Little White Lie

by Lea Santos

  “Okay, ’fess up. What are you thinking?” Gia asked.

  “Nothing.” She paused. “Well, actually, I was thinking about last night. I had a great time. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. I enjoyed it, too.”

  “I’m glad we talked, Gia,” she said in a private tone.

  Gia’s hands stopped moving, and she flipped her fingers over to caress Emie’s cheek with the backs of them. “Me, too.”

  They shared a lingering glance that plunged Emie’s stomach. Tremulously, she said, “Don’t let me interrupt what you were doing. It feels good. You touching me, I mean.” Her eyes drifted shut, unable to face the boldness of her own comment.

  “It does, huh?”

  “Gia,” Emie said, in a playful warning tone.

  Gia laughed softly, then continued her work. “I’m not going to do a full face here,” she said. “I just want to test some colors and make sure your skin doesn’t react to anything, then we’ll take the products home.”

  “Thief,” Emie teased.

  Gia scoffed, grabbing a white foam triangle from the tray to dab at her face. “Oh, believe me, no law breaking involved. You’ll be whipping out your platinum card before we hit the road.” She lifted Emie’s chin and tickled her lips with the sponge.

  Emie squinted one eye open. “On that note, any chance you can try to select a lipstick that isn’t twenty-five bucks?”

  “I’ll try,” Gia said wryly, continuing to touch her face. “But I have this thing about quality products, so beware.”

  Emie reached up and grabbed Gia’s wrist, narrowing her eyes in what she hoped was a threatening, all-business look. “You might have champagne taste, woman, but I’ve got a beer budget, so frugality is the key.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Gia grinned. “Close your eye before we irritate your contact lenses.”

  Emie obeyed.

  A few muzak-laden moments passed before Gia murmured, “You have really good bones.”

  “Said the undertaker to the cadaver,” Emie replied.

  Gia groaned. “You know what I mean. Bone structure. Nice high cheekbones, a good forehead.”

  Emie’s eyes popped open and she gripped the edge of the vinyl seat. An unfamiliar feeling of pride rose in her chest. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  She studied Gia’s face. “No one’s ever said anything like that to me before.”

  “Does that mean I get points for originality?”

  “God, G. You have enough points, trust me.”

  “Is that so?” Her brows arched. She held swabs of different-colored foundation next to her cheek and neck, turning her face this way and that. She chose one, applied it with her fingers and a sponge, then selected a matching powder. Picking up a huge brush that looked like a guinea pig on a stick, she said, “Keep your eyes closed tight while I powder you.”

  Emie complied, but halfway through the process, an unsettling thought popped into her head. “We don’t have much time before the faculty get-together. I don’t feel like we’ve made much progress with my new look. Puh! Puh!” Grimacing, she blew powder off her lips, reaching up to smear the back of her hand across her mouth and swipe particles from her teeth. “Yuck.”

  Gia laughed. “Makeup artists’ rule number one. Don’t open your mouth when you’re getting powdered.”

  “Sorry. You’re forgetting—low-maintenance woman, here. I’m new to this.” Emie watched Gia’s hand hover over a lovely pale blusher before she selected a darker shade that reminded her of Pep’s purple bruises. Great. A needle of anxiety pricked at Emie.

  “Then I’m sorry, too.” Gia plucked a brush from a clear Lucite holder. “I’ll keep you more apprised of what I’m doing.”

  Emie crossed her legs and sat back in the chair. “Start by explaining how we can possibly transform me from dull to ‘eat your heart out, Vitoria’ in the few days we have left.”

  “Don’t worry, querida, we have plenty of time.” She dipped the glossy brush in the cheek color, tapped off the excess, then tested it on Emie’s face. After studying the color from the front and side, Gia nodded, then wiped the color off with a tissue. The bruise blusher went into the to-buy pile, much to Emie’s chagrin. “It’s just a makeover, you know. Cosmetics. Not plastic surgery.”

  “Uh-huh.” Emie eyed the stack of products she was doomed to purchase. Assessing each one the random value of twenty-five bucks, she figured she was a couple hundred dollars in the hole so far, not counting tax. “What else do we need to do?”

