“Oh, hi Peggy Jean, no, I’m fine, it’s just that . . .” Flustered, he made the gesture of a handgun with his index finger and thumb, aimed it at his temple, fired. “Pow.”
“Now don’t even joke about that, Don.”
“Sorry. Anyway, I’m in the kitchen set doing a Creative Cooking thing, right? And I’m in the middle of presenting that nineteen-inch Stick-Not frying pan, and the omelet that I’m making, which is supposed to like, glide out of the skillet, sticks, and then starts to burn and it’s all black and smoking and I’m scraping at it. Then the plastic handle catches fire. It was just a disaster; they had to cut away to a Yanni promo.”
Peggy Jean sighed. “Oh, Dan, I’m sorry, how frustrating. It’s happened to all of us.” Though nothing like this had ever happened to her personally.
“My mother was watching!”
“Well, I’m sure she’ll understand. Live television doesn’t always go smoothly,” she said. Then she noticed that the bald spot on top of Don’s head was shiny. She thought it must create a hot spot on camera. But now was not the time to mention it and perhaps suggest Propecia.
“No, she won’t understand. Ever since Nancy left me for her personal trainer, my mother has been convinced that my daughter is malnourished. Now she has her proof that I can’t cook and am an unfit parent.”
Peggy Jean touched the sleeve of Don’s shirt reassuringly.
“I’m not kidding, Peggy Jean. I guarantee you my mother will be on the next plane out here.”
“Oh, Don—all I can think to tell you is, let go and let God.”
“Gee, thanks, Peggy Jean,” Don said sarcastically, shaking his head.
“You’re welcome,” Peggy Jean said earnestly.
As she turned and walked away she thought to herself that helping other people, even if only to give advice, really did lift one’s own spirits. And when she reached her office, she was smiling.
Until she sat at her computer and saw that she had received yet another E-mail from Zoe.
To:
[email protected] Fr:
[email protected] Subject: Re: Re: Too good for me, huh?
I’m getting a little sick and tired of your fucking form letters. You treat me like shit, I treat you like shit. Deal? Deal. It’s called having a taste of your own lousy medicine. Mustache cunt.
Zoe
Peggy Jean immediately looked away from the computer screen, horrified, and checked her watch. Less than an hour had passed between this E-mail and the last. Less than an hour. Her finger trembled as she brought it to her upper lip, touching, feeling the hairs. Thank God she’d phoned Dr. Stewart.
Peggy Jean sent her standard reply and then drove straight to the CVS pharmacy. She picked up her prescription and a bottle of Jolen Creme Bleach.
six
“How wonderful to see you, Peggy Jean. Just take a seat and I’ll let Claude know you’re here.”
Peggy Jean made herself comfortable in one of the black leather petite Le Corbusier chairs of the salon. The air was filled with the scent of narcissus blossoms and ammonia-free semipermanent hair coloring. Setting her emerald green faux crocodile handbag on the floor beside her, Peggy Jean picked up one of the magazines off the glass-topped table in front of her and began leafing through the pages.
A moment later Claude’s assistant, Mia, arrived with a tray on which was a tiny cup of espresso, some milk, and two little blue packets of Nutrasweet.
“Oh, Mia! You’re a doll, thank you so, so much,” Peggy Jean gushed.
Mia set the tray down on the table. “He’ll just be a few more minutes, he’s finishing up a comb-out.”
Peggy Jean tore open one of the blue Nutrasweet packets and sprinkled half of it into her espresso. Then she added just the smallest drop of milk. She thumbed through the magazine, pausing occasionally to smell the scent-strips attached to the perfume ads. She enjoyed many of the fragrances, especially Gucci’s Envy, but her own Giorgio was still her favorite. Coming across a picture of Michelle Pfeiffer in the magazine, Peggy Jean wondered if she should maybe have reverse-highlights instead.
“Peggy Jean Smythe, how dare you step foot in this salon looking so ravishing. You’re going to make all the other customers feel self-conscious,” Claude announced as he appeared before her. She rose from her chair smiling and blushing and Claude kissed the air on both sides of her cheeks. “I love those slingbacks—Prada?” he asked, pointing at Peggy Jean’s feet.
