Air Kisses (16 page)

Chapter Twenty

‘I’m actually surprised at how good it is.’

‘Me too, they’re usually so bad at anything to do with lips. Or base: that matte foundation they did was unforgivable.’

‘I’ve been wearing the stuff ever since the launch.’

Fiona, Yasmin and I were on our way back to Beckert from Bio Spa, where, in an intimate group of eight, we’d been given herbal tea and fresh fruit while being told about a new salon foot-spa range based on sea algae. We had also received a deluxe pedicure and polish. I hadn’t known about the pedicure part of the launch and so had worn closed-toe shoes. This meant that my lovely soft feet were currently sheathed in Bio Spa’s complimentary flimsy foam cut-out thongs, so as not to ruin the polish resting on my toes. They might as well
have been made of tissue paper: they were impossible to walk in, not that I could even entertain the idea of walking into the Beckert foyer with them on. With my luck, I just knew Karen would walk out of the lift at that exact second.

As we were nearing the office in our taxi, I was becoming increasingly agitated about what I would do. I had needed the pedi because I had a black-tie function tomorrow night and needed to wear strappy shoes, but because I hadn’t brought my own polish, I couldn’t retouch it (after inevitably botching it).

‘Han – have you tried it yet?’ Yasmin asked.

‘Sorry, tried what?’ I was in the front seat, as usual, audibly and physically removed from the conversation.

‘Gleam’s new long-last gloss. The double-ended one with the balm top-coat we got last week.’

‘Yes!
How good is it?
I love the Barely Buff shade.’

‘Me too!’ Yasmin said. ‘It has just become my new Perfect Nude.’

‘Whooooa, big call.’ I’d forgotten that Fi was the Perfect Nude police. Perfect Nude was the highest compliment a lip product could be given. It had to be just pink enough, just taupe enough and just sheer enough to make the lips look juicy and lush yet deceivingly natural.

Fi had coined the term in honour of Jennifer Lopez’s always perfect perennially nude lips. No one knew which exact product Jennifer wore (more than likely it would be a make-up artist’s motley concoction of liner, lipstick and three glosses) but we were on an ongoing mission to find it, or one that gave the same results.

It wasn’t just the beauty editors who were obsessed; so many of my reader emails revolved around the Perfect Nude gloss. Where could they buy it? How much was it? How
should they apply it? What should they eat for breakfast after having applied it? And so on. My answers varied, but I usually suggested Revlon’s Super-Lustrous in Nude Lustre, or M.A.C’s C-thru lipglass, or NARS lip gloss in Orgasm.

‘I thought it would do that revolting crusty-corners thing the long-lasts always do, but it stayed moist.’

‘Fi! You said
moist
!’ Yas squealed with disgust.

‘Well, it’s the appropriate word. Even if it does remind me of Japanese businessmen buying panties from vending machines.’

‘
FI!
’ We collapsed into a frenzied dialogue about how off the word ‘moist’ was.

‘It’s as bad as “member”,’ I said.

‘Or “fingered”,’ Fi offered.

‘No way. Panties is worse than moist. I mean, what woman calls her undies “panties”? It’s so porn,’ Yasmin exclaimed.

The girls carried on and my mind went back to my toes. Oh, screw it; I’d have to wear these absurd flip-flops upstairs. I’d just hide between the other girls. Luckily the traffic was taking a while, a good thing as every minute of polish dryness counted.

My phone beeped.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. My heart stopped temporarily. It was Dan. Dan, who I’d thought had forgotten my number. Dan, who I had actively tried to expel from my mind. Dan, who was now inviting me to Hawaii?

‘Is he for real?’ I whispered in disbelief.

‘Who is it, what’s happened, is it Jesse?’ Fiona was awful at pretending she wasn’t nosy.

‘No, no, it’s Dan. LA boy… He’s asked me to go to Hawaii next week.’

‘Oh my God! You HAVE TO GO!!!’ Yasmin was squealing again. I turned to face her; she was clasping her hands together and bouncing in her seat. She never did that.

