Face Value (16 page)

Kate put the file down by the side of the bath and stared at the dripping tap. She couldn’t bring herself to stretch forward and turn it off properly and she couldn’t turn it off with her feet. They were leaden. The only thing that moved was the tears that were silently pouring down her cheeks, those same cheeks that JK3 had derided for their flatness. She was crying for Patty, this woman she’d never met, never known, but who had been through this . . . torture! She was crying for herself, for the close escape she’d had in almost being sucked into this hideous, evil world where nothing was enough if it made you look good. How many other Pattys were there out there? How many JK3s? Why were women continuously falling for these empty promises? She was crying for humanity, for what it could do in a supposedly civilized, educated, democratic world, all to make a quick buck here, a few thousand there, never mind that some poor sucker won’t dare to look at herself in a mirror again, will probably never have a relationship, never have children, won’t be able to hold down a job in public. . . . When would life begin again for Patty? Kate looked again at the first photo of her. There was something endearingly hopeful, energetic, so happy about her big round eyes. And that was the true tragedy. Of all the features of Patty’s that had disappeared in the second picture, it was the sparkle in her eyes that was most shockingly conspicuous by its absence. Patty, the old Patty, was gone. She was never coming back.

And then just as quickly as the tears had come, they stopped, and her head felt clear. The fog of hangover lifted, the heady rush of L.A. vanished, and the weight of responsibility drew down on her. Patty Patrice was her wake-up call, the alarm bell she hadn’t heard ringing as she’d accepted
Darling
’s plastic surgery supplement assignment with scarcely a glance over her shoulder to see if her scruples were listening. Patty Patrice was her call to arms, a weighty responsibility turning into the challenge she’d been waiting for. Patty Patrice was also her future as a journalist. Because how else could she reconcile any conscience—political, social, moral, or otherwise—with the somewhat flighty, haphazard, and facile nature of her chosen career path?

Questions rapidly flashed into her mind. Why hadn’t Patty sued? Surely everyone here sued? Why was Aurelie helping her? She was bound to lose her job over this; what was more astonishing was that she should want to keep her job at all. She needed to call Patty, to find out more, to see what he’d done to her with her own eyes. There was no question she wouldn’t write up her story. Patty had a right to be heard, and
Darling
’s readers had that same right to be informed. Would Alexis go for it? As the entire basis of the plastic surgery supplement, no. As one informed warning on how far wrong surgery could go? Possibly. But would it really carry the same weight if it was only one strand of the supplement? How much stronger, fresher the supplement would be if it was somehow broader than just about surgery. Kate’s alcohol-addled brain started to see it taking shape, unfold before her eyes with each drip of the tap.

The cover: a naked female form, beautiful, natural. The cover line: WHY SURGERY IS YESTERDAY’S NEWS. No, too random, too alienating for readers, who, after all, would be expecting something in favor of surgery. She’d come back to that—maybe Tania back in Maidstone could help her out with some suggestions, although the girls in the subs department at
Darling
magazine seemed pretty hot with titles, too. The main feature would have to be Patty Patrice’s story, an interview with her, a warning on how surgery could go wrong. There could be another story on how to look ten years younger without resorting to surgery. Nature versus Nurture. Nurture Nature. That kind of thing. It had been done before, but not in this context: a positive, antisurgery article in a supplement devoted to helping women—oh, God, she could feel a cliché coming—help themselves. The final feature could be something on how celebrity culture was fueling unhealthy physical goals, causing us to pander to vanity, narcissism, self-obsession. She would start by looking at Hollywood, the spiritual home of plastic surgery, beginning with how the studios influenced the starlets to look a certain way. Taking her neatly back to Lolly’s original feature idea: the history of plastic surgery in Hollywood. Luxury, celebrity, entertainment. Well, there were elements of each of Alexis’s requirements in that lineup. Alexis would have to go for it. Oh, yes, the alarm bells would be ringing, all right.

The phone by her head, dripping with condensation from the hot bath, startled her to attention. She pressed the receiver to her damp face.

“Hello?”

