Face Value (25 page)

Kate ran down the hill, clutching her towel and her bag, clenching her toes around the thong of her shoes so they wouldn’t fall off as she gained speed. And then her toes slid so far forward in her thongs that they crumpled up anyway, unable to brake quickly enough to prevent her from coming thudding down on her knees. The sandy path stung her broken skin.

Quick as a flash, JK was by her side helping her up.

“Leave me alone!”

“Shh!” he said, finger over his mouth as he gently patted her knee with a clean handkerchief. Trust him to have a clean one on hand, probably pressed with camellia flower water, she thought to herself, grateful nonetheless.

“Sit—just for a second, I promise,” he said, holding her hand and pulling her down on the grass to the side of the path. “You’ll still get the boat.”

The fall had knocked her breath away, so she did as she was told, gripping her towel firmly around her and tucking her good leg under the other so that the grass didn’t irritate her knee.

“Now, you listen to me. There are two good reasons why I pushed to get you here—and I’m sorry if you didn’t want to come. The first is that you and I began a journey, a professional journey that we never completed. You said you wanted a final interview, and, call me an egotistical maniac, but I was more than happy to oblige and tell you about the important work I do here. Then your assistant said you would be thrilled to have a break. So I thought, Paracato is always a good host, and I believed you might like to
see
my work instead of my just telling you.”

“But you should have asked me first!” What work here? What was he talking about?

“Shh!” he said again, tipping bottled water onto a handkerchief and pressing it gently over her knee. “I did ask you. I asked Clarissa to ask you, and she said she’d spoken to you and you had said, quote unquote, ‘brilliant.’ I would never have just assumed—”

“Clarissa! I don’t believe it!”

“And my second reason . . . well, I wasn’t sure you’d really understood my Imperfect Perfect demo at the Face-Off convention. I don’t know, but you kinda disappeared on me, and everyone else seemed to think . . .” He reached into his bag for a Band-Aid, and started peeling off the paper backing and sticking it over her graze. “Actually, I didn’t care what everyone else thought, I wanted to know what you thought. You’re the only one around here honest enough, or interested enough, to properly care about what you write, and your opinion really mattered to me.”

“You w-wanted my opinion?” How dare he? Get her all this way just to fish for compliments. When, knowing what she knew, there was no way she could ever give him praise.

“Look, I don’t know how to say this . . . but . . . there aren’t many people in my life that I can trust, that I can ask about stuff like that.”

She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t understand what he was saying. What he wanted from her. She stood up, calmly, and hobbled with as much dignity as she could while still in her bra and knickers, clutching the towel, down the hill, JK walking beside her. They were silent now, as if he knew there wasn’t much point in saying more.

“Stop a second,” he said, seeing her struggle with her towel, bag, and underwear combination. “Give me that.” He gestured to the towel, then looked politely away, over his shoulder, holding it up to shield her while she got dressed.

“Don’t you dare look.” She glowered at him, pulling on her dress then limping on down the hill.

They arrived at the boat in silence. She threw her bag on then reached out to the skipper with her other hand as she walked up the small gangplank.

“Take me back, now,” she commanded the skipper, her voice choked with cold emotion. “Good-bye, JK.”

“Kate!” JK stood on the jetty, as if about to jump on board, but she thrust out the palm of her hand squarely toward him, warning him away.

“Don’t even think about it!” The tears disappeared, and anger brought strength to her voice.

The engines started.

He looked humbled all of a sudden. She had a distance from him now, enough to see him clearly as if for the first time. He was wearing jean shorts and a white T-shirt. He had brown arms, she noticed, muscly; tanned, tight calves.

“Kate, I don’t understand . . . why?”

“You’re lucky I’m not suing for kidnap!” she shouted back. The skipper and the crew stood poised on the jetty, ready to cast off, all eyes following their drama intently, yet with a servile discretion, pretending not to be.

“But how could I know? Listen, ever since that night at the party when you disappeared—”

“I’m not your Cinderella!” she shouted angrily.

“Okay . . . okay . . . but if I didn’t grab my chance, how could I see you again? What would have become of us?”

“Us? . . . Us?! Are you kidding?!”

