Face Value (12 page)

Chuck turned off the road into a private gated estate. The gate itself was built like a house, big enough to house a family of ten, but used instead as a security base filled with closed-circuit TVs, spy cameras, and uniformed guards. Chuck flashed his ID and drove through, into a sparkling paradise of wedding-cake palaces, complete with mock-Georgian columns and sculpted gardens, somewhat oddly juxtaposed with vacant plots of scrubland—real estate waiting to be snapped up for a cool twenty million dollars or so, then transformed with another few million into a film-set fantasy residence for the truly rich and famous.

They pulled up outside a wedding cake, and Chuck walked round to her door, holding it open for her.

"This was scrubland this time last year,” he said.

“Wait, how did they grow palm trees that quickly?” she asked.

“Nobody actually grows those,” said Chuck, incredulous at the thought. “You get them full-size from the landscape gardener’s. ”

“Oh. Of course. I knew that.”

He smiled at her, took her arm, and they walked into the house.

The first thing Kate noticed inside the house was not the spiraling stone staircase descending like something from
Gone with the Wind
to the black-and-white-checkered floor, nor the floor-to-ceiling windows that led out to a decked swimming pool at the back, nor even the chandelier that was about the size of her bedroom back home that sparkled, the sole light force for the reception area. The first thing Kate noticed was the line of handsome blond Action Man look-alikes all wearing those same white T-shirts with little men on horses waving polo sticks in the air, who thronged around her with trays of what could only be peach Bellinis on them. The only time Kate had been out drinking in New York was that one night out with that Jean-Paul idiot; it was time to make amends. She quietly deposited the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon she’d bought from the only supermarket she could find in Beverly Hills behind what in England would be called a pot-plant, but here was a towering banana tree, festooned with strings of camellia flowers and fairy lights.

“I told you there was no need to ‘bring a bottle’ . . . was that what you called it?” said Chuck.

“I guess he can afford his own booze, right?” she laughed.

“Here, I’ll show you around. The pool’s my favorite bit.”

Oh, God, not the pool party. They’d all be naked, showing off their new implants, and she’d be the flat-chested, big-tummied, no-cheekboned one hiding in the corner, the one who borrowed the host’s T-shirt because she was “cold,” except here the T-shirts would be tight and skimpy, designed to stretch over rippling torsos rather than hang conveniently down to her knees.

“Do I have to take my clothes off?” she asked, trading her empty Bellini for a full one.

Chuck chuckled. “Only if you want to! That kinda stuff doesn’t happen too much, at least not until really late. JK’s guests are kinda respectable . . . governors, fund-raisers, studio executives, porn stars, coke dealers, you know!”

“Porn stars?” Kate gulped down the Bellini and reached for another one.

"That was a joke! Don’t you go writing that in your magazine. ”

Chuck was right. No one was cavorting naked in the pool. They were draped instead over low-lying couches the size of king-size beds, wrapping themselves in furry blankets, or dangling long limbs into the black mosaicked water, all the while the hypnotic meanderings of a band like Air or Groove Armada or something equally wafting and bland trickling over them, keeping them calm, cool, chilled. Paper lanterns, all a delicate off-white color, were strung from tree to tree, trailing off into the garden, almost begging the guests to pair off, disappear, follow the lights, and snuggle down for romantic trysts in secret spots among the camellia bushes.

Chuck disappeared. Kate didn’t know what to do with herself. Think Jane-Louise, the girl back at the office in New York, as if she could possibly be thinking about any girl back in the office in Maidstone, although that might be funnier. What would Lianne do? Find a dark space and a tangerine, and wait until it was all over. No, Jane-Louise would sidle up to the nearest, friendliest-looking girl, introduce herself, and ask politely how she knew JK3. It would be a casual introduction, the kind that led into a good thirty minutes’ worth of chat, with the girl no doubt inviting Kate over to her beach house in Malibu for the weekend, seeing as Kate was new to the town and couldn’t possibly know anyone.

The blonde nymphet on the right would do.

“Hi,” said Kate.

“Hi!” The blonde smiled brightly, then a puzzled look came over her brow. Her brows could still puzzle. “Do I know you?”

“No!” Kate laughed heartily. “No! I shouldn’t think so, unless you come from Maidstone.” Take the bait, take the bait.

