Apocalipstick

by Sue Margolis

  Her eyes shot round the huge open-plan office. Nothing. For one dreadful moment it occurred to her that after only a fortnight on the Vanguard, she’d been sacked. But why? She’d done two beauty columns so far and there hadn’t been even a sniff of a complaint from Lucretia. In fact only yesterday she’d made a point of coming over to her and saying how much she’d enjoyed the one on nasal waxing.

  Finally she located her possessions piled up on the floor beside the fire escape. Next to the pile was a desk. On it was her computer. She knew it was hers because the screen was covered in Post-it Notes.

  Suddenly everything became clear. Rebecca’s original workstation was directly next to the Vanguard’s news desk and the office of its editor, Charlie Holland. Obviously, he had just taken on some new hotshot hack (and an anally retentive one at that) whose worth he considered to be far greater than hers. As a result she’d been banished to the far side of the office, to fire-escape purdah.

  She trudged toward her new desk. By rights she had no cause to feel so put out. As a freelancer whose only contribution to the Vanguard mag was a weekly column that took her no more than a day and a half to write and that she could quite easily knock out at home, she had no real claim to a desk at all, let alone one in a prime location. But Lucretia, in a rare moment of generosity, had insisted she have one. And positionwise—being right on top of the proper hacks as opposed to being with the girlies on the magazine—it couldn’t have fitted Rebecca’s needs more perfectly.

  The truth was that from a journalistic point of view, her interest in cosmetics was limited. Not that she didn’t adore buying them—at the last count she owned nine lipsticks, all in the same shade of neutral—and not that she wouldn’t happily have supported any move to make Bobbi Brown a dame of the British Empire. It was just that in her opinion, there was only so much a person could write about a tube of concealer.

  Over the years she had also become pretty skeptical about the cosmetics industry. Whereas she could see the point of spending a fortune on velvet-edged cardigans with little pearl buttons and having her roots tended by Camp David, he of Antoni e David on Berkeley Street, she could see no reason to slap on fifty-quid-a-tube gunk every night when hand cream probably worked just as well.

  Jess, on the other hand, had virtually no interest in makeup beyond a superficial coat of mascara and lip gloss. This was partly because she remained almost untouched by postfeminist thinking and still clung to the quaint notion that makeup enslaved women. But mainly it was because she didn’t need it. Jess was a natural beauty with perfect skin, a mass of gleaming shoulder-length curls the color of toffee apple and deep blue almond-shaped eyes.

  Rebecca had only one professional ambition—to become a successful investigative reporter. In the eight or nine years she’d been in newspapers she’d had her fair share of decent stories, but nothing big, although she supposed the Belfast women’s group story and the one about chlamydia looked pretty impressive on her CV. The thing about doing investigations as a freelancer was that they took so much time—years, often. Occasionally she would get lucky and a story would be commissioned rather than her having to do it on spec and submit it when it was finished. Then a features editor might give her some expense money up front to keep her going, but more often than not she was forced to finance her own investigations.

  She’d been working on a story about a company that seemed to be making huge amounts of money selling meat intended for pet food to butchers (her bank balance getting redder by the day) when her friend Nat, the heavily pregnant beauty columnist on the Vanguard mag and an old mate from their early days on the Rotherham Advertiser, suggested Rebecca fill in for her while she went off on maternity leave. The struggle to make up her mind—which centered on the loss-of-dignity issue versus the increase-in-cash issue—lasted no more than three seconds. She spent the next couple of days mugging up on her liposomes, ceramides, lotions, potions and glowtions as if she were studying for her finals, convinced Lucretia Coffin Mott that she was a veritable Elizabeth Arden of cosmetic knowledge, and got the job.

  The next day when her dodgy meat story collapsed, due to a consignment of pet food meat that she was assiduously tracking turning up at, er, a pet food factory, Rebecca realized she needed to find another big story, preferably a genuine one this time, to avoid imminent penury. So when Lucretia phoned to offer her a desk, which turned out to be just a few feet from the news desk, she was ecstatic. It meant that when the journalists were at the editor’s daily conference or at lunchtime when they were in the pub, she could answer the phone and maybe, just maybe, a proper, grown-up story might just land in her lap.

