Faces of Fear

by John Saul

  Tina picked up the single sheet he’d dropped on her desk. It was some kind of press release—not the kind of thing either she or Michael Shaw ever paid much attention to. “What’s so special about this one?”

  “My ex-wife’s new husband is going to do a little reconstructive surgery on a very interesting charity case.”

  Tina quickly scanned the release from the Dunn Foundation, her heart beating faster as she did.

  A twenty-year-old girl from Bakersfield who had had her throat cut and her eyebrows torn off.

  “Eyebrows,” Tina said. “So now we have breasts, ears, and eyebrows.” She looked up at Michael. “When was she attacked?”

  He shook his head. “You know everything I know,” he said, indicating the brief press release.

  “I’m going to need a helicopter to get up to Bakersfield,” Tina said, her schedule of phone calls forgotten as she grabbed her briefcase.

  “No helicopter,” he declared. “Bakersfield is hardly more than two hours away.”

  “But I’m in editing at noon,” she countered.

  He shook his head firmly. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t have time to argue with you, Michael,” she told him as she speed-dialed Pete Biner.

  “You can take a van and Pete,” Michael said. “The editing bay will be waiting when you get back.”

  “We’re going to need it tomorrow, too.”

  Michael shook his head. “No.”

  Tina’s eyes shot darts at him. “It’s either the helicopter or the bay, Michael. I only have so much time, so if I have to drive to Bakersfield and back—”

  “All right, all right,” he said, holding up his hands to stem her flood of words. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  But Tina was no longer even listening. She was on her phone. “Meet me in the parking lot in thirty seconds,” she was saying, and he knew she was talking to Biner. “We’re going to Bakersfield.” She snapped her phone shut. “You know, Michael,” she said, her eyes narrow, “if you’re not going to help me on this, you’d better at least stay out of my way.”

  “Have a good trip,” he said, deciding to ignore the implied threat.

  But Tina Wong was already halfway down the hallway.

  Not that she would have cared what he said even if she’d heard him.

  17

  RISA CHECKED HER WATCH, DECIDED THAT STRETCHING DINNER WITH her husband and daughter even another five minutes could ruin the deal she’d been working on for the last week, and waved off the waiter who was about to refill her coffee cup. “Have to run,” she announced. “If the sunset’s any good at all tonight, I’ll be coming home with an offer. When the clients ask to see a house at night, you know you’ve almost got them. And this is a tough one—it’s practically a tear-down, and it’s six million.”

  “Go get ’em,” Conrad said, squeezing her hand as she passed behind him.

  She kissed Alison on the forehead. “I might be late.”

  “I’ll still be up,” Alison sighed. “I’ve got tons of homework.”

  “Okay. I’ll come in to say good-night.”

  As if Risa’s departure was a signal, the waiter brought the check for Conrad to sign. “Would you mind if we stopped up at Le Chateau on the way home?” he asked Alison. “I’d like to check on a patient.”

  “Really?” Alison said, eyeing her stepfather uncertainly. Though she’d been to his office in Beverly Hills, she had only heard about the house he kept up in the hills so the wealthiest—or most famous—of his patients could convalesce from their surgery in complete privacy. “I thought nobody but you and the patients got in there.”

  “Me, my family, and the patients,” Conrad replied.

  Fifteen minutes later he parked in a large garage under a house high in the hills of Bel Air that was almost directly below their own house, though you had to wind through almost a mile of twisting roads to get from one to the other. The elevator that carried them up from the garage opened directly into a reception area that looked to Alison like the lobby of a very expensive hotel. The floors were thickly carpeted, the walls paneled in walnut, and comfortable-looking chairs flanked either side of a fireplace in which gas logs were burning even though the evening wasn’t particularly cold. The room was softly lit, and a beautiful young woman sat at the mahogany reception desk, making notes in a file.

  “Hi, Teresa,” Conrad said. “I’ve come to look in on Mrs. Wilson.” Teresa stood. “This is my stepdaughter, Alison Shaw,” he went on, then turned to Alison. “This is Teresa, our evening nurse.”

