Face Value (15 page)

“Look, all I’m going to say is, you have a chance to make the world a better place. You write stuff, you have an audience. Take that chance. Don’t be like me, don’t get caught up in all this.” Aurelie was still there.

“I’m sure it’s all very, er, interesting”—Kate tapped the envelope secretively—“but I don’t know if there’s much I can do. I’m supposed to be writing a story about history and—”

“Don’t you get it?!” Aurelie stood up. Her hissing assumed a more urgent kind of hiss, an almost nasty hiss. "This
is
history. If you don’t do something to stand up to these assholes, we are all history!”

The hiss around the word “assholes” was so forceful that a droplet of saliva bounced onto Kate’s plate of eggs. That did it.

“One more thing. If you see me at the surgery, not a word. We didn’t have this meeting, okay?”

“Of course not. And I promise I’ll read it, see what I can do.”

It was awful to think of herself at a time like this, what with Aurelie putting her life on the line, and women being history, but all this talking and thinking was making Kate’s headache worse. She watched Aurelie leave the café looking as conspicuous as a bloke in drag. She could vaguely make out, beyond the door, a black Mercedes pulling up, another woman at the wheel, and Aurelie getting into the passenger seat. They sped off quickly.

She was about to open the envelope when the waitress appeared.

“Wow, your friend had a heavy audition to go to today, right?”

“Something like that,” said Kate, feeling really weak and pathetic and disinterested in any further intrigue. Amazing how she’d held it all together, really, despite her “exhaustion.” At least she’d managed a night without cigarettes. Her first in a while. She should probably hurry back to the ever-cheerful Clarissa and find out more about this shoot she’d been banging on about in the middle of the night.

The waitress cleared up the plates of cold-looking food. “I guess Nicole Kidman has a lot to answer for. Everyone’s doing it these days.”

“Nicole Kidman?”

“You know. From that film a few years ago,
The Hours
. She got the Oscar for that fake nose. Your poor friend . . . I swear, if I had a dollar for every budding actress who thinks they can get a part with a fake nose—”

“Oh, yes. Yes. That’s right. The nose.”

“I’ll get you the check.” She returned with a plate with a slip of paper on it, and two small orange sweets. “Vitamin C,” she said. “It really helps, trust me. Take two, and a couple of Advil, and you’ll be fine.”

eleven

As soon as she arrived back at the hotel, at around 10:00 a.m., Kate had sunk under the duvet with the intention of putting aside any thoughts of work for the day until she had caught up on some much-needed beauty sleep. The maid, who, true to cultural stereotype, was of Hispanic origin, had other ideas. She banged so hard on her door when Kate had ignored the doorbell, and then burst into her room when she had ignored the banging, that Kate had no choice but to seek refuge in the bathroom and take a long, hot bath. The white noise of the Hoover energetically mowing the deep cream woolen carpet reverberated through the locked bathroom door, signifying that Mercedes (or so the pink embroidered italics on her uniform christened her) was now content with this trade-off, and that this had indeed been the right course of action. It was strangely soothing, this manic buzz of the vacuum, transforming the bathroom into a womblike sanctuary. Beige mosaic tiles with a hint of silvery green contributed to the overall Zen-like atmosphere, further enriched by Kate’s discovery of a seemingly magical wet-room switch, which instantly cloaked all the Perspex cotton-wool holders, plastic hair caps, and shoe shiners with a rainlike fog. The transformation into glorified Russian bathhouse was now complete, happily without the sweating, flabby men in towels who had been in the only other Russian bath she’d visited, on East Tenth Street in New York. (Article: “Spas: The Real Deal or the Luxe Factor?”

