Air Kisses (8 page)

I couldn’t take it seriously. It felt like it was some form of prank and that if I actually answered the question, my response would be met with shrieks of laughter and then forwarded with great speed and fury. I’d ended up writing, ‘I am grateful for anything you choose to send as a gift.’

And I was.

The last box I opened was from a small natural-cosmetics company who were only stocked in one state, in one store, had no online shop, and who constantly called and emailed me wondering why I wouldn’t put them into
Gloss
. Straightaway I knew the rank stench was coming from this bag. Had they sent me dead vermin in their rage? It wouldn’t surprise me. As I delicately peered into the box, I saw the culprits – a small collection of tropical fruit gone very, very bad. As in, ‘be sixteen, get drunk, steal the mayor’s car and drive it into the police station’ bad. The fruit was covered in a film of mould and had spread slime throughout the entire box.

This was not a friendly smell to my already volatile stomach. I dry-retched, packed up the box and bolted out of the office to the industrial bins near the lifts, into which I slammed the box. Who knew beauty could be so ugly?

Two coffees, an enormous salty-sweet stir-fry for lunch and roughly 0.9 per cent of the work I had planned for today completed, and it was 5.30 p.m. Which meant it was time to head off to the Torture Function. Woooonderful.

In my numb state I lost some of my nerves about the beauty ed clique. I decided to email Yasmin, the beauty editor at
Foxy
magazine – another women’s glossy owned by Beckert – to see if she wanted to share a cab with me. I chose Yasmin as she was even newer than me to beauty. I liked that.
She had come from an online magazine I’d never heard of, which I also liked because it was clearly underground and edgy, just like her.

Yasmin was half-Japanese, with an ironic mullet and beautiful deep pools of black liquid for eyes. She liked skull motifs, had a penchant for the word ‘fuck’, and looked as though she might date a tattooist called Slayer. Although her ‘uniqueness’ was obviously frowned upon in Beauty Land, she did her best to play the part of ‘pretty girl’.

When I got to the foyer, wearing more make-up than I’d normally wear in an entire week in an effort to look ‘alive’, Yasmin wasn’t there yet.

I took a seat, musing that being in our foyer was like being inside an iPhone. I’d never seen so much black. Everything from the floor to the desk, chairs, coffee table and sofas were gleaming with just-been-polished blackness. Even the front-desk girl’s hair was jet black.

But the foyer was lively for all its parallels to a Bond villain’s underground lair. A constant stream of amazingly dressed women passed through to the lifts, and there was a small, always busy espresso cart in the corner, hissing and steaming with fresh coffee for The Addicted.

After a minute, Fiona Rogers stepped out of a lift and walked towards the exit. She was the beauty editor on
21 Magazine
, and I had failed to really bond with her yet.

‘But did you see his face when she said that,’ Fiona said loudly to the girl she was with. ‘Un. Be. Lievable.’ Dramatic pause. ‘I loved every second!’ They dissolved into laughter, applying gloss as they walked out. Fiona gave me a sideways glance and, after a second, kept walking.

Well, that was a bit bitchy. She must know who I am by
now. She must. We’d been to loads of the same functions. Maybe she genuinely hadn’t recognised me…

My thoughts were interrupted by Yasmin screaming out of the lift and apologising for being late. She was wearing a black leather pencil skirt, black strappy heels and a silky peach singlet, but because she had the height and frame of a Ukrainian supermodel, what was a very simple outfit looked incredibly beautiful on her.

‘Hannah, I’m so sorry; my editor had me by the balls in a meeting and then I couldn’t find my heels but I’d actually taken them to get re-heeled at lunch, so I had to fucking borrow some from the fashion girls and they weren’t there and—’

‘Yasmin, Yasmin, it’s cool. You’re not even late.’ I smiled at her and stood up. We hailed a cab and she told me about the rest of her shitty day. I was grateful not to have to talk, still numbed by my hangover and fatigue.

Arriving at the venue, all ready to learn about a new unisex razor, we had to walk up five flights of stairs because the lift had broken. When we finally got inside, the bar was packed, but was lacking the only thing that was of interest to me right then: food. Okay, there were oysters, but everyone knows they don’t count.

I grabbed a glass of mineral water and sidled up to Yasmin. She was talking heatedly with Fiona – how come they were already friends? – and another girl about the latest
Big Brother
housemates.

I smiled at them without showing teeth (too much effort), nodded occasionally and drank my water.

