Authors: Kate White
I followed her back to her station, where she yanked open a drawer and reached for another tube. “It’s a post-peel cream, so it should help,” she said. “Rub a little on while I try to reach the doctor. We’ve got one on call.” She grabbed the wall phone and started to punch in the number.
“Wait a sec,” I said as I dabbed the cream on my face. “First show me the exact foundation you used.”
Stacy pointed to a familiar bottle at the front of the cluttered mix on the counter. I picked up the bottle and raised it to my nose. There was an odd odor, chemical-like. Something had been added since Stacy had last used the foundation on me. “Smell this,” I told her.
She leaned a little closer to the bottle, took a whiff, and quickly pulled her head back. “Yeah, that’s weird,” she said.
I glanced at Jimmy, who could barely contain his fascination with the scene. Stacy was a gossip, but she was in the bush leagues compared to a motormouth like him. “Jimmy, you need to give us a minute,” I commanded.
“All right,” he said. “But I’ve got a guest due.”
“It’s just a guy,” Stacy said. “Do his hair in the greenroom.”
“This makeup’s been tampered with,” I said as soon as Stacy and I were alone. “Have you seen anyone in here, touching this stuff?”
She frowned, looking even more worried. “No,” she said. “But I only got in two hours ago. And the room is open all day. Should we call security?”
“I’ll do that,” I said. “But I’m going to go back to my office before anyone sees me. Let me know when you reach the doctor.”
She nodded.
“Don’t say anything to
anyone
, okay?” I added. “And put a gag on Jimmy.”
I tore out of there, taking both the bottle and the tube of cream with me. As I flew down the hall with my head lowered, the linoleum floor seemed unfamiliar to me, as if I were racing down a corridor where I’d never been. Keiki was on the phone and didn’t look up as I darted into my office.
I closed the door and sank into my desk chair. My pulse was racing even faster. I felt like someone who had just staggered out of her car after an accident on a freeway. This was different from the cockroach and the books and the Barbie. I’d been
injured
. Someone had tried to physically harm me.
Get a grip, I told myself. I couldn’t come unhinged.
I called Ann first, my hand beginning to tremble as I hit her number. Her assistant conveyed she was in a meeting but due back momentarily. I explained it was urgent and asked that she get a message to Ann. Then I called Tom. “I need to see you,” I blurted out. “It’s an emergency.”
Less than a minute later, he was knocking at the door.
“Robin, what’s going on?” he exclaimed as he took in my face. “Are you okay?”
“No, I’m
not
okay,” I said.
I described what had happened with the foundation. Holding the bottle in a tissue, I lifted it to his nose for him to smell.
“You don’t think it just went bad?” he said. “I’ve heard that beauty products have an expiration date.”
“No,” I insisted. “Because—other stuff has happened, too.”
He pulled his head back
.
“
What
other stuff?” he said.
“Pranks, nasty things,” I said. “Someone here wants to sabotage me.”
Before I could elaborate, Keiki was opening the door to let Stacy in, and a second later, Ann appeared over her shoulder, shutting the door behind her. Ann’s hand flew to her mouth when she saw my face.
“The doctor said she can see you as soon as you get there,” Stacy said. “The office is on the Upper East Side.”
I glanced quickly at my watch. “But she needs to come
here
. The show’s in less than an hour.”
“I asked, but she said she wouldn’t know what to bring. She can’t determine how to treat you until she sees your face.”
“Then I’ll have to go tomorrow morning.” I turned back to Tom. “Stacy can cover up the red with makeup.”
“No,” Tom declared, giving a hard shake of his head. “Robin, I can’t let you on the air until a doctor has seen your face.”
“Tom, for God’s sake, it’s not going to make it
worse
to be in front of a camera,” I said. I was starting to feel frantic, penned in. “You can’t make me skip the show.” I looked quickly back at Stacy. “You’ve got concealer that will cover this, right?”
“Sure, there are tricks to use for redness. But I have no idea what’s going on with your face, and I’d be afraid of making it worse.”
She looked anxious. Was it just concern for me? Or was she remembering what she’d told me last week, a remark that was now flashing in my brain:
Vicky
had asked her what foundation I wore.
