Face Value (14 page)

“Ha. Very good. Anyway, when did you get here?” Clarissa looked as fresh as if she’d spent the last six hours in a spa having her skin steam-cleaned before the dresser arrived to put her in head-to-toe Armani.

“An hour ago.” Something was wrong. Kate couldn’t put her finger on it. Maybe she was a little merry, but Clarissa had no excuse to be so humorless, so prissy, so gritted-teeth and pale-faced, so . . . so . . . taupe. But of course, that was precisely what was wrong. Anyone else would have taken one look at Kate and laughed at her look-what-the-cat-brought-in appearance. Clarissa was taking it all far too seriously.

“I guess you had a late night?” Clarissa took Kate’s handbag, calmly found her keycard, and inserted it into Kate’s door for her.

“Correction. I was having a late night. I’m about to go to bed. And what’s your excuse for being up so late?” She wasn’t sure that her new, authoritative tone was having the desired effect. It sounded a little too defensive. Was she really perfectly positioned to tell Clarissa off for being up late? She couldn’t be much younger than Kate. That was the trouble with not having had anyone to boss around before. It was fine when you were on safe work territory, knew your ground, and could confidently dictate the required course of action—cut this paragraph, punch up that intro, and did you check the price of the Moulin Rouge lipstick yet?—but what happened when you skidded off-piste and could no longer lead by example?

“I just flew in. They sent me out to help you with the shoot the day after tomorrow, remember?” She sighed, as if not only was she tired, but this was profoundly boring. “The hotel wouldn’t let me check in without seeing my boss’s credit card, and you are my boss.”

“Look, come in, let’s have a coffee,” said Kate, grateful to have the door finally opened. A quick glance around the room revealed that it was safe to let in strangers. Room service had picked her underwear off the floor and retrieved her trainers from the window ledge, where she had left them gracelessly airing.

“No, thanks, I’m kinda beat.”

“I thought you said I was your boss.” Authority mixed with humor. Might just do it.

“No,
they
said you were my boss.” There was now so much resentment in Clarissa’s voice that even she was forced to back-track. “All right, then. But no hanky-panky, okay?”

It wasn’t about to thaw an ice age, but as jokes went, it was the one Kate needed to see that not only could the girl be funny, but that she knew—almost—just how far to go before she had to stop. It showed there was potential in this relationship, of what kind she didn’t know yet, but she was more determined than ever to crack it.

“Great. Now, do they need me to call down with my credit card details?” she asked her, now they were being friendly with one another. Bosses were meant to be concerned about the welfare of their staff, and she couldn’t let the poor girl sleep in the corridor. After all, she’d helped her with her key, which showed she cared a little.

“No, that’s okay. They took one look at you as you rolled into the lobby and said in this case they’d make an exception. In fact, I really should pass on that coffee. They’re taking my bags up. I just followed you to make sure you were okay.”

Oh, the shame of it all. “Well, good night, then,” she said, relieved that she could sidle out of the coffee without too much guilt. “And you know, thanks for helping me get into my room and everything. . . . I was okay, really I was. I was just suffering from a little . . . you know, exhaustion.”

Clarissa smiled sweetly. “Exhaustion. Yes. I saw a program about that once, apparently it’s really big in Britain right now. Young women go out every night and drink loads and then suffer from exhaustion.”

With that she turned and strode calmly off. Kate would have hated her, if she hadn’t been too . . . exhausted. What a bitch. There was no other word, as much as she hated using it.

But thinking it over this morning at breakfast she couldn’t help but see that Clarissa had a point. Maybe she was a bit exhausted? True, she hadn’t set out to get completely drunk; hers was more about knocking back as many drinks as she could to have a good time. Everyone knew that was a completely different kind of drinking, still somewhat reprehensible now she was holding a responsible position with two members of her own staff, and perhaps she should take that into account, but definitely not binge drinking. Binge drinkers wore short skirts, never wore coats in the depths of winter, and hung out in town centers knocking back vodka shots sweetened with brightly colored cheap liqueurs. They sang football songs, tried to beat up their best mate’s ex-boyfriend, then couldn’t remember anything the following day. Kate had only had a few too many Bellinis on an empty stomach at a swanky house party in Bel-Air. The two were hardly compatible, were they? Comparable, she meant.

