off the runway

The other night, Lola managed to insert herself into a fluffy, dramatically colored scarf (this is a fluffy tubular scarf, which can be worn as a sort of dress by a small child or a very tiny woman, and indeed it was a hand-me-down from a tiny woman who did wear it as a dress, to another friend, and then to Iris), and then she slinked over to the couch, where I was nursing my respiratory illness with a novel and a bag of cough drops.

"Fashion," she said inscrutably. "You are out." (True, I was wearing a stained Boston University t-shirt and a pair of sock-monkey pajama pants, but I had put on make-up and brushed my hair, and what more do you expect from the ailing?).

"You can leave the runway," Lola instructed me, and then she leaned forward and kissed me. At this point I caught on. Three year-old Lola has recently been exposed to "Project Runway", and evidently it had sunk in farther than I'd realized. Her childish voice is a ringer for Heidi Klum's (does that Klum woman have access to her lower register? Or does she have tiny little vocal cords?).

"Do you say 'auf wiedersehen?'" I asked.

"Auf wiedersehn. Good-bye!" smiled Lola Klum. Ah, fashion, the bitch goddess. One day you are in, the next day you are out.