“Thanks, Stacy, we’ll take it from here,” Tom said bluntly. “Just text Robin the info for the doctor and copy me.”
“Can someone please fill me in?” Ann urged after Stacy rushed off.
I explained quickly, stumbling over my words. I was fighting to stay calm, but I felt like the stress was engulfing me, as if someone had thrown a blanket over my head.
“This is dreadful,” she exclaimed.
“Don’t you
see
, Tom,” I said. “Someone wants to totally undermine me. If I’m forced off the show tonight, they’ve won this round.”
“You can’t think that way, Robin,” Ann said before Tom could respond. “You need to be treated by a doctor
now
. Besides, if you go on the air looking the least bit strange, it will be all over Twitter, and then the person doing this
has
won.”
I consented finally, my fear fused with outrage.
“We have to let you leave for the doctor’s now,” Tom said, “but I need to hear about these other incidents.”
“So you told him?” Ann said, looking at me.
I nodded.
“I can’t believe this is the first I’m learning about this,” Tom said. “But I’m not going to browbeat you. Get to the doctor’s. Keiki should go with you. And Ann can bring me up to speed.”
We agreed that I’d take the bottle of foundation with me and bring it back tomorrow. Tom would call security. He squeezed my arm. “We’ll figure this out, Robin, I promise,” he said. It was the first warm thing he’d said to me in days.
I decided against taking Keiki with me. I felt too hyped up to have anyone around. With the help of sunglasses, I managed to escape the building without anyone doing a double take. The driver who picked me up was one I’d never had, and he paid little heed to me.
As we headed toward the doctor’s Park Avenue office, I kept checking my skin in the mirror of my compact. The frost seemed more pronounced. Who the hell was out to get me?
As promised, the doctor saw me immediately. She was fortysomething, earthy-looking, and I felt a sense of relief at the sight of her entering the exam room. I explained what had happened and handed her the foundation.
“My goodness,” she said. She opened the bottle and took a whiff but said nothing. Then she felt for the magnifying glass that dangled on a cord around her neck and examined my face through it. “I’m pretty sure the foundation has been mixed with TCA—trichloroacetic acid.”
“
Acid
?”
“Don’t worry. It’s used in facial peels and won’t cause any lasting damage. I’m going to apply steroid cream, which will help eliminate the redness and the frosting. Your face may feel tight for a few days, but the discoloration should go away within twenty-four hours. Until then your makeup artist can use a quality concealer under the foundation.”
Relieved, I let out a ragged sigh.
The doctor took a tube from the glass case along the wall and began to apply it gingerly to my face. As gentle as she was, each touch felt like a pinch.
“How would a person get their hands on this stuff?” I said when she’d finished.
“You can purchase it in small concentrations over the counter at a drugstore,” she said. “But for it to cause this amount of redness, the concentration would have to be stronger. It was probably bought over the Internet.”
“Is there any chance that it was added to the foundation accidentally—by the company?”
“I highly doubt it,” she said. “If you haven’t already, you need to report this situation immediately.”
She wrote me out a prescription for steroid cream and gave me a sample to last a few days.
Back home, I texted Ann with an update and then turned on the TV. I couldn’t believe that at ten minutes to seven, I was sitting in my living room and not on the set. I wondered how they would handle the up-front part of the show, where Carter and I chatted together. I decided Tom would probably shorten it and let Carter riff on his own for a bit. He was one of those TV guys who could make shopping for new socks sound exciting.
But he wasn’t alone. A girl named Sherry Boggs, a reporter from one of the other network shows who sometimes did substitute hosting, was six inches to his left. Sitting in my freaking place.
“So nice to be filling in, Carter,” she said, beaming. I shut off the TV and tossed the channel changer on my coffee table. I couldn’t believe it. It was like I’d been
evicted
, kicked off and immediately replaced.
After pouring a glass of wine, I paced the room with it. I’m just off the show for a night, I reassured myself, I’ll be back tomorrow—and security will be on the case. They’ll find out who’s been doing these things to me.
A minute after eight o’clock, I grabbed my phone to call Tom and then stopped. There was already a text from him. Potts, he wrote, had called a breakfast meeting at his apartment, with him, Ann, Will Oliver, and me. Good. They weren’t wasting any time.