He seemed hurt. Exasperated. He sighed. “Look . . . I lied . . . when at the beauty editors’ thing, someone asked if there was a romantic connection between us. Whatever I said, I don’t remember exactly now, but I do remember I denied it. I said I never mixed business with pleasure, or something . . . something dumb like that.”

“But there isn’t a romantic connection!” Kate looked horrified.

“But there is, Kate.”

Her stomach churned. She was thrilled at the thought that there might be something between them; yet she was simultaneously repulsed by him, angry at all he had done, angry with herself for feeling anything for him beyond revulsion. She had to remember the truth, the real JK only she seemed to know about.

“Okay, I’ve heard it all, let’s go.” She motioned to the men.

JK put one foot on the gangplank. “No! Not yet! I’ll let you go, but just hear me out!”

Kate folded her arms and glared at him.

“I wanted to bring you here not because I’m madly in love with you or because I want to spend the rest of my life with you, or anything daft like that. I’m not that superficial. But that night at the party, before you threw up—”

"Thank you for reminding me!”

From nowhere a cheap plastic beach ball suddenly bounced into the water, interrupting them. They both stared at it, surprised. Its bright blue, yellow, and red stripes looked out of place next to the sleek adults-only yacht.

“Meu!”
came a voice from the top of the hill.
“Meu!”
Three children stood at the top of the hill waving, trying to get someone to fish out the ball for them.
“Por favor . . . Pare! . . . Por favor!”

One of the crew leaned over the side to try to fish the ball out of the water.

“Paracato has kids here?” asked Kate. His grandkids? Great-grandkids?

“No.” JK smiled. "That’s why I wanted you here. I haven’t given anyone this story yet.” He waved his hand proudly toward the children. “My patients.”

Kate was in shock. He operated on kids? JK operated on children?

The ball scurried along the crests of the waves, blown out to sea by a sudden gust.

“Eu não posso pegar isso! Desculpa!”
shouted the crew member back up to the kids. He turned to Kate, shrugged his shoulders. “It’s okay. They will buy them a new one!”

“You operate on . . . children?”

JK was too busy pulling off his T-shirt and kicking off his shoes to answer. He dived from the jetty, cutting through the water in a few strokes until he was at the ball, shouting jubilantly up to the children on the hill, something in Portuguese she didn’t understand. He passed the ball up to one of the crew, then hauled himself back up on the jetty. The vertebrae on his brown back stuck out as his shoulders rounded over, pulling himself up on his forearms. He shook the water off his hair like a big Labrador and bounded onto the boat.

“You operate on children!” Kate felt her eyes welling up again, in anger.

He was a liar. And a butcher. Who ruined physically perfect women, and now children. He should be behind bars, but instead he was flaunting it, willing her to write about it.

“Oh, Kate . . . Kate!” He ignored her hostility, tugging her down next to him on the wooden seat nearest to the gangplank. His skin smelled of seawater, and something else, something delicious like watermelon or cucumber, the scent of summer. She wished they could bottle that, turn it into a perfume, sweet-salty-sexy. The saltwater dried before her eyes, forming tiny white rivulets on the down of his smooth chestnut brown skin.

She shivered, hugging herself for comfort. She could see the children on the hilltop, reunited with their ball. Their innocent play made the reason for their presence all the more unsettling.

“What could possibly be wrong with a child’s face? How could you operate on them?”

He looked perplexed.

“What do you mean? Oh! I see!” He raised his eyes heavenward, bemused. “You think I . . . ? No, Kate, no. These kids are seriously flawed, Kate. Harelips. Jug ears. Things that in the States we’d have corrected pretty much at birth, but here they don’t have the money. Paracato used to do it. He set up an operating theater here so they could spend their recovery in paradise. Now that he’s older, he asked me to help out a little, keep it going. I did some training with him; he trusts me. It’s no big deal. But I needed you to write about it to help raise money for some of the costs.”

“You mean you don’t . . .”

“Do boob jobs on twelve-year-olds? Not my thing. Nose jobs for seven-year-olds . . . there are probably surgeons out there who would do that, but . . . not me.” He looked annoyed. “You know what, Kate? Maybe you could stop seeing me as this—I don’t know . . . some kind of butcher.”