‘Oh come
on
. As if she didn’t give him a hand job under that duvet! Please! Ray Charles could have seen that!’ Fiona said adamantly.

‘She didn’t, I’m telling you. Big Brother said to confess or get out, and she still swore she didn’t do it,’ the other girl retorted with equal conviction.

‘That’s just ratings bullshit. As if they’d kick off the big-titty blonde. She’s the show’s ticket to getting male viewers,’ Fiona guffawed.

‘Are you serious?’ Yasmin cried. ‘Men don’t like
her
! They’d probably like to fuck her, sure, but she’d never get a hello at the family roast. All men prefer brunettes deep down.’

‘Is that true, do you think?’ said a male voice behind me, and in my sleepy, stupid daze I flinched about ten centimetres.

I turned my head, with my hand on my heart, took a deep breath in, and said, ‘You scared the
absolute
shit out of me,’ to whoever it was that had spoken.

I then realised that the person who owned the voice was Jude Law. Or his antipodean twin, maybe. He was gorgeous. All olive skin and slim-fitting grey suit, with sexy stubble the same dark-blond shade as his tousled-but-completely-styled hair. And he had beautiful green eyes. He was the reason they made posters for teenagers’ bedrooms.

And he was smiling at
me
.

‘Sorry for scaring you, it’s just that I’ve been dying to talk to you since you arrived. My name’s Gabe. It’s Hannah, right?’

‘Yeah…it is,’ I said, shocked by the fact he knew my name.

‘I’m not a stalker, sweetheart. You’re wearing a name badge.’

I looked down, and there was the large white plastic rectangle with ‘Hannah’ emblazoned in bright red.

‘Oh,’ I said sheepishly. ‘I’m not really with it today.’

‘You went to the party last night too, then?’

Something about the way he spoke was overly familiar, like we’d been friends for years. It should’ve been creepy, but it was actually quite nice. I felt instantly comfortable around him.

‘I did,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Feeling pretty wrecked from it, truth be known.’ I laughed a nervous little laugh so he wouldn’t think I was a total trashbag, raving about how smashed I had been last night.

‘I missed it, but I heard it was a circus – everyone filled to their wigs with cheap wine and carrying on like a bunch of frogs in a sock.’

‘Yeah, that’s a pretty good description.’

‘So, the reason I wanted to speak with you, sweet Hannah’ – I blushed – ‘is that you’re flaunting possibly the best haircut this city has ever seen.’

Wow. That was a pretty amazing compliment coming from a guy – Jesse barely noticed when I chopped off ten centimetres, and this guy was assessing my haircut on our first meeting? He needed to be my future husband.

‘Thanks, Gabe, that’s really nice of you to say.’

‘Who cut it?’

Wow, he
was
keen to make a good first impression!

‘Okay, I promise I’m not bragging, but it was Gisele Bündchen’s hairdresser. He was in town last week, launching his new hair-care range, and I was one of three who scored a haircut.’

‘She’s a little man-ish, I find,’ he said. ‘Great tits and legs, but her face is a little masculine, don’t you think? I mean, she’s
divine
, of course, but she’s not
pretty
, you know?’

Did he just say ‘great tits and legs’?

‘Anyway, it’s an amazing cut – best in here by a Golden
Gate Bridge. Yasmin has good hair too, but yours is better.’

Okay, now I was confused. He knew Yasmin?

He sipped on his straw, furiously stirring his drink with the muddling stick, and asked, ‘So how’s
Gloss
going for you?’

Confusion squared. How did he
know
all of this stuff? In my state, I was unable to keep up the spritely façade required when you’re pretending you know who someone is, when you really, really don’t.

‘I’m…I’m really sorry, Gabe, but we haven’t met before, have we?’

‘No, but that’s because I’ve been overseas. But I’ve managed to catch up fairly fast over a few of these heinous cocktails.’

Seeing the look of utter confusion in my eyes, he stopped.

‘Sorry, allow me to do a proper introduction.’ He put his drink down, stiffened his collar, and cleared his throat. ‘I’m the beauty girl at
Phillip
magazine. Well, grooming editor is my official title, but grooming to me implies small spoilt dogs, so I’d rather just be called beauty editor and be done with it.’

Two billion light-bulbs switched on simultaneously in my head. One of them flashed, ‘He’s gay.’ Another, ‘He’s in the industry.’ And another simply went with, ‘You are a
fool
.’