I texted Tom back, telling him that I’d see him there, that my face was on the mend, and that I’d be doing the show tomorrow night. I sat at my table and considered the meeting at Potts’s. I would need to play it carefully. The guy had bullied me about toning down my act off the air, and I didn’t want to look like I was a drama queen. There was no way I could raise Vicky’s name as a possible suspect. In preparation, I made a few notes on a piece of paper.
The intercom buzzer rang suddenly. To my shock, the doorman announced that Carter Brooks was downstairs.
“Um, send him up,” I said. I didn’t want Carter seeing me now, but I needed to learn what he knew, what people had been told. I dashed to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Though my face had begun to heal, it was still slightly pink and frosted. Before opening the door, I dimmed the lights in my living room.
“Sorry to barge in like this, but I wanted to check on you,” Carter said after I welcomed him in. He was wearing his suit from the show, though the tie was off. “They gave some excuse about why you were out, but it sounded fishy.”
“I’m glad you’re here, actually,” I said. “Come in and sit down, and I’ll get you a glass of wine.”
He didn’t sit. As I poured the wine in the kitchen, I could hear him moving idly about the living room.
“Great place,” he said distractedly when I reentered the room. He’d taken off his jacket and laid it over the back of an armchair. He seemed different to me, as if, away from work and midtown, he’d allowed the “hunky anchor” persona to fall away.
“Thanks,” I said. “What excuse did they give for my absence?”
“They said you’d had a small medical emergency. But Tom looked weird and—Hold on, do you have a fever?” Even in the dim light of the room, he’d noticed the color of my face.
“I wish.” I told him what had happened.
“Wow,” he said when I’d finished. “And you think it was intentional?”
I nodded. “This wasn’t the only incident.” I explained about the books and the Barbie doll.
“Who could possibly be doing this?” he said.
“I don’t know. But clearly, it’s someone who hates my guts.”
I looked away. Though it would be good to have Carter as an ally, I wasn’t going to raise Vicky’s name with him, either. When I glanced back, however, I could tell by his expression that he had already gone there.
“Whoa, wait a second—are you thinking . . . ?”
“It’s hard to imagine, but yes, it’s crossed my mind. I’m not making any accusations at this point.”
“You’ve notified security, I hope.”
“Yes, and there’s a powwow tomorrow.”
“Gosh, Robin,” he said, stepping a little closer. “I just wish you’d told me all of this was going on. As corny as it sounds, we’re supposed to be teammates.”
“I appreciate that, Carter,” I said. “At first I wasn’t sure if I was imagining things or not.”
He smiled sympathetically. “Robin, I’ve made it clear how I feel about you, but I’m not going to push you on that. What I’d like right now, though, is to be there for you—as your friend, okay?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“You shouldn’t take it personally,” I said. “I just figured out a long time ago that I have to take care of myself.”
He cocked his head slightly and looked deeper into my eyes. “Are we talking evil stepmother here?”
I felt a nerve prick. “Why do you say that?”
“You told me the other night that you lived mostly with your aunt after your father remarried. So he must not have had your back.”
I sighed and looked off. He was perceptive, I’d hand him that. “No, he didn’t,” I said. “My stepmother did things to make me look bad, and—” Much to my chagrin, I could hear my voice cracking.
“And what?” he asked softly.
“Nothing was ever the same after that.”
Unexpectedly, I felt myself starting to tear up. God, don’t go all blubbery in front of him, I ordered myself.
The next thing I knew, he had his arms around me, and I was leaning in to that soft blue cotton shirt.
I arrived at Potts’s Park Avenue apartment several minutes later than I was supposed to—intentionally. I didn’t want to be the first one there and have to take him through everything on my own. My face, though improved, was pink and starting to peel, and I’d been forced to go industrial strength with concealer.
The door was answered by a housekeeper or maid in the kind of silly black and white uniform that generally turned up only in movies from the 1940s. She ushered me through the humongous living room to a humongous dining room, where the group was seated around a polished mahogany table. Tom, I noticed, was wearing a tie, something I rarely saw on him.