Face Value (18 page)

“So, the advertisers won’t like me writing about Patty Patrice because she doesn’t fit in with the sell on plastic surgery, does she?”

“Uh-huh. Patty Patrice doesn’t fit in with anything.”

So that was it then. She couldn’t do the story. Alexis wouldn’t like it. JK would sue. The aesthetic surgery clinic that was paying a fortune to encourage women to take minimal-risk procedures in the pursuit of turning the clock back would pull its sponsorship. She would be fired.

But if she didn’t write it, what would happen to Patty? Patty wasn’t like Clarissa. She didn’t have a rich daddy to bail her out, fix the things that had gone wrong, and there was no Mr. Right about to come along anytime soon. Patty needed Kate. The full horror of the immense responsibility she had taken on hit her: without Kate, Patty was lost.

Unless . . . what if she could do this a different way? Expose the dangers. Be responsible.
Darling
’s readers would thank her for that, wouldn’t they?

As if reading her mind, Clarissa leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered:

“Of course, you could still do the story. I mean, it’s a risk ’n’ all, but Patty sounds pretty convincing. And a newspaper would probably run it on the back of
Darling
covering it—you know, the people in the
Darling
media offices would sell the story on to, say, the
New York Times
or even the
L.A. Times
, or both. It could be a pretty big story, maybe even TV coverage if it blew up. It’s rare for a magazine to explode a story like that, turn the beauty industry on its head. Alexis loves publicity, you know. Just loves it. It’s a career-maker, that kind of story.”

“I don’t know,” said Kate, suddenly overwhelmed by the dilemma that faced her. Five minutes ago it had all been so clear: do Patty, tell the world, expose a liar, tell the truth. Now there was more on the line. Her job, for starters. To not do the story at all was the ultimate sellout, the surrender of any values she’d once held dear. But hadn’t she already sold out? She’d been suckered into that very same world of beauty by the salary and the thought of escaping Brian Palmers and
Maidstone Bazaar
, leaving her hometown, even leaving her mother. She’d taken a job for the money, and the escape route it had offered. Her beliefs, ethics, morals, call them what you will, had been about her old world, not this one. About the ozone layer thinning, about the ice caps thawing, about the lack of a cohesive recycling campaign by Maidstone Borough Council. But were these two worlds so separate? It was only now that she was forced to make some kind of stand on plastic surgery, a stand she’d managed to put off by writing about its Hollywood history, that she realized what her campaigns to save the world were all about in the first place. That same world she was busy trying to save was good for nothing if it didn’t care about the people who inhabited it. People like Patty who had been sold a dream only to wake up to a nightmare. People who searched for beauty only to end up looking ugly. Being ugly.

“Here’s what I’ll do,” she said, drawing a deep breath, aware as her heart quickened that she was on the brink of making a decision that was as fundamental to her sense of who she was and where she was from as it was to Patty’s future.

“I’ll write it. I’ll write it so well Alexis will have to run it. But I won’t tell her that’s what I’m doing until it’s done. It’s a risk, but I’ll take it.”

Clarissa smiled and sat back in her wicker chair. “I think you’re doing the right thing.”

Kate smiled back. “I think I am, too. Thanks.”

thirteen

The rain had threatened to fall all afternoon, and now here it was, pelting down from purple, blackened clouds the color of unpolished plums. Purple rain, like the Prince song. They were Patty’s tears; the only break in their unforgiving rhythm a thunderbolt of lightning. A message from Zeus, raining flash floods down on JK. Here, take that! And that! His camellias would be ruined. It thudded persistently on the windscreen, like the sound of applause as the film credits ran: Zeus played by Kirk Douglas, JK by Owen Wilson, Patty Patrice by Kim Basinger. Who would play the part of Kate Miller? She’d been in L.A. too long.