  “We’ll buy all this and hair products today and look for an outfit tomorrow.” Gia paused, sifting through a cup of pencils. “By the way, do you mind if we swing by an art store on the way home? I’m low on supplies.” She plunked a tube of raccoon-black mascara and a grape eyeliner stick in the purchase stack.

  Ka-ching! Emie swallowed. “Of course not. Whatever you need.” In went an eyebrow pencil, a pack of makeup brushes, and a lip-liner that reminded Emie of the Razzmatazz crayon in Teddy’s Crayola 96-count Big Box. Gia topped it with a bag of foam triangles. Emie pointed. “Um, I hate to spoil your vicarious spree, but I’m not independently wealthy, you know. I’m in higher ed. We go to school for, oh, about a decade just to be underpaid.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m only getting the basics.” Gia smirked.

  “This is how you’d define ‘the basics’? How do women afford to keep themselves up?” Emie couldn’t help but think Gia was enjoying the heck out of her fiscal discomfiture.

  Gia skirted around the money vein. “I was thinking we’d do a trial run of the hair and makeup this evening, just to make sure we have everything we need before the big event.” She slanted Emie a wary glance. “We’ll make a night of it. Maybe we can order in Chinese, if you’d like.”

  “Okay.” Emie didn’t care. Right now, she eyed the product mound. “Is that all? Please say yes.”

  “Nope. We still have to get the most important thing.”

  “What’s that, an offshore account to pay for it all?”

  Gia leveled her with an “I’m being patient, here” stare. “The lipstick, querida. Nothing sexier on a woman than a bright, pouty, kissable mouth.”

  “How could I forget?” Emie grabbed Gia’s arm, trying not to be distracted by how good the muscles felt beneath her velvety soft skin. “Please don’t pick a lipstick called Meow or anything equally repulsive.”

  “Emie?”

  “Yes?”

  Gia chucked Emie’s chin with a knuckle and shook her head slowly. “Are you always this bossy?”

  She sniffed. “I just know what I don’t like. And I don’t like cosmetics with names that objectify women.”

  “Understood.” Gia picked up a gold-tubed lipstick, uncapped it, and smiled. “Here we go. Perfect. And it’s called”—she flipped it over and read the tiny label—“Midnight Bordeaux. Can you handle that?”

  Emie reached for the gleaming case and peered inside. Her jaw dropped. “Bordeaux? It’s black!”

  “Deep wine,” Gia countered.

  She double-checked. “No, black. Pitch-black. Geez. Midnight Bordello would be a more accurate name for this horrific color.” Jab, jab went the anxiety needle, drawing blood this time. “You can’t possibly think that’ll look good on me.”

  “Of course it will. I’m an expert, remember?” She took the lipstick back and added it to the tally.

  “Wait.” Panic mounted in Emie’s chest. “There’s no talking you out of that lipstick?”

  “Nope. It’s dramatic. It makes a statement.”

  “Yeah—I’m a terrier—I have black lips.” Emie extracted her credit card from her wallet. “That’s the statement. Not my idea of a great fashion—”

  “Emie, a little trust?” Gia chuckled. “I’m good, but I can’t pull off a cat joke and a dog joke in the same shopping trip.”

  Emie jammed her arms crossed and glared at the offending lipstick. “I am so not amused by you right now.”

  “Well, it’s nice t
o see you’ve got the pout down pat.” Gia scooped the pile of cosmetics against her chest and smiled. “Come on, Profé. You’ll get over it.” She held out a palm for Emie’s credit card. “Let’s go max out your plastic, baby.”

  *

  “What do you use that for?” Emie asked, pointing at the gesso Gia held while they waited for the clerk to bring out the canvases. Customers swarmed through the art supply store, and though the employees seemed attentive, there were only so many of them to go around.

  “This?” She clunked it on the counter. “It is applied to ground the bare canvas. Prepare it for the paint,” she added, when Emie’s quizzical frown said she didn’t quite get it.

  “Oh, I didn’t know you had to do that,” she said, chagrined. “I figured you just kind of…slapped the paint on when you had a creative brainstorm. I’m afraid I don’t know much about your profession. But I’d love to learn more.”