The blonde looked blankly at her.

“Maidstone, in Kent. That’s where I’m from? In England?” Sentences going up at ends again? Invite me to your beach house? Or at least just talk to me for five minutes?

“Oh! You’re from Eng-er-land! In the United Kingdom! I knew you had an accent!”

"That’s right.” Kate smiled and looked down at her gold Jimmy Choo thongs. At least she had good shoes. Jane-Louise. Jane-Louise. Jane-Louise. “Anyway, how do you know JK?”

The blonde laughed. “Chesney!” she shouted at a muscly man standing a few feet away from her, talking to three similar-looking blondes. “Hey, Chesney! Come here! This chick wants to know how I know JK!”

Was that so funny?

“Well, it’s not that important. I mean, only if you want to tell me—”

Chesney walked over and grabbed the blonde from behind, squeezing her breasts playfully upward and outward. “How do you think she knows JK?” he laughed.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean. I mean, I meant—”

“Looks like you need to get to know him a little better, too!” He put his arm around Kate’s shoulders and hugged her tight. “Hey, only kidding!” He pinched her cheeks, no doubt thinking she needed cheek enhancements, too, but mercifully remembering some shred of good manners and keeping quiet about it. “Now, why don’t we get you a drink? Your glass is empty. Can’t have that, can we, Pancake Girl?”

The blonde, it turned out, was called Symphony, and the muscly man, Chesney, was her fiancé. Chesney was determined that Symphony was going to make it in the movies, and so had paid a fortune for her to see JK, considering him to be the top surgeon in the town. His investment in Symphony’s breasts was already starting to pay off, with a couple of auditions resulting in her getting callbacks—a big deal apparently—even if they both hoped that one day the parts she was offered would be greater than Third Busty Waitress, Girl in Swimsuit, or Hooker, Sunset Boulevard. They loved Kate’s accent, just loved it, and had she ever tried acting? Chesney knew a great agent who could get her fixed up with some work. Oh, she was a magazine editor! From New York! But didn’t she say she was from England? They just loved England. And where did her family live? Get Pancake Girl another Bellini, someone!

And thus, for a famous-making fifteen minutes, Maidstone’s collective ears burned with all the glory of the fires of ancient Rome, or at least as if the Kimberly-Clark toilet paper factory had been set on fire. The Roxy,
Maidstone Bazaar
, even the newly reopened Larkfield Leisure Centre were described as if they were the seven wonders of the world. Kate told them stories about her mum, her best friend, Lise, the affair Lise was having with Steve (“perhaps it’s true love, Kate, it can strike at any time,” said Symphony); about Brian Palmers and how she’d been called out of the blue to take this job; and even about Badass the cat. Absence had made her heart grow if not fonder, then at least a little more aware that she had been away from home for well over a month and this was the first time she’d even talked about it. For some reason, Chesney and Symphony found everything hysterically funny, and not only did they find it funny, but their ten friends (Rupee, a surfing pro; Ali, some hotshot book agent; Chloe, a publicist; Fifi, somebody’s girlfriend; Armand, an actor; Emmanuelle, a model; Travis, something in film; Huckle, somebody famous’s tennis coach; and Flint and Glint or was it Trint and Hint . . . something else to do with film) also found her funny. She was on to her fifth peach Bellini when she was aware of a tall, blond god standing head and shoulders above the throng.

“Kate?” he called out to her. “You made it! I’m so glad, gorgeous girl!”

JK3. The throng parted and it was just her and him, him and her, and he was wearing an off-white suit, probably Gucci, with a string of wretched camellias hanging round his neck like a Hawaiian lei which he’d probably spent all week picking, laying out on frozen tissues, and sewing together because he wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it for him. No wonder he’d been late for her this morning. He looked gorgeous.

“Let me show you around.”

“Yes, I’d like that,” she said feebly. He took her arm. The breeze blew her hair gently across his face, catching him by surprise. He breathed in the fragrance, all that L.A.’s best hairdressers could offer, cloaked in the balmy night air, laden with jasmine. “Mmm . . .” He smiled, then moved his hand around her waist. She held her stomach in self-consciously. Thankfully she was still sober enough to walk straight up the rounded stairs without gripping too heavily on the banisters with her free hand.

