Air Kisses (10 page)

‘Hannah! What the fuck does this mean? Check the cartridge positioning, tray four?’

I had no idea. None. I was even worse with antagonistic office machinery than I was with psychotic superiors.

‘Do you want me to take a look?’ I said, hoping she’d say no and shoo me away. She had a reputation for being very scary once every four weeks.

‘Yes, fix it, please, Hannah. I need to print out finals.’ And with that she whooshed back into her lair.

I put my bag down and slowly started tinkering with trays and touch screens, trying to understand why this sadistic machine was trying to get me verbally clocked.

When my phone rang, I let it ring out. When it rang again, I did the same. I preferred to focus on the copier, and thus preserve my life. When the shrill tone sounded for the third time, Eliza opened her door and screamed, ‘Hannah, would you please answer
that fucking phone
.’

She startled me so much I actually jumped. I hadn’t felt this scared and tiptoey around someone since school. It would be funny tomorrow, but right now it was frightening.

It was Trucker. Shit.

‘Hannah speaking.’

‘
Hola!
Sexy
señorita
, what’s the G-O? I love your phone voice, you sound foxariffic. I’ve had the
worst
day; my agent was being a total toss, trying to get me to do some lame-ass supermarket show, and I’m like, “Uh,
Phil
, I think we both know I don’t do shopping centres.” Loser. Anyway, flash forward, who cares: what time am I seeing you tonight?’

‘Oh, um, can I maybe call you back?’

‘Why? Your husband there? Tell him I said hi, and that tonight you’re all mine.’

‘No, I mean—’

‘The party starts at nine, so we’ll meet Kyle and Shaun at the Duke for a drink at eight. Can you wear those jeans that show off your arse? Hot.
Damn
, you look fine in those. You should wear them every friggin’ day.’

‘Hannah! Is that copier fixed? I’m pressing print right now.’

‘Look, I’ve gotta go. I’m not sure if I can come tonight, but I’ll text you.’

‘What?
Like hell
. I’ll hunt you down and carry you out like a caveman.’

‘I’ll call you. I’ve gotta go, bye.’

He spoke like a teen in a Seven-Up ad. And I hated the way he informed me of plans, instead of asking me if I wanted to go. It was way too relationshipy.

Ten minutes later and the copier was still not fixed. I had magenta ink all over my hands and the Hormonal Ogre was about to lose it.

‘Um, I’m really sorry, but I can’t seem to figure it out – maybe you can print it out on Level Ten? We’re connected to their colour printer.’

‘How? Can you do it?’

Why, I’d be happy to
, I thought. Doing things for you is an
absolute pleasure
.

After I had printed out what she needed, and fetched it for her, Eliza raved with insincere gratitude, saying I was ‘the absolute best’.

I noticed a packet of M&Ms and a bag of crisps on her desk. All we needed now were tears and we’d have the PMS trifecta.

Exhaling in an attempt to expel her energy from me, I settled in at my desk to type about my favourite new beauty trend – enchanting emerald eyes – and set about testing blue and green waterproof eyeliners on my wrist.

I liked to do the testing by product group, and then, if I had time, by price range. Karen loved the whole spend-versus-splurge thing, and so I always included both cheap and luxe items in my pages. Readers needed something to
aspire to (cue Chanel, Dior, La Mer, La Prairie), but they also needed to be able to afford some of it too (cue Maybelline, CoverGirl, Revlon). It was only too easy for me to remember how expensive beauty products were when you weren’t being sent them for free every day.

After an hour, I was hungry, covered in a rainbow of eyeliner, agitated and in need of a drink. Maybe I would meet Trucker and his Next Top Model crew after all. His ego injections were far too hard to resist.

Chapter Ten

Iz seemed to think I was severely mistreating Trucker. I was talking to her at the same time as laying out a full-page shot of stills for the next issue. The photographer was outside smoking, and the art director had nicked off to get a coffee, so I was the only one left to style it. This actually suited me fine; the control freak in me liked my products displayed exactly the way I imagined it in my head, and today’s shot was one I’d entertained mentally for some time.

‘So, let me get this straight: you invite him back to yours, light candles, sip on Baileys, get jiggy, then you kick him out?’

‘Well, that’s putting it a bit harshly.’ I took the lid off the blender I had called in for the shot, and started to place my goodies inside.

The theme was tropical beauty, and I had gathered a selection of wild orange lipsticks, yellow nail polishes, red lip glosses, pink cheek gels and green eyeshadows, and was organising them just so in the glass blender.

‘Honey – that’s exactly what you’re doing! Can you imagine if a guy did that to you? Or me? We would have a conniption! We would despise him. Poor little boy. He’s fallen for you, you know. Kyle told me.’

Dammit! There were too many products. I hated it when that happened. Each had been chosen specifically and each deserved to be in the shot. I
hated
deciding which ones would miss out.