Peggy Jean laughed modestly. “Good heavens, no, these are just plain old Nine Wests.”
Claude handed Peggy Jean a cotton/poly smock and instructed her to change out of her top and into the smock, guiding her to a small dressing room. Peggy Jean did so, belting it tightly around her waist. She returned to Claude’s station, setting her purse on the shelf below the mirror.
Claude gave the chair three quick pumps with his foot, and then waved Peggy Jean into it. Standing behind her, placing both hands on her shoulders and looking at her reflection in the mirror, Claude asked, “Same as always?”
A slightly mischievous look crossed Peggy Jean’s face. “Claude? I was thinking, wondering, if maybe I could do reverse highlights?”
Claude looked down at Peggy Jean’s blond hair and ran his fingers through it, feeling the texture, evaluating the color as well as the existing level of damage. “You mean, sort of a Michelle Pfeiffer thing?” he asked, and then answered his own question, “I think we could do that, yeah. As a matter of fact I think it could be fabulous.”
“Oh, well, wonderful then, let’s be bold and try something new,” Peggy Jean said. Then she casually fingered the sterling silver Omega necklace around her neck. “I’m flying to Milan for a special live broadcast, and I just want to look my best.”
“Milan? How glamorous! You television people, I swear. Now don’t you move a muscle,” Claude instructed. He disappeared momentarily to get the color cart, but paused briefly in the changing room to snort a little crystal-meth. When he reappeared, wheeling the white plastic cart in front of him, he was humming the latest Ricky Martin single. Claude looked back down at Peggy Jean’s shoes. “I can’t believe those are just Nine Wests.”
Snapping the plastic top off the colorant, Claude opened the fixative and poured it into the bottle of colorant, placing his index finger over the opening and giving the mixture a shake. He then placed a protective cape over Peggy Jean’s smock, fastening it tightly at the nape of her neck.
“Guess who came in the other day for a cellophane?” he asked.
Peggy Jean adored Claude. “Who, tell me, who?”
“I’ll give you a hint,” he said, humming a few bars from the theme to Maude.
“Bea Arthur?”
“Better. Adrienne Barbeau.”
“Adrienne Barbeau? Goodness, I haven’t heard a peep about her in years.”
“Darling, stop moving your head so much,” Claude said, steadying her head with his hands. “Anyway, as I was saying, get this: She just had twins . . . at fifty one!”
“Claude, you can’t be serious.”
“Not only that, she looked wonderful. And she’s as nice as can be. Though the poor thing was a little distraught over an infomercial deal that went sour.”
“Oh, well that’s a shame, but I’m sure another infomercial will come along. With twins, she could do a Beech-Nut thing.” She scratched her elbow. “Connie Chung doesn’t still do Beech-Nut commercials, does she?”
Claude put one hand on his hip and wagged the applicator brush at Peggy Jean. “Joan Lunden does Beech-Nut, girl. Connie Chung does Maury Povich. Get your news-divas straight.”
Peggy Jean loved the way he always called her girl.
After brushing the color on Peggy Jean’s hair, he wrapped each section in a square of aluminum foil.
“How’s your roommate?” Peggy Jean asked, a modern, politically correct woman. Although she did lower her voice when saying the word “roommate.”
“Please . . . he’s driving me absolut
ely crazy. His latest delusional fantasy is that he’s going be a food stylist, you know, for photo shoots?”
Peggy Jean nodded into the mirror.
“I came home the other day and he was rubbing shoe polish all over the outside of a raw turkey to make it look already cooked.”
Peggy Jean scrunched up her face. “Yuck.”
“It’s been a nightmare. You try living with somebody who uses the blowdrier to melt cheese on top of nacho chips.”
Peggy Jean couldn’t imagine.
“You don’t know the half of it. I caught him adding grill marks to a steak with my best curling iron,” he said, all faux exasperation and rolling eyes.
For the next twenty minutes, Peggy Jean sat under a blowdrier, thumbing through Elle and wishing she had longer legs. Then, scolding herself for such a vain wish, she silently thanked God for her three beautiful, handsome boys and her loving husband.
