“And the rest of the time, when I’m not being a surgeon, well, I’m me. Thirty-four years old. Single. Nice house. Nice life. But not so different from anyone else, and certainly not so different from you. . . .”
He pressed her hand firmly down onto the sofa so she couldn’t move it, and started tickling her ribs until she pushed him away, giggling. Why did men always want to touch your stomach? Didn’t they know that was her fat bit?
“Okay, have it your way, I’m the bad guy,” he said, smiling. “But now I get to ask my question.”
“What question?” She’d forgotten. Alcohol probably, or trying to work out which one of JK’s answers was closest to the truth.
“My question . . . have you ever been dumped?”
“Dumped? Me?”
Her dress was riding up over her knees. She didn’t pull it down. “I’m not sure if I was ever in relationships long enough for them to count as relationships. I mean, can you dump someone without officially going out with them? Because if so, well, then, yes, frequently, I have been dumped.”
He paused. “I can’t imagine how.”
“Oh, that’s sweet of you. But there are loads of reasons for dumping me.”
“And I’m sure there are. But I wasn’t going to say that.”
She flushed. How presumptuous of her.
“I was going to say, I can’t imagine how you ended up in this business. Writing about beauty. You seem too, well, intelligent, shall we say.”
She was surprised at how angry she felt at this comment. What was he saying, that you had to be a bimbo to write about beauty? Yet if she was really honest with herself, hadn’t she thought this, too, not just about herself and every other beauty editor, but about him?
“Well, I could say the same about you!” she retorted.
Another awkward pause. He broke it first, pulling her shoulders over to face him so that they lay even closer to each other, side by side, limbs stretched out in alcohol relaxation.
“So you could say we’re two of a kind.”
She knew that this was one of those instances where the witty comeback would come to her too late to have any impact. She stuttered indignantly, “You . . . you . . .”
He lifted a finger and stroked the place where her cheekbones should be. This time his finger seemed to suggest he liked what he was touching, moved slowly, appreciatively, enjoying and approving the flatness, the unbeautifulness of her face.
“We’re not bad people, Kate.”
Lying so close to him, feeling his breath on her face, fresh, sweet; suddenly worrying that hers was alcohol-laden made her panic, want to get up and outside, anything to avoid a conversation that was in danger of becoming heavy, intimate, or both. She was aware of his eyes looking at her freckles. Perhaps he was marveling at how anyone could still have freckles, wouldn’t have bleached them off their face in a bid to get that even, retouched complexion the world seemed so obsessed with.
“Can we go outside now?”
Two more cocktails later, and the party was in full swing, pulsating, effervescent, fast, and glossy, just like a movie. If this were her movie, her soundtrack, she’d choose the jolly, skipping-along, cheeky-chappy beat of that song “Love Is in the Air.” She could almost hear it now, enjoy its frenetic ardor, its Air." She could almost hear it now, enjoy its frenetic ardor, its crescendos, its
Woh! Woh! Wohs
. They walked hand in hand along the lantern-lit, moonlit path, him in his white suit, her in her Marchesa dress, as daring as she’d ever dressed, without, she hoped, looking too tarty, too much like Lise out for a Saturday night. “Love is in the air!” sang JK. So he could hear her soundtrack, too. Imagine that!
“Woh! Woh! Woh!”
sang the couple on the low-lying couch nestled in the camellia bushes to her right.
So everyone could hear it. It wasn’t some imaginary soundtrack to the movie of her life. It was real. Time to ease up on the Bellinis.
"That was the governor of California. Bud Montefino. You’ve heard of him, right?”
Kate drew an appropriately sharpened intake of breath. “With Ronita Shakira, the actress?”
“His wife, yes.”
She of the perfect cheekbones. “Have you done her?” “
Done
her?” he joked, with a lewd twinkle in his eye.
“Now, Kate, you know it would be unfair of me to say whose faces I’ve worked on, who’s had a nose job, or a little lipo . . . unfair to my competition, that is!” JK laughed, then pulled her close to his hips and spun her around effortlessly. “I used to be a dance champion, you know. You can put that in the article.”