‘I agree. You should go. Enjoy crazy-good sex in a tropical climate while you can. Is he paying? He should be. You should go. Lord knows, I would.’ Fi made the decision sound as simple as cereal over toast.

‘But, I haven’t, I mean, I can’t, I’m shooting next week and we have that massive Garnier function and—’

‘And you place a higher value on that stuff than a whirlwind trip you’ll be telling your grandkids about one day? Get a grip, girl.’

Fi had some salient points, but I was still in shock and couldn’t process anything.

My phone beeped again.

My hands were shaking. I read the girls his latest text with my eyes shining and a grin cemented onto my face. He was very, very hard to be angry at. Impossible, even.

‘You are SO going!’ Fi was clapping her hands Yasmin-style now.

‘I’ll have to ask Karen…and, oh shit, Eliza…and, oh, I am sure she’ll be
super
-thrilled about it, but, well, I guess… I guess if they say yes…’

More squealing from the back. I tried to act cool, but I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. I was going to see Dan. And I was going to ignore the part of my brain that was screaming he didn’t deserve my company, and what was I teaching him about my self-respect by leaping onto a plane for a dirty holiday when he had been such a bastard for the last three weeks.

‘Ohhhh, wish
I
was off to be sexed by a hotrod in Hawaii,’ Yasmin said in a wistful voice as we got out of the cab.

‘Yas, my darling, your time for wild island-sex will come,’ Fi said, and linked arms with her. ‘We just need to find you a man. And me too, while we’re at it.’

As I got to my desk and dumped my sack of algae foot scrubs and lotions next to it, Kate looked at my feet in bewilderment.

‘Whoa! What are
they
?’

I looked down and broke into maniacal laughter.

‘Your job…honestly…’ She shook her head and smiled.

I was so excited about the thought of Hawaii that I had completely forgotten about my stupid ‘shoes’. And no one had noticed them in the foyer.

Funny how things just work out when you let go.

Chapter Twenty-One

Part of my week from hell before Hawaii was an interview with an upcoming model-slash-TV-presenter, Cassie Eaton. She was a pretty little thing who had scored a gig on TV by virtue of dating a racecar driver. From there, she had moved on to various high-profile jobs, including heading a swimsuit campaign, being a mobile-phone spokesperson, and now she had become the face of Bare cosmetics.

This was a regular gig: interviewing people who knew a lot about only one thing. The ‘thing’ could be serious, like sun damage or pigmentation or antioxidants, or it could be more frivolous, like eye make-up or using hot rollers.

Interview subjects, I had quickly surmised, were hit and miss. Perversely, the hits were often those I had tried to get out of because I had no interest in learning – or writing about – DIY hair extensions, or else they were the ones I had written while on a death-defying deadline.

In the same way my happiest nights out were always the ones where Iz had to physically drag me into the taxi, the people I didn’t want to interview were usually the most fun. Like the interview I’d conducted with the eponymous founder of Ken Brent cosmetics two weeks back. (There are two kinds of men in the beauty industry: the suits-and-stats managing-director kind, and the kind who wear Hermes loafers and emcee ‘Bingay’ at boys-only bars on Tuesday nights. He was the former.) I was swamped in copy, feeling dusty from Gabe’s birthday drinks the previous night, and had spilled yoghurt on my dress in two very conspicuous spots in the breast region. I had tried to cancel but the PR wasn’t answering her mobile – a very clever tactic they use when they simply will not entertain the notion of you cancelling. If you can’t get through to them and don’t show up, you’re a bastard. And no one wants to be a bastard.

So I trawled up to their suite, and smiled weakly as the usual platitudes prevailed. But then this fellow, Ken, entered. He would have been late forties or early fifties, and was dressed like he had been styled by
Esquire
magazine. He was very Richard Gere circa
Pretty Woman
, all charcoals and chocolates and leather and cashmere. When he spoke, he sounded like a Hugh Grant–Ben Kingsley hybrid. His presence filled the room so completely that even the plumbing couldn’t have escaped his aura.

‘Magnificent dress. Not many people can wear that tone.
I bet you look excellent in green, too. Or aqua, do you ever wear aqua? It would set those eyes of yours alight.’

