Summer Blowout

by Claire Cook

  Mario shook his head. “He’ll be a mess on HDTV. Next time, use it, okay? I pitch us with cutting-edge airbrush makeup. It’s what sets us apart.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Mario gave me one of his looks.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think it was that big a deal.”

  “Okay, but you’re going to have to use it in here. We’ll need to move fast.”

  Good thing I’d brought my airbrush stuff in with me. I knew Mario would never fire me, but he was definitely capable of making me run back to my car. “So, why exactly are they having makeup and nails at a college fair?”

  Mario shrugged. “Apparently it’s the new big thing to attract spoiled rich kids and their parents to higher education. I hear they’ve got a massage booth and a fortune-teller, too.”

  The family business had grown beyond the small chain of salons owned by our communal father. We also did on-site television hair and makeup in the greater Boston area, plus weddings, funerals, and pretty much anything else that came in. Since my life imploded about a year ago, I’d been hitting the road as a makeup artist on the days I didn’t work at one of my father’s hair salons, usually Salon de Lucio, but sometimes Salon de Paolo, or one of the others. I needed the money, since I planned to stay single and reinvent myself in some totally fascinating though as yet undetermined way.

  I took another long slug of my coffee and tried not to think, which was becoming one of my specialties. Mario combed his freckled fingers through his curly brown hair, then clapped his hands. “Okay, everybody. Here’s the deal. I got us our full day rates, plus parking and supplies, so keep track of your sponges and cotton balls, and make sure I get your parking receipts. And I said we couldn’t work legally without disposable mascara wands, and I certainly wasn’t going to pay for them at thirty-nine cents a pop.” He smiled. “Eventually they caved.”

  “You’re good,” I said. Mario was in charge of our on-site business.

  “I don’t see why I have to do nails,” Tulia said. Tulia was a total flake. She also couldn’t makeup her way out of a paper bag, since she only moonlighted for Mario when she was maxed out on her charge cards. I gave Mario a look.

  He put his arm around Tulia. “You’re lucky we’re letting you near the nails,” he said. “And remember, only the people who want light colors in your line. The dark colors go to Angela—she’s got a steady hand. And don’t forget…” Mario flipped through his stack of cosmetology licenses. “If anybody asks, you’re Joanne Dolecheck.”

  “Whatever,” Tulia said.

  Technically, if you were not in a salon setting, the Massachusetts Cosmetology Board had no jurisdiction, but if you ran a business for our father, you always went the extra mile. It was part of the deal.

  Loud music suddenly blasted out, and we could barely hear one another speak. Which was actually more than fine with me. I looked around. College banners draped the fronts of rows and rows of tablecloth-covered booths. Tweedy people stood behind them getting ready to pass out brochures and applications. I squinted. Some of the booths even sported displays of bottled water with the college name printed on them. Who knew.

  Mario looked at his watch. “Places, everybody. The doors open at eleven.”

  I pulled out the extension legs on my case and set it up next to the first of the three hydraulic chairs Mario had brought in for the makeup applications. At the other end of the makeup chairs, Angela and Tulia were already seated at folding chairs and setting up nail polish and remover on top of two small round tables.

  “I call lips,” Jane said. Jane was our only makeup artist who was completely unrelated. Every so often we actually had to hire someone my father had neither married nor fathered.

  “Okay,” Sophia said. “I like eyes better anyway.”

  “I’m eyes, too,” Mario said. “I think you’re going to need me. I brought an extra folding stool, just in case.”

  “It’ll be nice to see you doing some actual work for a change,” I said. I reached for my airbrush gun and started setting it up. “And if I get ahead, I’ll jump in and help out on lips.”

  I’d just turned the pressure up to forty and was blowing some MAC Micronized Airbrush Cleanser through my gun to make sure it wasn’t clogged, when the guy at the booth next to me said, “Well, will you look at that.”

