Melt With You

by Alison Tyler

  Bette closed her eyes and settled back in the chair as Dori looked at her, seeing her former boss as if for the first time. How would she apply the make-up? What sort of transformation would she attempt?

  ‘Do you have any ideas?’ she asked. ‘You know, what you’re looking for.’

  ‘Make me gorgeous,’ Bette said, eyes still shut.

  You are gorgeous, Dori wanted to say honestly. Bette was a natural beauty. Candy-floss blonde hair with the colored tips, pale porcelain skin, big blue eyes. She would have looked lovely with no make-up on at all, the way that Pamela Anderson did. And Marilyn Monroe. But natural wasn’t Bette’s style. She liked the artifice, looked at cosmetics the way an artist looks at a palette.

  Instead of telling Bette she’d be prettier bare, Dori asked, ‘How far can I go?’

  ‘All the way,’ Bette said softly, eyes opening for a quick peek. ‘You show me what you can do.’

  When she was done, Dori turned Bette toward the mirror. Her boss moved forward, inspecting herself, turning her head this way and that before throwing back her head in her trademark full-body chortle. The laugh of an evil queen, pleased by her loyal subjects. ‘Beautiful,’ she said, clapping her hands together. ‘You’re a magician.’

  Nina came closer to look, too. She was a retro diva, with an inky-black beehive hairdo sprayed into permanent submission and a different poodle skirt for each day of the week. ‘God, Bette. Is that you?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You look amazing.’

  Nina gave Dori a cautious smile. She hadn’t seemed so pleased when Bette had hired her. But now, seeing that the girl had chops, she appeared mollified. ‘Me next?’ she asked shyly.

  Dori recalled this form of entertainment from her youth, as well. Whenever they were slow at the beauty supply, the women would do each other’s make-up, sometimes going for a specific theme – the gilded beauty of a 1920s silent screen star, at other times simply playing with the palette of colors. Her father had disapproved of this job, especially when she came home looking thirty instead of sixteen. But working at The Beauty Box had been excellent training, hadn’t it? Dori had gone on to college, at her parents’ insistence, but she’d dropped out and headed for beauty school at twenty, because that’s what she loved best. She’d never gotten over her love of cosmetics, for the way they could not only transform your face, but your whole mood.

  Over the next few hours, she did the make-up for each of the women, and for several customers as well. And when she was done, she sat behind the counter, reveling in the atmosphere. The tape deck played a heavy rotation of her favorite singers and bands: Prince. Oingo Boingo. Soft Cell. The Cure. There were other tracks thrown in, bands she couldn’t name, but songs she remembered. ‘Obsession.’ Oh, how she’d loved that one. And ‘Kiss On My List.’ Who was that? Hall and Oates. Who would the women be playing today? Gwen Stefani, Pink, Justin Timberlake. Bette would have loved the Future Sex disc, but Timberlake must have been a Mouseketeer in the 80s, right? And what about Britney? Britney would have been a toddler drinking milk rather than a twenty-something wearing a MILF T-shirt.

  At closing, she went to the back room to get her purse, and Bette stopped her.

  ‘We’re all going to the city tonight,’ she said. ‘Have you ever been to a Rave?’

  Dori shook her head.

  ‘Come with us, Emma. You’ll love it. I swear.’

  She hesitated a moment, heart racing. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. Just promise me you won’t tell Dori about it. She’s been dying to go with us, and I won’t take her. She’s far too young to get mixed up in parties that last all night long. And she’ll be so jealous if she hears we took you.’

  Dori grinned suddenly. ‘Sure, no problem, I won’t tell Dori.’ She felt a bit lightheaded at the statement. Keeping secrets from herself now, was she? Wasn’t that one of the first stages of insanity? ‘What time are you leaving?’ she asked Bette.

  ‘About ten. Things don’t really start up until midnight. We won’t be back until five or six. We can grab a breakfast at the Creamery and be ready for work.’

  Dori’s eyes widened. Yes, she lived in Manhattan, and over the years she’d been to many parties. But she couldn’t imagine going to work after an all-nighter. She recovered quickly. ‘Where should I meet you?’

