She was only slightly offended by being told even her voice was old, but surprised to find it wasn’t that easy throwing it higher. At first, she sounded like Tweety Bird, and she snorted with laughter as Sam watched her, smiling. “You have the register. I can tell by your laugh—it’s so much higher than your voice.”
“You mean my cackle? God, I’d love to change that. I hate my laugh.”
“Nah, keep it,” he said. “It’s cute. It has a lot of personality.”
She enjoyed every minute of Speech. Later, sitting at the desk in her room jotting down some reminders for her diary, she realized she’d enjoyed Movement, too, even if those shoes from hell had played their part. It was like being an acting student again or in summer stock. She thought it would be fun playing someone else. Totally, she added to herself—youthfully. Totes.
Grooming “class” was filled with surprises. Her coach, Fleur, was younger and more blue collar than her name implied. Perhaps Anna wasn’t the only one in the room who’d changed her moniker. The bio in Barton’s folder described Fleur as a twenty-seven-year-old who wrote an online hipster fashion blog.
That first day, Fleur asked Anna questions, then told her how wrong she was. “What’s your natural hair color?”
Anna shrugged. “I haven’t seen it for a long time. I guess kind of dark blond with some gray.”
“You gonna have a wig for your performances? No? Well, no one under forty except rich Russians has time for all that blond tortoiseshelling you’ve got anymore. Unless your director fights it, go red. I’d say medium auburn with flame and yellow stripes.”
“Yellow? You mean blond?”
Fleur cracked her gum and looked at Anna as if she’d just stepped out of a spaceship that had landed on the lawn. “Yellow, Lisa. As in, yellow. I’ll bring some shots on my iPad tomorrow, to give you an idea. ’Cause that style’s got to go, too. I’d pick short and spiky if I were you. Your face is kinda long for long hair. Don’t wanna look all Celine Dion.”
Celine Dion? Before Anna could even express horror at the comparison—she couldn’t stand Celine Dion—Fleur was on to the next thing.
“You’ll be doing your own makeup? When we meet tomorrow, wear makeup—I mean, wear it all—and I’ll critique it for you,” she ordered.
“I am wearing it all.”
That got her an eye roll. “What do you do, go into a store and ask for whatever they have in drab? I can give you some tips to spice it up.”
And so it went until, by the end of the hour, Anna felt as if everything about her had been shouting “Old broad coming through!” for years.
Her Attitude teacher, Meredith, described in her bio as a professional acting coach, was a far cry from Fleur. Anna’s age, she conformed to the caricature of a typical middle-class Englishwoman. Her appearance was dreary, from her dun-colored hair to her tweedy pantsuit. She went through a list of what she seemed to think were cutting-edge words, but most of them—like hottie and hookup—were nothing new.
“The thing is, Meredith, I don’t need to sound like a rock star, just like a younger woman.”
“You should learn the words before deciding you aren’t going to use them,” was the tart reply. She ordered Anna to go to urbandictionary.com and to follow young actors’ Twitter feeds in order to learn ten new expressions to use every day. “Now, let’s go over these words again.”
Anna could have used a few BarPharm pick-me-up prescriptions to get through the day. By the time Leo-Nardo showed up for Lifestyle class at five o’clock, she was exhausted, swamped by delayed jet lag.
Leo-Nardo was, in his words, “part Jamaican, part Argentinean, a slap of Chinatown, and a shitload of God Save the Queen.” He was small and sleek, with dark olive skin and hair that looked to Anna’s professional eye like an old-fashioned Jheri curl. He could have been the runner-up at a Prince look-alike contest.
She was told to call him “just plain Leo,” pronounced as “Layo.” He worked, she knew from his bio, as a deejay in various clubs around London. He could have passed for eighteen or fifty-eight, being such a mix of styles and tics; it was hard to pin anything down. He dressed “from the ’hood”—in half-laced bulky Nikes, jeans so low-slung the back pockets were almost to his knees, and a tight T-shirt that showed off his muscles and made him look younger than his weary, seen-it-all eyes.