  He pointed. I looked. Way down in one corner of the ballroom, a wrestling ring with bright yellow ropes had been set up. A sumo wrestler in big white diapers adjusted a pile of giant padded sumo suits with flesh-colored torsos and limbs.

  “Wow,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to try safe sumo wrestling.”

  “Yeah,” the guy said. “Me, too.” He paused. “Maybe we could check it out together later?”

  “Excuse me?” I said. “You’re not actually asking me to wrestle you, are you?”

  “Just being neighborly,” he said.

  I turned to get a good look at him. He had large hazel eyes, thick hair and eyebrows, good skin, and a wide, slightly asymmetrical smile. If I hadn’t given up on men for the rest of my natural life, I’d probably think he was cute, maybe even borderline supercute.

  He reached out his right hand. “Hi,” he said. “Sean Ryan.”

  “Is that first and middle or first and last?” I asked, not that it really mattered. “Bella,” I added. “Bella Shaughnessy.”

  “Bella Shaughnessy?” he said, right before the doors opened and all hell broke loose. “What kind of name is that?”

  3

  A GOOD MAKEUP ARTIST NEVER PANICS, BUT I WAS close. I’d never seen so many high school kids and their parents in my entire life. The boys and the handful of fathers in attendance swarmed the sumo wrestling ring and formed long lines at the ultracaffeinated drinks booths. The girls and their mothers headed straight for either the massage people or us. The tweedy people at the college booths crossed their arms and waited. I guess they figured people would notice them eventually.

  Angela and Tulia started right in on the nails. Angela had already given up on remover and was painting a darker color over an obviously stressed-out high school girl’s chipped and well-bitten nails.

  “Come on, Bella,” Mario yelled from over where he was helping get the nail people separated into light color and dark color lines. “Do your thing so Sophia and Jane can get started on the eyes and lips.”

  I glanced out at the sea of faces. I picked up my airbrush gun. Airbrush makeup really was cutting edge. It was fast. It was accurate. It felt good going on. It stayed on until you decided to take it off. It could make even teenagers with bad skin look like porcelain dolls.

  But cleaning out the gun between applications was a bitch. “Hey, Mario,” I yelled. “Can you make some lines for us next?”

  The woman right in front of me cleared her throat. She was probably an NW30. “Excuse me,” she said. She made sure I saw her looking at her watch before she continued. “But how much longer are you going to be?”

  “As long as it takes,” I said. “Any other questions?”

  That shut her up. One thing I’ve learned in my line of work is that people will walk all over you if you let them.

  Mario finally came over. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  I waved my gun at the line and lowered my voice. “I was just thinking if you could line them up lighter to darker it would make things go much faster. That way I’d just have to keep adding drops of darker foundation, instead of cleaning out the gun and starting all over again between people.”

  “You want me to put the dark people at the back of the line? Are you crazy?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m just trying to be efficient here.”

  Mario put both hands on my shoulders and squeezed. “Bella, we can’t do that. It’s racial profiling.”

  “Ouch. It’s not about race, it’s about shade. I mean, you’ve already set a precedent with the nails. And they can go get a massage if they don’t like it. It’s not like they’re paying. You just
hate it when somebody else has a good idea.”

  The woman at the front of the line cleared her throat and looked at her watch again.

  “Bella,” Mario said. “This is Boston. We still haven’t lived down busing in the seventies. Come on, get going or I’ll take that gun away from you and use it myself.”

  WORD WAS OUT ON TULIA. “Excuse me,” I heard her say to one girl, “but weren’t you in my line?”

  The girl pointed to Angela. “I want her,” she said. “No offense, but you totally messed up my girlfriend’s nails.”

  “Whatever,” Tulia said. “Who’s next?”

  I’d opened my third bag of sponges a few faces ago. There were twelve to a pack, so that meant I’d done more than twenty-five foundation applications already. Before I primed and airbrushed, I was putting just a little bit of concealer on a sponge and applying that first. I hadn’t taken the time for this step with the governor, but these poor kids had more than their share of zits, not to mention circles under their eyes from either studying or partying too hard. And their mothers looked even worse from all that worrying. The sponges also gave me an accurate count. In situations like these, at the end of the day I liked to know exactly how much I’d suffered.