  ‘We’ll pick you up. Gael’s driving. You’re staying at Dori’s house, right?’

  And before Dori could say another word, Bette patted her on the arm and headed out the back way, swinging a hefty black bag so that it landed smoothly in the dumpster to the left of the door.

  At her house, Dori stared once more into her mother’s closet. Could she make something work with these clothes? No. That was the simple answer. Even her mother’s party clothes were abhorrent to her – all Dynasty glitter with the shoulders that would not die. She flipped through a copy of Vogue that she’d found by her mother’s bed. Not helpful at all. God, the outfits were dated. No, that wasn’t right. She was the one who was dated. In fact, she was post-dated.

  With no other options, she went back into her room and, for the first time since her slip back through time, she opened the doors to her closet and looked inside.

  Instantly, she felt her breath catch. She loved these clothes. There was a basket on the top shelf filled with fingerless gloves. On the dresser in the rear of the closet were fishnets, striped stockings, an ancient artillery belt. Her favorite clothes had made the trip to Europe with her family, but there were plenty of treasures left behind. So much black. She’d gone for the Goth look from head to toe. And the silver hardware. The tight-fitting concert T-shirts. Bubble skirts. Ripped-up sweatshirts, the look stolen from Flashdance. Clothes to layer. Colors found mostly in accessories. Neons so bright they reminded her of safety tape found only on work sites.

  Oh, look at this! A Wham T-shirt. She remembered George Michael when he’d been part of that group. And under that was a T-shirt from Lou Reed’s Red Joy Stick tour. God, they’d howled at the lyrics:

  ‘She came into the bedroom, raised her skirts up high

  She said, if a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, baby,

  Give me a piece before I die …’

  When she reached the outfit she wore each weekend at Rocky Horror, she stopped. Just seeing the silky chemise, the fishnets, the faux pearls, was enough to make her feel flushed with longing. But a longing for what? She had no idea.

  Yes, she was back in time, but she was no longer eighteen. No longer staring into the future with her whole life ahead. But there was no time to be maudlin now. Bette would be picking her up shortly.

  She started spreading clothes out on the bed. What would fit her now? What would suit her? She’d seen how Bette dressed, and Nina. She would need to put an outfit together that would let her blend in, yet these clothes fitted a teenager. And she was thirty-eight.

  She had to keep telling herself that. Reminding herself to not only act her age, but dress her age. Yet how did people her age dress? Think of Concrete Blonde’s Johnette Napolitano, or the Eurythmics’ Annie Lennox or Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders. Think of them now. And by now she meant in 2008. They still looked hardcore, rock ’n’ roll. So, fuck, she could do sexy. She could do edgy.

  For inspiration, she glanced at the albums in the milk crate by the stereo. Rifling through them, she found The Scorpions and slid the record onto the turntable. To the tune of ‘Rock You Like a Hurricane,’ she got dressed, pleased with herself. The make-up came last, and she really worked it. Lining her eyes like Cleopatra, sporting serious lashes, full red lips. Then she went downstairs, turned on MTV, and waited.

  Rowan had tried his best. He’d worked out his plan so carefully. And then Luke had stepped in at the end and ruined everything. As Luke had always managed to do. No, that wasn’t right. Luke wasn’t responsible this time. It was Dori’s own choice that had messed up his plans. He stared through the window at her, watching as she watched MTV, and wondering what he was going
to do now.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ Bette said, pulling Dori out the door with her. ‘We’ve got to go.’

  Dori stumbled in Bette’s wake, and glimpsed familiar faces in the car, Gael at the wheel. Bette opened the back door for Dori and then climbed into the front seat. She turned to face the people in the rear as the car took off.

  ‘Everyone, this is Emma. Emma, this is …’

  But Dori already knew. Mica, who was the sales rep for the exclusive line of cosmetics they sold and Van, the delivery stud, who looked extremely pleased not only to see Dori again, but to be seated between two sultry ladies. Had Bette really thought she wanted him? Dori remembered her favorite Janis Joplin quote: I’m saving the bass player for Omaha. Was that what Bette was doing, saving the boy for herself, a midnight snack before moving on to Gael?