‘Um, aqua? Um, sometimes, I guess…’ I was a little taken aback.

‘Even a light blue would do the trick. Any of the tones in your iris would look incredible.’

‘Oh, uh, cool.’

The more interesting he was, the less articulate I became.

The PR cleared her throat in a passive-aggressive way that implied we should begin the interview.

We sat down; he poured me some tea – ‘Do you know why it’s called Earl Grey? Not many do. It stems from a time when…’ – and as we chatted he was so charming that my cheeks flushed. The thing was, what he said wasn’t flirty, or sleazy, or creepy, just commanding and fascinating. He referred constantly to his wife and children (
the
most attractive thing a man can do, even though this obviously rules out any chance of an encounter), and he had the kind of sparkling eyes usually belonging to game-show hosts or beauty queens. He promoted his products with an air of irreverence that made me think I needed them more than they needed space on my pages. Then he brushed over their celebrity followers with a dismissive wave, as though they were lucky to have discovered them: ‘David and Victoria love the pomegranate-and-fig shower gel, but we always seem to be out of stock when they come into the store.’

He was the kind of man who, for the first time in my life, made me wonder if I
could
be with an older – much older – man, when previously I’d always thought a double-decade age difference was in the same realm of creepiness as people who wear nappies as a form of sexual fetishism.

On the flipside, the interview subjects I
did
get excited about meeting too often let me down: they’d keep me waiting for an hour; or they’d grunt their way through our conversation, as though they’d been subjected to a giant personality extractor only minutes before meeting me; or they were just rude.

As I was excited about interviewing (or at least looking at) Cassie, I wondered if she would prove my theory true. I hoped not.

I arrived at the interview, late because of traffic, and stumbled into the Hilton’s amazing honeymoon suite, gushing apologies to appease the stern-looking PR.

Cassie was sitting on the sofa in that relaxed-but-camera-ready position which beautiful famous people are trained to do. She was wearing a stunning beaded singlet, jeans, and heels that appeared to be held together with a thread of gold string. Her skin was luminous and her hair was so full and shiny that when she nodded her head her curls formed a small chorus line of confirmation, dancing up and down with her. She didn’t get up to shake hands, she just sat there, smiling her famous, toothy smile.

Totally affected, I thought immediately, storing a description of her outfit that I could dissect with Gabe later.

‘So, you must be busy at the moment?’ I asked, sounding like every other schmuck who had interviewed her.

‘Yeaaah.’ She smiled and nodded.
Uh-oh.
She was a blocker. A one-word answerer. Not good.

I scrambled for my recorder and pen, trying to set it all up, and she didn’t say a word. Silence. This made me overcompensate, and to disguise my fluster I started asking her standard starter questions.

‘Are you enjoying your newfound rise to fame?’

‘Yeaaah, it’s been gooood,’ she said, smiling and nodding.

She tucked her hair behind her left ear.

‘You must be exhausted with all of your commitments at the moment?’

‘Yeah, but it’s been really goooood,’ she said, smiling and nodding. Whoa, it was lucky I knew shorthand.

She now dramatically flicked her hair to the other side of her head with her left arm.

‘So, I work for
Gloss
, as Jane might have told you, and I guess my readers will be most interested in what you—’

‘Can I get another Diet Coke?’ She looked to the PR. She had an attitude that was disproportionate to her level of fame. She looked back at me and gave me a closed-lip smile. She flicked her hair again. I was momentarily stunned. The PR scarpered off to get the drink.

‘…Um, I guess, I guess they’d want to know which are your favourite Bare products? Let’s go with maybe five?’

‘I like the mascara.’

I waited.

She didn’t say anything. She tucked her hair behind her ear.
Again
. I was almost able to set a clock to her ridiculous hair-fiddling.

‘Okaaay, great! Which one do you like best?’

‘Um…the black one? It’s real good for night-time and stuff. Makes lashes
so hot
. Love it.’ Her phone went off on the table. She leant forward and checked the screen, not bothering to silence its shrill siren.

‘Lashification?’

‘Yeah, that one. Hot.’

