Chapter Four: “The Makeover”
Chapter Four
“The Makeover”
“LET’S SEE!” ADAKU CRIED, KNOCKING PERFUNCTORILY ON THE DOOR
to the suite’s second bedroom before walking right in.
Sewanee stood in the middle of the room. She did an ironic twirl.
Adaku’s hands came to her mouth. “Swan,” she breathed through her fingers.
Sewanee turned back to the full-length mirror.
She looked good. She looked hot. She looked like a different person.
After she’d closed up the booth around 4:00, she’d walked briskly to the nearest bar for the Last Word she’d been drinking in her mind since 11
A.M.
when Ron had suggested she get a drink. But the bar hadn’t had the necessary ingredients. So she’d gone back to her room, intending to grab her stuff and head to the Strip, to a bar that knew what it was doing. Instead, she’d fallen instantly asleep and woke an hour later to a text from Adaku telling her to be at the suite by 6:00. She showered quickly, threw on the modest outfit she’d brought to go out in, put on her eye patch, and cabbed to the Venetian.
Adaku had been waiting with a hair and makeup artist and a stylist with three designer dresses in Sewanee’s size. She’d
protested halfheartedly, but the truth was Adaku’s instincts always bordered on clairvoyance. She knew what Sewanee needed before she did. For reasons she hadn’t quite parsed, Sewanee wanted to be something more tonight, something different, something slightly less . . . her.
The stylist, wanting to get in good with Adaku, had done a speedy alteration of Sewanee’s selection: a bodycon dress that managed to flatter her curves without drawing her perfectionist attention to the extra fifteen pounds she wished weren’t there. That used to not be there, before her job involved sitting for the length of a hundred pages a day.
Sewanee had enjoyed being “put through the works,” having hair and makeup experts descend upon her with the sole purpose of making her look her best. It had been so long. Now, her auburn hair was styled in a sweep, parted on the left, the bulk of it swooping over her eye patch and down over her right shoulder. Her left eye, her mother’s glacial blue, was slightly smoky. She had red lips and defined cheekbones. Contouring. Bronzer. A thicker brow. And boobs! Where had those come from?
Even to Swan’s constantly critical eye, she looked stunning.
“Yes!” Adaku clapped. “Come through, lips! Come through, hips!”
Sewanee focused on her friend’s gleeful face. “I can’t thank you enough, A.”
“Oh, please. I didn’t do this for you, I did it for me. Now everyone will be looking at
you
instead.”
Sewanee’s mood had lifted, a fog burned off with the warmth of the sun.
Adaku was her sun.
“And you!” Sewanee exclaimed, walking over to her. Adaku looked gorgeous per usual in a short romper of silver sequins,
ankle-height zippered heels, and a deep burgundy lip. Her hair had been straightened into a jaunty bob, made shiny by the coconut oil finishing serum her usual stylist had designed specifically for her. “You look like a million bucks before taxes and commissions.” They laughed and, when Adaku looked at her with Pygmalion pride, Sewanee pulled her into a hug. “It’s stupid, but I do feel better.”
“Playing dress-up occasionally is necessary.”
The suite’s doorbell rang and Adaku pulled out of the embrace, jogging from the room. Sewanee took one more look in the mirror and followed after her, hearing Adaku open the door, thank someone profusely, and close it.
The sight in the foyer stopped her.
“Why–what are my bags doing here?”
Adaku, a fresh bottle of Cristal braced inelegantly between her thighs, fingers speedily dispensing with foil, merely smiled that silver screen smile that was impossible to argue with. “You’ve checked out of the Rio.”
Pop.
“LEAVE IT TO
you to find the one bar in all of Las Vegas with books in it.”
They were ensconced in a library-themed bar somewhere on the perimeter of the Venetian’s casino floor, sitting on a deep chesterfield sofa in front of a fireplace that didn’t give off any heat, surrounded by heavy mahogany bookshelves full of nondescript antique hardcovers. Sewanee was sure the books were fake. It was the Vegas way: everything was meant to seem real, but wasn’t. Tonight, though, she didn’t care. It was all part of the fantasy.
Their waitress stopped by the table. “Another, Ms. Obi?”
“We’re good for the moment, thanks!”
“Signal if you want anything else, anything at all.” She gave them a toothpaste commercial smile and went on her way.
Adaku nodded toward a man who had just walked in. “What about him?” It was not the first time she’d said this tonight.
“Why don’t I stand by the door with a net?” Sewanee smirked and took a sip of her Last Word. “A, seriously, I’m not gonna hook up with some rando. Tonight’s about you and–”
Adaku’s phone buzzed. She glanced at it. “One sec, sorry. Manager.” She picked up. “Hello? Manse? Manse–can you hear me?” She plugged her ear with a long, well-groomed finger. “Hang on–yeah, I know, one minute.” She stood, made apologetic eyes at Swan, and hustled out of the bar, likely toward a quiet bathroom hallway.
She returned five minutes later looking sheepish. “So!” She sat, but on the arm of the chesterfield, perched like a bird about to take flight. “Don’t hate me,” she began.
“They up the offer to two mil?”
“I have to go.”
“Okay.” Sewanee reached for her purse.
“No. To L.A. Tonight. Like, now.”
Sewanee shook her head the way a cartoon character did a double take
. Brrrroing!
“What?”
