Chapter 3

"My darling," Richard was saying, "you're thirty-two years old. It's natural that you should begin to have a few lines in your face..."

"One! Just one! I only have one, near my eye. My left eye."

She was lying on the bed. She had nearly fainted, and now Richard was rubbing her wrists as he consoled her. But he sounded impatient. He would be late for work if he didn't leave soon. She could hear Abel gunning the car down in the driveway under their window. But she couldn't help the feeling of terror. She needed him there.

"Richard..."

"Yes, Catharine." He looked at his watch, pretending not to.

"You don't care if I get old, and ugly..."

"You'll never be ugly, Catharine. But it's human to grow older. I've got lines, lots of them. See?" He leaned down over her, smiling, but definitely impatient.

"I don't want to have lines. I'm sorry, I know I'm being idiotic..."

"And childish."

"And childish," she repeated obediently. "But ... you won't love me if I lose my looks, I know it. What else do I have-nothingl I never went to college, I never learned to do anything. Everybody in this town is waiting for me to get wrinkled and old, and then they can laugh at me. ... " She dissolved into sobs.

Richard stood up. "This really is very silly, Catharine. Of course I'll still love you. You ought to know that. In fact..." He trailed off, thoughtfully.

"In fact what?" she gasped through her tears.

"In fact, maybe when you're not quite so perfect, I'll love you more." He grinned down at her, trying to make her smile.

"No," she said quietly. "You won't."

He went to the dressing table and smoothed his hair with a quick glance into the mirror. "Catharine, you really are being impossible. One little shadow of a normal line, and you've become a complete hysteric. Please, pull yourself together. I must get to the office now."

"You see? You can't wait to get away from me."

He stared at her for a long moment. She turned her head on the pillow so that her left side would be hidden.

"That's not like you, Catharine," he said, not unkindly.

"I'm not like me any more!" she wailed. Richard left the room, and then she heard the car gun away.

Crying would only deepen the line, maybe make more lines. She stopped her tears with a loud, unattractive and uncharacteristic sniffle, and sat up. She put on her dressing gown and went out of the room, down the wide carpeted hallway to the end, where the little door led to the attic steps.

Her daddy's big old leather chair now sat right before her oval mirror. Catharine curled up in it, put her head back, and contemplated herself. In this light she looked as she always had. The sun came streaking through the attic windows like a diffused, rosy, faraway memory. Catharine sighed deeply. Her dressing gown fell open. The tangerine silk nightgown underneath made the outline of her legs look carved out of soft marble. But they were warm flesh. She moved, slowly, turning this way and that to see the gentle sunlight play on her skin, highlighting the textures of worn leather, soft silk, smooth skin.

Slowly. Slowly, her long legs were revealed to the mirror as her hands pulled the bright silk up over her calves and her thighs. She spread her legs, a little at first, then wider. Burrowing her head deep into the indentation that her daddy's broad back had made in the chair, she felt safe. The mirror reflected all of her as she lifted the gown high and gazed deep into her own pink and furry cunt. Its little nest of fine golden hair highlighted the treasure as her long tapered fingers opened herself wider. One hand pulled her dressing gown from her shoulders, and her eyes admired the unblemished curve from her cheek down along her graceful neck, around the glowing smooth shoulder, finally coming to rest inside the low neckline of the shimmering gown. She touched her straining nipple, saw it rise against the silk, and slowly she let the gown slip down. Her body tingled with pleasure as she watched her breasts emerge from their coverings.

"Beautiful," she whispered, and then said it aloud. "You're so beautiful. I love you...." Her hand probed deep into her moistness, and then withdrew to run teasingly down the inside of her thigh, almost to her knee. Shudders of pleasure began to shake her whole body and she leaned forward from the chair, close to her face that was glowing with life and excitement.

"Mommyl! Are you up there?"

In one motion, Catharine pulled her gown back over her shoulders and thrust her arms into the dressing gown. Damn! How had she forgotten to lock the door at the foot of the stairs? She must have been so distraught that she didn't stop to think. She stood up on legs that shook and threatened to give way. But her voice was an expert mask as she called down.