The music switched to something a little more mellow. She could usually spot a tune instantaneously, but this one . . .
"Sufjan Stevens,” said JK, beating her to it.
“How did you . . . ?”
“I have this weird talent. I can name a tune in pretty much the first two notes.” He grinned at her, smugly.
“I don’t believe it.”
“You don’t? Stick around!”
“No, I mean, it’s not that I don’t believe you can name it. It’s just that . . . I can, too.”
“We’ll see about that!”
He pulled her through Sufjan Stevens and out of a camellia glade toward a large fountain. The music was more frantic here, couples spun each other around with an ease that was almost professional.
“Celia Cruz,” she said, just as he said “Tito Puente” at the same time.
“A duet!” they said together.
“Dance with me!”
Kate observed the snake-hipped salsas going on around them. She felt giddy. “It’s not quite the Macarena, is it?”
“Oh, don’t be put off by them, they’re hired for the night,” said JK.
“You hire your guests?”
“Well, I hate that part of the evening when the dance floor’s half empty and everyone’s afraid to get up and make a fool of themselves, don’t you?”
Celia Cruz reached her climactic chorus as JK spun Kate back around and neatly in front of him.
She could feel it happening.
His eyes locked hers, and this time she knew he wasn’t about to quiz her about some taxi.
She stopped breathing.
He leaned in close to her face, clasped it in his hands, and brought his lips close to hers.
She went pale.
“Kate . . . I ...”
“Excuse me!” She pushed his face away and rushed toward the fountain, where she emptied her stomach of its liquid contents. The five peach Bellinis briefly presented themselves as their very own spin-step-step-spin, a vision in swirling, orange-spangled chiffon, before being recycled away, giving their very own sepia tinge to the otherwise pristine crystal waters. Miraculously, no one seemed to have noticed. Except her host, who was holding her by the shoulders, rubbing her back, and laughing.
“Kate . . . I don’t usually have this effect.” He picked out a piece of peach from a strand of her hair and wiped his fingers on a white napkin on the tray of a passing waiter.
Oh, where were those huge earthquake fault lines when you needed them?
“Was it my dancing?” He was still laughing. Almost bent double.
The five peach Bellinis might have had something to do with it.
“Let me walk you to the powder room, you can freshen up. I’ll wait for you outside in case you want to . . . lie down for a little afterward.”
Lie down. With him.
What kind of a house had its own powder room, anyway? A plastic surgeon’s house. JK’s had three toilets, three separate vanity “booths” equipped with the surgeon’s very own skin care line, and a white-haired octogenarian attendant, no doubt there to remind them of what would happen if they didn’t submit to the surgeon’s knife. A quick glance in the mirror confirmed her worst fears. The kohl smudge look she had carefully applied to her eyes while testing out Clarissa’s autumn trends makeup feature to see if it actually worked had descended into Missing Member of the Ramones circa 1972. Kate was aware L.A. had had its own brief, rarely documented flirtation with new wave punk way back in the ’70s, but she suspected that was all it had been, a flirtation. It was certainly not a trend about to be revived. Freshen up, she told herself. Pull yourself together. Jane-Louise. Lianne. Tania. Even Badass right now would be an improvement in the looks department. A brush, silver-plated, delicately inscribed with the words
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
, reminded her that her bed-head should have been put to bed hours ago. She picked out the last stray piece of drying peach from the hair nearest her neck. What the hell was she playing at? He was her interviewee. She couldn’t be this unprofessional!
She had to get herself together. Perhaps if she twisted her hair up and piled it on her head, it might look a little less like she’d just thrown up in a fountain. She then remembered the camellia hairpiece. Sodding camellias, but at least it was making itself useful, and she was willing to bet no one else at this party would be creating quite the same peach-infested camellia hairstyle she was. From the guts of her handbag, the clear plastic bag revealed the camellia was less battered than she might have expected it to be. No doubt Amalie or Anomaly or whatever her name was had some helpful tip or other she could use to fix her hair. She unrolled the paper around the base of the camellia.
