Confessions of a Park Avenue Plastic Surgeon

by Cap Lesesne

  “Call the police,” he said, staring straight at me. “There’s someone hurt inside.”

  And he took off down the block.

  It was brilliant of him, I would later think. In that shared frozen moment, our minds had both been racing, doing the things we were trained to do: I, the surgeon, spent it gathering data about his face and physique that might be useful; he, the thief, spent it scrambling for a way to best immobilize the bystander before him, so that he could make a successful getaway.

  As soon as I stepped inside the store, I realized it for the lie it was: No one was there, hurt or otherwise. Back outside, I spotted his retreating figure a half block away, running for Central Park. Again, not thinking, I gave chase. The adrenaline rush was similar to what you feel when you’re trying to save a life. As I ran past a residential building, I yelled at the doorman – sleeping in a chair just inside the entrance, his cap tipped down over his eyes – to call 911. Continuing west, I saw the thief enter the park, then lost sight of him. At the park entrance, I scanned the area in front of me, but he was gone. Out of breath, I returned to the building where I’d yelled to the doorman, took the phone from him, and gave the police a detailed description. Then I ran to the park. Within a minute, a squad car appeared a couple blocks south of me and I ran into the street, hopping up and down, yelling and waving. He floored it in reverse and pulled up alongside me. Without hesitating I jumped in the backseat and told them I was the one who’d seen the robber. The cop in the front passenger seat said they’d already called in to have the park sealed, and the lights turned on, a show of authority that mightily impressed me. As we passed through a break in the park wall at Sixty-ninth Street, I began rattling off the description again.

  “LA baseball cap, navy blue parka, blue jeans. Five-ten, one-eighty, mole two centimeters from left nostril. Crooked upper-front two teeth. Pimple on upper right cheek –”

  The cop in the passenger seat shifted full around to look at me. “Who the fuck are you?”

  I didn’t understand what he meant.

  “I never heard a description like this,” he said.

  “Oh. I’m a plastic surgeon.”

  “Shit,” he said, shaking his head. “I never heard a description like that.”

  Five minutes later, about six fifteen now, a call came through that another patrol car cruising the park had stopped someone matching my description. The robber had done himself in: The cops had noticed a man jogging, in parka, blue jeans, and heavy work boots. When they stopped him for questioning, he said he was out jogging. In parka, jeans, and work boots.

  It came out that he’d been arrested thirty times. He was convicted, got fifteen years. After the trial, the DA told me he’d never heard a description like that.

  It was after business hours. I opened the door to leave my office, and right away I knew someone was lurking in the hallway who didn’t belong there.

  I was pushed back against the wall.

  Then she tried to kiss me.

  Naomi had been lying in wait. She had seen the lights go out. Before I knew what was going on, she’d pushed me back inside my office and her face was pressed up to mine.

  I admit it: I was scared. Plastic surgeons have stalkers who occasionally carry guns. One doctor in Seattle was shot.

  I knew the cleaning lady was in one of the rooms.

  “Gloria!” I yelled – not for her help, but so my psycho patient would know we were not alone.

  “Doctor, I want you,” said Naomi.

  “Gloria!” I yelled again. “Naomi, I do not date patients,” I said quietly. “Gloria!”

  The door to my inner office opened, and Gloria appeared.

  Naomi unclenched me and ran from the office.

  I met a fun, supportive, pretty woman. She worked as a paralegal at a big matrimonial law firm. She’d been married twice before. She had two children.

  Her name was Elsie.

  It had been so long that my mind was one-track about surgery that it wouldn’t have been startling had I simply forgotten to seek more permanent companionship and the promise of a family.

  After dating me steadily for some time, Elsie said, “If you don’t propose, I’m leaving.”

  I probably should have told her, No, this isn’t going to work out.

  Should have cut my losses right there.

  But I said nothing.

  She had called so many times in the two weeks before her face-lift – wanting to re-re-review the procedure, wanting the fee reduced, This is a problem, that’s a problem – that I should just have told her, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find someone else to do this.

  I said nothing.

  I performed the operation. Jiang Li looked sensational. Her daughter agreed that her mother looked sensational. But that meant nothing to Jiang Li. She was unhappy – with the face-lift, with me, with her daughter, with fluorescent light, with herself, with life. She had been a famous singer in China, and she could not get over the fact that she was no longer desired, no longer beautiful as she defined beautiful – the complex beauty of a forty-seven-year-old, the full-throated beauty of a thirty-five-year-old, the gossamer beauty of a twenty-three-year-old. She was sixty-two. She had moments, you could tell, where she believed she still had fame and accomplishment and music in her. But then she would look in the mirror, and whoever it was who looked back did not agree.

  A month later, she was admitted to a psychiatric home.

  Not that it would have mattered, but I should have said no.

  If the romantic intensity and spontaneity of the proposal are indicative of the chance for marital success, then we were doomed from the start.

  In response to Elsie’s ultimatum (“If you don’t propose, I’m leaving”), I had thought for maybe a few seconds, then said, “Will you marry me?”