"Yes, darling, I'm here."

"May I come in?"

"No, Mommy will be right there, precious."

She breathed deeply three or four times, and turned to open the locked door and take her daughter back down the steps to safety.

"Mommy, why can't I ever play in the attic? You go up there so much of the time. Why won't you ever let me play there, too?" Her voice was not wheedling, just curious.

"It's not a place for playing, darling," Catharine said, leading Jennifer down the hallway. "If you want any toys from the attic, you know Abel will get them for you."

"Well, what do you do up there all the time?"

"Not all the time, surely!"

"Well ... a lot of the time."

"I ... I just remember."

"Remember what?"

"Oh, when I was a little girl."

"My age?"

Catharine looked at her twelve-year-old daughter. Jennifer was no longer the slim little wisp of new grass-she was beginning to bud. She already knew about what to expect when she became a woman, any day now. Catharine sighed. "No, not your age, younger. I remember when I was a very little girl. I guess that's silly."

The subject of being a very little girl bored Jennifer. She changed the subject.

"Will you show me how to put on makeup today, Mommy? You promised, for the school play. Please."

"Not today, darling. I have an appointment. I'll be late if I don't hurry and dress right now. You can watch me get dressed, if you like."

"Okay. But when?"

"First chance I get. The play is not for weeks yet."

"I know, but I have to practice, don't I? It takes skill, you said, and I have to learn how."

"Yes." Catharine looked at her daughter's shining face, thinking what a pity it was she had to grow up at all.

Jennifer drew up a little tufted stool to sit close to her mother, watching intently in the mirror as the subtle touches of highlighting and enhancing color transformed the lovely face into a stunning one. She loved the scents and the textures and the array of jars and bottles like an artist's palette waiting to produce a masterpiece.

"How come you're using that stuff? You never did before."

"It's just a little pale rouge."

"Well, you never used rouge before, did you?"

"Jennifer, when you get ... older, you have to change the makeup you wear." Catharine's voice stumbled, and she turned on the chair to look away from the mirror, directly at her daughter's sweet upturned face. "Jennifer, I think I really have to hurry now. Please, let me finish by myself."

"Are you getting older? Is that why you're changing your makeup? Why do I have to leave?"

"Jennifer, please go now. I mean it."

Jennifer sniffed at her own image in the mirrror, and glided haughtily out of the room without looking back.

Catharine picked up the house phone. "Is Abel back with the car yet, Lisa?" she asked impatiently.

"Yes, he's back. He's in the garage, polishing it up."

"Please tell him to hurry, and to meet me in front in ten minutes. I'm late for an appointment at the beauty salon."

"Okay."

"What?" Catharine's voice was sharp. "I said, yes, Miss Catharine."

"Thank you." She hung up the phone and hurried to the closet. She reached first for the red and yellow Pucci print, thinking she needed happy colors this morning. But then she remembered Mr. Eugene fussing at her about blue. Saying she should always wear shades of blue, because it set off her coloring so well. She put the Pucci back and took out a navy shirtwaist instead. But it looked like something an older woman would wear, she thought suddenly. Fighting panic, she reached for a powdery-blue pleated skirt that had a matching cashmere sweater in one of her dressers.

The single strand of perfect pearls which had always seemed school girlish suddenly looked matronly. She flung them on the floor, fighting back her rising frustration and rage. Who needs jewelry to go to the hairdresser, anyway, she told herself, and stood quietly before the dressing table for a last check before leaving the room. The makeup was wrong. Rouge didn't highlight the fine cheekbones in order to draw attention away from the hint of a crowfoot line at the eye. It made her look like she was blushing, or angry at something. Blinking back tears, she sat down and began to cream off the makeup. She took her time, because it was important to make all the strokes in an upward gesture. When her face was fresh again, aglow from the brisk rubbing, she turned on all the lights for the first time since early that morning, and stared at herself unflinchingly. It was time, she decided grimly, like someone going to the gallows. Time to let Eugene take over. Special creams and masques and whatever else it took to ward off the disaster. He would know what to do. And maybe he would be kind enough to do it in secret, not in front of her friends who would love to see Catharine Johnston Burgess begin to fade and crumble.