It all made sense! The sharp banter, the fashion-forward suit, the obsession with my hair… No straight man would ask who cut my hair, or speak openly about a woman’s mammaries in such a vulgar manner.

God, I needed some sleep; my brain wasn’t even able to distinguish a happy camper in a sea of straighties.

‘Hannah, I already know that I like you and we’re going to be fabulous friends, so I feel entirely at ease telling you that
you should probably head home once you’ve handed over your card and kissed whoever’s arse it is you’re here to kiss.’

‘How so?’

‘Your face: it’s beautiful, but it’s weary. You need a hot bath and a good back rub.’

‘Are you suggesting I look like shit, Gabe?’ I asked with a twinkle in my eye.

‘Not at all, but come
on
, darling, we’re beauty fascists! We know we’re supposed to look superb every single day! Don’t waste a crack in the veneer at a dive like this.’

He was far too ‘on’ for me. All I could do was laugh and reach into my bag for a card.

‘Oooh, what an excellent card! Whore-lipstick red, how gloriously appropriate for the beauty girl of
Gloss
! I
love
it!’

I took his – it was thin, shiny, black, and had only the word ‘Phillip’ on one side, and on the other the initials GHF, one phone number and an email address. All lower case, all in silver, and all uber-cool.

‘Try not to be blinded by how hip I am, sweetheart. Now, get out of here and go get some beauty sleep. You need it.’

I laughed. ‘You struggle with honesty and assertiveness, don’t you?’ I said, picking up my bag and doing up my jacket.

‘Very much. But one thing I’m good at is modesty. I’m probably the best at modesty. If there were an award for it, it’d be mine.’

I laughed as we air-kissed on the cheek, and I deftly manoeuvred out of the room to the stairs, a cab, and the bed I’d been fantasising about all day.

Chapter Eight

Since starting at Gloss, I’d begun to view women as blobs with hair and make-up rather than the more socially prevalent term ‘human beings’. I didn’t
mean
to mentally divide women into sophisticated blush blenders and amateur blush blenders, but since it was all I read about, wrote about and thought about, I couldn’t seem to find the off switch. It was one of the beauty editor side-effects.

Yasmin and I were on our way to a skincare launch in the city’s Botanic Gardens, when a woman walked past us. I gasped.

‘What’s up with you?’ asked Yasmin, without taking her eyes off her mobile phone, which she had been neurotically prodding the entire journey.

‘Did you not see her eyebrows?’ I asked in disbelief.

‘Sperm-brows. Awful.’ Yasmin was always coming up with cool sayings.

‘Hmm. Well, I want to help women like that, you know?’ I said, with absolute sincerity.

Yasmin sniggered. She found my Susceptibility to Gullibility (STG) enormously amusing.

It was at one of my first beauty launches, not long after the fateful Fire lunch, where Jill’s arseholey and unnecessary discussion of Jesse and Lisa Sutherland had spoilt my appetite, that I had displayed classic symptoms of STG. It was a foundation launch, held in the back area of a brand-new bar, the kind that has a one-word name and elaborate chandeliers and staff who believe they are too good-looking to serve you a drink, let alone clean up the mess you create when you spill it on the
white sofas
. (Whoever puts white sofas in a room where red drinks are served and the intoxicated roam unfettered deserves to have them ruined.)

The PR team had been hard at work preparing the room, plastering it with seductive, creative visuals for this exciting new foundation. Before the first canapé had time to wiggle down my gullet, the call-to-action on the posters had me.

Are you sick of your foundation falling off by lunchtime?

You bet I am!

Wouldn’t you like it to last all day?

Is it even
possible?

Well, we’ve got you covered: our new base stays for twelve hours.

I have cash: I will buy your magical potion immediately.

Next came the PowerPoint presentation, complete with beaming quotes from women who had already had the great
privilege of trying this foundation, followed by info graphs, charts, statistics, and even footage of leading make-up artists from recent Hollywood movies talking about how radical it was, and how superjazzed they were that a product like this had
finally
been invented.

After this circus of persuasion, it was all I could do not to take the PR by the collar, shake her and demand she hand it over.

I was giddy with anticipation and wondered how soon I might be able to try this exquisite commodity. As it happened, despite the fact that the product wasn’t on sale (or ‘on counter’, as we say in the biz) for another three months, the lucky, lucky people in that room would be
allowed to take some home today
. And that included
me
.

