Switched (11 page)

Doyle pounded on the door. “If you’re not dying, keep it quiet. You’re upsetting the clientele.”

“I
am
dying! I
am
dying!” I insisted.

“She has a lot of body hair!” Maisey yelled. “Go away.”

“Jesus,” I heard Doyle mumble from the other side of the door.

“All right,” Maisey told me, wiping the sweat off her forehead. “Put your legs behind your head.”

“Help!” I yelled.

The rest was a blur, which is normal because the brain has a tendency to black out traumatic memories. But I was left with red skin, strips of cold wax she couldn’t get off, and a couple of sores in compromising places.

“Do you have any antibiotic ointment?” I asked.

“No, but there’s a bottle of scotch under the sink,” she said and stripped down. I took a couple swigs of the scotch and waxed Maisey’s upper lip. I took a half-dozen more swigs before I ripped the last hair off her body.

“I’m going to shower and exfoliate now,” Maisey announced.

“Good. I’m taking a break.”

I left the bathroom before she could ask me to help wash her back. I took a deep breath of fresh air and adjusted my shorts because they were rubbing my tender, bald skin. Gunnar was sitting on the couch watching TV.

“You know, I used to be an accountant,” I said, plopping down next to him.

“Oh, yeah? I used to be an orthopedic surgeon,” he said. He flipped the television stations until he found a cooking show.

“Very funny,” I said.

“I thought so, too. Working eighty hours a week, alienating my wife, no time to read a book or enjoy a concert. Very funny.”

He changed the station.  “You’re not kidding,” I deduced.

“I could fix your bow leg if I had an operating table.”

“You can? What do you mean, bow leg?”

The bathroom door swung open. Maisey was wrapped in a towel, and her arms were filled with makeup and hair products. “Done,” she said, blowing a strand of wet hair off her face. “I’m going to start with my hair in my room. Get in there and scrub yourself down.”

Maisey had adopted a military air. She was Patton in a towel, and there was no possibility of disobeying her orders. I hopped up from the couch and walked to the bathroom. “And use the vanilla bath wash,” she added. “Men like the smell of vanilla. And then come into my room to get your face done.”

Inside, the bathroom was filled with steam and chaos. Wet towels, plastic bags, and beauty products were strewn everywhere. I paused a minute and questioned letting Maisey push me around. Hadn’t I had enough of people taking over my life? Wasn’t that exactly the relationship I’d had with Jackson? 

But on second thought, maybe I did need a makeover. Hadn’t I come to Mallorca to restart my life? Perhaps new beginnings started with a new hair color and a total body wax. Even if I didn’t want a tycoon, a wild party on a yacht might be just the thing I needed to shake up my life.

It took a while, but I finally found the bottle of temporary hair dye under a loofah and a box of fake eyelashes. It was a mousse, easy to apply, and it washed out in three shampoos. I combed a blob of it into my hair and straightened up the bathroom while I waited for the color to set.

I grabbed the loofah and took a shower, careful to scrub everything like Maisey had instructed. Talk about renewal. I was going to have totally new skin. I rinsed off, turned off the shower, towel-dried, and looked in the mirror. The color hadn’t taken. I was exactly the same.

It was a relief. I didn’t want to be a redhead, temporarily or not. But a deal was a deal. I put on another coat of dye, this time doubling the amount. I scrubbed out the tub and took a couple swigs of the scotch while I waited for the color to set. Then I rinsed it out.

Nope. Nothing. No red at all.

I checked the directions again. I had done everything correctly, but it wasn’t working. I emptied out the bottle and combed in the rest of the dye.

There was a knock at the door. “Uh, Debra, are you okay in there?” Doyle asked.

“I’m dyeing my hair,” I said.

“You’ve been in there for over an hour,” Doyle said from the other side of the door. “Maisey’s done with her hair. I have to piss. Do you have an ETA on your hair dye?”

“I’m coming out,” I said. I quickly rinsed my hair one last time, did a towel dry, and opened the door. “It didn’t work anyway,” I said. “I used the whole bottle. Nothing.”

Doyle didn’t say a word. His eyes had grown huge, and his mouth dropped open. “Are you okay?” I asked him. “You’re not having a stroke, are you?”

He slowly lifted his hand and pointed at my head. “Head,” he said.

“Like the clown,” Gunnar said from the couch. “Zozo.”

