Face Value (17 page)

“Do you—I mean, have you ever wanted to look like—these women?” Kate gestured toward a mother and daughter pair who were strolling toward the café. The mother had the Rodeo classic blow-dry—a little lift at the roots, then straight, then curved inward at the ends; the daughter, a more tousled, jaggedy cut. They had identical figures. Lean, tall, wearing low-cut jeans that hugged tiny, bunlike buttocks. Mini tees, one in pink, one in lime, rose a couple of inches above diamanté-studded belts to reveal flat, tanned stomachs. In spite of being so thin, ample breasts stood to attention above the lace-trimmed scoop of their tops, like full moons rising over the froth of surf at Santa Monica. Silver necklaces jiggled, as if fighting to claim occupancy of the cavernous fold between the breasts. Tortoise-shell sunglasses, taking up what remained of their faces besides the button nose and glossy, plump lips, perfectly matched blonde and copper highlights.

Clarissa sighed. “It’s an L.A. thing.”

They had planned the next few days meticulously, starting with the rescheduled casting. After lunch a stream of pale, rather plain-looking girls had presented themselves before Kate, then shown photographs that seemed to bear no resemblance to their real selves. She flicked through each plastic-coated portfolio, seeing page after page of long Pantene hair, skin that screamed “it was worth it,” lashes that “maybe were Maybelline.” The working title for the story they were shooting was “In Search of Natural Beauty” because that was the look—Alexis had argued on the phone—that most women wanted. Looking at the women on Rodeo Drive, Kate seriously doubted this. They didn’t want “natural” at all—they wanted “artificial,” surely? What was natural about collagen-plumped lips, brows that looked so surprised they said, “
You’re
dating George Clooney?” and breasts that stood rock-hard at attention? It was funny how the question What’s beauty? had returned to haunt her with a vengeance. She had thrown it out to Alexis in one of their very first conversations in the hope that some definition of her job would come back to her; instead Alexis had seized upon it as a defining moment in the direction of the magazine. Now she had to take the cause and run with it. Yet, here she was, dancing in the shadows of the beautiful people, and she didn’t want to look like them at all, didn’t want their answer to “What’s beauty?” any more than they wanted hers.

“How’s it going anyway?” Alexis had asked in a postlunch phone update. Kate had been economical with the truth, thanks to some timely advice from Clarissa. She had shown her the letter from Patty Patrice. Clarissa was visibly shocked and had enthusiastically gone for the story, but not without warning Kate about the considerable dangers that lay ahead.

“If you don’t mind me saying,” she had ventured, “maybe you should write it first, I mean, don’t tell Alexis. She might not get it.”

“What’s not to get?” asked Kate. Quite how anyone could fail to be moved by such a story was beyond her. Alexis was clearly a woman of intelligence, and
Darling
was a women’s magazine—this story was perfect for it, something that would shake its readers from their turpitudinous reverie, would give them something more important to think about than whether they should go for black nail polish or white; Manolo Blahniks or Jimmy Choos.

“Well . . . first off, there’s the question of the advertisers,” said Clarissa. She sipped from her glass of sparkling mineral water. San Pellegrino, ice on the side, lime not lemon.

“What have they got to do with it?”

Clarissa’s water snorted out of one nostril.

“What have they got to do with it? Are you . . . ?!” She checked herself, dabbing at her nose with a folded damask napkin. A waiter rushed up to replace it.

“Nuts, I believe you wanted to say.” Kate laughed, although she wasn’t sure if her response should be so casual or amused, for what was ostensibly such a disrespectful comment.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you about the advertisers?” Clarissa continued. “You know, those people who pay our salaries?” She pushed her thick-rimmed black sunglasses onto her head. She looked worried, concerned even; quite why, Kate had no idea.

“Nouvelle Maison Editions pays our salaries, doesn’t it?” said Kate, quietly, realizing as soon as the words tumbled out of her mouth that this answer was not the right one.

Clarissa sighed. “Look. Maybe magazines work differently in the UK, but here advertisers rule! Sure, we pretend they don’t. We talk about freedom of the press, in the same breath that we talk about democracy and the American dream, but . . . it’s just not like that.” Her voice rose to a muted shriek.