I wasn’t sure how it happened, but, without my permission, my hands joined and separated quickly several times. I
actually clapped
at the idea of getting this foundation. To take home. To wear. Months and months before anyone else in the country. That last point was by far the most pertinent for me, and was probably one of the primary reasons I loved being a beauty editor so much:
I have stuff before anyone else does.

Yasmin denied she felt this way, but I saw her. I saw her with her limited-edition Chanel palettes and La Prairie illuminators, flashing them around as though they were Olympic medals at a closing ceremony. But me, I was fresh off the beauty boat, and I was light years away from cynical. The moment I walked into a boardroom/café/elaborately decorated garden tent, I unwittingly fell to my knees before the religion of face wash. Or eyeliner or teeth whiteners, depending on what was being offered in between mini fruit-salads
and scrambled egg concoctions fit only for people who think capers count as an actual food.

Of course, during a function I played it ice-cool, so the other beauty editors didn’t start referring to me as The Suck.

‘It’s the cheek crème the Olsen twins swear by,’ the PR would gush.

Shrug.

‘It contains a blend of the two rarest – and most expensive – types of zucchini extract known to man.’

Roll eyes.

‘It’s been clinically proven to take away
every single
dimple of cellulite.’

Pfft.

‘It will take ten years off your face in one application.’

Snort.

Of course, internally I’d be all oohs and aaahs, and praising modern science, but I was a fickle beast. The next week I’d be oohing over another product with similar zeal. However, I figured disloyalty was part of the job. I had to stay impartial. I mean, imagine if I only used the first products that ever impressed me? Completely unprofessional.

Besides, it invariably gave me currency at dinner parties: women
always
wanted to know about the latest new beauty products, and I
always
knew what they were. It was a beautiful dance.

‘Hiiii, Hannah!’

I had just,
just
stepped into the ye olde-style tea-gardens café and the PR had already zeroed in.

‘Oh, hey, Olivia!’ I smiled and air-kissed her, careful not to mess up either of our gloss jobs.

‘I
love
coral on you – you look amazing,’ she gushed.

‘Speak for yourself,’ I said, commenting on her beautiful, obviously expensive frock, which, with its busy colours and high floral quotient,
should
have looked atrocious, but actually looked amazing.

‘Sooo, how’s everything?’ she asked.

As I answered that things were good, but busy – the standard response – her thickly glossed smile didn’t waver. But her eyes slid down to my chin.

To them.

The twins that had sprung up that morning like tiny volcanoes, waiting to erupt and ruin my complexion for a good five days.

Olivia obviously realised she’d been caught staring, and so jumped in and awkwardly started her own version of how busy things were. But she couldn’t help it:
everyone stares at a
beauty editor with a blemish
, no matter how small.

I’d come to realise that as a beauty editor, you are not, by law, allowed to carry a flaw. There was an unspoken expectation that because you had every form of prevention, correction or concealment at your disposal, you had to look perennially flawless.

In addition, because you had elected to spend your working days advising/lecturing the public on how to avoid acne/cellulite/greasy hair/bad eyebrows/chipped nails/yellowed teeth/fake-tan lines, in theory you couldn’t ever sport any of those things. You had to live and breathe your gig. Your job shouldn’t define you, but in the beauty-editor game it absolutely, utterly, have-you-ever-seen-a-badly-dressed-fashion-editor did.

This had come as a bit of a shock to me, as pre-
Gloss
I rarely wore foundation, let alone concealer, which I was now
expected to know how to master in the same way a model masters her calories.

I found that I’d actually come to adore this part of the job – I loved playing dress-up each morning with all of my ‘toys’ – but simultaneously it was very tiring. It bred vanity, induced insecurity, and paved the way for obsessive paranoia and way too much compact-mirror-glancing and surreptitious concealer-dabbing.

Friends had noticed. Well, some of them. When Gabe and I had gone for schmucktails – as he called them when I had suggested we go to a bar where there were lots of handsome, suit-clad men – he’d commented that I had reapplied my lips no less than four times in the one-hour sitting.

‘You’ve become a touch-up tart,’ he said dismissively as he sipped his gin fizz.

‘What does that mean?’

‘You’re one of those painful beauty girls who touches up her make-up a thousand goddamn times whenever she’s further than a metre from the mirror that sits on her desk in place of her computer monitor.’

‘Gabe, I am
so
not a touch-up tart! Um, maybe the fact there are good-looking men everywhere has something to do with it?’

‘Forget it, honey. They all think you’re with me. You’re not getting any let’s-catch-up phone numbers tonight.’