  And where was Bette’s steady boyfriend, Will?

  ‘Nice to see you again,’ Gael said to her as he put the car into drive. ‘I’m glad you’re feeling better. Not so pale.’

  ‘Nina and Dom are meeting us there,’ Bette continued. Then she faced front once more, slid a tape into Gael’s deck, and kicked her feet up on the dash. Dori was relieved to see how the two women in the car were dressed – quite similarly to herself. Black with splashes of color. Bette’s hair was spiked up with tons of gel. She had a plethora of rubber bangles on one arm, and studded leather cuffs on the other. Indulgence. That’s what Dori had remembered best from the 80s. Or over-indulgence. If you couldn’t decide between lace fingerless gloves, or three layers of crinolines, or purposely ripped stockings, then why not wear them all at once?

  ‘Are you comfortable, perfect girl?’ Van asked, smiling at her, reminding her of the song that had been playing while they’d fucked in his van. He didn’t seem at all surprised that they had run into each other again. If anything, the look on his face made her think that he’d expected it.

  Gael hadn’t seemed at all surprised to see Dori enter the car, either. Dori figured that Bette must have explained about her ahead of time – and he would have realized right away that she was the girl he rescued from the sidewalk. If anything, he could take credit for her being present, as he was the one who told her about the opening at The Beauty Box.

  Dori watched as Bette pulled a leopard-print flask from her huge black leather purse and drank long and ferociously before passing it to the back seat. She didn’t take the container. She was focused too much on the way Van’s leg touched hers. He was wearing spidery emerald-green stretch pants that fitted his body like a second skin, and he had on a great deal of heavy black eye make-up. Dori worked daily with men who wore make-up, but she’d managed to forget the 80s trend lately. The men she knew now wore a bit of foundation, emphasizing their perfect skin and plush lips. 80s make-up on men was all about being in your face. The dark eyeliner. The pumped-up hair. The lipstick. Some boys in the metal bands were honestly prettier than the girls they dated.

  Mica leaned over Van to talk to Dori. ‘He’s already started,’ she said with a knowing smile.

  ‘Started?’

  ‘He took X an hour or so ago. So he’s feeling pretty happy.’

  Van definitely did look happy. When she settled in a little more comfortably, he wrapped one arm around her, pulling her close.

  Dori had never done Ecstasy, or anything much at all in the mind-altering department. Liquor didn’t scare her the way drugs did. She’d seen too many friends wind up in rehab, or worse, to want to follow along. But now look at her. She watched, mesmerized, as Bette lit a joint in the front seat and passed it back to Mica. She’d known that there was partying behind the scenes at the beauty supply. Yet she’d never guessed exactly what that meant. Pot, coke, X? Apparently, at least two out of three, and the night was young.

  Not that Dori was a prude. But she’d moved to NY near the end of the coke phase. Most of her friends had wild stories to tell, tales that involved fish bowls filled with the expensive white powder, but few felt the need to continue the lifestyle. And yet here she was, in the center of the me decade, where extravagance was the style, where excess reigned king.

  ‘You smoke?’ Mica asked, passing the joint toward her.

  Dori shrugged and shook her head at the same time, watching as Van hijacked the tightly-wrapped joint and took a hit. He was deviously, almost dangerously handsome, wasn’t he? Dori thought of her night with Luke, of the bitterness that seemed to have overwhelmed him. The sadness she saw in his eyes that he didn’t seem able to erase. Watching him drink was massively different than this. All of the people in the car seemed happy already and simply interested in becoming more so as the evening progressed.

  When Dori didn’t immediately reach for the joint, Van took another hit and handed it over to Bette. Then he gripped Dori by the back of her hair and brought her in for a kiss, exhaling the fragrant smoke into her mouth. She fought the cough that welled up inside of her, breathing in deeply in spite of herself and feeling dizzy at the flood of emotions the scent aroused within her.

  Yes, she’d smoked before. But it had been years. The people she hung around with now had a whole new circle of favorite drugs. Xanax. Valium. Percocet. All of her clients were on various meds, and all of the meds came in little amber-hued prescription bottles. Nobody was into street drugs any more.

