Imperfections (28 page)

Leonard nodded. “Sorry.”

“It's all good.” I shrugged. “You were wrong last time.”

“Yeah,” Leonard said, though his face told me that this time he knew he had it.

I felt tired suddenly. I was jet-lagged. I tried to remember the last time I slept. How long had the flight been? Eighteen hours? Half the time I didn't know where I was sitting—on an airplane, in an airport waiting room? Where had I been and where did I end up?

Leonard looked as terrible as I felt. His hair was a greasy bird's nest. He had a shadow of a beard and his clothes were wrinkled and sported many stains, only one of which was courtesy of me.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Come on.” He grinned. “I'll show you.”

Leonard led me through one corridor and down a second. He stopped outside a yellow door and peeked inside.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Quietly though.”

The room was still. Leonard eased the door closed behind us, locking out the bustle of the hallway.

Rachel lay in a hospital bed. It was the same type of bed I had left Dad in a short while ago, the kind that could be made to sit up, the kind with side rails. My heart jumped, then I saw she was breathing. In her arms, she held a bundle of blanket. Her eyes opened slowly and she smiled.

“Were you sleeping?” Leonard asked, sidling up beside her on the bed. The pair of them looked so pale and exhausted.

“Just resting my eyes. Maggie and Tony stepped out to get something to eat.” She beamed at me. “Richard, my God, I haven't seen you in forever.”

I made my way to the bedside. “It's been way too long,” I said.

Leonard gently took the bundle from Rachel's arms. “I want you to meet our daughter. Here,” he held the bundle out to me, “hold her.”

“Congratulations,” I said. I hesitated. I had never held a baby and didn't know where to start.

“Here,” Leonard said. “Like this,” he manoeuvred the bundle into my arms. “Just support her head.”

Leonard was suddenly an adult in my eyes. Until that moment, I had never thought of us growing older, growing up. Leonard had always been my childhood friend but now, with the responsibility of another life weighing in my arms, all I could think about was how we were becoming our parents. Auntie Maggie and Uncle Tony had been our age when they had Leonard. Mom and Dad had been twenty-five when they had me. Now, I held Leonard and Rachel's daughter.

“Uncle Richard,” Leonard said. “Meet Aaliyah.”

I folded back a flap of soft blanket and revealed Aaliyah's face. She had chubby cheeks, a cute button nose and she was perfect.

“She's gorgeous,” I whispered.

CHAPTER 15

The Evolution of Beauty

What the hell is this? I thought.
 

French Rococo?
 

Boca Raton?

“What would you call this?” I asked the woman sitting next to me.

She raised an eyebrow and gave me an annoyed sidelong glance.

“This,” I continued, oscillating my arm in front of me like I was dealing cards. “The decor. Is it Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired West Coast?”

“I… I don't know.” She looked around as if noticing the waiting room for the first time. Then she gave me a noncommittal “Contemporary Gothic?” Her eyes drifted back to the fashion magazine she was flipping through.

What was this room meant to inspire, exactly?
I wondered.
A calm, comfortable excitement with a modern edge in a traditional sort of way?
All those things thrown together made something entirely new. Everything was familiar yet arranged in such a way that there was nothing real about it. Each piece—the furniture, the fixtures, the art—was nothing on its own but together they made something entirely new.

The woman next to me focused on flipping past glossy photos of models and celebrities. A spread on Paige Green's 2003 spring line flashed by before a flickering light caught my eye. Behind the receptionist on a television—volume down, beautifully flat-screened—a new advertisement glimmered every thirty seconds. This one was for the Capital One Health Care Finance Credit Card. With 25 percent interest and a limit up to $40,000, it was the only card I knew that was tailored to finance cosmetic procedures. I knew this because I had one in my wallet.

The woman beside me leaned forward. Her toned ass, gift-wrapped in tight jeans, slid across the taut leather chair, causing it to emit a friction fart. She dropped her magazine onto the table and started pushing others around. Her hands were a spiderweb of blue-green veins under parchment-paper skin. Her hands, the only part of her that seemed aged, prompted me to wonder how old she really was.

I watched those crone's hands slide magazines around. There were glossy covers about breasts, noses and liposuction. There were titles like New Beauty, Elevate and Only Skin Deep.

I admit: everything in the room made me nervous and more than a little bit anxious. How I got to be in this seat, in this particular waiting room, had been even more nerve-racking.

Two months ago, Chester signed me for my first show in almost five months. It was a Deacon Grande show but I was so desperate for the money and the camera time that I agreed. A long story short, Deacon exploded in one of his legendary tirades and, with Chester on speakerphone, fired us all because we were, “too fat and made his clothes look like shit.”
 

With six hours to showtime, the venue buzzed with the hairy butt-cracks of contractors. With two hours to showtime, the installation of a Planiform Multi-Plan V garment conveyor—just like the ones dry cleaners use—was complete. The models from the Agency clustered around the device, murmuring and poking at it like a clan of fabulous-looking cave people at an obelisk. Deacon strode out, put one hand on a hip and draped the other on the conveyor.

“All of you,” he announced, waving an arm magnanimously over our heads, “can attend the show.” He spun on his heel and made his way backstage. “But you have to stand at the back.”

We did attend the show. The Planiform Multi-Plan V ground a clattering path, the chain driving the whole mechanism churning its way from the back of the stage to the front. At regular intervals, it dragged captive coat hangers. Each draped in a Deacon Grande creation that shimmered in the spotlights because of the quivering vibrations of the motor. I pictured Mitsi and her team of dressers grumbling and toiling backstage, stripping and redressing coat hangers with frenzied fingers.