‘You’re
such
a bitch.’

‘
Totally
. Do you love it?’ He’d said this in the style Paris Hilton so often did, and it always made me laugh, even when he was being nasty.

But today I was definitely being a touch-up tart. Just a very stealthy one.

On days when I had big unhappy pimples, I prayed that the function would be in a dark, moody bar. Of course, thanks to Murphy, that rotten prankster, and his foul laws, they would always be in rooms entirely themed in white, or in a science lab with cruel fluorescent lighting or a courtyard flooded with natural light.

Today was a prime example. In this sky-lit palace there’d be no missing the twins.

Yasmin had stopped outside to take a phone call so I walked through to the function solo. A handful of beauty girls, all anti-pants and pro-frock, were scattered throughout. I wasn’t friendly enough with any of them to make conversation. I saw Fiona pouring herself some coffee. I decided to
make her like me.

I walked over to her. She was wearing a black cinched-waist dress, black pumps, and some exhilarating red lipstick. She looked very chic. As always.

‘Hi, Fiona!’ I said with gaiety, like we were old friends.

‘Oh, hey,’ she said. And went back to her coffee preparation.

No
. Had she really just done that?

‘So, uh, how’s your day been so far?’ God. Was I trying to pick her up? I should’ve just asked what a pretty girl like her was doing at a launch like this.

She shrugged her shoulders, concentrating on her sugar-spooning. She said nothing, but she didn’t need to. Her indifference screamed.

‘Oh-kaay,’ I said quietly to myself, wondering what to do next. ‘Well, um, I’d better go take a seat.’ She was diabolical. I needed to abort. Where was Yasmin?!

I watched as Fiona took a long sip from her cup,
completely entranced, before turning away. That was it. I was done with her.

‘Sorry, I’m no one’s friend until I’ve had some coffee.’

Facing the room, I closed my eyes and smiled with relief. So she
wasn’t
a total cow. I turned back to her and, feeling extremely congenial all of a sudden, decided I needed a coffee too. Being not-psychotic together could be the glue that would bond us. I tried to do my best ‘Oh, me too’ face.

‘Know what you mean. I’ve already had one, but another won’t hurt.’ There was a pregnant pause. She’d missed her cue. Time for me to prompt. ‘So…um…do you think they’ll be launching that new serum today? I saw an amazing write-up of it in
WWD Friday
last month.’

‘Imagine so. Have you tried that three-in-one cleanser of theirs?’ She spoke vaguely; she was still totally engrossed in her coffee, holding it up to her face, taking desperate, scalding little sips every ten seconds or so.

‘Mm-hmm, it’s actually really nice. The exfoliating beads are really tiny and soft, you know, so you can use it every day. I never usually believe it when they say that, but—’

She half laughed. ‘Do you still try everything you’re given? I love it. Adorable.’

I wasn’t sure whether she was mocking me, so I shrugged and laughed with my mouth closed.

‘You’ll get over it,’ she said knowingly. ‘Trust me, I’ve been in the industry for a thousand years, and soon you’ll stick to the brands you know work. No matter which celebrity or bloody dermatologist swears by it.’

‘Mmmm.’ But I couldn’t allow myself to agree, no matter how much I wanted her to like me. I knew that for as long as my skin could cop it, I would try every last product that
arrived clad in tissue paper in my office.

Suddenly a dark figure landed beside me, furiously clanging coffee cups and pots with the kind of wild abandon coffee addicts think nothing of. Yasmin had finally come in. ‘Hey, Fi. Hannah, can you pass the skim? And then can we sit down? These shoes are fucking murder.’

All three of us took care to balance the weight of our handbags with our precariously balanced cups and saucers as we sat down on a large white-leather ottoman. All very, very dangerous for our attire and their furniture.

As we sat sipping, and Yasmin detailed the drama of her photo shoot last night – ‘The model was so fucking hungover, no amount of coffee or make-up could do anything, so we sent the stupid bitch home and used the work-experience girl, can you believe it?!’ – I watched Fiona out of the corner of my eye, fascinated. Her make-up was
absolutely
flawless. So was her skin. And her hair; there wasn’t a single hair out of place. And no roots either; just a head of perfect, shiny, Gwyneth Paltrow-like blondeness. Fiona’s hard work was admirable, but there was something a little bit creepy about it, too. Like she was a Real-Life Doll who seduced people’s boyfriends and then killed innocent civilians en route to her murdering said boyfriends after dark.