‘He has
not
; he just loves the chase. And anyway, I’ve told him I’ve just come out of a long-term relationship and that I’m not looking for anything. It’s not like he doesn’t know how it is.’

I scrapped one polish and a large pink blush, and the rest all fitted. Next, I filled the gaps with small coloured ice cubes in the shape of palm trees. I folded my left arm across my ribs and stood back to admire my handiwork. It was genius. God, I loved this part of the job.

‘
How it is?!
Listen to yourself! You’re a man! You have become one of those bastard men
Gloss
warns girls about.’

Secretly, I had to agree. I was finding it a little curious that I could have a gorgeous man adore me and not want anything more than a casual hook-up. Which in turn seemed to be making him keener. Bizarre. Last weekend I had read a book I’d found on the
Gloss
bookshelf called
Why Men Love Bitches.
It was all about how if you don’t show you’re keen, and just get on with your super-fun, super-excellent single life, men won’t be able to get enough of you. Problem was,
this book was founded on the premise that woman
wanted the man to eventually commit
. And that was the last thing I wanted. Well, from Trucker, anyway. Although it fitted well with my plan to completely avoid Jesse, and thus make him miss me terribly. That he hadn’t exactly been breaking my door down was something I tried to push from my mind.

I
was
being kind of mean to Trucker, if I thought about it. But I was aware something inside me was changing. I had become less, well, me. The sweet, do-anything-for-a-guy girl had been shut down. I desperately hoped Jesse hadn’t scarred me so that I’d be doomed to live a bitter, anti-love existence, like Sam on
Sex and the City
, except with a scummy apartment and twenty-seven cats.

I decided my tough exterior was proof I needed some single time, some ‘me time’. Just like all those articles in
Gloss
said. But I’d be fine. It was a time thing. Everything would be apples.

Plus, I had bigger things to think about. Like an interstate trip with Marley.

We’d been sent to attend a series of meetings with beauty clients. Marley had come because she’d recently taken over Laura’s position (baby boy; Mitchell; eight pounds), but Karen had to cancel at the last minute, so it was just the two of us, flying, getting cabs and checking-in together. It would be forced work-bonding, basically. Just minus the squalid strip clubs and sweaty lap dances slimy businessmen opt for in such situations.

‘Want to get some dinner? Or are you feeling room-servicey?’

This was the only non-work-related thing Marley had said since arriving at lunchtime.

‘Sure, why not? Dinner sounds great.’

Marley, a different person after having showered and
slipped on some beautiful leather sandals and a white shift-dress, suggested a small restaurant in Chinatown, where, after a few wines and some MSG-drenched Chinese, we became loose-lipped. Some of us more than others.

‘So, what’s happening with you and that B-grade TV-star ex of yours?’ she asked, as I sat with a scrunched forehead, investing enormous amounts of energy into reading a very blurry dessert menu.

‘Oh, nothing. We’re completely over.’ I answered a little too quickly.

‘You’re lying,’ she said, studying me as I coolly took a sip of wine.

‘No, I’m not. I’m over him. Seriously.’

‘Has he been contacting you?’

‘Um, no – I mean, once or twice, but…no.’

‘Got a new girl, has he?’ Evidently, tact was not Marley’s strong point.

‘Um, well, I’m not sure, but the rumour is he has, yeah.’

‘She pretty?’

‘Mm-hmm. Weather girl. Huge boobs. Great hair. Perfect skin.’

‘I knew that. I was just testing to see if you did. She’s okay; you’re cuter. Plus, she has terrible dress sense.’

‘What do you mean, “if I
did
”. What, it’s gospel now? That they’re a couple?’ I was starting to talk faster and could feel a surge of anger.

‘Well, no, but this isn’t about them,’ she said with complete calm. ‘It’s always very telling how people react to news about their ex having a new lover.’ She had a mischievous glint in her eye, and she circled the bottom of her wine glass with one dark plum-painted nail.

‘Marley, did it occur to you that maybe, you know, the
delivery
of your information could be what makes people crack the shits?’

I folded my arms and glared at her. I must’ve been drunk, as I was suddenly not scared of her at all.

‘Don’t get upset, I’m just trying to make you see you’re not over him. You can freak out if you want to, but this will all help in the long run. Because knowing they’re not thinking about you is the best way to move on from thinking about them.’ She sipped her wine and stared at me. ‘Trust me. I know.’

This was the most insightful thing I’d ever heard Marley say. She usually just ran her mouth or made jokes. I was too shocked to respond.

Realising she had let her emotional fortress down, she immediately sat up straight and requested the bill. ‘Let’s get out of this dump, shall we? I need a ciggy.’

Apparently the conversation was over. And now I had an empty hotel room and a head full of Jesse and Lisa fucking Sutherland.

Brilliant.

