Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (79 page)

Suddenly everything fell neatly into place. She was
annoyed. 'So that's why I had to wait so long before you
showed me the screen test,' she accused bitterly. 'Until you'd
heard from him.'

'Guilty.' He looked at her with new respect.

'All right.' She took a deep breath and grasped the arms of
her chair with trembling, splayed fingers. 'But I want $400,000
over the next eighty-four months. Guaranteed—whether the
surgery is successful or not.' She slid a sideways glance at him.

He looked at her expressionlessly and took his time relight
ing his pipe. 'You drive a hard bargain, little lady,' he said as
he lit up. 'What makes you think you're worth $400,000?' His
face was wreathed in blue smoke.

She smiled slightly. 'The same thing that makes you think
I'm worth $364,000.'

'Without the surgery, you know you're not worth a fraction
of that. Why get greedy?'

'I'm not greedy,' she retorted. 'I want to be covered just in
case . . .'

'The surgery fails,' he finished for her.

She nodded. 'That, or I'm left with worse complications
than I started out with. If that happens, any career I might
want will be finished before I start.'

'Fair enough.' It was his turn to nod. 'Agreed.' He signalled
to Carol Anderegg. 'Carol, you and Claude rustle up a tem
porary wardrobe for Tamara, will you? Including a white mink
coat. If this little lady's going to be a star, she'd better get used
to looking the part. I want her to go first class all the way.'

He turned back to Tamara, who had slumped limply in her
chair. She looked emotionally drained. 'Come to the studio at
eight tomorrow morning to sign the contract,' he told her. 'At
nine you'll report to wardrobe for measurements and what
ever they'll have scrounged up for you. At eleven a car will
take you to your first appointment at the dentist's. As soon as your teeth are fixed, I'll see to it that you and Louis are flown
to Italy. It'll probably be a couple of weeks.'

'Flown! A couple of weeks!' Tamara gasped. 'But—'

Skolnik made a casual gesture. 'Don't forget, I have an
entire fleet of airplanes at my disposal. Why waste time on
trains and ships when you don't have to? Time is money, after
all.
My
money.'

She shook her head blearily. She was completely overwhelmed now. After waiting this long for a break, she sud
denly found herself swept up in a whirlwind. Tomorrow!' she
murmured weakly. 'It's going to start tomorrow?'

He shrugged again. 'Why shouldn't it? You'll be on my
payroll as of eight o'clock in the morning, so we might as well
get cracking.' He sat back and grinned, contentedly puffing
on his pipe.

'In that case, I'd better be going,' she said, rising to her feet.
'It seems I'll need all the beauty sleep I can get.'

'You go do that. I'll see you tomorrow. Louie will drive you
home.'

She nodded numbly, said good night to the others, and
followed Ziolko unsteadily out of the room. Her knees
trembled. She felt anything but elated. A sudden depression
had permeated her every limb.

She tightened her lips. Her dreams of success had been nothing like this. She didn't know why she felt so unhappy. Except that maybe she had made a deal with the devil.

Chapter 9

It was dusk a little over a month and a half later when the stabbing yellow headlights of the Fiat Balilla crested the
spruce-studded hill high in the Italian Alps. Snow crunched under the clattering snow chains as the chauffeur expertly
negotiated the car up to the lamplit entrance of the four-storey
chalet, where it rolled to a smooth stop. Immediately he
jumped out and held the rear door open.

Max Factor, makeup genius and cosmetologist extraordi
naire, and Oscar Skolnik exited together. The March chill and
the clear, thin mountain air sharpened Skolnik's senses. Even
in the dusk, his vision seemed crystal clear as he inhaled the
heady fragrance of fresh air. If air could have healing proper
ties, then this was it, he thought. Abruptly he pulled his lips back across his teeth in a grin. His eyes were lively, dancing with unsuppressed excitement. In fact he looked far better
rested than the well-rested Max Factor. On a lesser mortal the
strain of the trip would have been all too evident, but Oscar Skolnik was a master at conserving his energies.

At the sound of the car pulling up, Louis Ziolko had hurried
down the chalet's terraced stone steps, half his face in deep
shadow. He was well bundled against the alpine cold in a thick
fur coat and scarf. He had been restlessly prowling the foyer
for this moment. 'Have a good trip?' he greeted quietly, his
breath a plume of vapour. 'Your room and a hot bath are
waiting.' His cheeks were taut, and he seemed oddly subdued,
as though he had been under an enormous strain.

Skolnik strode purposefully up the steps past him. 'How's
she faring?' he asked without preamble, never breaking his
swift stride, and thereby causing Ziolko to turn around in surprise and hurry back up the steps after him. 'The last time
I spoke to her on the telephone, she sounded crotchety and
annoyed.'