Up on the first floor he led her straight to his cinema, a plush cream leather-walled square room, with one white cashmere-covered sofa bed and a huge plasma screen on the wall.

“It’s a bit gay, isn’t it?” she giggled. She must be drunk.

“I’m sorry?” He looked confused. Perhaps no one had told him that there was a fine line between bachelor-pad interiors and being a little too heavy-handed with the off-white leather.

“Well . . . all this . . . cream. Where I come from they’d call it a bit gay.”

He laughed, a little painfully, and pulled her down onto the sofa bed. What if he kissed her now?

“Kate, I am not gay. Not that I have a problem, you understand, with being thought of as gay . . . but do you need me to prove it?”

She giggled again.

“Okay, you’re not gay, but don’t you think this is a little bit . . . creamy?”

“I didn’t do it! My ex did. She had this obsession with this interior designer, Lopes Lopez—note the
s
and the
z
—who was most definitely creamy! And what she wanted, I wanted, so . . .”

“What happened to her?”

“No sooner had the mink throws been placed at appropriately asymmetrical angles on this sofa than she dumped me. Ran off with Lopes Lopez, who, by the way, wasn’t as creamy as I thought he was. Or at least, he was creamy, but in a different way. Oh, you know what I’m saying! Anyway, all my fault. Never trust anyone with an alliterative name, that’s what I’ve always said.”

They laughed, their heads bashing together gently. It was hard to imagine this superconfident man being dumped by anyone, let alone for someone who was or was not gay.

“Oh, and I got rid of the mink throw thing. It’s really not cool to be killing animals when there’s perfectly good cashmere available. I’m macrobiotic vegetarian, did I tell you?”

“Yes!” They laughed again, then stopped at the same time, leaving a silence that neither was comfortable enough to have empty.

“Have you—” he said, just as she uttered the words:

“Why did—”

“You go first,” he said.

“Why did you become a cosmetic surgeon?” she asked. Could he read the subtext, work out that behind her question lay a desire to understand how anyone could do what he did for a living: create Barbie doll prototypes, trout pouts, pulled-taut eyes, wind tunnel face-lifts, a homogenized, bastardized version of humanity? He was vegetarian, so clearly loved animals, although she suspected he might have problems with, say, black dog hairs on the cream chairs. He was good-looking, too. Even more so now that she’d had a couple of drinks and forgotten about not having any cheekbones. So how could someone so gorgeous, and a vegetarian at that, butcher women’s faces?

A flicker of hurt flashed across his face. “You don’t approve, do you?” He sighed.

“I don’t want to be rude,” she said, “but . . .”

“No, that’s okay. It crops up occasionally.” He sat more upright, suddenly older, more serious. “Let’s see. I could tell you I was bullied at school. Relentlessly. Remorselessly, in fact, all for the way I looked, and that it was only when my grandfather stepped in and paid for me to get my nose fixed by a leading surgeon in L.A. that the bullying stopped.”

Kate looked at his slightly squiffy nose. He should have asked for his money back.

“But that would be lying. Or I could tell you that I’ve always been obsessed with the ideal of beauty as outlined by Euclid in 300 BC, which says that, like it or not, there are certain measurements which universally we find pleasing to look at in others. That it is my conscious endeavor, my purpose in life, to create a beautiful figure of a man or woman that conforms at least in part to Euclid’s principles.”

Kate looked doubtful.

“Or I could tell you that, actually, I realized living in this town that I was never going to be famous for acting in movies or writing screenplays, so I did the next best thing. Made a ton of money at a very young age, out of helping those with fixations about certain parts of their anatomy to feel a little better about themselves.”

He shrugged his shoulders, reaching out to hold her hand.

“Is that so bad?”

She didn’t answer.

“Look, all that before, in my clinic, it’s a bit of an act, sure, but it’s not some kind of hard sell. It’s how I am, as a surgeon. I know what people want to hear. I know I can make them happy. But I’m honest with them.”

She shrugged her shoulders, smiling. She didn’t trust herself to answer, and liked him enough not to want to upset him. His grip was firm, she felt his warm smooth skin, neat nails. A surgeon’s hand, skilled, strong, dextrous.