She shivered on the backseat of the car taking her to Patty’s house. The camel leather upholstery touched the backs of her legs and left them cold. She pulled down over her knees her weather-inappropriate floral print cotton dress. The air-conditioning lifted the soft, downy hairs on her shins where she was due for another wax. She remembered how her mother used to bundle her up on her lap when she was about five. She’d stroke her smooth knees and marvel at her skinny little legs, while Kate watched
Mr. Benn
, the only TV program she was allowed apart from
Blue Peter
, that all-time classic of kids’ TV shows. She sniffled. Oh, shit, not a cold coming on, the last thing she needed! Outside, L.A. passed her by, the off-white houses and steel gray roofs of La Cienega looking shabby and dull without the blessing of the sun to plant its magic halo. The sea, gray and unappealing, like a faded English seaside town on a February day; the damp mugginess of the air exuding an end-of-the-world feel, the aftermath of a nuclear fallout. It was all a sham after all—the low-roofed buildings that had looked so appealing in the magic of the sunshine now looked like film-set fakes; the sea was cold and unyielding; the beauty so transient. The L.A. that had greeted her a few days ago was shallow, diffident, closed.

After lunch Clarissa had gone back to her hotel room to make the final arrangements for tomorrow’s shoot. The makeup artist needed to be confirmed, as did the hairstylist and manicure and pedicure people. The right backdrop needed to be ordered, the photographer’s budgets had to be checked. Kate had been happy to let her get on with these things.

She had instead met Harold Epps, a plastic surgeon now in his nineties, for tea by the hotel’s rooftop pool. Harry, or, strictly speaking, Professor Harold Bernstein Epps, was one of the oldest living plastic surgeons in L.A., an irregular but welcome fixture on the UCLA lecture circuit, distinguished not just by the longevity of his career, but also by the techniques he had pioneered with some of America’s most famous surgeons. Rumor had it, he had given Marilyn Monroe cheek implants; but no one knew for certain. It might have been a chin tuck. Or it might have been another surgeon, Dickinson-Smith, who might have given her a nose job. Either way, Alexis had been impressed she had managed to lure Epps out of his retirement for
Darling
, and even more so when Cynthia had unearthed a recent interview with him in the
New York Times
. Epps had been scathing about the latest round of reality TV shows taking housewives with low self-esteem and turning them into wannabe supermodels. It wasn’t something that would have happened in his day. (“Fabulous!” Alexis had gushed. “He’s controversial. Glad the history story’s coming along.”)

It wasn’t, though, not really. Coming along. More like running away, slipping through her fingers. In spite of their relaxed setting at a corner table, away from the waterside loungers, Harry was not forthcoming on the history of plastic surgery in Hollywood. He wore an immaculately pressed beige linen suit, with an open-neck pale yellow Cuban-style shirt and a Panama hat. He shuffled into his seat and ordered an English tea—to make Kate feel at home, he said. And that was his only attempt at lighthearted banter. Frequent lulls in the conversation caused by his alternately masticating the fluffy white scones, then staring at the two tanned, toned actresses on the other side of the pool only exacerbated his natural reticence. He wasn’t so much ogling the girls as watching their poolside performance with benign amusement. Each of their movements seemed to be considered, geared toward the suited men on the other side, who must have been important agents, producers, directors, somebodies. They smoothed sunscreen with long lascivious strokes over each other’s backs then dived into the pool, flicking their hair back like girls in shampoo commercials. Beads of oil on skin sparkled like dewdrops as the water splashed off their bodies. Kate covered her Dictaphone with a napkin and tried not to scowl.

After an hour with Harry, she was an authority on Los Angeles architecture, surgical techniques of the 1940s, but still wasn’t getting very far on the subject of Hollywood history. A more targeted approach was called for.

KATE MILLER: Do you think Hollywood was more “innocent” back then or was every starlet up for a surgery makeover?

HARRY EPPS: Innocent, my ass! Sorry, but you really do have the wrong idea there. Sure, things were different then, but my, they’d been operating on thousands since the ’30s— and that was before my time, I might add. There was one surgeon . . . who was (
pause to marvel at diving ladies, about seven seconds
) . . . radical. They used to say he could do breast implants in fifteen minutes! Mind you, he also had a reputation for not bothering to mop up the bleeding, so the floor was filled with blood. (
Pause to spread more strawberry jam on scone, about twenty seconds
.) I heard he was somewhat . . . ruthless
.

MILLER: And who did he operate on? (
Give me some names!
) EPPS: Oh, I couldn’t reveal names. No surgeon would do that. It wouldn’t be right to say . . . but they were prominent . . . prominent
.