'You can't really blame Tamara,' Ziolko retorted with
barely controlled anger. "The surgery she underwent was pain
ful, and apparently the bandages cause a lot of itching.
They've been on for over a week and a half.'

Skolnik stopped on the top step and turned around. 'But
they're still on?'

Ziolko nodded and sighed. 'She still looks like a mummy,
if that's what you want to know,' he grumbled. 'Dr. Zatopek
was anxious for them to come off two days ago, but he held
off until you could be here.'

'Good.' Skolnik nodded with satisfaction. 'I take it he's
ready, then? I'll go straight up to her room. Have him meet
me there at once.'

Ziolko hesitated. 'It's Dr. Zatopek's dinner hour, the only
time of day he insists on not being disturbed. I think it wise if
we wait half an hour or so.'

Skolnik regarded Ziolko stolidly. 'I travelled two whole
days and nights and seven thousand miles to see this. If I could
do that, then the good doctor can interrupt his dinner.'

'Very well.' Ziolko compressed his lips and nodded. He
glanced down at the car. The chauffeur was unloading the
luggage from the trunk, and a familiar figure he couldn't quite
place was climbing the steps toward him.

'You've met Max Factor, of course,' Skolnik said offhand
edly. 'He's been sworn to secrecy. We can trust him to take
our little secret to the grave.'

Curiously, Ziolko looked at the makeup creator. 'Good to
see you again, Max,' he said equably, hiding his anger and
shaking the man's hand. But inside, Ziolko seethed. Tamara had specifically asked for Pearl, a known quantity in her life,
whom she trusted. Instead, she had got one of the world's
foremost cosmeticians . . . but a stranger. Max Factor or no,
she would be greatly disappointed.

Skolnik had caught Ziolko's brief flash of subdued anger. 'I
asked Max to come along so that he could personally do
Tamara's makeup before she sees herself in a mirror. I want
her to look her absolute best. I know this hasn't been easy on
her.'

Not easy!
Ziolko wanted to shout with a new flare of anger.
If
that was me under all those bandages, I'd sure as hell have
ripped them off by now and found myself a mirror. And broken
it and attacked Skolnik with the shards.

For he remembered only too well the warning Dr. Zatopek
had given him, but which both he and the doctor had carefully
kept from Tamara: the operation might well be successful; then again, it might not. Facial surgery was in its infancy.
Worse yet, she could even be disfigured for life.

With a heavy step, Ziolko followed Skolnik into the warm
foyer, praying as he had for the last month that the series of
operations had been successful.

Soon now, too soon, he would know if his prayers had been
answered.

Which would she be? Beauty? Or the Beast?

Tamara's eyes.

They were all that was visible of her face. Snowy white
bandages made the rest of her head a smooth, featureless
mask. Her nostrils were mere slits. Her mouth, a gash of dark
ened, wet bandages.

She did not even look remotely human—unless one looked
closely into her eyes.

They were human and wide and filled with fear. The fear
was much more evident now than before because of the lights,
a brilliant, blinding cluster of five-hundred-watt operating-
room bulbs.

She sat stiffly erect in the hard, upright chair beside the
operating table in her shapeless striped gown, eyes blinking
against the glare, wary of the tray of gleaming surgical utensils
beside her awaiting Dr. Zatopek's imminent arrival. When,
she asked herself, would it finally end?

First, her teeth had been straightened and capped in Califor
nia, too fast and therefore too painfully. She had also begun to lose weight there through a daily exercise regimen and virtual
starvation; at the weighing this morning, she had lost the last
of the twelve pounds she had been striving to lose. She was
now five-feet-nine and weighed 120 pounds. It had been no
easy feat. For the last month and a half, she couldn't remember a night when she hadn't gone to bed hungry. Or hadn't had trouble sleeping because of excruciating physical pain.
When she had first agreed to the surgery it had never occurred
to her that it would be so painful or that she would be con
stantly humiliated. To date, the nose surgery had been the
worst by far. In order to reshape it, her nose had been broken and then reset, packed with endless yards of fine, thin absorb
ent tape. Through the hazy fog of the local anaesthetic she had
heard her own delicate nose cartilage shattering, had heard the scalpel scraping. Even thinking about it now made her
shudder. Then, when the packing had come out, she had been
nauseated for two entire days and nights. Even that she had
suffered in silence, and although Louis Ziolko had been at her
side throughout this ordeal and they had grown quite close, she would have much preferred Pearl, or better yet, Inge, to
whom she would not have hesitated to pour out her woes. But
what she found most difficult of all to bear was that Dr.
Zatopek had refused to let her have even the slightest fleeting
glimpse of herself and her 'new' nose. At the clinic, mirrors were a carefully guarded commodity, locked in closets and
brought out only when the patient was deemed physically and psychologically ready; even her compact and the hand mirror she had packed in her luggage had been confiscated upon her
arrival.