As I work, the girls’ chatter fades into background noise, like the drone of a hair dryer or city traffic. I lose myself in the strokes of different foundations I’ve applied to Taylor’s jawline so I can match her skin tone flawlessly, and in the swirl of copper and sandy hues I blend on my hand to bring out the gold flecks in her eyes.
I’m brushing bronzer onto her cheeks when her cell phone rings.
Taylor stops tapping hearts and holds up her phone: “Private number. Should I get it?”
“Yes!” Mandy says. “It could be Justin.”
Taylor wrinkles her nose. “Who answers their phone on a Friday night, though? He can leave a message.”
A few moments later, she touches the speakerphone button and a man’s voice fills the room:
“This is Ben Quick, Dr. Shields’s assistant. I’m confirming your appointments this weekend, for tomorrow and Sunday from eight to ten A.M. The location again is Hunter Hall, Room 214. I’ll meet you in the lobby and take you up.”
Taylor rolls her eyes and I pull back my mascara wand.
“Can you keep your face still, please?” I ask.
“Sorry. Was I out of my mind, Mandy? I’m going to be way too hungover to get up early tomorrow.”
“Just blow it of.”
“Yeah. But it’s five hundred bucks. That’s, like, a couple sweaters from rag & bone.”
These words break my concentration; five hundred is what I make for ten jobs.
“Gah. Forget it. I’m not going to set an alarm to go to some dumb questionnaire,” Taylor says.
Must be nice, I think, looking at the sweater crumpled in the corner.
Then I can’t help myself: “A questionnaire?”
Taylor shrugs. “Some psych professor needs students for a survey.”
I wonder what sort of questions are on the survey. Maybe it’s like a Myers-Briggs personality test.
I step back and study Taylor’s face. She’s classically pretty, with an enviable bone structure. She didn’t need the full forty-five-minute treatment.
“Since you’re going to be out late, I’ll line your lips before I apply gloss,” I say. “That way the color will last.”
I pull out my favorite lip gloss with the BeautyBuzz logo on the tube and smooth it along Taylor’s full lips. After I finish, Taylor gets up to go look in the bathroom mirror, trailed by Mandy. “Wow,” I hear Taylor say. “She’s really good. Let’s take a selfie.”
“I need my makeup first!”
I begin to put away the cosmetics I used for Taylor and consider what I will need for Mandy when I notice Taylor has left her phone on the chair.
My rocking Friday night will consist of walking my little mixed terrier, Leo, and washing the makeup out of my brushes—after I take the bus across town to my tiny studio on the Lower East Side. I’m so wiped out that I’ll probably be in bed before Taylor and Mandy order their first cocktails at the club.
I look down at the phone again.
Then I glance at the bathroom door. It’s partly closed.
I bet Taylor won’t even bother to return the call to cancel her appointment.
“I need to buy the highlighter she used,” Taylor is saying.
Five hundred dollars would help a lot with my rent this month.
I already know my schedule for tomorrow. My first job doesn’t begin until noon.
“I’m going to have her do my eyes kind of dramatic,” Mandy says. “I wonder if she has false lashes with her.”
Hunter Hall from eight to ten A.M.—I remember that part. But what was the name of the doctor and his assistant?
It’s not even like I make a decision to do it; one second I’m staring at the phone and the next, it’s in my hand. Less than a minute has passed; it hasn’t locked out yet. Still, I need to look down to navigate to the voice mail screen, but that means taking my eyes of the bathroom door.
I jab at the screen to play the most recent message, then press the phone tightly to my ear.
The bathroom door moves and Mandy starts to walk out. I spin around, feeling my heartbeat erupt. I won’t be able to replace the phone without her seeing me.
Ben Quick.
I can pretend it fell of the chair, I think wildly. I’ll tell Taylor I just picked it up.
“Wait, Mand!”
Dr. Shields’s assistant . . . eight to ten A.M. . . .
“Should I make her try a darker lip color?”
Come on, I think, willing the message to play faster.