I stood next to Donna at the back of the room, in the dark, watching Deacon's clothes quiver by like a parade of the world's most elegant jellyfish. Donna let out the occasional gasp or sigh of appreciation as the clothes passed. To Deacon's credit, his clothes had come a long way in the past three years. Gone were the cringe-worthy millennium frocks, here were the Grand Palais-worthy ones.
 

Doug had done Estevan—no, all of Saskatchewan—proud.

After the show, the Agency models gathered for drinks in the hotel lobby. It was a sparkling cavern filled with the noise of chatter, piano music and clinking glasses.
 

“I thought they did an awesome job,” Donna said. She fished a pickled onion from her Reverend Mordant Toehold and flicked it into the dark in disgust, muttering that she didn't know when they “started sticking fucking salad in her fucking drinks, fuck.”

“Yeah, his clothes have really improved,” I agreed.

“No, Richard. The
coat hangers
,” Donna said. “They made those clothes look amazing. Something to inspire to.”

I checked my watch and saw I was running late. If Donna wanted to aspire to be a coat hanger, I would have to leave her alone with her dreams. I excused myself.

After the Deacon Grande show I had run into Paige Green. I knew she was part of the weekend's events; her name was on all the marketing material, though this was the first I saw of her. Things had been awkward since she confessed her love for me at our last meeting. We hadn't really talked since the morning after the orgy. How long had it been, five years? Anyway, Paige called to me as she was swept by, caught up in a crowd. She just blurted a request as she passed.

“Richard. Room 2317. 9:30. I need you. I'll pay.”

I nodded though she was already gone. It sounded like honest, paid work to me and everyone seemed to know that I was desperate for any opportunity. Somehow, I had become charity. Somehow, it had become necessary.

I left Donna and the others and wove my way through a forest of martini waitresses to the hotel lobby where I pushed a button and waited for the elevator. As I watched the numbers above the door tick down, I began to feel a mounting panic, as if the countdown signified something more than a descending elevator. The number reached zero and the door opened.

Room 2317. Brass numbers above a spy hole. Between the numbers and the hole, there was a knocker in the shape of a bull's head with a ring through its nose. From behind the door I heard voices, music and a less-defined clatter. I grabbed the nose ring and knocked it against the door.

“Can you get that?” a voice said.

Promptly, the door swung open and Stella stood before me, a teacup in one hand and the other on the doorknob.

“Richard,” she said. “When Paige told me you would be joining us, I was ecstatic. Do come in.”

The room was large and smelled of cigarette smoke and body odour. There was a small table in the corner with a carafe of coffee on it and a constellation of lipstick-kissed cups. A vase of roses sat as a lonely reminder of beauty and glamour. Champagne flutes were scattered around a stack of something-salad sandwiches. Could I smell egg? Or perhaps it was tuna.

A large window framed the table. Far below, through dusty streaks, the city lights shone a brighter reflection of the stars above.

There were three people in the room. I recognized Stella and Sienna, who was standing in the corner looking out the window at the city lights stretching to the horizon. The last time I saw Sienna, she was talking to Donna at Charles de Gaulle airport, just before the Heavenly Show.

“Paige has stepped out for a moment,” Stella told me as she shut the door. “Room service was supposed to deliver more champagne but they haven't been seen for ten minutes now. She's gone to emasculate them, the lovable little gynocrat she is.”

Meetings like this are called “sales calls.” They are common though I had never attended one before. I never felt the need. The purpose of tonight's visit was to sell very expensive garments to the richest fashionistas and most exclusive boutiques in the world. Clients booked an hour to review Paige's season. Boutique owners placed their orders and billionaires drank warm champagne, ate bad food and bought their family wardrobe.

“That man…” Stella whispered, pointing to a fifty-something balding fellow sporting a ponytail and earring. He leaned against the table, flipping through the line sheet, looking at Paige's sketches, sizes, colours and the list of prices. “He's a prince of some tiny country in some desert place that has more oil than water. Can't remember where but it's apparent there are some cultural differences with regards to manners and social interaction.”

Stella led me across the room. I nodded and smiled at the man. He glanced at me, and then went back to the line sheets.

“Charming, isn't he?” Stella said, loud enough I was sure the man could hear. “But not as charming as his wife, the woman we're all here to entertain and dress up for.”

“And where is she?” I asked as we arrived at the table. I poked around for a clean coffee cup but couldn't find one so I filled a champagne flute with coffee. I grabbed a sandwich—the bread felt stale and crusty between my fingers and thumb.
 

Stella pointed at a door and, as if on cue, a toilet flushed.

“Poor dear,” Stella said. “She suffers from a constitution which could handle neither the champagne nor the salade de poulet.”

I put my sandwich back on the table and took a gulp of coffee, holding the flute by the stem because the bell of the glass was too hot.

“Yes, she's actually very nice, very appreciative of our efforts. Doesn't speak a word of English but seems wonderful. She's only twenty-two, blessed with the body of a goddess but cursed by a face that far from matches.”

“Twenty-two? A bit of a trophy wife…” I commented, glancing at the man leaning against the table and inadvertently pictured him naked.

An unfortunate-looking woman with a body to match Sienna's exploded from the now-fragrant bathroom, chattering in a language I didn't understand. She sounded like machine-gun fire.

“A trophy wife, yes,” Stella said moving to the woman's side and gently rubbing her back. “I should guess third or fourth place, but a trophy wife nonetheless.”

The man barked something at her. She flipped through the “look book,” a similar book to what the man held but this one was full-colour, glossy, with Paige's garments in action, on models. No prices.