After Claude checked her hair and decided she was done, he sent her over to the shampoo sink where Sonja rinsed, then shampooed and conditioned.
Back in Claude’s chair, Peggy Jean’s newly reverse-highlighted hair was blowdried and styled with a circular vent brush. Standing back to admire his work, Claude said, “That was a marvelous idea. I love what it does for your features. It gives you angles.”
Then Claude caught a glimpse of something in the mirror and leaned around Peggy Jean to look at her face. “Honey, we should really bleach those little hairs on your upper lip. You just sit right there and I’ll be back with something in a flash.”
But I did bleach them, Peggy Jean thought. Had she grown more of them? In the space of only a couple of days? She could do nothing except sit there, stricken, and stare at her reflection in the mirror, wondering, What’s happening to me?
Then Peggy Jean reached into her purse and retrieved a Valium, which she swallowed dry.
“N
o, Max, I promise, he did not think you were a flake,” Laurie was saying to her agitated client. As Max paced back and forth in his living room, Laurie attempted to offer him hope. “Next steps: First I’ll contact Discovery Channel. And we’ll go ahead and fax your résumé and bio over to Lifetime. I’ll put out my feelers and see what’s going on.”
“Don’t bother, nobody is going to ever hire me again. My career is over.” Max knew he blew the interview with E-Z Shop the instant he mentioned the game show.
“Maxwell, you can’t take this personally. They had to go with an Asian, they just didn’t have a choice. They don’t want to get involved in some hundred-million-dollar discrimination case like the Buy-a-thon Network.”
As much as he hated to admit it, he could understand. Rebecca Chow’s recent lawsuit against Buy-a-thon sent shock waves throughout the industry. She claimed that the network discriminated against her because she was relegated to the overnight position, while only the white hosts were allowed on during the daylight hours.
Even Sellevision had sent out a memo asking all their hosts if any of them had any “Hispanic, Asian, African American, or American Indian ancestry.” It turned out Irish-Catholic Adele Oswald Crawley’s great-great-grandmother on her father’s side had some Navaho blood. So within a month, Adele was dressed in a little suede dress with fringe and given her own turquoise jewelry showcase called Indian Expressions, complete with potted cactus trees and a tepee. An old black-and-white photograph of Adele as a little girl wearing an Indian headdress at a birthday party was enlarged and hung behind her. Prop stylists added Navaho throw rugs around the living room set, but the deerskin was pulled at the last moment because of the lawyers. After the show, Howard had made it clear, “This is just a Band-Aid on the situation. We’ve got to get an ethnic in here immediately.”
“When do you think you’ll hear something?” Max asked Laurie.
“Any day, just be patient and don’t panic.”
“Don’t panic, don’t panic,” Max told himself after hanging up with Laurie. “Don’t panic, don’t panic,” he said walking from empty room to empty room, having no idea what to do with himself, wishing he had a dog that he could take for a walk or a boyfriend who could reassure him that everything would be all right. He couldn’t call any of his friends because they, unlike him, were all at work. And if he went to a movie, the theater would only be filled with retirees and other unemployed losers like himself and he would only become even more depressed than he already was.
What scared Max the most was that in his heart of hearts, he felt almost certain that neither Discovery Channel nor Lifetime—nor any other network—would hire him. The sad fact was that he was only comfortable in front of the camera. And it just didn’t seem like any camera was going to be aimed at him any time soon. “I’m heading straight for radio,” he said, hands on hips, head pressed against the living room wall.
C
hanges was the current it bar and restaurant in Philly. Located on Twenty-sixth and Poplar, Changes attracted an upscale, hip clientele. Bebe was to meet Eliot at the bar at eight P.M. Although she had never seen him before, he’d given her a pretty good visual description: six-foot-one, 185 pounds, salt-and-pepper hair (“Yes, a full head,” he’d laughed). She was to “look for the nervous guy at the bar wearing gray slacks and a red sweater with five or six empty martini glasses in front of him.” At least on the telephone, he had been charming.