But as I fell into bed, drunk and lethargic, I felt sadness, not anger. That had to be progress.

The next morning, after a horror meeting with a bulldog of a marketing manager (‘We just feel that
Gloss
and Hot Catwalk make-up are perfect synergy’ – their make-up is so tacky that even the work-experience girls won’t take it – ‘and yet for some reason your pages don’t seem to reflect our relationship’ – we have less rapport than France and the US) we dragged our sorry, hung-over arses onto a plane and back into the office.

Once back at
Gloss
, I sat down at my desk and braced
myself for an onslaught of appointments, functions and emails.

But fun stuff first.

I opened my non-work emails. There was one from Trucker with an outrageous photo of him from a Japanese catalogue he’d just shot, wearing a fluoro-pink poncho and looking quite serious about the idea of potential rain, saying he missed me; one from Mum saying they were now in Peru and that I would love it there; and then one from a reader.

The subject was innocuous enough. I really hoped it wasn’t going to be a nasty left-field attack. I was too fragile today to deal with a rant from a righteous reader, telling me how awful I was at my job.

I read it a few times, my heart racing. I felt awful. She had made me feel as though I’d personally offended the entire non-Caucasian
population. My hung-over head was pounding like a jackhammer, and sounded like it might implode at any second. I was
definitely
too fragile for such an e-attack.

Jay came over to ask some questions about the story I’d pitched on candy-coloured make-up being huge. If I didn’t give her a picture reference for my make-up trends, she thought it never really existed.

She saw my face and asked what had happened.

‘Oh Jay! This, this reader, she just laid into me! About the fact I used a bad example of a dark-skinned girl in my “Base for Every Face” feature last month.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘That’s what’s got you so upset?’

‘Yes, because she’s right! I
was
being racist. It was wrong of me to discount the really dark women out there.’

‘Oh my God, honey, you’ve lost it.’ Jay was looking at me in dismissive disbelief. ‘Just write back and say maybe she’d like to supply a shot of herself for next time.’

‘I’ll have to tell Karen, of course.’

‘Tell her what? Some loser with too much time on her hands had a strop about one of your pics? Just reply with a sucky apology and she’ll be fine. There are too many freaks in this world to worry about all of them, Hannah.’

She ruffled my hair and walked off.

She was right. I wrote a four-paragraph apology to Jose, then texted Trucker to say that yes, I would like to see that movie with him tonight.

I’d had enough of women.

‘But how funny was the part when she stacked the bike right into his car?’

‘Crazy.’

‘I loved that guy, that main actor guy, he’s the bomb! So funny, man. Yeeeow! Soooo good. Love him.’ Trucker smacked his hands on the steering wheel in appreciation.

We were on our way home from a cheap-arse Tuesday-night movie. Models never have money, and so even though the film was half-price, I still had to pay for us both. So much for my rules about making men woo and impress you.

His childish enthusiasm, which I usually liked, was grating on me. I was irritable and wanted to go to bed, so holding a conversation with a five-year-old was proving hard work.

‘Your house or mine, baby?’

‘Um, maybe not… I’ve got an eight o’clock meeting.’

‘Cool, well, I can drive you to it. Easy.’

‘No, no, I think I just need to get a good night’s sleep.’

‘I promise I won’t annoy you. I’ll be a good boy.’ He winked at me lasciviously.

Everything he was doing was normal, but tonight I just wanted to punch him.

‘I just want to sleep alone, okay?’ I snapped.

He looked at me with a frown, and didn’t say anything till he pulled into my driveway.

‘Okay, what is your problem?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Bullshit. Tell me.’

‘I’m just tired, and I’ve got a big week.’

‘Well, that didn’t stop you last week.’

‘Okay, you want to know what my problem is? I’ll tell you. I always told you I wasn’t looking for a relationship, and
now it’s like, like…’ I was lost for words. My nastiness was shocking even to me.

‘Um, we’re not, like, in a relationship.’

‘But you, you always want to stay over, and you invited me to meet your mum and dad… And I just thought that was—’

He looked at me with a scowl. ‘Get over yourself, Hannah. I just think you’re a cool chick and that my parents would think so too.’

I put my tail between my legs. ‘Okay, I understand.’

‘And you know what, you so don’t put in as much as me anyway. I always call you, and text you, and you never, ever contact me, except when you’re drunk or toey, or I happen to see you because you’re with Kyle and Izzy.’

Ouch.

‘I’m not going to argue with that, because you’re right. And I’m sorry. You’ve been so excellent and—’

‘Save it, Hannah. Write it in your bloody magazine. I don’t want to hear it. I’ve gotta roll.’ He stared ahead, waiting for me to get out.

‘I’m sorry.’ I didn’t know what else to say. ‘Goodbye’ seemed a bit callous, and anything else seemed futile considering the mood he was in. That I’d put him in.