  Teresa smiled and extended her hand to Alison.

  “See if you can keep Alison occupied until I get back.” A moment later Conrad disappeared back into the elevator.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” Teresa said. “I just need to make a couple of entries in this chart.”

  While Teresa went back to her file, Alison wandered over to a credenza covered with framed photographs of women. Beautiful women. “Are these some of Conrad’s patients?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Teresa said. She opened a drawer and brought out a photo album. “Here’s some more—except these have before pictures, too. And believe me when I tell you this is one album that never leaves this room.”

  Alison took the album, dropped into one of the chairs by the fireplace, and began turning pages, gazing at before-and-after photographs of face-lifts, tummy tucks, breast augmentations and reductions, and dozens of other procedures she had never even heard of. Far more of the pictures were of girls who looked about her own age than she would have expected. Most had been as flat-chested as her before the surgery, but they all looked beautiful afterward. And not only did their breasts look perfect, but natural as well.

  Near the end of the album she found a photo she was almost sure was of Tasha. At least, the “after” shot was of Tasha.

  In the “before” picture, her friend was almost unrecognizable.

  She was still gazing at the pictures of Tasha when Teresa sat down next to her. “Are you considering breast augmentation?”

  “No,” Alison said, a little too quickly, and felt herself flush. “Well, I—I don’t know,” she stammered. “Maybe.”

  “I had implants when I was sixteen,” Teresa said. “Best thing I’ve ever done.”

  Alison stared at Teresa. How was it possible? She was tall, and lithe, and perfectly proportioned. How could it have been faked? “Really?” she blurted. “You weren’t born looking like this?”

  “Nobody is,” Teresa said flatly. “And believe me, I had nothing. I mean nothing, nada, zero. Zippo! But not anymore. Now I have exactly the shape I always wanted—nothing too much, nothing not enough. Nothing dramatic, except to me.”

  “Who did them?”

  Teresa rolled her eyes. “Dr. Dunn, of course—do you think he’d let someone else’s patient work here? And believe me, if you’re thinking about having anything done, I wouldn’t go to anyone else.”

  “But he’s my stepfather,” Alison said, feeling her face redden again. “Just the thought of him looking at my…” Her voice trailed off in embarrassment, but Teresa only shrugged.

  “I suppose that might seem…what? Awkward? But don’t forget, he sees thousands of breasts every year. And all kinds of other things, too. But believe me again, it’s not an intimate thing. He’s a doctor, you know? Hasn’t your regular doctor ever seen you naked?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “But nothing,” Teresa declared. “If you’re even thinking about getting something done, don’t go anywhere else. You’ll have one moment of shyness, and then you’ll be past it. Ask anyone—they’ll all tell you the same thing.”

  Alison looked back down at the photographs of the girl she was almost sure was Tasha, but Teresa reached over and flipped back a few pages. “That’s me,” she said, tapping one of the before pictures.

  Alison gazed at the photograph of a torso in bikini panties that might as well have been a picture of herself—slim-hipped, with a small, flat stomach
and virtually no breasts under small nipples. Then her gaze shifted to the after photograph, and she saw exactly what Teresa—and Conrad Dunn—had accomplished. Though she thought both Tasha and Dawn had breasts that were a bit too big for their physiques, Teresa had chosen perfectly. She had small, well-formed breasts that Alison knew would fit as well on her own body as they did on Teresa’s. They looked good, but were compact enough so they wouldn’t be a problem even if she kept running track in college.

  Looking up she gazed at Teresa with something like awe. “He made you look absolutely fantastic!”

  Teresa smiled. “Best thing I ever did,” she said again as the elevator door opened and Conrad stepped out.

  “What’s the best thing you ever did?” he asked. “Besides come to work for me.”

  “That was second best. Best was getting you to work on me. Which,” she went on, taking Alison’s hand in her own, “is what Alison is also thinking about doing.”

