into the dark closet among the brooms and pans, and proceeded to thrash it unmercifully with a broom. The animal shook with terror, and the angry woman redoubled the force of her blows. Then four men arrived with guns and nets and recaptured the animal. The terrified lion gave himself up quietly, only too glad to escape that woman torturing him.
    When the woman discovered that she had been beating a lion, she fainted dead away.
    She had dominion over him for as long as she thought he was a donkey, and as long as she treated him as a donkey, the lion was in abject fear of her. When she discovered her mistake, the old preconditioned fear returned and she responded according to the fear, not her faith.
    This anecdote proved a galvanizing recollection for Mrs. Brown. She needed its encouragement because nearly four months and one long cold winter since declaring her intention to turn lions into donkeys, her ideas for earning extra money were pretty much a bust.
    She made $132 taking in some sewing from the dry cleaners. Yes, she broke her rule about not buying lottery tickets, not once, but twice, and lost her money.
    Meanwhile, every day was business as usual at Bonnie’s beauty parlor, well, that is until it wasn’t. On a Tuesday afternoon in late March something, or someone, you might say, rather extraordinary happened.
    Just before five, the door to the salon opened and alighting in the entrance was a woman who took all by total surprise. Except when they’d visited Mrs. Groton back in the day, celebrities were unusual in Ashville.
    Even Mrs. Brown knew who this was. When she was cleaning and a cover of one of the celebrity magazines Bonnie subscribed to caught her eye, she’d have a look.
    Sailing through the doorway of the salon, long, tawny brownish hair flicking over her shoulders as if airborne in a sultry Caribbean breeze, her skin as luscious as French chestnuts . . .
    What was the supermodel Florida Noble doing in Ashville? Really? At Bonnie’s Beauty Salon?
    It took a lot to bring Bonnie’s to a full stop, but this did it. Florida Noble wore impossibly tight but chic, not vulgar, white jeans—legs as long as highways, waist smaller than a shot glass. Below them she wore sandy khaki-colored strappy sandals with a five-inch stiletto heel. Above them she wore a paper-thin black cashmere T-shirt and a brown suede blazer. Florida Noble, supermodel—Dolce & Gabbana, Virgin Atlantic airlines, Louis Vuitton—magnificent mare, was in need of some beauty assistance.
    Bonnie’s sandpaper voice—she was chanting to excess