  I was so efficient I was causing a logjam for eyes and lips, so I took a minute to look over at the booth next door. That Sean Ryan guy had a pretty good line going for himself. He was handing out boxes of some kind and also doing a lot of nodding his head and joking with the parents and kids he was giving them to. I leaned over to try to get a better look, not at him, but at the boxes. He turned and looked at me. I looked away fast.

  I was using a gravity-fed gun that had a little cup on the top for liquid foundation. If I had to go from a very dark face to a very light face, I emptied out the cup, turned on the gun, added some air gun cleaner, and then started all over again from square one. Otherwise, if the next face wasn’t a big shade jump from the last one, I just figured out the difference and added a few drops to get the right shade for the next person. Then I held one finger over the end of the gun to block the air. This made it bubble, and the bubbles mixed the colors together.

  “Hi,” I said to the next girl in line. “What a pretty face you have.” This wasn’t completely true, but you never really knew who would grow into their looks and who wouldn’t. Beauty is part facial symmetry, part surprise, part attitude. Plus, who couldn’t use a compliment at that age. Or any age.

  “Thank you,” she said. The way she was beaming made me glad I’d exaggerated. Quickly I added a big squirt of NW35 to bring the NW25 in the cup up a few shades for her. I put my finger over the end of the gun.

  “Wow, I know talent when I see it,” Sean Ryan said beside me. “You’re amazing.”

  I turned. The cup bubbled over. Polka dots of foundation spattered everybody in the immediate vicinity.

  “Bella!” Jane screamed. Even the lipstick she was holding had polka dots on it.

  “Holy shit,” the girl in front of me yelled. “This was my favorite shirt.”

  “Watch your language,” her mother said. She touched the fine sprinkle of makeup on the sleeve of her white jacket tentatively with one finger. “I hope you’re effing insured,” she added in my direction.

  I wiped some dribbles off my cheek with the back of my hand and turned to look at Sean Ryan. He was covered.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. His eyes were scrunched shut, and he was holding his palms up, like he was waiting for a miracle.

  Mario started making dry cleaning arrangements with the worst case scenarios and passing out wipes. I reached out and grabbed two. I handed one to Sean Ryan.

  “Thanks,” he said. He spread the wipe over his hands and leaned forward and buried his face in it. “A buddy of mine is covering for me so I can take a break,” he mumbled into his hands. “I was about to ask you if you wanted to join me.”

  Sure, he was kind of sweet and funny now. They were always nice to you in the beginning. Then, before you knew it, your life was exploding all over the place, with little jagged pieces of your heart flying everywhere.

  I waited until he lifted his head up again. “Does it look like I can take a break?” I asked before I went on to the next face.

  FOUR HOURS AND SEVEN PACKS of triangular sponges later, I was so sick of airbrushing I could have turned the gun on myself. To make matters worse, since I’d been the last to arrive, everybody else just did the bare minimum for cleanup and waltzed right out of there. That meant I had to stay to help Mario pack up our stuff and lug it out.

  To possibly speed up the payment process, Mario headed off to see if he could hand deliver the invoice to someone. I curled up in one of the hydraulic chairs and closed my eyes, waiting for a second wind.

  “Whew. That bad, huh?” I heard Sean Ryan’s voice say from a distance.

  I opened my eyes, then closed them again. “Haven’t you done enough already?” I asked.

  “I said I was sorry. Is it safe to come over? I mean, are you unarmed now?”

  “Cute,” I said. I kept my eyes closed. As far as men were concerned, my philosophy was thoroughly worked out: Been There, Done That, Who Needs Them.

  I finally opened my eyes, just out of idle curiosity. Sean Ryan was looking down at me. My eyes met his, and I felt a jolt that seriously conflicted with my philosophy. I ignored it.