  Alison felt a rush of heat rise through her neck to her face. “Teresa! I didn’t say—”

  “Oh, come on,” Teresa cut in. “The only way to get you past this is to just do it.” She turned back to Conrad. “She was looking at my before-and-after shots, and I think they looked pretty good to her.”

  “Well, it sure wouldn’t be hard to do,” Conrad said, his gaze shifting to his stepdaughter. “What’s the problem?”

  “She’s shy,” Teresa said.

  Alison wanted to fall through the floor.

  “Why wouldn’t she be?” Conrad countered. He sat down next to Alison. “You should have seen Teresa when she first came to see me—she could barely even speak.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Teresa said. “It was horrible. Even worse than the moment you just had.”

  “Which is now over,” Conrad declared. He looked down at the open photo album on Alison’s lap. “How about getting me a prosthesis in B, Teresa?”

  “Give me thirty seconds.” Teresa jumped up and disappeared down a hallway.

  “Okay, so now that we’re talking about it,” Conrad said as soon as Teresa was gone, “how about if I gave you the procedure as a birthday present? I know it’s not a car, but you’re not old enough for one anyway.”

  “I—I don’t know—” Alison floundered. “I mean, I don’t know what my mom and dad would say.”

  Conrad grinned at her. “Well, I can’t speak for your dad, but I know your mother thinks it’s a good idea.”

  “She does?” Alison cocked her head and looked at Conrad quizzically as the truth began to dawn on her. “Was this all Mom’s idea?” she asked. “Having you bring me up here to talk to Teresa?”

  Conrad spread his hands helplessly. “Well, it wasn’t all her idea. I might have had just a tiny little part in it. But how else were we going to get you to start talking to me about it?”

  “You could have—” Alison began, but before she could finish, Teresa reappeared, holding a small lavender gift bag.

  “Just take these,” Conrad said, taking the bag from her and giving it to Alison. “It’s a pair of falsies, exactly like the ones Teresa tried out a few years ago. Just try them for a couple of days and we can talk about it later. Or not—it’s entirely up to you.”

  Alison gazed at the bag as if there might be a rattlesnake inside, but then gingerly took it and peered inside. “You’re sure these are the same size as yours?” she asked Teresa.

  Teresa nodded.

  “Very conservative,” Conrad said. “Which is very smart. The last thing you want to do is too much. And if you decide you want to do it, we can have you completely recovered before your party. Hey,” he added as Alison looked at him suspiciously, “a girl should have her gift on her birthday, not a couple of weeks later.”

  “You’re having a party?” Teresa asked.

  “Sixteen,” Alison said softly.

  “Perfect,” Teresa said, and gave her a warm smile.

  Alison looked up at her stepfather and saw, for the first time, genuine affection on his face.

  Was it the first time it was there, or was it the first time she’d let herself see it?

  Maybe, after all, she’d been wrong about him.

  “Let me think about it,” she finally said.

  “Great!” Conrad stood up. “Mrs. Wilson is stable and ready to be discharged tomorrow,” he said to Teresa, then turned to Alison. “And it wasn’t all a ruse: I really did need to look in on her. Ready to go home?”

  Alison nodded. “My homework’s still waiting for me.”

  And so was her first opportunity to see exactly what she’d look like if she could perfectly fill a size B bra.

  ALISON STARED DARKLY at the gift bag on her dresser.

  Who put falsies in a gift bag?

  Weird. Very weird.

  And why did the gift bag seem to be getting bigger and bigger, even though she knew it wasn’t? The answer to that one was easy: it wasn’t the gift bag she was thinking about at all, or even what was inside it.

  No, the real problem was the surgery the bag and its contents represented. Even as she tried to concentrate on scratching Ruffles—who was curled up next to her on the bed with nothing more on his mind than making sure she didn’t pause for even two seconds—she couldn’t quite get the idea of the surgery out of her mind.

  For one thing, no matter what Conrad said, surgery was a big deal. People could die in surgery, even surgery more minor than implants. And what if she went through it all and didn’t like the results? Maybe she could have the implants taken out again, but she’d still have scars, wouldn’t she?