  ‘Good stuff,’ Bette said from the front seat. ‘Isn’t it?’

  Gael added, ‘Only the best for the best ladies.’

  Where was Will? Dori wondered again. Will was Bette’s boyfriend. Shouldn’t he be in the car, too?

  She turned now to watch the scenery pass. They were on the 280 to San Francisco, a peaceful journey, so different from the road clutter of the 101. Dori watched as they passed other cars, focusing on the styles, thinking about the cars of the future. She didn’t own one in Manhattan. There was no need. But what passed for a luxury vehicle now – the mammoth SUVs – were all missing from the 80s landscape. And if she mentioned a Hummer to the audience in Gael’s Mercedes, she was pretty sure everyone in the car would think she was talking about a blow job and not a Humvee.

  She whipped her head around as a car streaked by in the opposite direction.

  Christ, was that a DeLorean?

  A sound disturbed her thoughts, and she watched as Bette flipped up the handset between the two front seats and pulled out a phone receiver. Dori bit down on a laugh. The height of fashion. A car phone. Complete with a long curly cord like that on a normal land-locked telephone. She hadn’t seen – or even thought of – one of these in years. What would Gael think if she whipped out her Blackberry, or passed him her high-tech razor phone in cherry (but also available in grape and blueberry colors), with the ability to show movies, to take pictures, to send email, to turn into a stereo? The word ‘text’ as a verb hadn’t even been coined yet, had it? Or ‘Skype’ or ‘eBay.’ And the only spam anyone in this world would understand was the kind canned by Hormel. She knew that her phone would be useless here, or her brand new friends would think it was a toy and that she was a show-off.

  Was it the pot making her feel giddy?

  Suddenly, Dori felt as if she’d gone back in time, not to the 80s, but to the land of the dinosaurs. And yet wasn’t it a bit freeing not to be reachable at all moments? Nobody could get her. Nobody knew where she was. When had that last happened to her? She was always on call in some way or another. First by beeper when she was working on a movie, then by cell phone. Something in her purse always seemed to be making a noise or vibrating.

  She sighed and settled back in the seat, realizing as she did so that Van had taken her movements as an invitation. He pulled her closer to his body, and she let him. She wondered what he thought of her, whether he believed she was easy since they’d already slept together. And then she wondered why he was paying attention to her at all. What was he thinking? Notch an older woman on his belt? She didn’t actually feel older. That was the strangest part of all. Somewhere along the line, she’d managed to pretend to be an adult. But still,
when she categorized her emotional state, she was always at that naïve teen level. Easily surprised.

  Had it taken a time slip to show Dori how to let down her guard? That thought flickered through her mind. Maybe she’d had to go back to the 1980s in order to learn to relax. Or maybe that was just the marijuana talking. But there had to be something good about being trapped in the 80s, right?

  Van’s hand began to stroke her arm, and she cuddled against him. Was Mica doing the same on his left side? Must have been, because when Bette turned around to offer her flask once more, she started to laugh.

  ‘You look like you’re in fucking heaven,’ she said, grinning at Van.

  ‘Not quite,’ he said, pulling even tighter around Dori’s waist. ‘But close, man. I’m close.’

  ‘Who was on the phone?’ Mica asked.

  ‘Nina,’ Bette sighed. ‘She’s bringing some friends.’

  Dori heard the words, but couldn’t pay attention. Because Van had turned her toward him once more, and was kissing her again, this time without the pot smoke, and she felt herself lost for a moment. Loving his mouth on hers. Not caring that she was in a car filled with people. Or that she’d lost twenty years. Or that she had no way to get back home. For as long as the kiss lasted, none of those things mattered.

  They broke apart at the catcalls from the front seat. Bette had turned around, facing them, watching with interest. Dori realized that her boss wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, and that shocked her. Shocked her more than watching Bette smoke and drink in the car. Everyone in the future – wow, did that feel weird to say, even internally – but everyone she knew wore seatbelts. Slipping one on was an automatic reflex. Get in the car, put on your belt. Dori couldn’t even back out of a driveway without having her belt in place.