  “Some artists coat the canvas with rabbit skin glue before the gesso,” she told her, “but a lot of curators frown on that practice anymore.” She leaned in and lowered her tone. “Critters think rabbit skin glue is a delicacy.”

  “Ah…yeah. Gross.” Her nose crinkled at the thought. She waited patiently until the clerk had handed Gia the canvases and a few tubes of paint. As they walked to the cash register, Emie said, “Tell me more about oil painting.”

  “Oh, you know, it’s pretty much slapping paint on a canvas whenever a creative brainstorm hits. I’m tired of talking about me. Tell me about your job.”

  Emie’s face came up, surprised. “Really? No one ever wants to talk about what I do.”

  “Why? Cloning is much more interesting than painting.”

  She laughed, and they piled the goods on the checkout counter. “Well, what do you want to know?”

  Gia spread her arms in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t even know enough about it to ask a proper question. I just keep thinking about evil duplicates of people storming the planet and wreaking havoc.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Hollywood. The bane of my existence.” A gum-popping clerk began listlessly ringing up their purchases. She wore the vacant stare of a disillusioned minimum-wage earner. “We’re working on the medical advances human cloning may provide rather than on the sci-fi aspect.”

  “Like what?” Gia extracted a credit card from her wallet and handed it to the checker after the girl monotoned the total to no one in particular.

  “Well, hmm. There’s so much.” Emie pondered it, then flipped her hand over. “One example would be the possibility of being able to clone a heart disease sufferer’s healthy heart cells and then inject them into the damaged areas. We do a lot of studies with embryonic stem cells, too.”

  “Which means what? In plain English, please. Or Spanish,” Gia added, with a smile.

  Emie crossed her arms and leaned one hip against the counter. “We’re researching whether stem cells can be grown in order to produce organs or tissues to repair or replace damaged ones. Skin cells for burn victims, spinal cord cells for people with quadriplegia. Like that. If the tissues were cloned from the patient rather than donated, the rejection rate would plummet.”

  Gia grabbed her bags absentmindedly, engrossed in the topic. “And that’s cloning? I never knew. How do you grow these cells?”

  Emie pressed her lips together and considered the question as they walked out to the truck, then tried to explain the procedure in as nontechnical terms as possible. She knew the scientific babble was what put most people off.

  Gia slammed the tailgate and wiped her palms together to brush off the road dust. “So, as long as the technology isn’t banned by people who think it’s all a science-fiction ploy to take over the world, a lot of diseases and conditions could benefit from cloning.”

  Emie nodded, as always energized by the topic that had fired her blood since high school. “Potentially. A lot more research needs to be done but it’s exciting.” She shrugged. “Problem is, we need grant monies and governmental support, which is difficult to secure when seemingly every special interest group in the world protests the research. They just don’t understand the potential.”

  “What wonderful and fulfilling work you do.”

  She sighed. “I love my career, but it has its negative aspects. You know, I’m the only woman on the research team—not counting that bitch, Vitoria—and I’m also the only person under the age of forty. Combine that with being a quote-unquote minority and I’m quite the oddity.”

  “You should be proud.”

  “I am. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just burdensome sometimes to be the frontrunner. The token Latina, some people think. I must be there because of a quota, not my brains.” She huffed. “I’ve worked goddamned hard to get where I am, ever since I first learned about human cloning in my high school genetics class.”

  “I’m sure you have. I wouldn’t imagine anything less.”

  Emie bestowed a smile of pure gratitude. “Not to mention, the field is packed with arrogant, prima donna men—and women—who puff up their chests at the thought of a thirty-year-old woman working on a level commensurate with their own.”

  Like Elizalde, Gia thought. That Emie showed even the slightest interest in the woman completely baffled Gia. And rankled her. She didn’t want to think about it.

  “If we had more kind, intelligent scientists in the field, I’d probably be much happier. People like you,” Emie added quietly.

  Gia warmed at the compliment and averted her gaze. And here she’d been thinking Emie would be bored hanging out with a simple painter. Maybe she’d been wrong. God, she wanted to hold Emie’s body against her own. Emie made her feel so incredible, so special and…gentle. Gentle had never been in her repertoire. Her swelling emotions warned her to get back on track, and quick. “What about things like injured joints or amputated limbs?” She held her door open while Emie climbed into the truck. “Could cloning possibly regenerate those for a person?”