She was fortuitously interrupted from the sure and steady path to a mental posthangover telling-off by the arrival of an enormous plate of eggs, complete with a side order of pancakes and muffins. She feigned annoyance at the mistaken over-order and prepared to tuck in, only to look up and see that a brunette with dark glasses and a dodgy nose had had the nerve to sit down silently at her table, without even asking if the chair was taken. Americans just didn’t have the same concept of personal space, or manners even. She would have said something, but the woman beat her to it.

“So, Pancake Girl,” she whispered to Kate, “I see you have an appetite this morning.”

“I’m sorry?” Kate was taken aback. Did she know her? And then she remembered. Things like this happened in Hollywood all the time; Symphony had said so. Apparently, L.A. could be very, very small. You hung out with a small clique of people from the same world: movie actors, governors, musicians, women with surgically enhanced breasts. When that world was plastic surgery, almost anyone with money could and would get an entry visa. The only rule about this particular clique was that you’d have to pretend you’d met the surgeon at the gym, say, because to admit to knowing him as a result of having had surgery was tantamount to admitting you weren’t born perfect, which in L.A. (Symphony aside) was tantamount to social suicide. This bore complications if you wanted to recommend him to anyone, but you’d get around this problem by introducing him thus: “My makeup artist knows this great surgeon . . .” (because everyone had a makeup artist, and that was okay). The presumptuous woman before her now must be a member of this strange new clique. Either that or she was Anjelica Huston—the hair was a dead giveaway. Or Cher, if you took a sideways look at the nose. Had she been at the party, too? She was much fatter in the flesh. Funny that, as she’d always thought it was the other way round, television making you look fatter than you were in real life.

“It’s me.” The woman raised her glasses and winked. “Au-relie. ”

“I . . . don’t understand. Aurelie, yes . . . oh!
Aurelie! Wow!
You look so different!”

“Shh!” Aurelie’s benign winking turned into a scowl. “I’m in disguise,” she hissed. “Now listen. I can’t stop for long. If I get caught talking to you, I’m . . . well, I’ll—”

“You’ll never work in this town again,” said Kate. “I love it! People really do say these things! And I thought it was just a cliché!” She laughed and took a swig of her tea.

"... I’m dead.”

Kate’s head ached. Did she just say “dead”? She hated to be so pedantic when death was in the offing, but she wondered whether Aurelie meant “dead” as in no pulse anymore, beaten to a pulp in an alleyway somewhere, or just “dead” as in not exactly going places, game over, take a trip back to Orange County or wherever it was Californians who fell from grace were dispatched to, without collecting your two hundred dollars or passing Rodeo Drive.

“Well, okay, not dead exactly, but I might as well be. Now listen. I have a file here. Read it. If you’re interested, contact the woman in it. Her details are there.” She looked at the adjacent tables to check if anyone was listening, then handed over a bulky brown envelope, its edges frayed and straining.

“What woman?” Kate was trying to concentrate, but she wanted nothing more than to be back in bed right now, hot story or no hot story. It seemed a little uncivilized to call a meeting at 8:00 a.m. after a party the night before.

“You’ll see.”

The waitress appeared at the table, notebook in hand. “Would you like to order something?”

Aurelie buried her wig in her hands and muttered, “No, thanks, I’m just leaving.” She waited until the waitress left the table before continuing, “And by the way, you shouldn’t have let those idiots laugh at you like that.”

“What idiots?”

“Chesney and that floozy of his. People like that, they think that all us women should look the same.”

“Oh, you mean, him calling me Pancake Girl? You saw all that?” Her boozy evening had not gone unnoticed at all. But Aurelie was right. She shouldn’t have. Back in Maidstone, had Lise or Brian or Steve or Lianne, or anyone for that matter, called her Pancake Girl she probably would have slapped them. Here, in the semitropical confines of Bel-Air, a couple of Bellinis down her, she’d found it only mildly irritating, and as the evening wore on, the height of entertainment.

“In the security room. I saw everything on the closed-circuit TV cameras.”

“Oh.” Not good.

"That idiot, he had no right to be so derogatory about a woman’s appearance. What are you supposed to do, trade your pancakes in for a couple of muffins, like this?”