  Not six months into the marriage, my relationship with Elsie started to crumble. We fought sporadically, then regularly. There were too many times, for my liking, when I wasn’t home and alcohol was involved, that the police came to the house.

  Finally, we separated. One day, Elsie called to ask if I’d drive with her through a snowstorm to deliver something to her daughter. I had the flu but I agreed. After we finished the errand, I returned with Elsie to the house where she was living, and went to collapse in an upstairs bedroom. But soon I heard crashing noises coming from below. I walked down the stairs – and just as I reached the landing, a bottle flew past my head, missing me by inches and shattering against the wall behind me.

  I looked over to see Elsie, at the bar, reaching for another liquor bottle. Before she could snatch it, I moved quickly toward her and grabbed her arm. In an effort to cool the situation down, I pushed her out the door.

  I called the police to report it. When the cops came, they asked what happened, and when I recounted how I’d pushed Elsie out the door, they shook their heads. As soon as I had put my hands on her and removed her from the premises – though she had thrown a bottle at my head – I had committed third-degree assault, a misdemeanor. I was arrested.

  Elsie dropped the charges.

  But prospects for our marriage dropped faster.

  After splitting up, we remained friendly, for a while. We were out of each other’s lives cleanly and abruptly. We hadn’t had any children together. We weren’t involved long enough for her children and me to form deep bonds. She and I had lived under the same roof for less than two years.

  Except for the possibility that every now and then we might cross paths in Manhattan, the biggest little small town, I expected that, compared to most ex-spouses, we would fade faster and more completely from each other’s view, and that would be that.

  The Royal Treatment, Part II

  My erudite, multinational friend Mohammed, the man who had introduced me to Her Royal Majesty, was on the phone.

  “The queen would like you to come visit,” Mohammed said warmly. She wished to have more work done, he told me, and several of her companions wished it, too. I to
ld him I would have a little free time in a month, when I would be halfway to her part of the world, taking a long weekend in the south of France.

  “Fine,” he said. “The plane will pick you up there when you have concluded your stay.”

  Mohammed would not tell me what work was to be done, so when the date approached, I would have to messenger over to his office an extensive set of instruments and injectables, to be prepared for anything. It was all very James Bondian.

  A month later, I stood in my tuxedo on the porch of the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo, sipping Moët and watching fireworks explode over the harbor. Roger Moore, 007 himself, stood just feet away, looking even more dashing than he does on-screen. In another corner were Arnold Scaasi, Joan Collins, and Veruschka. We’d all been invited to help celebrate the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary of our friends Ricky and Sandra di Portanova of Houston and Acapulco, legends in the international jet set. The party was so glamorous that celebrities from a nearby event – Jerry Lee Lewis, Mario Thomas, and the CEOs of FedEx and Northwest Airlines, to name a few – joined us. Assessing the scene all around me, I was truly amid the glitterati – and it wasn’t the champagne talking: I’d had the bartender cut it with seltzer six times because there was a chance I’d have to operate the next day. The queen’s people were flying me to her country the following morning. Given the veil of secrecy surrounding my work on her, who knew? I might be asked to operate immediately upon my arrival. Mohammed, as usual, had been sparse with details. I’d been told only that I would be gone for four to five days. I did not know where I was being taken – the Middle East, Southeast Asia, or someplace completely different.

  Here in Monte Carlo, though, in the summer of 1999, on the porch of the elegant Hôtel de Paris, having a ball, smiling and chitchatting, everything seemed like a fairy tale, something out of To Catch a Thief; I almost expected Gary Grant and Grace Kelly to appear on a nearby balcony. I watched Veruschka hit on the younger guys. The once-beautiful Slavic was lean and still striking, but her skin was sun-ravaged. She reminded me of Brigitte Bardot; aging, I thought, is a relentless and indiscriminate bully. Joan Collins was on a couch teasing Arnold Scaasi; she, on the other hand, had aged well and in my professional opinion had had good work: her neck line, upper lids and cheeks look younger than one would expect for a woman of her age. And she wore her makeup well.

  What a surreal scene. Maybe my focus on work really was unhealthy, I thought. The demands of my job meant I was in the office by seven, almost always in bed by ten. I had to keep my emotions in check. I hardly drank. I didn’t even play golf.

  These people, though: Man, they knew how to live.

  I’d become friends with the di Portanovas, our hosts, through Jeanette Longoria, a patient many times over and now a close friend. A Texan, Ricky di Portnova was descended on his father’s side from Italian royalty, and on his mother’s from an oil fortune, one of the largest privately held oil developers in the world. Back in the sixties, though, Ricky had been a sculptor, moved to Rome, married a Yugoslavian basketball player, and lived a bohemian life. He fell out of touch with his family back home and eventually concluded that he’d been disinherited.

  One morning, he was awakened by a knock on his door. Standing there were two Houston lawyers who informed him that he’d been named in his grandfather’s will, and that he might want to return home. Some money was involved. Three million dollars.

  Tax-free.

  Each month.

  In perpetuity.