“Well, of course I know magazines aren’t all about freedom and democracy, but they’re still independent; we can still write about Patty Patrice, can’t we? Oh, God, maybe I need to talk to Alexis.” Kate reached for her cellular. Was Clarissa being patronizing?

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Clarissa, in a friendly rather than threatening tone of voice. Kate put the phone down obediently. Clarissa elaborated. “I guess it’s different where you’re from. . . . See this?” She lifted up a burgundy leather handbag. The strap was plaited, and a leather key fob with a silver plate engraved with the name “Clarissa” hung from it. "This bag was hand stitched. They made ten of them like this. Oh, sure, there are thousands of others like this, but they don’t have the hand stitching, and they certainly don’t have the key fob.”

“It’s . . . er . . . a lovely bag. A wonderful bag. Um . . . well done. For having the bag.”

Clarissa stared at her impatiently.

“I got this bag for free. Its retail value is in excess of two thousand dollars. See these shoes?” She uncrossed her legs, sticking out her left foot for Kate to examine. “Snakeskin. Real. Gold insole. Stiletto. Eight hundred fifty dollars. They’d look tacky if I was wearing them with anything other than this plain black shift dress. Fifteen hundred and seventy-five dollars, by the way. But I knew that when I picked out the dress and the shoes and didn’t have to pay for them.”

“You stole them?” Clarissa really did have hidden depths.

“No! They were gifts! All of them! The shoes, the bag, the dress—even my skin, which everyone keeps telling me is perfect—it wouldn’t look like this without free treatments from my derm and a facial once a week. I can’t afford all of this on my salary, and they know that. But they can!”

“Who’s ‘they’?” asked Kate.

"The advertisers, the publicity people, the guys in marketing who want us to write about their stuff. To sing their praises. To tell it not like it is, but how it could be!”

“But you don’t . . . I mean, you stay independent, right? I mean, they don’t tell you what to write, do they?”

Clarissa sighed again. Kate felt like an idiot.

“Oh, you really don’t know, do you? Sure, it starts innocuously enough. They want to tell you about their new supermoist lipstick. And the best way to tell you is by showing you a DVD presentation, over lunch at your favorite restaurant. You pick out the caviar, have a glass of champagne, because it’s on them, right? And then you notice that the portable DVD player is made from a superlight titanium casing, it’s the latest on the market, and guess what? It’s engraved with your name. A little present from them, because they’re fans of your work. Next thing you know, the publisher’s sitting in your office, asking how much coverage you are going to give that same new supermoist lipstick, because the company that makes it is considering taking out a double-page spread in the April issue to the tune of seventy thousand dollars. Oh, I thought I’d do a bit on the news page, you say, really happy you’ve got the DVD player, and the lipstick’s not so bad either. That’s not enough, she says. Wouldn’t it be great to have a feature on how products are so multifunctional these days? How the two-in-one concept has revolutionized our everyday lives? How a lipstick can give color, plump up the lips, and moisturize at the same time? I mean, wouldn’t
Darling
’s readers really like that? she says. And you say, well, yes, I guess so, thinking about your DVD player and how much it would have cost you if you’d bought it. And perhaps the two-in-one concept really has revolutionized our everyday lives, and besides, those people from the lipstick company have called your assistant three times this week and it would get them off your back. And so you write it. A whole page. And no one really knows, but the publisher’s really happy, and the editor doesn’t give a damn, she’s so wrapped up in where she’s going to get her next free outfit from. And so, sure, Nouvelle Maison Editions pays your salary, but they wouldn’t be paying that without the money from the advertisers, and the advertisers wouldn’t advertise without the articles they get from you about their supermoist lipstick, would they now? So do you get it?”

It was a blazing hot day but even though they were outside where the air-conditioning couldn’t reach them, Kate suddenly felt a chill running through her. The hairs on her arms stood up, her back tingled. So this was what it was all about. People weren’t being nice to her, weren’t being generous. She’d thought she was a success, popular, winning friends, influencing people. She’d thought she was doing a good job, all the while eking out the good and the bad from the downright ugly. Damn it, she had done a good job, hadn’t she? None of the pieces she’d written so far had been about anything she hadn’t truly believed in, hadn’t researched to the
n
th degree. But now she had to face a truth so ugly it couldn’t be concealed with something flesh-toned, high in pigment particles, yet still supermoisturizing. The truth was, the beauty business was an ugly business.