“Bozo,” Doyle corrected. “Bozo the Clown.”

“Yes, that’s the one,” said Gunnar.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

Doyle pointed at me again.  “Head.”

I ran back into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. This time my image was illuminated by the light from the living room, and I could see it: bright neon red hair.

“I could direct planes,” I said, staring at my reflection. “I could guide traffic.”

“You could probably be spotted from space,” Doyle added.

I slammed the door and turned on the shower and started shampooing. Thank goodness it was a temporary dye. I could just wash it out. Lesson learned: Never dye your hair in a dark room.

Another lesson learned: The word “temporary” is relative. No amount of shampooing, it turned out, would wash out the dye.

“It’s like super-dye,” Doyle noted. “Or nuclear waste. Try shampooing again.”

“I washed my hair six times!”

“You might turn into a superhero. Makeover Girl or Glow Woman.”

Maisey danced into the living room. She had done her hair in an elaborate updo with long tendrils curling down her back. Her face was coated in inch-thick makeup, purple eye shadow, and long glittery eyelashes. She stopped dancing when she saw me.

“We can fix it,” she said, cutting right to the meat of the matter. “It isn’t so bad. We’ll camouflage.”

Doyle brought us dinner while we got ready. The day had slipped into the late evening, and it was time to get going. I had put my foot down about the swimsuit and the non-covering cover-up, but Maisey insisted on a teeny tiny skintight “dress” that almost covered my butt as a second choice. She decided on a flower wreath to cover up some of my fluorescent hair, but I thought it actually highlighted my hair, like a sign that says, “Look here.”

We wobbled out of her bedroom on sky-high heels. “I don’t think I can make it all night in these things,” I said.

“You’ll get used to them,” Maisey said.

“I think I’m getting a nosebleed.”

“No, your nose is just running from the hairspray fumes.”

“I can see the top of the refrigerator. My head almost reaches the ceiling. I could be drafted to the NBA. I mean, if I could walk.”

“Men like tall women.”

“I’ve lost all feeling in my toes,” I noted.

“That’s lucky. I can still feel mine.”

Doyle, Gunnar, and Juan Carlos also got ready for the yacht party, but in their case that only meant combing their hair. “What’s going on with your eyes?” Juan Carlos asked me.

“I can’t open them all the way,” I said. “The eyelashes Maisey glued on me are too heavy. It’s like I’m looking at the world through tiny cell bars.”

“They frame your face,” Maisey insisted.

“They do,” Doyle agreed. “But I think they’re just supposed to frame her eyes.”

“You know nothing about beauty,” Maisey told him. “Look at you. You look like a retired banker.”

“That’s exactly the look I was going for.”

Our little café family piled into Juan Carlos’s Renault, and we drove to the harbor. Maisey sat in front and used the rearview mirror to do some final touch-ups on her face. “Perfect. The tycoon won’t know what hit him,” she said.

“Poor bastard,” Doyle mumbled.

By the time we arrived at the marina, the wind had whipped up. The minute I stepped out of the car, the wreath of flowers flew off my head. Maisey walked with her hands on her head, trying to minimize the damage to her hairdo. Since I was lame and half blind, Doyle helped me walk to the boat that would take us to the yacht.

“I feel slightly ridiculous,” I told him. I was leaning on him, clopping as I walked like a Budweiser Clydesdale going down Main Street.

“You look great,” he said charitably. “You might want to pull your dress down, though. Juan Carlos has taken three photos of your ass.”

It was another error in judgment. I shouldn’t have worn a thong.

“Renewal takes a lot of effort,” I said.

***

The boat raced across the choppy sea for fifteen minutes before we arrived at the yacht. We heard it at about the same time that we saw it. Blaring house music, giggling, and general partying noises beckoned to us across the water.

The yacht was enormous, at least as big as Rhode Island. The tycoon had to be the tycoonest tycoon on the planet, I thought. There was a helicopter pad and all kinds of antennae doodads on the yacht.

“I should have used more eye shadow,” Maisey breathed. I felt her pain. It would take a lot to stand out on the USS
Snootypants.

The boat parked in the yacht’s own parking lot. Two young men helped us onto the yacht’s deck. I needed the two men plus Doyle to get me upright on my skyscraper shoes. Doyle signaled for me to pull my dress down.

I was a hot mess.