  Now she was sitting by the bloody fire escape, however, and she’d feel far too conspicuous walking past the subs and advertising people to answer the phones.

  She picked up a pair of windup sushi, the ones with halved and flattened plastic prawns on top, wound the mechanism and sat watching them lumber across the desk. At the very least, she thought, somebody might have told her she was being moved. Apart from anything else she was now miles from the kitchen and the loo. There weren’t even any people from the magazine sitting nearby. Just Dennis Eccles, the local government reporter, who bleated on constantly about devolution for Lancashire, and was so boring he’d been consigned to the fire escape too.

  Rebecca decided to have a hunt around for Snow. It was half past ten and she wanted to know if Lucretia had arrived yet.

  The male voice came from behind her. “Love the sushi,” it said.

  She spun round. It was the Hugh Grant hair she noticed first. Good God, it was him—the honker with the small penis. What was he doing here? For one mad, irrational moment it occurred to her that he had somehow heard her make the small penis remark or even lip-read it in his rearview mirror. Having followed her to work, he was now about to have the most almighty go at her in front of the entire office.

  “I just wanted to come over,” he began, his manner disarmingly polite and charming, “and apologize about all this—you being forced to move.”

  Hang on, Rebecca thought, this was the new bloke Charlie had taken on? Pretty certain now that he wasn’t about to berate her about her small penis remark, she felt safe to go into affronted mode regarding his behavior on Camden Road—not to mention the small matter of her being turfed out of her desk. She shot him a thin, tight-lipped smile. Then she bent down and began gathering up papers.

  “Thing is,” he continued, clearing his throat, “there wasn’t a lot I could do, I’m afraid. Charlie insisted. The girl with the freckles—Snow I think her name is—was supposed to explain. She did, didn’t she?”

  Rebecca straightened and put the papers down on the desk. “Actually, no. Snow hasn’t said a word,” she replied frostily.

  He was tall with broad shoulders. The navy suit was Kenzo, maybe Paul Smith. Underneath, he was wearing an Italian cotton shirt in a slightly lighter blue, with a matching tie. Brand-new shoes, she noticed. Expensive black slip-ons. Unquestionably overdressed—certainly for the Vanguard, where all the blokes wore Dockers, open-neck shirts and sensible shoes.

  Clearly fancied himself, she decided.

  “Sorry,” he said. He was looking at her, his head tilted slightly to one side, “but have we met?”

  “Briefly,” she said, “and I have to say it was a total blast.”

  He gave her a look of total noncomprehension.

  “Camden Road. Half an hour ago. I was the woman in the blue Peugeot.”

  “What, the one doing her makeup?”

  She reddened. “OK, I admit, it may not have been the most sensible thing I could have been doing, but you didn’t have to be quite so bloomin’ rude.”

  He looked distinctly sheepish. “No, you’re quite right,” he said. “What can I say? You must think I’m a complete prat.”

  “Well, I have to say my thoughts were veering in that direction.” She was so enjoying getting her own back.

  “Look, I’m most terribly sorry. Thing is, I was
in a bit of a state this morning. My car got pinched from outside my flat.”

  Her enjoyment instantly turned to guilt. “God, I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Yeah, not the best way to start your first day in a new job. By the time I’d sorted everything out with the police, I was running severely late. I tried calling a cab, but there weren’t any. Anyway, I was just leaving to get the tube when I bumped into the guy from downstairs who I know pretty well and he offered to lend me his car. I’m thinking great, problem solved. Then I hit the traffic on Camden Road.”

  “Oh, right. So the Subaru isn’t yours?”

  “Good God, no. Bit flash for my taste. Plus I always think blokes who drive cars like that are out to prove themselves in some way, don’t you?”

  “Maybe,” she said, casually turning back to organizing her papers. “Never thought about it.”

  “Really? I thought most women loathed blokes who drive flash cars. Anyway, look, I know I was appallingly rude, but please could we possibly start again?”