MILLER: Well, what about later? During the ’50s, for example. Were starlets under pressure from the studios to undergo some kind of physical transformation? (
Give me some names!
)

EPPS: I don’t know. I avoided the Hollywood scene. It’s just not my temperament. To wit, I would come home and mention to my wife and say, “Oh, So-and-So was in the office,” and she’d say, “Well, don’t you know who that is?” and I’d say,
“
No, who was it?
”

MILLER: And who was the “So-and-So” she mentioned? Was it Marilyn Monroe by any chance?

EPPS: I can’t say
.
(
Finishes last mouthful of scone—plate empty
.)

So that was that. Their surgery secrets would go to the grave. It was down to Patty Patrice to bring some color, some excitement—a goddamn story—for the supplement.

The car pulled up to a block of sandy-colored flats eight or so stories high. They looked nice enough, but a quick glance at the balconies and the kids’ bicycles, the washing hung out to dry, and the odd dried-up geranium in a pot left her in no doubt these were low-rental apartments, not some playboy’s penthouse.

The rain stopped. The black clouds were illuminated by a sudden burst of light. There was a freshness in the air, the sulphuric smell of water on a hot, dusty road. Sounds became crisp again, the passing sirens of cop cars, kids’ voices playing in the gardens to the side of the flats, the rolling whir of skateboards clunking off pavements. As long as the sun was here, so was optimism, hope, life.

“I’ll wait here for you, madam,” said the driver, an older driver than JK’s Chuck, someone who probably didn’t moonlight as a theater assistant, but seemed with his straight back and clean-shaven, open face to have chosen this as his life’s work. He held the door open for her and she stepped out, her flat golden pumps soaking up a puddle. She had chosen her outfit with care—a button-down shirt dress with a jolly floral print, something she hoped would be interpreted as friendly, trustworthy, nonthreatening. She looked back into the car to check she hadn’t left her Dictaphone behind, or that her cellular hadn’t fallen out. She clutched her handbag under her arm, smiled at her driver, and headed for the front door.

The entrance hall was dark, flanked by four doors and a concrete stairwell. Patty was on the fourth floor. The stair light flickered on and off, plunging the stairs in and out of sporadic darkness. At the third step she became aware of someone standing behind her, watching.

“Who’s that?” she said. Her hand moved down toward her phone in her bag, hoping the perpetrator wouldn’t think she was reaching for a gun, fire at her, kill her dead. She’d been watching too many of those American cop shows late at night in her hotel.

Aurelie was leaning against the wall, in a manner that was less nonchalant, more about concealment. She eased herself up straight, took a white muslin cloth from her handbag and wiped her hands, then dusted down her beige trousers and pale pink jacket. It was only then that she explained what she’d been doing hiding behind the stairwell doors.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you, but I had to be sure.”

“Sure of what?” said Kate. Her three steps’ advantage made her momentarily taller, but the shrillness of her voice revealed how frightened she had been. Her chin jutted forward.

Aurelie moved to the first step. "That you weren’t coming with anyone. JK, for example. He’s been talking about you all day at the clinic. You are his new obsession.”

In another world, that would have been exciting news, resulting in girlish giggles with her and Lise. Now, knowing what she knew, it made her feel physically sick. An obsession. Her hand gripped the banister; she felt her shoulders crumple.

“It’s okay,” Aurelie said. “He can’t touch you. You’re a journalist, remember? It’s only patients he can touch.” She touched Kate’s arm; their eyes met. There was a softness in her expression, her eyes were wet and moist, welling up for an instant and then gone, the hardness returned. “Come on. Patty’s waiting for you.”

Sunnyside Residences had been built in the 1960s by an architect whose dream was "to make every hour a golden hour.” Privately funded, the idea of drenching each home in daylight wasn’t practicable in a city where temperatures reached eighty degrees in February. People wanted shade, blinds that kept the heat of the sun away from salads, ice lollies, Coke Zeros. The private, high-income tenants, the playboys and models, never moved in. The landlords lowered the rents; young families and old couples arrived and, after enduring inadequate air-conditioning and the hottest summer on record, were delighted when a block of flats went up next door, shielding them ever more from the white gold of the sun.