Bombshell

by Lynda Curnyn

  Not exactly a drawing. More like a photocopied replica of a human face, which had been marked in dark pen around the eyes, the chin….

  “What is that?” I demanded.

  “Nothing!” Claudia insisted, sliding the paper beneath a magazine.

  “Don’t tell me you’re considering plastic surgery?” I asked, realizing I had seen a similar drawing before in an article in a woman’s magazine detailing the horrors—and the joys—of going under the knife.

  “Cosmetic surgery,” she said, as if it were as simple as choosing a new foundation.

  “Claudia! Whatever happened to aging gracefully?” I asked, harking back to all those conversations we’d had over cocktails about how glorious our profession was for supplying us with the moisturizers, the color palettes, the illuminating creams, to do just that.

  “Please,” she said, “there is nothing graceful about growing old.” Her eye fell on the blowup of Irina that now covered the back wall of her office. Claudia sniffed, returning her gaze to me. “Why do you think this company is banking all its future profits on that little chippy over there?” She gestured with her chin at the photo, as if she could no longer bear to look at it. “Beauty beyond thirty is a farce,” she declared. Then she stood and walked up to the life-size Irina, her eyes scanning that insolent face as if to find some secret there. “Look at her!” she said. “That skin…”

  “Claudia, that’s been airbrushed.”

  She shook her head, a bit furiously. “Maybe. But you saw it. At the reception. She’s practically flawless.” Her voice lowered to a reverent whisper as she brushed a veiny, perfectly manicured hand over Irina’s face, as if caressing a lover.

  I stood behind her, also studying Irina’s face. But all I saw was the blankness in her eyes, and a certain tilt to the chin that suggested Irina Barbalovich was selling the kind of confidence no girl of nineteen could have.

  She’s just a kid, I thought, suddenly seeing her cockiness, the kind of fearlessness that comes from not knowing what hurts, what disappointments, lie ahead. I recognized it as the same look I had seen on Sasha’s face.

  The phone rang then, though Claudia seemed not to notice, either because she was caught up in her adoration of Irina’s virtual porelessness, or because she had forgotten Lori was now across the pond.

  “Claudia? The phone? Do you want me to—”

  She started then, picking up the phone and barking with her usual menace, “Claudia Stewart.”

  Her features slackened immediately, and her voice was positively ingratiating as she said, “Well, hello, Bebe.”

  Bebe was Irina’s personal assistant. Though what a nineteen-year-old needed with a personal assistant was beyond me.

  “Of course, I’m still coming,” Claudia continued, in the same buttery tone. I saw her frown. “A car? I had thought we’d simply get a cab—” She paused, glanced at the window at the cloud-filled sky that brightened an otherwise cold and dreary evening. “Oh, right. No, of course. We wouldn’t want Irina to catch a cold. Not with the shoot coming up. I’ll order one right away. Shall we say, eight o’clock?” Her mouth moved into the smile that I suspected was more a cover for her gritted teeth. “Perfect. See you then.” She hung up.

  “What was that about?”

  “Oh, some party down at Moomba I’m going to with Irina.”

  “You’re actually hanging out with her?”

  “Um-hmm,” she said, digging through her Rolodex. “Her and that boy she hangs out with. The photographer? Phillip something or other. It seemed like a chance to meet new people—” She broke off, as if she realized that she had just revealed some new vulnerability—one I suspected had something to do with Larry Bennett’s abrupt blow-off. “Though now that the party is here, I’m dreading it a bit. Can you believe that girl had the nerve to call us to order her a car?” Finding the number she sought, she pulled the card, then looked at the dial pad on her phone as if she’d never used it before. And maybe she hadn’t. After all, she’d always had Jeannie—and now Lori—to complete such menial tasks as calling up cars or dialing up clients. She stabbed at the numbers, then stood, looking up at me, a kind of pleading look on her face I had never seen before.

  “You want to come?” she asked, her tone implying she might get on her hands and knees and beg. In fact, the lost look on her face even lent her a kind of youthfulness. But maybe that was because I had never seen Claudia look so positively nervous.