  She swiveled round to face him. He was smiling at her, but it was an uneasy, slightly diffident smile, she thought. He was also fiddling with the loose change in his pocket. Maybe she had misjudged him. Perhaps what happened this morning really was nothing more than an aberration brought on by stress. She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “OK,” she said. “Let’s start again.” She extended her hand and introduced herself.

  “Max Stoddart,” he said, taking her hand in his. She couldn’t help noticing how big and warm it was. “I’m the new science and environment correspondent.”

  Of course. The Vanguard had just poached him from the Independent, where he’d won the Listerine award for an investigation into hospital superbugs.

  “Look,” he said, “let me help you pick this stuff up.”

  “No, I’m fine, honestly.”

  But he bent down anyway. She was now acutely aware that her hair, which always took on a life of its own whenever it was exposed to the damp and drizzle, was probably sticking out all over the place. God, she must look like she spent the night under a helicopter rotor blade.

  “By the way,” he grinned, “nice bum.”

  “Er, excuse me?” she shot back, thinking maybe she shouldn’t have given him the benefit of the doubt after all.

  “The pot thing,” he said, pointing to the ceramic arse. He picked it up and handed it to her.

  “Oh. Right. Yes.” She put it down on the desk, next to the papers.

  “Before I forget,” he went on, “I found a few more bits and pieces in your desk drawer.” He put his hand into his jacket pocket and took out a box of TheraFlu and her ChapStick.

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “Hang on,” he said, “there’s something else.”

  His hand went back into the pocket. The next second it had reemerged holding what looked like a tube of something wrapped in a paper tissue. He passed it to her. Then he said he’d better get going as the editor’s conference was due to start any minute.

  Once he’d gone, she unwrapped the tube. It was her Monistat. In order to spare her blushes, he’d wrapped her thrush cream in tissue. Max Stoddart might fancy himself, she thought. He might even lose it under stress, but he wasn’t without sensitivity.

  “Lucretia’s on her way up.” It was Snow calling to her from the other side of the office. “Planning meeting, two minutes.”

  Rebecca picked up her notebook and headed off toward the magazine conference room.

  She was almost there when she saw Lucretia step out of the lift.

  Sorrento? Rebecca thought to herself. What had the ditsy Snow been on about before, with her “Lucretia’s going to be ten minutes late on account of her only just having left southern Italy”?

  Lucretia was wearing a heavily embroidered black silk kimono, white toweling turban and satin mules.

  Rebecca stood shaking her head with confusion and amusement. Maybe the Turkish baths were having a formal night. It was only as she carried on watching Lucretia sashaying toward the main office, Snow a respectful couple of paces behind holding a suit carrier, a plastic container full of salad leaves and two liter bottles of Lucretia’s fashionable Kaballah water, that Rebecca noticed something even odder about Lucretia’s appearance.

  Her skin—at least the bits of it Rebecca could see—looked dreadful, not in an “Oh, dear, did we forget to clarify, tone and moisturize last night?” sense, but more in an “Oh, my God, the woman has clearly suffered some kind of catastrophic dermal eruption, which has left her smothered in a crusty, lumpy lava, the color of Marmite” sense.

  Rebecca screwed up her face. What on earth was wrong with her? Maybe she was suffering from one of those appalling flesh-eating diseases. That would explain the kimono. The soft light silk was probably all she could bear next to her skin.

  A few of the journalists gave Lucretia a quick smile or said hello as she passed, but mostly people carried on working. For the life of her, Rebecca couldn’t work out why, when the fashion, beauty and lifestyle editor was clearly rotting and decomposing before their very eyes, nobody seemed even remotely bothered.

  2

  OK” Lucretia said briskly, using two menstrual red talons to pincer off a cruddy brown bit from her wrist, which she then crumbled into the ashtray. “So far this month we’ve got Sheherazade’s feature for the health page—‘Stars and Their Scars.’ Fashionwise it’s Madonna, Calista and Gwyneth on ‘Pleats in My Life.’ Beauty—we’ve decided lips are still in. Oh, and I don’t want a repeat of the faux pas we had last week with the evening wear shoot. There was a definite trace of nipple on one of the models.”