Adaku grabbed her drink and polished it off. “The Angela Davis biopic I was telling you about? I want it. But the exec producer doesn’t think I’m right for it. He lives in Paris or Florence or something so I haven’t been able to get to him. But he’s flying back from Hawaii through L.A. tonight, landing in ninety minutes. Manse told the exec’s assistant about the jungle movie, his assistant e-mailed him while he was in the air, and he’s agreed to meet me for a drink.”
“Wait, you’re meeting him at LAX?”
“Yes. There’s a Southwest flight leaving in forty-five minutes. So, this is me, going.” She bent over, kissed Sewanee’s cheek. “Back by midnight.”
Sewanee’s eye bugged. “You’re coming back?”
“We’re celebrating! Return flight’s already booked!”
“A, you don’t have to–”
“You’ve got a dinner reservation at the celebrity chef steak house in half an hour, bottle service at the club, a driver. Put everything on the room! Find someone to join you! See you in four hours! Leaving!”
Before Sewanee could respond, Adaku was on her way out. As she passed the waitress, she pointed at Sewanee and her drink, clearly ordering her another.
Sewanee sat back. She took a breath.
She already felt awkward sitting in the bar alone, looking like she was waiting for a prom date–or even, she thought, glancing down at her cleavage, a customer. Before she could tell the waitress to cancel the drink order, she’d arrived back to deliver it, as if Adaku had some FastPass lane at the bar reserved solely for her.
She gulped down a good portion of it and thought.
Why would she go to dinner by herself, go to a club by herself, be driven around by herself? Ridiculous. She’d go upstairs, have some coffee, finish prepping the book, and wait for Adaku to come back. She’d have this last drink and close out.
She caught the waitress’s eye and made the universal hand gesture for
check, please?
And sat back, waiting. Drinking. Drinking until her cheeks began to warm and her shoulders began to loosen and the bar took on a slightly sexier cast, as if a filter had been applied to the whole room. Before she was officially tipsy, she did the thing she’d been trying to find the time to do all day. She called her grandmother.
“Hello?” Sewanee could hear the familiar click of her grandmother’s rings on the plastic receiver. She’d tried to get her to use a cell phone, but the buttons were too small and she’d somehow dial international numbers and then lose the thing in the couch, and anyway they were back to a landline.
“Hi, BlahBlah!” There was a half second of silence, which prompted her to quickly add, “It’s Sewanee,” before her grandmother could reveal she hadn’t known that.
Her voice immediately warmed. “Dollface! How’s my favorite girl?”
Sewanee’s smile was equal parts relief and joy. “I’m good. I’m still in Las Vegas.”
“You’re in Las Vegas? I didn’t know you were in Las Vegas.”
She did. Or she had, anyway. “I’m here for a conference.”
“Well, I hope you’re finding time for fun.” The texture of her grandmother’s voice was the result of every cigarette she’d ever smoked, every martini she’d ever drunk. While she retained none of her Tennessee accent (she belonged to the generation of actors whose regionalisms had been drilled out of them), she still carried a Southern dignity and propriety. She swore and drank and partied in her day, but goddammit, she did it
elegantly
.
“Your grandfather took me to Las Vegas once.”
Sewanee had heard this story many times before and recently. But this was how it went these days and she knew to go along with it. “Did you enjoy yourself?”
“What a night we had! We saw the Rat Pack. Frank, Dean, Sammy, and . . . oh. I can never remember the other one.”
“Isn’t it Peter something?” Amanda had told Sewanee to make Blah use her memory whenever possible, instead of just supplying answers.
“Yes! Yes! Lawford, Peter Lawford.” She muttered, “He was
never that important anyway. He didn’t do anything. Anyway, after the show, Marvin took me backstage–it was the Sands Hotel–and introduced me to Frank and Dean. And of course Sammy and . . . shit! Who’s the other one? Doesn’t matter. Frank took my hand and asked me what I thought of the show and I came right out with it, I said, ‘You should have a lady up there.’ Marvin was mortified–he’s always mortified–but Frank and Dean, they laughed their tooshes off!” Blah’s chuckle became a hacking cough. “Frank’s hand is softer than I expected.”
Sewanee noticed the shift from past tense to present and she tried to guide her back. “Didn’t Grandpa know Sinatra?”
It worked. “Oh yes. Frank had done one of Marv’s early pictures, you know, so they went way back. He was awfully sorry for all that McCarthy business. Frank, not Marv. That sonofabitch. McCarthy, not Sinatra.” There was a pause. “Do you want to come over, Dollface?”
“I’m in Las Vegas.”
Blah clucked her tongue. “Christ on a crutch, you just said that. I swear, this old tackle box of a head is nothing more than tangled up lines, lures, and sinkers. Getting old is for the goddamn birds.”
Sewanee smiled. “I’ll come by on Monday for lunch, okay?”
“I wouldn’t if I were you. It’s chicken salad day.”
“I love you, Blah. See you Monday.”
“Love you, Dollface. Now go have fun. You’re only young and beautiful once. Make the most of it.”
“We’ll see–”
“Do it, Swan!” There was a pause. “When can I see you?”
Sewanee took a patient breath. “How about Monday?”
“What’s today?”
“Saturday.”
“Perfect! Though, fair warning, Monday’s chicken salad day.” She made kissing sounds into the phone and hung up.
The waitress appeared with the bill (tucked like a bookmark into a real hardcover–
Jane Eyre
, she noted) and Sewanee thanked her. She took another sip, leaned over the low table, opened the book, and heard, from above:
“Hi.”