He got up to go.

The sun was disappearing rapidly behind the hilly island as the gangplank was finally pulled up and the crew pushed off from the shore. The purple mountains in the near distance were silhouetted layer upon layer, like the cardboard backdrops of a puppet theater.

JK stopped on the jetty and looked at her once more. He sighed deeply.

“Look, the third thing I wanted to say. Or the fourth. I can’t remember. There were a few.”

The boat was chugging out now, the engine and the waves making a din.

“What?”

He shouted, “It’s just that . . . I’d like to be laughing again with you. Playing Name That Tune with you. Like we did. I haven’t done that in so long, not with anyone.”

"I can’t hear you!”

Kate couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She wanted to hear more, but Patty Patrice’s face, that face in the sweltering hot apartment back in L.A., was there before her. She could see the weird shiny texture of her skin, taut and pained, gleaming.

The engine jerked the boat forward suddenly. They were off.

“Well . . . I don’t want to laugh with you.”

She shouted back; she couldn’t hold her rage in anymore.
“I know what happened, JK! I know what you did!
”

“What do you mean?”
He looked concerned, confused.

He was gobsmacked. He dropped his hands to his sides, defeated. As if he knew that all the good work for children in the world couldn’t make amends. The game was up.

new york

beauty note:

Jeans by True Religion. Top by Kate Moss for Topshop (sent as a free gift to press, sell on eBay?).
Eyes:
Red Eye eyedrops by Rite Aid, concealed underneath with YSL Touche Eclat (shade 3) and Secret Brightening Powder by Laura Mercier.
Complexion:
Revived with Estée Lauder Advanced Night Repair Protective Recovery Complex, enhanced with Estée Lauder DayWear Plus Multi Protection Tinted Moisturizer SPF 15.
Eyes:
Bobbi Brown No Smudge Mascara in black.
Lips:
Lipstick Queen Oxymoron lipstick in Minor Crisis.

twenty-one

Jean-Paul met her off the plane at JFK, so she knew he must be keen. Clarissa had forwarded him her new flight details (at least that was something she’d done right) and he’d rearranged everything around her. Not that artists probably had such tight schedules that they couldn’t cancel a coffee or get up a little earlier once in a while, she figured.

No one had ever met her at an airport before. Not that she’d been to that many, the past few days, weeks, excepting.

“Leesen to the noise, Kate!” he said. She’d forgotten how French his accent was. A fleet of police cars screeched past the cab rank. “Did you forget how great this city is?”

“No, I didn’t.” She hadn’t, either. It was good to be back in New York, her home away from home. She’d scarcely spent any time here, but now she was back, it felt like the only place she’d ever had roots. After all the craziness of L.A., and then Rio, it felt somehow safe.

Her real roots were in the meantime trying to reclaim her: messages were piling up on her mobile from Lise and her mum. She would call them later. After this evening with Jean-Paul.

Strangely, JK hadn’t called. She had half expected him to call, to try to engage her in a debate about Patty Patrice. He’d obviously given up. Finally. Well, good. She had been foolish to confront him with the knowledge that she knew about Patty. What if he caused repercussions for Patty and Aurelie? Should she say something to them? But then she had convinced herself that he wouldn’t say anything; perhaps he didn’t even know to what she was referring. If she called him, or Aurelie for that matter, and brought up the subject of Patty, that would give the game away, make it all worse. Better to leave it ambiguous like this. His not calling her spoke louder than ever of his guilt in the matter. Children or no children. She remembered his scent as she’d sat next to him on the boat yesterday. Wet, then hot. His warm brown body, soft skin rubbing next to her bare arms. She tried not to think about him, or Rio, anymore.

The early evening light didn’t glow gold like it did in L.A., but the pinkish orange that descended on the skyscrapers before her as their taxi sped into Manhattan more than sufficed. Compared with the sprawl of L.A., she felt almost as if she knew where she was going, as the grid of avenues reaching out north and south fell obligingly into rectangles with east-west cross streets. It was somewhat mathematical, but at least the billboards and shops all served as landmarks when the street numbers turned into a maze.