  Emie’s face brightened. “Exactly! Wow, it’s so wonderful to talk to someone who just gets it. That”—she poked her finger softly into Gia’s upper chest—“is the type of human cloning research we do. We’re not out to recreate emotionless human duplicates.”

  Gia raised her hands like a heavyweight who’d just won the world title. “And Mendez chalks up another point for catching on. The crowd goes crazy.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and imitated crowd cheering noises. It was a feeble attempt to lighten what had morphed into an intimate mood before she gave in to the impulse to gather Emie against her chest and rain kisses on her face, her neck.

  Lower.

  Emie shook her head and laughed a little, then studied Gia intently. “Ever thought about going into the sciences, G? You’ve obviously got the mind for it.”

  Gia pulled a skeptical face but pleasure from the compliment swirled through her. “No chance of that. I’ll leave the hard work to experts like you. I’m perfectly happy painting.”

  “Which is a perfectly brilliant contribution to the world.”

  Time stilled.

  Attraction crackled.

  “Ah, sweet Emie.” Gia caressed Emie’s arm slowly from shoulder to wrist. “A woman sure could get used to being around you.”

  *

  Later that evening, Emie perched on the edge of the bathroom vanity while Gia applied the promised “full face.” She hadn’t seen it or her hair. But based on what she could feel, spiky quite literally described the hairstyle. It felt crunchy, sharp enough to put a freaking eye out. She could only wonder what effect the glitter spray had on the whole look, God help her.

  “Quit smashing your spikes.”

  “Sorry. It feels funny.” She folded her nervous hands in her lap. An idea struck. “You getting hungry yet? We could take a break and order dinner.” She really just wanted an excuse to turn around and get a sneak preview of her face.

  “No, you can’t peek, but nice try.” Gia glared. “We’re almost done. And in answer to your que
stion, I can wait to order unless you’re going to die of starvation.”

  “I can wait, too,” she muttered, grumpy that Gia had pegged her amateurish ploy.

  Gia had been firing off questions about her job since the minute she walked in the door, which pleased Emie. Most women she’d encountered had either been bored by the topic or intimidated by her expertise. Gia seemed genuinely interested.

  As though reading Emie’s thoughts, Gia deftly turned the conversation back to the topic. “How does that bitch, Elizalde, fit into the research team?”

  Oddly enough, thinking of Elizalde didn’t infuriate Emie as much as it had right after the Stillman Show disaster. She found the woman rather…pathetic. Though she still wanted to get her back for what she’d done. “She’s on a two-year faculty exchange from Universidade Federal de São Paulo,” Emie said. “She’s actually a medical doctor and she’s part of the embryonic stem cell project. Hot stuff in her country. In the whole field, really.”

  “Hmm,” Gia said, sounding unimpressed. “Stare at my throat and don’t blink.” Gia applied mascara to her lashes in silence. When she finished, she stuck the wand back into the tube and cast Emie a sidelong glance. “Can I ask you a question that’s none of my business?”

  “Great opening. Really sets a person’s mind at ease.” She gave Gia a droll smile. “But sure. Go ahead.”

  “What do you see in that woman?”

  Emie’s forehead crinkled. “Vitoria?”

  Gia turned her back and took a moment to rifle through Emie’s new cache of expensive cosmetics. “Yeah,” she said through clenched teeth.

  Emie shrugged, confused. “Well…I don’t know what you mean. I respect her work, her contribution to the field of genetic research…and we’re lucky to have her on the project.”

  “But is that enough of a reason—” The ringing phone interrupted Gia’s question.

  “I should get that.” Yes! Now was her chance to catch a glimpse of her makeup.

  “Fine, but no peeking.”

  “Okay,” she fibbed, jumping off the counter. She had to see it so she could control her reaction in case she hated the way it looked. Not that she was a pessimist. “I’ll run downstairs and order the food while I’m at it. It will be at least forty-five minutes before they deliver.”