She moved the two plates of food around, like a sideshow magician doing a “Now you see it, now you don’t” conjuring trick. One minute the pancakes were here, the next minute the pancakes had gone and the chocolate muffins were in their place. The muffin magic didn’t work as a demonstration because the pancakes were still there, just over to the left a little beyond the plate of eggs. "That’s what he’d have you do. And all the other men like him. Never mind all the scars, the pain, the risks, the goddamn fakeness! And I’ve seen it all, believe me!”

She slammed the plate of pancakes down, violently, then, as if embarrassed by her outburst, stood up.

“I’ve got to go.”

Kate’s pancakes and muffins were now downgraded to a before and after picture that hadn’t quite made JK’s book of happy endings. She hoped the waitress would take them away.

“Wait!” said Kate. “Before you go . . . why are you doing this?”

More to the point, how could she tell if Aurelie was to be trusted? Up until today she’d believed she was the only one in this strange new world of the beautiful people with any doubts about the world of surgery, which was why she’d dreamed up the history in Hollywood story in the first place. (Or at least, Lolly had dreamed it up, but she’d gone along with it.) Aurelie had told her she could lose her job, so she must have some good reasons for giving Kate the inside story.

“I just am. That’s all you need to know. Look, I’ve got to go. If anyone sees me—”

"They won’t recognize you. I didn’t.” As soon as she’d said that, she wished she hadn’t. It would be much better if Aurelie did leave sooner rather than later, for no other reason than that the eggs were starting to look a little congealed, and if they went, her entire breakfast would be ruined for her, as opposed to just the pancakes and muffins. Besides, there was always the chance that Aurelie would start spinning the eggs round to demonstrate a quick face-lift or liposuction procedure. Lucky she hadn’t ordered the banana milkshake with the straw.

Aurelie sat down again.

“You’re English. And you have a hangover. That’s why you didn’t recognize me. These others? A lot of people know me, know who I am. A lot of people who wouldn’t hesitate for one second to call up JK and tell him they’d seen me out with the drunk English journalist at his party.”

Okay, so she’d been drunk. Aurelie really didn’t need to keep telling her. And wasn’t that the point of parties, to get drunk? Besides, JK3 might actually be glad to hear the drunk English journalist was having breakfast at the Beechwood Café. For all he knew, she might be dead in a ditch, or on a plane back to Britain. She had been awful to him, nearly vomiting all over his white suit and carefully pressed camellias, then running off without saying good-bye. She was glad she had left when she did—anything could have happened—but perhaps she should have phoned to say she’d got back all right. Or was that something you only did when you still lived at home, at age thirty-two, and didn’t want your mum to be worried? The difference between her and JK, nationalities, fortunes, and gender aside, was that he was a grown-up, and she was still very much a girl, one of those women who pretended to be capable and independent and in charge, but was still struggling to do what was right, follow her path, and not throw up in the fountain.

What she didn’t understand was why he had seemed attracted to her in the first place, but then again, she didn’t really know why Jean-Paul had been attracted to her back in New York either. She’d lived in Maidstone for years with not so much as a pip-squeak of interest, and now here they were, coming along like buses. It wasn’t even as if she was that attractive. Sure, she could put the uniform together a little easier now, wear the right labels in the right combination and come out with something that vaguely resembled a “look” as opposed to just clothes to keep warm. But it hadn’t escaped her notice that women here were different yet again to the efficient, streamlined New Yorkers. Here they were more tousled, more effervescent, like the fizzy sparkling aldehyde that gave Chanel No. 5 its personality. Here they were more likely to reveal toned, bronzed legs under those baby-pink toweling shorts, or a Symphony-style cleavage that popped out as if from nowhere and very often was from nowhere. Kate fell into neither camp, which led her to believe that if either man was indeed attracted to her, it could only be due to a commonly held misconception that she could, would somehow provide publicity for their careers. It was in their interests to be nice to her, to flirt with her; what she had to remember now was that their flirtation had nothing to do with their true physical feelings for her. She’d already learned a gentle lesson after she’d wrongly assumed Lolly Bergerstein’s sudden appointment was down to “niceness” when in fact it was sheer opportunism. She told herself it didn’t really matter, because she wasn’t chasing them for friendship: she was as much after the story as they were for the publicity. Besides, as she’d always maintained to Lise: no man was going to get in the way of her career.