  Stateside, Ricky’s marriage to the Yugoslav disintegrated. One day, the newly minted multimillionaire walked into a soda shop in Austin, Texas. His eyes met those of an undergrad behind the counter, a young woman of Armenian descent named Sandra Hovar. Lost to history is what Ricky ordered from her. Not lost is the fact that Sandy, nicknamed Buckets because of her beautiful breasts, leaned over to serve him.

  Ricky fell in.

  Oh, he told himself, that’s what I want.

  Soon enough, Sandy became Princess di Portanova, with homes in Houston, Acapulco, and London. When she shopped internationally, she sometimes took along a second 737 to lug everything home.

  Now, looking out at the Monte Carlo harbor and marveling at the spectacular light show of the international fireworks festival that lit up the summer sky, I sipped one more half-glass of watered-down champagne and called it a night.

  Early in the morning, a car arrived to take me to the airport. I was instructed to go to a certain desk, where a ticket awaited me. No destination was printed on the ticket, nor was one listed on the marquee behind the desk. Passengers milled about.

  My flight was called to board. I was first. Entering the 747 cabin, I looked to the right, into coach, to see … no one. Looking left, into business and first class, I saw … no one. The only people on the plane were the crew.

  “Good morning, Dr. Lesesne, and welcome aboard,” the steward said to me, ushering me to my first-class seat.

  After several minutes, I realized I was the only passenger.

  As we took off and the plane banked to the right, I watched from the window. I had no idea where I was being taken, and no control over it – a pretty tough thing for a surgeon to swallow – so I just let go.

  I slept off and on. Once, I attempted to engage a flight attendant in a conversation about our destination. He smiled broadly and asked if I wished more food or drink.

  I awoke as we began our descent, nine hours after leaving the ground. Looking out, I saw a gorgeous coastline rimming the aquamarine of the Pacific. Or was it the Indian Ocean? Now I could make out a lone airstrip. Other than that, nothing but sand and water as far as the eye could see. When the plane door opened, a blast of furnace-hot air hit me, tempered only slightly by the ocean breeze. I descended the steps. At the bottom, a familiar face greeted me.

  It was Ali, the barrel-chested head of his country’s security. The last time we had seen each other – at the OR at the hospital in New York, where I had done a face-lift on Her Majesty – Ali had told me that if the queen died, he would kill me.

  “Masa’a Alkair” I said to him now. Since our last meeting, I had mastered a few Arabic phrases.

  Ali grinned. “Dr. Lesesne, welcome,” he said, holding out his hand. “May I please have your passport?”

  I hesitated.

  “You won’t be needing it,” he assured me. I handed it to him.

  He took it, then held out his hand again. “And may I please have your wallet.” Before I could hesitate, he said, “You won’t be needing that, either.”

  He wasn’t smiling. He took all my forms of identification.

  Everything would be returned to me, Ali announced, after the surgeries. “You are a guest of His Majesty’s government,” he said.

  Now he smiled.

  One could interpret the gesture as intimidating. I chose to view it as the ultimate gesture of hospitality.

  In a Spartan-looking building beside the airstrip, Saudis in beautiful, deep purple, gold-trimmed robes mingled with Russian oil executives. I was ushered into a black Mercedes, accompanied by Ali and a driver. For an hour we sped inland, through desert the color of faded bone. No more sightings of water; there was sand, sky, and nothing else. At the moment, I literally had no identity (no passport, no wallet) and was careening through a foreign country. I was putting a lot of trust in them, just as they had in me. Every now and then, sand swirled up from the desert. The dunes rose and fell like waves, like the contours of the body. I remembered the first time, as a young surgeon-to-be, that I’d incised skin, and how it was nothing at all like cutting into an animal, nothing like a cadaver. The sensation of the skin is mostly resistance – a reaction pressing back against the scalpel, the singular pressure that simply cannot be understood by reading medical textbooks; you must feel it. And then the first time you see bleeding. All the feedback that goes through your fingers to your brain. I’m becoming a surgeon, you think – and then you realize just how much you don’t know. Outside the Merc
edes, there were no signs of life, just two endless colors, the café au lait of desert, the undiluted azure of sky. You focus on what you are doing, you don’t look up at the overseeing doctor across the table as he talks to you. You’re so scared you feel as if you’ll wet your pants. Early on, a mentor observes every cut, on every procedure. Then he’s there less and less. A few years pass and suddenly you’re no longer removing appendices or benign lipomas but standing over someone with complex facial fractures and you’ve got a high-speed drill in your hands and you’re putting screws around their skull and moving their eyeballs around and if you sneeze you’ll either blind them for life or kill them.

  An amazing transformation.

  I spotted my first goat, weighed down by his pack and led by an old man. Then more goats. Then crossroads, houses, and finally a sign.

  At least I knew where I was.

  We entered the city. I rolled down the window and smelled salt air again. The scenery turned greener and greener. In the distance, finally, I saw it: the castle, the color of wet cinnamon, with towers and square parapets at each end. Its perimeter was brocaded by palm and date trees – as well as security guys, soldiers, and police. Guns everywhere. We passed through the guard gate into a central square within the castle.