“I see.”

Clarissa sat back, folding her arms across her chest. For the first time since meeting her, Kate was impressed that she could be this impassioned about her work, this aware of a situation that needed rectifying. She’d assumed her various disgruntlements were a bad case of job envy, her excess of attitude about being majorly pissed off that, with Kate as head of the department, she would have to leave the magazine in order to get ahead, or stay put and remain subordinate to this English interloper. She had been wrong, judged her unfairly: Clarissa hated her job because, like Kate, she found it hard to compromise when it came to ethics. All that remained was for Clarissa to open up to Kate, to talk about the principles they clearly shared, and the two could be colleagues, friends, battle the same battles.

“You know Clarissa, I’m shocked, I’ll admit, because you’re right, things aren’t the same, er . . . where I’m from, or maybe they are and I’ve just been burying my head in the sand.” (They hadn’t experienced the same pressure at
Maidstone Bazaar
, unless you counted the free balloons that came with the sunbed vouchers for the Larkfield Leisure Centre.) “But what I don’t understand is, if you hate it so much, how come you work in this world?”

“Hate it?!” said Clarissa. She giggled. “No, no, no! I don’t hate it! I
love
it!”

Kate couldn’t conceal the look of horror on her face. Here was someone who blatantly exploited her work, her readers, for what exactly? A pair of snakeskin shoes and a handbag? She took a sip of sparkling water, at a loss for words.

“You don’t understand,” said Clarissa, this time sounding genuinely concerned for the shock she’d caused Kate. “I’m not like you. I’m not even like . . . Cynthia. I’m not doing this job because I like writing.” As if realizing she’d almost done herself out of her job she added hastily, “I mean, I do . . . and I can do it. . . .”

She paused, waiting for Kate to give her the affirmation she needed.

“Yes, of course you can, I mean, you’re very good,” said Kate.

“But . . . I’m doing it because, well, what else is a girl to do?”

“Well, you could . . .” Kate could think of any number of things a girl could do besides writing articles about supermoist two-in-one lipsticks. She could get a job for Amnesty International, something Kate herself had once considered. Or at Greenpeace, Kate’s first big charitable love. Both would pay decent salaries, though likely not as big as the salary at
Darling
. She could do some voluntary work—she had heard they needed people at the charity clothing shop, to style the clothes and present them in a more saleable way. Clarissa would be good at that. She was just about to suggest these options when she realized that Clarissa couldn’t do any of these things. Not really.

“I mean, sure there are things I could do, but none of them would give me perks like these.” She gestured to her shoes again. “Look, I’m, I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but I’m from a different world to you and Cynthia. I’m here because . . . well, because my dad knew someone who knew someone. I get a small allowance. Small, note, hence I still need the free shoes. I’m meant to be finding a husband. Some nice hedge fund guy, with a house in East Hampton. Or Amagansett. Or maybe even Southampton, in a pinch. I guess then my real work will begin. Charity fund-raising, art lunches, you know. And then all this will come in useful somehow; it’ll be like training.”

Kate was appalled. She couldn’t believe what Clarissa was saying. She fumbled with her napkin. “Is that what you want?”

“I guess so.”

They sat in silence, the waiter arriving and noisily clearing away the plates as if to compensate for the sudden gloom that had descended upon them. Kate did not know what to say. She was stunned. This was worse than an arranged marriage. What kind of parents brought a girl up to be this afraid of life, this ignorant of the possibilities? And why? So she could kill time until Mr. Financially Right came along? Clarissa was bright, but what she was saying now was that she had lazily accepted this to be her fate, because she couldn’t be bothered to do anything else. Kate wasn’t convinced she was as happy about that as she was pretending to be.

“Well . . . good for you.” It wasn’t what she meant, but what else could she say? A sudden breeze playfully tickled the corners of the waxed paper menu, as if daring them to order a dessert.