  So why did both her mother and Conrad think it was such a great idea? Of course, she couldn’t remember ever having talked about plastic surgery with either one of her parents, so maybe she’d just always assumed they would be against it.

  And no matter what her mother thought, she was pretty sure she was still right about her father. Maybe Scott would think it was a great idea—in fact, he probably would—but not her father. Her father would hate it.

  Absolutely hate it.

  Like he’d hated her being on MySpace.

  He’d probably forbid her to have the implants, just like he’d forbidden her to stay on MySpace.

  Why? What was the big deal?

  It wouldn’t be fair—it wouldn’t be fair at all!

  Realizing she’d just made the decision she’d never thought she’d make, she did what she always did next: picked up her cell phone from the nightstand and speed-dialed Cindy.

  “Hey,” she said when Cindy answered. “Guess what I’m getting for my sixteenth birthday? Besides a party, to which you’re the first person I’m inviting.”

  “Great!” Cindy said. “And I know exactly what I’m going to get you for a present. It’s perfect for someone who lives in Bel Air.”

  “What?” Alison demanded, suddenly missing Cindy more than she’d realized.

  “You’ll find out on your birthday,” Cindy shot back. “I can’t tell you before then. So what kind of a party is it going to be?”

  “Like nothing we’ve ever even been to before,” Alison said. “I think it’s going to be kind of a fancy thing up here at the house. A garden party with caterers and a band.”

  “A band?” Cindy repeated, sounding less enthusiastic. “How much am I going to have to dress up?”

  Alison hesitated, glancing toward her closet where the twelve-hundred-dollar dress hung. “Some,” she admitted, knowing what Cindy’s clothes budget was. “It’s my parents’ idea.”

  “Ooookay,” Cindy said slowly. Then: “So I better buy some really, really nice jeans, right?”

  “Just wear that dress you wore last Christmas,” Alison told her. “It looks great, and none of the Wilson kids have ever seen you in it.”

  “And they’ll know exactly how much it cost and that I didn’t buy it at Neiman-Marcus,” Cindy said sourly.

  “Oh, who cares?” Alison replied. “Anyway, the party isn’t even the big news. Guess wh
at my stepfather is giving me for my birthday.”

  “What?”

  “Implants.” Alison waited expectantly for Cindy’s gasp of envy, but instead heard only silence.

  A silence that stretched on way too long.

  “Cindy?” she finally said. “Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you,” Cindy finally replied. “I just assumed you were kidding.” Now it was Cindy who waited for a reply that didn’t come, and finally she spoke into the void. “You mean you’re not kidding?”

  “No,” Alison said. “Why would I be kidding?”

  “Because it’s the stupidest idea I ever heard,” Cindy replied. “What are those kids at Wilson doing to you? It’s only been, what, two weeks? And you’re already getting plastic surgery?”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Alison demanded. “Everybody gets—”

  “Everybody does not get plastic surgery for their sixteenth birthday. And a boob job? From your stepfather? You know what, Alison? I think I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Cindy, wait.” But it was too late—she’d already clicked off.

  Alison closed her cell phone and pulled Ruffles closer. “She could have at least listened to me, couldn’t she?” she whispered to the dog, who only wriggled for an answer. “I mean, she didn’t even let me tell her why I’m doing it.”

  Ruffles whimpered.

  And then, as she went back to petting the little dog, a thought came to mind.

  What if Cindy was right?

  What if she was making a terrible mistake?

  Her eyes fell again on the gift bag on her dresser. She jumped up, got the bag, and dumped its contents onto the bed.

  Then she went into her mother’s bedroom, took a black bra out of her middle lingerie drawer, and went back to her own room. She fitted the perfectly molded foam prosthetics into the cups of the bra, then put it on. It didn’t feel quite right, so she pushed the fake breasts around a little until they felt comfortable, then pulled on her favorite sweater—an ice-blue cashmere her father had given her on her last birthday—and turned to the mirror.