I
was feeding her the names of products she was being paid fistfuls of cash to promote. That wasn’t right. I stared at her.

I cleared my throat and tried again.

‘Okay, and what about foundation? Are you a matte girl or a sheer girl?’

‘Um, I really like the liquid foundation.’

There were seven liquid foundations.

‘Right. The liquid one…’

I was almost too scared to ask about lips. ‘And lip gloss? Which one do you wear?’

She screwed her mouth to one side. She flicked her hair behind her shoulders. She glanced at the PR, who handed her a glass of brown liquid bobbing with ice cubes. Her eyes searched the room, then suddenly lit up. ‘Shine and Last! It’s awesome. I, like, totally wear it every day.’

One out of three wasn’t bad. Except if you were a Bare employee paying her many dollars to flog your products. Or a journalist who had to make a story out of her quotes.

After another few awkward minutes, I could get nothing more out of her. Asking for her make-up tips and secrets baffled her; simple concepts like ‘beauty blunders’ mystified her; and her phone kept ringing just as I went to ask my questions.

‘Okay then! I think that should do it,’ I said, after her phone rang for the fourth time and she took the call: ‘Babe, I won’t be home for hours, can’t you just feed Princess now before you go?’

The PR started gushing about how excited they were about their double-page ads in
Gloss
, subtly reminding me to be kind in both my copy and my post-interview anecdotes.

As I thanked Cassie, she was rifling through her bag for something and appeared not to hear me. It wasn’t till I started walking to the door that she realised I was going and yelled out, ‘Thank you so much!’

‘My pleasure,’ I said, turning to offer her a weak smile. She looked up at me with a smile that could melt a thousand icy poles, and said, ‘It was
reeally
great to meet you, Alannah.’

I smiled (twelve icy poles, max). ‘You too, Carrie. Bye for now.’ Slam.

I kept smiling all the way back to the office, thinking about what a twit she was and how unfair it was that twits were paid so much even while being so twitty.

When I got back to my desk it suddenly occurred to me that I was off to a beachy climate in days. I needed to book in a spray tan for starters, and get a wax, and then I would need sunscreen and tinted moisturiser and some monoi oil and after-sun stuff and some super-hydrating moisturiser for the plane… But was it wrong to call it in from cosmetic companies when it was for personal use, not a story for
Gloss
? I needed a second opinion. I picked up the phone.

‘Yasmin?’

‘Yes Miss Hawaii Tropic?’

‘Do you ever, you know, call in something that you really like, but, like, not shoot it in the magazine, and just, you know, start using it?’

‘Are you for real? Jesus, I call in stuff for myself all the time. You might decide you love it so much you want to write reams about it one day.’

‘And the companies don’t get pissed?’

‘They wouldn’t even know!’

‘Oh, cool. That’s a good way of looking at it.’

‘It’s not a way of looking at it, sunshine, it’s legit. Now you go call in that Re-Nutriv.’

I got off the phone giggling. I felt much better about it.

I needed the stuff by Thursday because I was flying out
Friday morning. And I was stupidly busy until then. The functions were laid on thick, and if I wanted time off, I had to meet my deadlines before I went. Late nights were a gross understatement. Decent amounts of sleep were a fantasy.

And, until a few days ago, so was seeing Dan again. I was still fighting a ferocious little internal battle about my decision to frolic off to meet a guy who had found it difficult to find time to email me only a week earlier.

What if we didn’t get on like we had here? What if I got bored of him after a day? Or he got bored of me? Or we fought? Or I wasn’t attracted to him any more?

Part of me was sulking in a corner, arms folded, hissing that Dan didn’t deserve my company after the way he had been treating me. In the other corner it was all fluorescent banners with the slogans ‘Live in the now!’ and ‘How many times in your life will you do this?!’

I confirmed resolutely that I was going to Hawaii. I consoled the part of me that was shy of being bitten again with the reassurance that at least I knew what to expect post-holiday. This time there’d be no expectations of mutual long-distance longing. Uh-uh. I was no fool. I knew how to play this game now. I’d enjoy my holiday for what it was, and that was it. Too easy.