  “Um, no. Sorry. Can’t unfortunately,” I said, frowning as if dismayed by the idea of not joining Irina and her troop of followers as they traipsed all over town in search of whatever glories were to be had in NYC’s bar scene. “I have plans,” I lied.

  I saw her visibly slump, resigned, before she focused her attention on her call. “Yes, I’d like a car,” she began, then rattled off the address I knew to be Irina’s brand-new loft in Soho, purchased before the ink was even dry on her million dollar contract with Roxanne Dubrow.

  I turned to face my youthful counterpart, realizing suddenly where that bravado I saw cloaking her came from. Because I knew that whatever wisdom she couldn’t possibly have didn’t really matter in the face of what she did have. Like money. And most of all…

  Power.

  I felt a kind of power, too, when I dialed up Jonathan Somerfield the next afternoon. Maybe it was because my father had provided me with the opportunity to wield my charms on Jonathan Somerfield once more. The moment I announced myself to the assistant who answered the phone, I felt a kind of tingle of anticipation, as if I was certain the good doctor wouldn’t outlast a second encounter.

  “Hello, Dr. Somerfield,” I practically purred into the phone when his deep, rich voice finally boomed a greeting over the line. “This is Grace Noonan.”

  I heard him hesitate and felt my heart begin to sink. Did he not remember me? Was it possible I had not made such a great impression on him as he had made on me? “Dr. Noonan’s daughter?”

  He cleared his throat. “Hello. What can I do for you?”

  I bit back a disappointed sigh. Well, I could be all business, too, if that was how he wanted to play it. “Actually, my father recommended I contact you,” I said, clearing up any misconceptions my somewhat breathy hello might have created. “He sends his regards and asks if you would do me—well, him, really,” I added quickly, “a favor.”

  “Of course,” he said, his tone clearly warming now that he recognized this to be a matter between him and his former colleague.

  I explained that I had purchased the Chevalier, but that I needed an expert to review the certificate of authenticity before I could insure and ship the painting to my parents.

  “We could meet at the gallery some night if you’re free,” I said.

  I heard him suck in a breath and felt myself hold one of my own. What was with this guy? He was all raring to go until he realized this little favor for my father would bring him into contact with me again.

  As if I could not bear what his pregnant pause might mean, I suddenly heard myself babbling into the phone. “It’s open until six during the week. Or all day Saturday, if you’re free. Just let me know what works for you, as I’d need to make an appointment with the gallery manager.”

  “Of course,” he said, sounding somewhat reluctant. I heard him rifling through some papers on his desk, probably looking for a calendar. He blew out a breath, as if suddenly weighted down by a task that, up until five minutes ago, had been a joyous homage to Dr. Noonan. I felt a sudden burning need to make up some excuse to get off the phone, then realized what a child I was being. What the heck did I expect? The guy clearly wasn’t interested. And while normally I took that as a challenge, this afternoon it made me…depressed.

  “Well, I could do something on Thursday…around five?”

  “Fine,” I said, even knowing that meant I would have to leave work early. Now that this was feeling less and less like the romantic interlude I had imagined it might be, I just wanted to get it over with. Besides, i
t wasn’t like anyone really needed me at the office these days. “I’ll see you Thursday at five, then. Good night.”

  I hung up the phone, wondering when I was going to rid myself of this foolish desire for things—and men—I clearly had no business wanting.

  I quickly dialed up the gallery to make an appointment with Pamela. When I was done, I looked up to find Claudia in my doorway. Or someone who resembled Claudia. She looked a bit…anxious. I had never before seen my boss in such a state.

  Or such an outfit.

  The pants were low slung, with a brightly colored embroidered design on the flare-cut legs and what looked like silver studs on the pockets. The shirt screamed hippie love child with a trust fund, with its wide sleeves and sleek cut high-tech fabric. I think I even saw Claudia’s midriff peeking out at me, but I couldn’t be sure from the way she kept smoothing her hands over the front of herself.

  Wait—I had seen this look before. In the junior department at Bloomingdale’s. It looked like a Mitzy Glam, a hot new designer catering to the fashion-forward teen.

