She sighs and plants her hands on her hips."The point is, if you want a man to notice you, you have to be alluring."
"I can do alluring," I say a little too eagerly.
"You absolutely cannot," she replies."An alluring woman never says she's alluring.She simply is, by the way she breathes and moves."
"I mean..."I start to do damage control after my cowboy walk.
"Do hush."
She drags me in front of a mirror.
"Step one.Smile."
I smile.
"Goodness gracious.Do you want to crack my mirror and scare every man you meet?"
"What?"
"You look like you're planning his murder and are very happy about it."
"But that's my happy smile."
"It's the smile of a woman who adds arsenic to her lover's porridge."
I smile again, except this time my face has completely forgotten how to smile naturally, and now I look psychotic.Case in point, Madame Celina.
The woman winces, and so does Sam.
"You are trying too hard.Everything about a woman is natural.She doesn't try.She is."
Then clearly, I amnot.Still, I try.
"Worse.Let's move on to the eyes.A smile lures the man in, but the eyes are the confessions of the soul and of the pussy."
"The pussy?As in a cat?"
Madame Celina sighs even harder this time, as if I'm her worst client yet.
"As in the vagina.How you look at a man portrays what is happening between your legs.If he is just a dear friend, there is trust.A stranger, neutrality.A man you want to have at your knees, feasting on my little kitty like he is starved beyond repair, you look at him so."
Madame Celina demonstrates, and I'm awed.How is it possible that she made her gaze look both sweet and sultry at the same time?
"Now you try it."
I do.I try very hard.
"Why are you squinting?"
"I'm not, I'm tempting him with my irises."
"You look like you're trying to identify a suspect."
I didn't mean to, but I involuntarily wiggle my eyebrows, and well, Madame Celina is one thread away from throwing in the whole towel.At me.
"I'm being mysterious," I protest.
"You look constipated.Men are not impossible to seduce.It is one of the easiest things in the world.The right smile and the perfectly angled gaze, and he will bring the world to your feet.You, my dear, might get straw and a dead pig.Show me the men you must seduce," she instructs in a commanding voice, and Sam jumps to attention, showing the older woman images of Lorenzo, Emilio, and Marcello from her phone.