I heard Maisey say something about the Jacuzzi, and then she disappeared into the mass of beautiful people. Juan Carlos and Gunnar targeted two bikini-clad girls and vanished, as well. It was like a scene out of an MTV special about rich rock stars. It was like I had landed in Jay Z’s world but even richer. Half-naked waiters and waitresses offered the guests trays of champagne and caviar. Some people were dancing, and I could have sworn I saw one couple having sex on a table.

“This is Rome, the later years,” I said.

“Are you going to be all right?” Doyle asked me.

“I guess—” I started, but he was gone, vanished like the rest of my café family into the throngs. Without Doyle to lean on, I realized I was half squatting with my arms outstretched in order to maintain my balance. The boat was rocking, making it very difficult for me to stand. The sea was very choppy, and the wind didn’t seem to have any intention of calming down.

A middle-aged man in blue cotton slacks and a white shirt approached me. “A beautiful woman should not be alone,” he said with a thick accent.

“I’m hardly alone. I’m surrounded by a hundred people.”

“They do not count. Only I count,” he drawled. He raised an eyebrow, waiting for me to agree with him. Ew. He was gross in an uber-rich kind of way.

“Well—” I started and then lost my balance completely, falling on top of the man. He was surprisingly strong and caught me easily.

He laughed. “If you wanted to dance, you needed only to ask me.”

It turned out his name was Bruno. He convinced me to take my shoes off and walk with him inside where a party within the party was happening and where it would be quieter and more comfortable.

It wasn’t more comfortable. Yes, there was designer furniture, plush carpeting, and a Gauguin or two on the walls. Yes, there was a full gourmet spread available, including a stuffed peacock, intact with all its feathers. Yes, it was full of the beautiful people who were even more beautiful than the beautiful people on deck.

But the rocking was worse.

Bruno sat me down next to him on a white couch, and I rocked back and forth. It felt like my brain was knocking the inside of my head, and my stomach was climbing up my esophagus.

“You look like you need a drink,” Bruno said. “I have had one made special for tonight.”

He snapped his fingers, and a half-naked woman came over with a pink drink in a martini glass.

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” I said and burped.

“Nonsense.” He handed me the drink and urged me to take a sip. Oh, what the hell, I thought. I couldn’t feel any worse. “Do you like my little boat? Usually women comment about the boat, but you are unique. Different. I like you.”

“Your boat?”

“I like what you’ve done with your hair,” he said, picking up a strand of my neon red hair and letting it slide between his fingers.

“It was sort of a beauty malfunction. Are you sure this is your yacht? Are you the tycoon?”

Bruno guffawed. “Tycoon. Yes, that is a good description.” He leaned in close and ran a finger down my face. “I am going to enjoy making love to you. A man would have to be very strong to make love to you. You’re like a ball of fire.”

“That’s the hair. It gives that impression.”

“The hair, yes. The body, yes. And this.” He cupped my breast forcefully and smiled like he had discovered a new toy. I almost slugged him, but at that moment my ass started to hum.

“What’s in this drink?” I asked him. “I feel weird.”

“The vibration. The captain has started the motor.”

My body grew rigid, and my nausea increased tenfold. I grabbed Bruno’s arm with one hand, while my other hand holding the drink began to shake. “You mean you’re moving the boat? I don’t think you should move the boat.”

“You and I will move the boat all night,” he said.

I thought back to all I had ever learned about combating seasickness. Take deep breaths through your nose. Look at the horizon.

Horizon. “Where’s the horizon?” I asked him.

“Have you ever eaten black truffles?”

My left eyelid drooped under the weight of Maisey’s fake eyelashes, but Bruno understood it as a wink and an invitation to nuzzle my neck. Without stopping, he took the drink out of my hand and put it down on a table. He wore a Rolex watch, platinum. His fingernails were perfectly manicured with clear polish.

He could have probably paid off my credit cards with the change he kept in his cookie jar. He could solve so many of my problems, I thought. He could make life easy, at least for a while. But he was creepy. He was kissing my neck with too much slobber, and I wanted him gone.

I would have pushed him away from me if I thought I could stand without throwing up. There was also the little problem of Maisey. She had had her heart set on grabbing the tycoon. If I could keep his attention for a few moments, I figured, I could replace me with her. I was sure he would be much happier with her cleavage and see-through clothes.