  Because I didn’t know what else to say, I found myself asking, “Where’ve you been?”

  “Bloomingdale’s,” she replied with a shrug, as if leaving midday for a shopping spree was ordinary behavior for her.

  Uh-oh. It was a Mitzy Glam.

  “I certainly couldn’t meet up with Irina tonight in last year’s Bob Mackie,” she said.

  Or this year’s fashion for the fourteen-year-old set, I thought but didn’t say. “You’re going out with Irina again?” I asked, with no small amount of surprise.

  She actually blushed, then said, “Well, I really had a nice time last night.” She raised her chin, the gleam returning to her eyes. “In fact, Phillip seemed positively smitten with me.”

  Oh, dear. Clearly Claudia had lost it. Not only on a fashion level, but on a reality level. “Uh, Claudia, I hate to break it to you, but it’s common knowledge that Phillip Landau is gay.”

  “I know that.” She glared at me. Then, raising her chin once more, she declared, “He wants to take my picture. In fact, we’re thinking about approaching W with it,” she said. Then, before I could accuse her of overreaching—after all, a supermodel Claudia was not—she added quickly, “For an article on Roxanne Dubrow’s new face, of course.” She smiled like a Cheshire cat. “With a feature on me, as the reigning queen of Roxanne Dubrow’s beauty revolution.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “Does Dianne know about this?”

  Claudia narrowed her eyes right back. “Of course!” Then she added, “I left a message with her assistant. I would have told her directly, if Dianne wasn’t spending half her life at her mother’s bedside.” She rolled her eyes, as if tending to one’s ailing mother was a nuisance better borne by others.

  “How is Mrs. Dubrow?” I asked, thinking of the kindly elderly woman I had seen only at the yearly Christmas gatherings. She had been long retired by the time I had joined Roxanne Dubrow, but I knew of her legacy—and her radiant beauty as a younger woman, immortalized in the photos featured in numerous biographies written about her.

  “The woman is dying, Grace. How should she be?” Claudia sniffed. “Anyway, I’m sure Dianne will get back to me if she sees a problem. Besides, it’s good publicity for the company.”

  It wasn’t the company I was thinking of when I rode home in a cab that night, but Dianne. Her mother was dying. Dying. How hard it must be to lose a parent….

  My throat was clogged with tears, as if I were the one suffering this great loss. And even as my first tears fell, it occurred to me, with no small surprise, that I had suffered this loss. That I knew, at least on some level, how Dianne felt.

  Oh, God, I thought, crumbling under the weight of the emotion that crashed over me like a wave.

  Kristina Morova. She had never been my mother in any way that truly mattered, but I knew now that she had lived in my mind as some shadowy figure I could never quite grasp. Never would grasp now.

  She was gone. Gone in a way that somehow seemed worse than I had ever imagined.

  I had no plan anymore to make my way to see her. There were no more solitary cab rides to take me where I had believed her to be living all this time, hoping to confront her. Either to lash out in anger, or reach out to her in relief.

  There was, I realized now, no more hope of her.

  Nothing but a dream of her that up until this very moment, I had not allowed to die.

  When I was a little girl, I used to run my finger over the arch in my grandmother’s foot. “Your grandma’s feet are shaped like stilettos!” she would say, chuckling over the arch that had deepened from the years she had spent in the high-heeled shoes she preferred.

  I smiled at this memory now, running my finger over my own deep arch and realizing I had likely inherited my love of fancy footwear from my grandmother, judging by the way my feet were shaping up. I certainly hadn’t gotten that taste from my adoptive mother, I thought, leaning into the phone as I listened to her inventory the comfortable flats and sneakers she was packing for her trip to Paris.

  “You’re going to be all right? Alone on Thanksgiving?” she said now, alerting me that beneath all her preparations, her excited chatter, lay the lingering fear that she was somehow causing emotional damage to her daughter by not sharing the holidays with me. It was my own fault really, for calling her midweek, compelled to by some lingering sense of malaise I had felt ever since leaving Shelley’s that evening.