“Imma give you a list of shit to do on the net tonight, and then tomorrow, we do iTunes ’n’ all,” he said. “But your producer”—Anna wondered if Barton had played that role himself—“says you gotta learn the hot covers, what a girl with her shit together would be into. Yeah? What music do you listen to now? House? Acid? Hip-hop? Rap?”
She shrugged. “You won’t be impressed. Sixties and seventies rock. Jazz. Opera. A little pop.” Trying not to sound mocking, she added, “That shit.”
Leo-Nardo burst out laughing. “Man, we got our work cut out for us this week. You probably love that Celine Dion, too, huh?” He collapsed in laughter, so amused that Anna didn’t bother to tell him she didn’t like Celine Dion. Or that she did not—in any way whatsoever—resemble her.
Monday, June 20
The “me” that my coaches seem determined to turn out doesn’t sound at all like me, the real me, and only slightly like me when I was in my twenties. I wonder if I’ll feel like a fraud or if the Youngskin product will make me actually feel youthful again?
One thing today’s sessions helped me see is that youth is about more than skin, though that is clearly of vital importance and will be to all Youngskin users. But age is a state of mind that runs the gamut from fashion to catchphrases to books and music and movies. The older coaches don’t seem all that different from me—I imagine Gilda, Sam, and Meredith spend their free time pretty much as I would. (By the way, Meredith doesn’t have a clue how anyone of any other age actually speaks; she’s useless.) But the younger ones, Fleur and Leo-Nardo, inhabit a different universe.
And in just a few weeks, I’m going to be passing myself off as one of them. Can I do it? Do I even need to? So much of what I’m being taught seems superfluous, behavior that might work in a movie but would seem absurd in real life unless I were a teenager. But I think my own judgment will let me emerge from my lessons with a believable new persona.
So out goes Anna, and in comes Lisa. She’ll be a whole new person if she survives this. A young one.
Berlin, September 12, 2011
The shared-room-at-the-hostel plan worked fine, and the next day Anna had appointments to look at rooms in three crowded, hipster areas: Friedrichshain, Neukölln, and Kreuzberg. Armed with Chyna’s cell number, she went out after locking up whatever she felt secure leaving behind. Those bolted-to-the-floor lockers were making her a hostel fan.
She bought a new German cell SIM at a shop down the street and scrapped the Dutch one she’d used only once. Was she safe? She had no idea. She hoped dyeing her hair a dull brown the other night would be a lifesaver. With a few drab brown hanks poking out from her knit cap and no makeup on, she wouldn’t have recognized herself as either Anna Wallingham or Tanya Avery. Then again, she wasn’t a killer on her own trail.
She slouched through the streets and on and off the U-Bahn, hiding behind her map like a tourist and trying to call as little attention to herself as possible, refusing to give in to the terror that made her want to check for dangers. The first apartment wasn’t a squat but might as well have been, more crash pad than home. One look at the congealed grease in the kitchen and mildewed spots on the walls and Anna shook her head. “Sorry,” she told the sullen German girl showing the place, “I’m a clean freak.” She got an I-could-care shrug in return.
She’d heard Neukölln was up-and-coming, but the zone the second flat was in was more down-and-going. She negotiated cracked cobblestones between graffiti-spattered buildings with a sinking feeling that proved justified when she was buzzed in only to practi
cally trip over two nodding junkies in the trash-infested courtyard. She went back out front, rang again, and said, “Thanks . . . but no.”
Luckily, the third time was the charm. She found Kreuzberg lively and colorful, its streets filled with Turkish women buying produce, up-all-night goths heading home, and others of all types, races, and ages. She lunched on Tibetan noodles in a cute little restaurant, where a two-course meal cost less than a glass of wine in London.
The apartment was a first-floor walk-up off the busy Mehringdamm. Its door was opened by a tall blue-eyed young woman with hair the color of wheat. “I’m Kirsten,” she said. “Danish, not German. Come in.”