And there it was, in black and white:
Meet me at 8 a.m., Beechwood Café, Hollywood Hills, if you want the real story. He is not all he seems. Aurelie.
ten
Pancakes or muffins. Pancakes
and
muffins. She could eat both, but she should probably choose one over the other.
What was it that Chesney guy had called her? Pancake Girl. She should probably order some of those wafer-thin crepes she had seen emerge from the kitchen with a wedge of lemon on the side, French-style, as the menu had described them. On the other hand, the American penchant for light, fluffy buns with nuggets of molten chocolate secreted inside was growing more appealing by the minute.
“I’ll take the muffins,” Kate said to the trim waitress, who smiled patiently as she took the order, without writing a thing down. “With a side order of fried eggs, and a large mug of tea. Please.”
“You have such a great accent,” said the waitress, placing a napkin and some cutlery on the table before hurrying on.
She didn’t have a great accent. She had an all right accent, but it wasn’t what you’d call remarkable. The Queen had a great accent: cut glass, polished, and matronly. Michael Caine had a great accent: characterful, happy-go-lucky, yet sinister. Kate Miller had an average, south of London yet not as distinctive as
sarf
London accent: nondescript, clear, yet not crystal. She did, however, have the mother of all hangovers.
It was 7:30 a.m. and the Beechwood Café was already bustling with the prework activity of the well-to-do inhabitants of Hollywood Hills. Handsome men in their forties with just-so flecks of gray hair sat by themselves, tapping away lightly on their laptops, looking up every so often then tapping away again frantically as if suddenly inspired by whatever vision in baby-pink toweling jogging shorts had just walked in. Couples sat in silence, reading the
L.A. Times
and sipping coffees, the smug contentment of newlyweds radiating gently, their his and her BlackBerrys vibrating harmoniously. Kate had arrived early, partly so as not to be late, but also hoping that she could get a head start on the breakfast she knew she was going to need after last night’s Bellini extravaganza. A quick examination of the premises revealed she could eat in peace, there being no sign of the mysterious Aurelie.
Her head was pounding, but her conscience hurt more. It was bound to have happened sooner or later, this mini crisis of hers. Such huge changes all at once, such a big workload—stress always got to you sooner or later, tipped you upside down and inside out and left you vomiting in a fountain at a house party in Los Angeles just before you kissed your prime interviewee, L.A.’s top plastic surgeon.
Good look, Kate.
Thank God Lise or anyone else from home for that matter hadn’t been there to see what she’d got up to. In fact, she didn’t think too many people at the party had seen either, which was a relief as she’d spent most of the evening prior to her
vomitus grandus
telling anyone who would listen her entire life story. She cringed at the thought of some of the things she’d told them. Had they really needed to know about the time she and Lise had . . . It didn’t bear thinking about.
Unfortunately, the aftermath, the bedraggled, ashen, wrung-out, and left-to-dry detritus of Kate’s big night out had been witnessed by none other than Clarissa. Kate had vanished from the party like Cinderella, without saying good-bye to Chesney or Symphony or Trint or Glint or Shint or, more importantly, John Kingsley III, plastic surgeon to the stars, as soon as she’d read Aurelie’s note. She had to leave—if she hadn’t she would almost certainly have shown Aurelie’s note to JK3. Booze did that to her. Enabled her to confess anything to anyone whether it needed confessing or not. But more importantly, she hadn’t trusted herself not to land in any more compromising positions with him. Metaphorically speaking.
She had been trying to find her key back at the hotel when a voice from beside her in the elevator made her jump.
“It’s a keycard, remember, not a key you’re looking for.” Clarissa was the last person she had expected to see here, at this time of night.
“Ah, Clarissa, how are you?” She didn’t have a clue what to say, nor any idea what Clarissa was doing here. “How’s the autumn trends copy going?”
Clarissa looked blankly at her. Dud question. It was one thirty in the morning, a time when work matters might safely be discarded for greetings of a more social nature. She attempted an equally poor recovery.
“You handed it in two weeks ago, didn’t you? Any luck with that, er . . . Lolly Steinberger interview?”
“It’s Bergerstein,” Clarissa replied coldly. “But then, you were just checking to see if I was listening, weren’t you?”