“Kate. Or should I call you Cinderella?” Shit! JK3. How on earth should she play him now? He didn’t know, shouldn’t know that he was some kind of Antichrist to her. “Kate? You still there?”

“I’m in the bath.” A wistful sigh at the other end of the phone told her this was too much information.

“I’d join you only I’m in the garden.” Funny how only yesterday, he’d sounded sexy, charming; now she visualized him in leafy foliage surrounded by lizards, himself the king of all reptiles.

“Picking camellias?” She hadn’t meant for it to sound sarcastic, but it had.

“Waiting by the fountain, where I last saw you. At least you’re not still in my powder room.”

It was annoying how in spite of all the things she’d read he’d done, at his mention of the fountain, her good manners prevailed. “JK, I’m really, really sorry.”

She tried to stand up to get out of the bath but the lead from the phone wasn’t long enough. The phone dropped back underwater. By the time she’d found a towel that wasn’t a facecloth or big enough to make a double bed with, he’d gone. Let him think she’d hung up on him. This was just the beginning. She had to get organized anyway. The shoot tomorrow! Her interviews! And most importantly she had to track down Patty Patrice and the mysterious Aurelie.

She looked at herself naked in the mirror and felt lucky to be whole, unscarred, unhurt by any surgeon’s empty promises.

The doorbell rang. Why didn’t Mercedes just barge in like she had before?

Clutching her towel and wearing her old-lady bath hat, she opened the door to find Clarissa looking at her as if she was a lazy slob for still being in a towel at 11:00 a.m.

“Good morning,” she said, managing a grimace of a smile. “You have a casting at twelve midday, an interview at three, another at five, then a beauty editors’ dinner for the plastic surgery conference the day after tomorrow. Oh, and a facial in the spa at six. And Alexis called. Twice. And there’s this package for you.”

She handed over a white box. She wasn’t expecting anything.

"Thank you, Clarissa. Obviously we have a lot to talk about. Can you meet me in the lobby in half an hour?”

Still clutching her towel around her, Kate closed the door. Time to get Clarissa onside. She moved over to the bed, now invitingly made up. Funny how just half an hour ago she’d wanted nothing more than to sleep, deeply, forgetfully; now she wanted to change the world, fight Patty’s battles and those of every other woman who’d been through these ghastly experiences. She could no more sleep than she could wonder about what to wear.

She opened the box, peeling back the tape gently, trying not to tear the off-white Japanese paper finish, which was irresistibly pretty. She’d like to save the box, wrap some present in it. It had a lid like a cake box’s, with precise folds forming a hinge-like motion as she raised the lid.

There was an off-white flower inside.

A camellia.

Calmly, she picked up the box and carried it over to the desk by the window. She dropped it into the bin.

twelve

A car pulled up to the stoplight. The female driver looked like Heather Locklear. She had a platinum blonde bob, wispy fringe. She checked her reflection in the dashboard mirror then pulled off in her black Range Rover as the lights changed to green. Almost immediately the lights changed back. Another woman pulled up in a black Range Rover. She looked like Heather Locklear, platinum bob, wispy fringe. . . .

Kate was sitting in the hotel café counting L.A. sheep: watching identical blondes of a certain age drive past. They all looked perfect, the blow-dry just so, the nipped-in jacket, the jeans, but they all looked the same. Creepily so.

Clarissa interrupted her daydream. “I’ve canceled your casting, one of your interviews, and the facial and arranged a car to take you to Patty Patrice’s house at five. It’ll pick you back up at seven, so you’ll be in time for the beauty editors’ dinner at eight. Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you to the interview?” She pushed a lump of mozzarella around in a slurry of balsamic, like a round white pebble at the bottom of a peat-filled river. Clarissa’s dietary requirements seemed to defy Atkins or the Zone or any other new fad diet.

“No. Thanks, but I’ll be fine,” said Kate. She reached across for the saccharin that would apparently knock off two dress sizes with a simple click, remembering Trisha Hillmory’s Splenda habit. All that—Maidstone—seemed so long ago, now. She would call her mother today, must do, it had been mean to be so aloof but she hadn’t meant to, if that counted.