She hoped the heat wouldn’t damage the array of lotions and potions she’d brought with her from New York, items that only six or so weeks ago she wouldn’t even have been able to identify, but which now she somehow found indispensable. The rose-scented moisturizer from Rosamai, a fancy French skin care company, had impinged on her life to such an extent that it was one of the first things she looked forward to as soon as she woke up. They’d explained at the launch that this was to do with the unique effect the rose oils had on the psyche due to each petal having been handpicked by a remote tribe of African women, famed for the softness of their hands. (They hadn’t been country specific—“Africa” was suitably foreign and obscure enough.) Six weeks ago she would have taken her deep desire to moisturize as a sign she needed to get out more; now it was integral to the daily maintenance of her skin, an important component of any girl’s grooming routine, a vital step to start each day. Her cleanser was of eastern European origin, its rather basic packaging somehow lending credibility to its more exclusive price tag, justified by the purity of the waxy ingredients and the softness of the muslin facecloth which accompanied it (made by nuns in a Romanian monastery). She was the proud owner of an eye cream called Tender’ice, which came from a Swiss laboratory and had been tested on NASA astronauts between four and six o’clock in the morning, the time when skin was apparently at its most receptive to its potent cocktail of ingredients. Kate had for the most part ignored the stories—let them pick their roses and smooth spacemen’s tired eyes as much as they liked—the creams felt divine to the touch, and her skin was better than it had ever been before. Of course, before it had been lucky if it had come into contact with a bar of soap, so perhaps she wasn’t the best judge, but these few things were nonetheless carefully edited down to be her favorites among the multitude of dazzling concoctions presented to her. At least for this week.

Insofar as she was wearing anything at all, she disrobed, dropping the huge fluffy towel on the floor. (The actual robe hanging on the back of the door, with its belt tightly wound round itself to form the initial
K
for “Kate”—the hotel prided itself on these small, personal touches—had quite frankly been too much of an effort to unwind, and who needed the complimentary slippers when the carpet was so soft?) The smiley faces she had childishly finger-drawn in the fogged-up mirror had produced clear tears of condensation that now ran in a downward trail. They led directly to the brown envelope by the sink. She’d dumped it there when she’d run in this morning. She flicked off the steam machine, tore open the envelope, and, carefully clutching the clear plastic folder within so the contents didn’t slide out from the open-ended bottom, she stepped gingerly into the bath and prepared to find out what secrets lay within.

Patty Patrice’s face had been pretty but unremarkable pre-op: soft brown curls cropped closely to her face, big brown eyes, a beaming smile, and the ubiquitous sparkling white straight teeth made to sing out “God Bless America!” But even with the tap splashes on the photograph which had etched unsightly blue moles on Patty’s features as the photographic paper dissolved, nothing could prepare her for the photograph that followed. Exhibit 2, Patty Patrice’s face postsurgery was Patty . . . after some horrendous burn incident, surely? She had looked in her late twenties before; now she looked in her late forties. Her skin was stretched, pulling tightly around her eyes, and where it was tanned and freckly before, afterward it was red and rough, with a sore-looking shine, like a sucked boiled sweet. Her nose had a strange curve upward, her nostrils flared like a monkey’s yet conjoined in a sharp point at the tip. Her lips were puffy, swollen, and enlarged. Patty Patrice’s transformation was remarkable, but for all the wrong reasons.

Exhibit 3 was a collection of letters, all, it had to be presumed, unanswered, from Patty Patrice to JK3, expressing dissatisfaction with the successive procedures. Exhibit 4 was an invoice from JK3 for the sum of fifty-seven thousand dollars for work undertaken so far, with the notice that if his bill was not paid by the end of the month, he would take her to court. Exhibit 5 was a letter from Patty Patrice’s insurers saying they were sorry, but due to the work on her face being “of self-inflicted origin” they would be unable to refer her to any plastic surgeon for correctional aesthetic work, whether it was related to sinus problems or not. Exhibit 6 was some kind of diary, or letter, to no one in particular, or perhaps to Kate herself, she wasn’t sure, offering an account of her experiences. She rested her head on the edge of the ceramic bath. It felt cold on the back of her neck. She drew a deep breath, and started to read:

He suggested I have not one, but several procedures. I didn’t think I looked that bad, really I’d only wanted my nose tweaked a little, but he said, "Think about it this way, gorgeous girl, if you get it all done now, you’ll save money, because you’ll only need one anesthetic. Also, I’m busy next month, I have a big
Vogue
shoot to prepare for.”