Bebe had tried on three different outfits before finally deciding on the new black slacks, the new black silk shell, and the coral cashmere jacket she bought two weeks ago, but hadn’t worn. Around her neck she wore an eighteen-inch fourteen-karat white gold rolo chain, at the end of which was a Diamonelle Glitter Ball slide. For earrings, she went with simple fourteen-karat white gold demi hoops. She wore a tasteful Diamonelle tennis bracelet in fourteen-karat yellow gold, but you really didn’t notice the yellow so much as the stones. But even if you did, it was perfectly okay to mix your white metals with your yellow. On the ring finger of her right hand, Bebe slipped a two-carat princess-cut Diamonelle simulated sapphire ring with two twenty-five-point channel-set trillian-cut stones on either side. But then she slipped it off, fearing that it might look like an old engagement ring she refused to return. She decided to leave her fingers ringless.
The first thing Bebe noticed as she stepped into Changes was the beautiful arrangement of lilacs atop the bar. The vase itself was filled with clear glass marbles in water. The second thing she noticed was a man in a red sweater. He was sitting at the bar, speaking with the bartender, when the bartender suddenly caught her eye and stopped talking midsentence. The man in the red sweater tracked the bartender’s eye-line, which led him directly to Bebe.
He stood immediately and Bebe approached him, extending her hand. He took her hand in his and gently guided her to a chair at the bar, which he pulled out for her. “You must be Bebe,” he said. “I’m Eliot, as I suppose you’ve figured out by now, unless you’re an extremely well-dressed and friendly meter maid and I forgot to put money in the meter.”
Bebe laughed and sat on the tall stool next to Eliot, exhaling and admitting that she was “kind-of slightly sort-of nervous.”
Eliot suggested they remedy that situation at once and asked Bebe what she would like to drink.
“Oh, a glass of white wine, I suppose.” The bartender nodded and walked to the opposite side of the bar.
“You lied to me,” Eliot said with a completely straight face.
“How did I lie to you? I told you I’d probably be wearing something black.”
“You also said you weren’t beautiful—to use your exact words, ‘just slightly over average.’ And that, Bebe, is a bald lie.”
“Okay, that’s it, I love you.”
They both laughed.
As the bartender set the glass of wine before Bebe, he paused and then said “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt you, but I just had to ask: Aren’t you Bebe Friedman from Sellevision?”
Bebe smiled and admitted that yes, indeed, it was she.
“I gotta tell you
, my girlfriend started watching you and then she got me hooked—you are so hilarious.”
“Well, thank you so much!” Then motioning with her head toward Eliot, “So how much did he pay you?”
The bartender laughed, excusing himself.
“I feel terrible that I’m not familiar with your work,” Eliot said.
Actually, it was a relief to Bebe. At least she knew that he didn’t like her just because she was a semicelebrity. And was it just the lighting, or did Eliot actually look like George Clooney?
“So tell me about the dry-cleaning business. I feel I have a right to know considering I subsidize the entire industry.”
“You?” Eliot asked. “You’re the epitome of elegance.”
“You haven’t seen me operate a fork yet.”
He gave her a playfully doubtful look, then affected an air of elitism. “Dry cleaning is my life’s passion,” he told her. He took a sip of the martini before him and added, “Just teasing. It was my father’s business.”
After half a glass of wine, Bebe began to relax. Actually, it probably wasn’t the wine, but Eliot himself. He seemed so easygoing, so quick to smile and laugh. She sensed a real warmth from him. Then, there was that George Clooney thing.
“So, Bebe, have you, ah, met any interesting men from your ad?” It was an awkward question to ask, but he made it sound as casual as possible. Like a weather question.
Bebe swallowed her sip of wine. “Yes, actually, one. One man.”
A small bubble deflated in him. He gave her a smile that showed his teeth, “Yeah, so what was he like?”
Nonchalantly, Bebe looked up to the left, like she was thinking of how to describe him, then looked directly back at Eliot. “Well, so far he seems like a pretty great guy.”
It took him just a fraction of a second to get it.
For a while, they just sat there looking at each other, smiling. A moment later, the maître d’ introduced himself and informed them that their table was ready. The maître d’ had to repeat himself.