  I focused instead on the two dots of foundation on his right eyebrow. They weren’t even his shade. He had one of his boxes tucked under his arm like a football.

  “What is that anyway?” I asked. “They sure were selling like hotcakes.” I swung my legs around so they touched the floor and pushed myself up a little.

  He smiled his lopsided smile. “A kit. For writing your college application essays.” He held it out to me.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “What do you mean, a kit?”

  “You know, cards with essay starters, a questionnaire to isolate your best shot personal topic to sell yourself to the college of your dreams, inspirational stories from kids who’ve lived through it and are now happily ensconced at their first-choice college, a note to parents about backing off, some caffeine product samples, a cattle prod. An old friend of mine who’s a high school guidance counselor came up with the idea. I helped him put it together, and now I’m test marketing it for him.”

  I looked up at him. “A cattle prod?”

  He held out the box again. “Go ahead, look. I wouldn’t joke around about something like that.”

  “Right,” I said. “Nice box,” I added. It was kind of abstract and hip. Instead of a picture of some kiss-up straight-A student on the cover, it had a skull and crossbones and COLLEGE APPLICATION SURVIVAL KIT printed in bright red letters.

  “Thanks,” he said. “It’s getting a great response.”

  I could just see Mario working his way back over. I dragged myself up to a standing position. “Well, good luck with it,” I said.

  Sean Ryan reached into his jacket pocket. He held one of his cards out to me. “You know, I was thinking. Maybe you should put together a makeup kit.”

  “Oh, boy,” I said. “Now I get it. Is this like a pyramid scheme or something?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know, you only make money on your kit if you bring in enough other kit makers?”

  He shook his head and started putting the card back in his pocket. “Never mind,” he said. He looked up. “What is your problem anyway?”

  “How much time do you have?”

  Mario came back and started folding the tables. I took a step in his direction. “Listen,” I said. “Maybe you should find someone else to try your kit line on. Nothing personal, but I’m completely over men.”

  He nodded his head calmly, as if nothing I could ever say to him would shock him. “Since when?” he asked.

  “Since. My. Half. Sister. Started. Dating. My. Husband.”

  That got him. He opened his eyes wide, despite himself. “Ouch. That’d do
it. Whew.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  He held out the card again. “Here, take this anyway. Just in case you change your mind.”

  I looked at him. He looked at me. He tilted his head. I tilted mine. I had a sudden stupid urge to toss my hair, run my tongue along my lower lip to make it shine, say something flirty. Instead I straightened my head back out and took a step away.

  “About the kit,” he said. He leaned over and put the card in my case.

  I blew out a puff of air. “You’d probably turn out to be a homicidal maniac.”

  He smiled. “Maybe. But, who knows, I might be a really nice guy.”

  4

  I WAS JUST FINISHING UP ESTHER WILLIAMS. HER name was really Esther Williamson, but she’d shortened it to sound more glamorous after she “dumped that last clown I married.” She had broad shoulders and narrow hips, and she liked to tell people she was the famous swimmer from the movies. She said she got a lot of dates that way.

  This Esther Williams was well into her eighties. She came into Salon de Lucio at least once a week for a wash and set, something we didn’t even have a price for anymore. We gave her a special deal because she was a regular, and also because she had a manicure every week, a pedicure every other week, and a full makeup complete with false eyelashes every time she came in. At least one of those clowns must have left her some serious money.

  She also paid less because Salon de Lucio was our flagship salon. It was separated from the house my father lived in by only a breezeway, so it had the cheapest prices of any of my father’s salons. The way he looked at it, the greater the distance he had to travel to get there, the more he should charge. Even Mario couldn’t talk him out of that one.

  Today, Esther Williams was getting her monthly color done, too. She liked to sit with her Clairol Professional 37D Iced Brown on for a full four hours, something I’d never put up with from any other client. She brought her portable DVD player and yoga mat with her, and after I applied her color, she’d go off to the kiddie area.