Anna entered, and Kirsten led the way down a long, wide hallway. “Not so pretty, this hall, because the owners covered the original floorboard with laminate,” she noted disdainfully. “I think they fear renting to anyone under fifty means their apartment gets wrecked.” Anna would have said she’d worry, too, but “Lisa” just smiled and nodded.
The big living room was simply furnished in Ikea modern. “The lease is in Susanne’s name. It’s her name on the bell, Susanne Francke. She’s gone to Turkey for a month with Hana, who’s Turkish, so both their rooms are available. There is also Paola, who’s Italian. We’re like the UN. Come, I’ll show you the rooms.”
The two bedrooms were tiny, the apartment obviously having been broken up over the years. Each held a bed, chest of drawers, small bedside table, and a wheeled rack for clothes. There were hooks on the wall, with a shelf over them. “Not much space, but this is typical of Berlin,” Kirsten noted.
There was a decent-sized bathroom with a tub and a smaller bath with a shower, as well as a long, narrow kitchen.
“I like it,” Anna said when the tour ended. “And it’s three hundred and fifty euros for a month?” Pretty much the cost of a single week in a hostel or cheap hotel, and no need for a passport.
“Ja, either bedroom. Utilities included. And I would need three hundred and fifty euros as a deposit.”
“That’s perfect! An American I met on the train needs a place, too. Can I call her from your phone and have her come over?”
They waited for Chyna over mint tea in the living room. Kirsten explained that she was studying German for a year before going back to Denmark to teach, then asked “Lisa” what she did. Anna pulled out the old inheritance line. “I thought this might be my only chance to see the world. Not that my grandmother left me much, but since I ditched my awful job, I’ve been traveling on the cheap: London, Paris, Amsterdam. A month is good—long enough to get to know a place.”
Kirsten grinned. “What was the awful job?”
“Supposedly the assistant editor at an interior design magazine. Instead, I was a glorified file clerk. Not so glorified, either. Bumming around Europe was a better option.”
When the buzzer sounded, and Kirsten went to let in Chyna, Anna shook her head in bemusement at her own inventiveness. Still, when all this was over, she thought she really would try writing a novel. If she survived.
Chyna loved the apartment, so Kirsten went over the house rules. They were simple: no going into one another’s bedrooms without asking, no dates brought in without agreement, and no overnight guests ever.
They got to meet Paola before they left. Small, dark, and friendly, she, like Kirsten, spoke impeccable British-accented English. “In Italy, you have the choice of British or American teachers for private English lessons,” she explained when Anna commented. “We choose British if we wish to sound classy.”
“I’ll have you talking unclassy pretty soon,” Chyna promised, and with that, the deal was done.
“Come at ten tomorrow and I’ll have keys,” Kirsten said when they were leaving.
“What’s your plan, then?” Chyna asked Anna when they were sitting in a café over big salads that evening. “You’re outta here in a month, right?”
“I might leave even sooner if my boyfriend can take a few weeks off and wants to meet someplace else,” she said, laying the groundwork for any sudden departure.
“Not going back to the States?”
“No plans yet. Right now, I’m happy to be here.” And to be alive, she added to herself.
It was only eight o’clock when they got back to the hostel. “What now?” Chyna asked as Anna pushed the button for the elevator. “Want to come check out a club later? I’m having a drink with these Aussies I met earlier, then we’re going out. Would you believe some clubs here have happy hour from two to four—in the morning? Mega-awesome, huh?”
“Early to bed for me. I ran all over town today. But have fun.”
“Oh, I will. And I’ll try not to crash into the furniture when I come in!”
Anna could still hear Chyna’s high-pitched laughter as the elevator doors closed behind her. Maybe she’d be glad to get away from so much youthful exuberance at some point, but the girl’s enthusiasm was cheering. Chyna also kept her from being easy to spot. That might not make them bosom buddies, but it made her almost as good as a real friend.