  After hurriedly telling Shelley about my visit to Brooklyn and my decision never to return, I had tried to spend the rest of the session talking about real estate. Specifically, whether or not I should buy a new apartment to go along with my baby plans. Though the weight of everything involved in my single parent scheme had kept me from moving beyond the idea stage, I wasn’t going to let Shelley know that. She went along with my chatter for a bit, even revealing that she had her own sweet deal in the West Village. But she still wanted to know why I felt a need to deal with everything alone. In particular, why I refused to discuss Kristina Morova’s death with my parents.

  “I’ll be fine,” I insisted to my mother for what felt like the umpteenth time. I realized once again that I had been right in not telling my parents about Kristina. Didn’t Shelley understand that there were some things that you should just deal with alone, rather than drag the rest of the universe down with you? Needless to say, it was not a productive session. But I felt justified in holding fast to this point. I was certain if I told my mother about Kristina’s death, she would cancel her trip out of some maternal desire to comfort me. It was enough for me to know that she would be there for me if I allowed her to. There was no way I would risk ruining this vacation for her.

  I heard her sigh. “We should have flown you home for Thanksgiving.”

  “Mom, if I wanted to come home for Thanksgiving, I could have bought a ticket myself. It’s not a big deal,” I said, making light of it. “Besides, I could catch up on work, do a little winter cleaning.”

  “It’s the perfect time of year to take advantage of the city,” my father chimed in. “Black Friday is the best day of the year to do a little shopping. And I bet the museums and galleries are open.”

  I smiled, knowing he was likely wondering if I had succeeded in getting the certificate. “Dad’s right,” I said now. “In fact, I have plans to go down to SoHo to see a show tomorrow night.”

  “Good girl,” my father said, as if my art education were at stake.

  “Oh, that’s lovely, Grace,” my mother said. “A new artist?” she asked.

  “Umm, no. Can’t remember the name,” I hedged. “I think it’s French…. From the romantic period,” I added at the last minute, as if to throw her off track.

  “Oh, I love the romantics,” my mother replied with a sigh. “Have a lovely time.”

  Lovely wasn’t exactly how I felt when I stepped out of a cab in front of the Wingate Gallery the following night. Rather than the snow the recent cold bout h
ad promised, a chilly rain had begun to fall, seemingly the moment I stepped out of my office, making it nearly impossible to find a cab. But find one I did when, after a full fifteen minutes of wielding my umbrella against the slanting rain, an off-duty cabbie took pity on my half-soaked self and pulled over.

  After I had assessed the damage in my compact—rain-dampened hair and mascara shadows that I hastily rubbed away—I handed my knight-in-a-yellow-sedan a big, fat tip once we arrived in front of the gallery.

  Pamela briskly unlocked the door and ushered me into the office, where Jonathan Somerfield already waited.

  Liquid pooled inside of me at the sight of him, and even tenderness at the sight of his brown loafers, the way the stripes on his oxford shirt clashed mercilessly with his tweed coat. Then he glanced at his watch impatiently, and I felt my armor go up, suspecting that my tardiness had not whetted his appetite, but only irritated him.

  But it wasn’t irritation in his eyes when he looked up, his gaze meeting mine and flickering with the kind of heat I had experienced myself moments earlier.

  I almost smiled with pure feminine satisfaction. It seemed the good doctor was not immune to my charms after all.

  “I have all the paperwork ready,” Pamela said, clearly unaware of the temperature spike in the room. I might even have thought Jonathan Somerfield wasn’t aware of it, by the way he dug right in, studying carefully the documents Pamela laid out before him, but for the way his gaze traveled over me once more when he was done, as if he would have loved to have taken me right there. Meanwhile Pamela was going on and on about how Chevalier’s works would only become more valuable in years to come.

  “Yes, he certainly is an interesting man,” I said, my gaze still locked on Jonathan’s.

  “Oh, that’s right. You met him the night of the opening, didn’t you?” Pamela said, tucking all the necessary paperwork into a folder.

  “Chevalier?” Jonathan said, frowning. “You met the artist?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I said, leaning over to sign the insurance forms. You might have met him, too, I thought, if you hadn’t run off like you did.