  Lucretia was a contradiction. She was elegant and glamorous—sexy in a postmenopausal Barbie kind of way—but she was also a prude. She was famous for it and made no apologies. She flinched at the mere mention of the word sex and had stopped going to the movies and watching TV on the grounds of the “execrable filth” being shown. She loathed anybody in the office talking about their sex life or telling an even remotely risqué joke around her—although everybody did, especially the blokes, just to wind her up.

  It was all very odd, since Lucretia, who was expelled from one of the top girls’ boarding schools after being caught at age fifteen with a gardener in her bed, had begun her career in journalism working on porn mags. By the midseventies, she was editing one called Tongue. She shot to fame when the magazine was unsuccessfully prosecuted for seditious libel and blasphemy, and each day she turned up at the trial dressed in a skimpy black rubber minidress and thigh boots. Spurred on by winning the case, she then stood as a candidate for the Party Party in the 1992 election (manifesto commitment: bondage gear on the National Health Service). Naturally she lost her deposit. After that, she set up her own magazine, Suck. Then, suddenly, in the early nineties, she had a religious epiphany, which she described in her biography Out of the Blue.

  She was alone in her office at Suck editing a piece called Around the World in Eighty Shags when she heard God speaking to her and telling her to give up her life of debauchery.

  “The Lord explained my mission,” she wrote. “I was to go out into the world and, through my writing, save the souls of fat ugly women with no fashion sense. I was to preach to them about the sacraments of waxing, exfoliation and laser dermabrasion, teach them they were doing the devil’s work by wearing Miu Miu over the age of twenty-five.”

  A year after her visitation, the rubber bondage gear had gone and she emerged as a self-appointed fashion and beauty guru. By coincidence the Vanguard had decided to start a Saturday supplement aimed at women and they took her on to edit it.

  “Right,” Lucretia continued. “Any more thoughts?”

  As the writers and features editor continued to put up ideas, Rebecca turned to Snow, who was sitting next to her at the far end of the conference table.

  “Isn’t Lucretia just so brave?” she whispered.

  “How d’you mean?” Snow mouthed.

  �
��You know, her skin. Is she in terrible pain?”

  “What, from the Sorrento?”

  “Sorrento?” Rebecca said. “What’s Sorrento got to do with it? It’s January. Even in southern Italy, she couldn’t have gotten sunburned.”

  Snow did her best to stifle her giggles. “She didn’t go to Sorrento. She went for a Sorrento.”

  Rebecca gave her a quizzical look.

  “She has it once a fortnight,” Snow explained. “It’s a fake tan. Right mess it makes ’n all. They cover you in this muddy gunk that gets left to dry. You can shower it off at the salon after about half an hour, but Lucretia likes to leave it on because the longer you leave it, the deeper the color. She’ll pop to the office shower just before lunch. I can’t believe you haven’t heard of it, what with you writing a beauty column.”

  Rebecca gave Snow a sheepish smile and immediately looked round with a start. Lucretia was saying her name.

  “Er, Rebecca, if you’d care to join us.”

  “Sorry, Lucretia.”

  Suddenly Lucretia turned to Snow. “God, I nearly forgot. Did you pick up my cans of oxygen from Harvey Nicks?”

  Everybody was used to seeing Lucretia gulping pure oxygen from what appeared to be empty drink cans. The idea was it energized and revitalized the entire body. In Lucretia’s case she took such huge amounts that it was as much as she could do to stop from keeling over.

  “No, Lucretia, not yet,” Snow said meekly. Rebecca wished that just once, Snow would pluck up the courage to tell Lucretia to go to hell.

  “Well, I suggest you go now. And get me a large half fat decaf cap on your way back.”

  Snow stood up, head bowed ever so slightly, and walked to the door.

  “Right, Rebecca, as I was saying,” Lucretia went on, “I’ve got this brilliant idea for your column this week. Tonight is the Mer de Rêves Winter White Party. Le tout Londres will be there. Bound to make great copy. It was dazzling last year …”

  “God, yeah,” Sheherazade butted in, stubbing out her fag. She was a vague, grubby Sloane with lank hair and permanently dilated pupils. “I mean, like, all the food was served by these like cute little guys in white sequinned G-strings. Not one of them was like more than three feet tall.”