Chapter 7
The rest of that first week at the manor house was more of the same, with the addition—starting on Day Two after a prebreakfast piece of fruit and cup of tea at half past six—with a full workout with Joe, a former United States Marine turned exacting personal trainer. Joe’s specialty was getting stars in shape for movies, and Anna soon understood how he could turn any quivering blob of jelly into muscle in record time.
She was puzzled that all these coaches were so incurious about her. No one asked any questions. Nor did they say anything about their own lives.
She was nosy. She decided Fleur would be the easiest nut to crack, so in between discussing trends, she tried a little casual pumping.
“Do you coach people like this all the time?”
“No, not really.”
“So how did my people get in touch with you?”
“The usual channels. You know.”
“Mmmn. And your next job? Is . . . ?”
Finally, Fleur snapped. “Look, Lisa,” she said, her voice rising, “I need this gig. And, as I’m sure you know, part of the agreement is that I can’t talk about anything except what I’m here for. So please don’t do this.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry, Fleur. You must think the whole setup is weird anyhow.”
“If your producer has money for all this”—her sweeping gesture encompassed the house, the lessons—“the rest is none of my business. He must know what he’s doing.”
After that, Anna shut up and submitted to her coaches’ supposed expertise, though she was doing little more than humoring them. When the end of the week finally arrived, she thought objectively that she was moving and sounding more like a younger woman, had a bit better grasp of current lingo, and could tell the difference between bands previously unknown to her. But she considered most of the training a waste of her time and Barton Pharmaceuticals’ money.
At the end of the week, she celebrated with a festival of old films from back when she actually had been young, movies perhaps no one that age now had even heard of, much less seen, with one common theme: becoming someone else. Watching movies like Educating Rita and Zelig was her way of not thinking about the next day, when she’d be driven somewhere unknown to meet some mysterious doctor who would begin stripping the years from her face. Who wouldn’t be anxious?
Anna didn’t sleep well. Her skin was tight and literally cracking; she was comfortable only on her back. When she dozed, she dreamed her face had turned into a chicken’s, complete with beak; she pecked futilely and then realized Anna the chicken was pecking at the face of a young Anna, each tap of the beak making that face older.
At six o’clock, she gave up. No workout today, to enable her to stay “relaxed” for her procedure. After showering, she put on the most comfortable of the few clothes she’d brought, sweatpants and a shirt. Then she sat and
waited, without even bread and water because she’d be getting light twilight sedation for the procedure.
Aleksei, in his usual chat-free zone, drove along back roads still shrouded in fog. When after about twenty minutes, they reached a road construction barricade and a “Diversion” sign and she saw Aleksei bang his hand on the steering wheel, she almost grinned at his showing human emotion. He pulled off the road to make a call on his cell phone, then turned the car and followed the detour sign. Anna had no idea where they were or how far they’d gone. She saw a signpost saying “Dibden Village, 10k,” then just hedgerows and fields skimming by until Aleksei turned sharply into the back driveway of a small, institutional-looking building.
The way the chauffeur stood by the car watching her as she walked to the back door and rang the bell irked Anna. Did he think she was going to run off? A plain, middle-aged woman wearing a nurse’s white tunic and pants let her in. “Hello, Lisa,” she said. “I’m Marianne. Come with me, please.”
Anna followed her down a hospital-green hallway to a small elevator. They went up a floor, then down another hallway, through a miniature operating room, and into a changing cubicle with a metal chair in it. “Take off everything but your knickers and socks, and put on the gown in that plastic wrap along with the paper shower cap and slippers on the counter there. I’ll be back in five minutes. Okay?”
Just minutes later, Anna was flat on her back on the surgical table in the other room, an IV needle in her arm. Marianne loomed over her to peer at her skin appraisingly. “The retinol did a good job. I’ve started the IV drip, so you’ll be in dreamland in no time at all. Now you’re going to feel a little chill.” Anna smelled nail polish remover and felt something cold on her face. “This is just acetone, to remove all the oil from your skin,” Marianne explained, swabbing down her face and neck—scrubbing it, really—with gauze pads. “And then all you’re going to . . .”
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