"Of course, love," Eugene said soothingly, when she arrived at his place forty-five minutes late for her appointment. He took her to a private little cubicle. In a whisper, she confided in him nervously.

A wrinkle-yes, it's true-had appeared that very morning. Eugene understood. No one worshipped beauty more than he. He examined her with a magnifying glass. He couldn't see any lines, not one, not even a hint. He swore on his roommate's head that he saw no sign of a flaw on her perfect face. But he agreed to begin preventive measures-never too soon, love, he said-and in absolute privacy.

"Just our little secret," he whispered. "You can trust me, love. Your beauty is the shrine I worship at. It will be my sacred trust to tend the fire. You shall never grow old, not you, dear Catharine. You are a goddess, and I shall be your vestal virgin." She looked past her own reflection to his, but there was no trace of a smile.

She put on the coverall smock, and he tilted her chair back so that her long hair flowed into the basin. Eugene played with it in his fingers for a moment, as he always did. "Such luster, such incredible texture!" he sighed.

"Eugene ... is it still the same? No ... no sign of..."

"No, love, no sign at all. Not for years yet. Your hair is magnificent. Haven't we always taken the absolute best care of it? What wouldn't every beautician in the whole world give to work on hair like this! Why, most of them never even see such hair, they can only dream about it. I'm just going to give you a pure castile wash and herbal rinse, just like I always do. Then we'll do your face, and I'll set this crowning glory later."

Catharine sighed, and relaxed under Eugene's tender and sensitive fingers. The warm torrent of water and his deft male hands moving in her hair made her feel pampered, adored. Slowly, lovingly, he moved his palms and thumbs and fingers around and up and down against her scalp, massaging the warm moist suds deep into the hidden roots. As she gave herself up to the hypnotic pleasure of Eugene's shampoo, her knees spread slightly apart beneath the long smock.

"But my appointment was for half an hour ago. I was here on time. Who's he working on that's so special? Don't tell me, let me guess. Catharine Burgess?" The shrill voice penetrated Catharine's trance-like peace. She recognized it as belonging to Ann Birmingham, who had been four or five years ahead of her in school and was already a middle-aged harridan with four messy children and a voice to shatter steel.

"Don't tell me I can't go in there. He's a half hour late for my appointment and I have a right to know who's holding me up!" With that, the door to Catharine's cubicle opened and Ann Birmingham stuck her bloated face inside. "Oh, hello Catharine. I figured it was you. Getting the works, are you?" Ann's smile was a cross between a hippo's and a barracuda's.

"Mrs. Burgess doesn't need the works," Eugene said sweetly. His hands caressed Catharine's head as the rinse water flooded her tender scalp with a warmth that tingled deliciously all the way down to her cunt. "All she needs is a plain wash and herbal rinse." He turned for a moment to scrutinize Ann's scowling face. "My goodness, look at you, you've gone too long between appointments again. I'll be with you in a minute. There's a new issue of Playgirl out there somewhere, I know you love that magazine, why don't you find it and amuse yourself for a few minutes, okay?" He smiled ingenuously, and Ann Birmingham backed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

"Oh, Eugene, I don't want anybody seeing..." Catharine began.

He wrapped her head expertly in a huge fluffy towel and tilted the chair to an upright position. "Now don't you worry about a thing," he said to her mirror image, wagging a long bony finger. He went over to the door and turned the key. Catharine sighed and he began the treatment.

He spoke continuously, soothingly, of her incredible bone structure, her god-given eyebrows that never needed a speck of tweezing, her miraculous long lashes-"I don't know a woman in this town who doesn't need falsies on her eyes," he said-and her fabulous skin. All the time, he was applying a thin green gel over these features, but her apprehension was dissolved by his comforting words. She held her neck high and her eyes never left her reflected face as he covered it with the masque. His fingertips stroked and smoothed as her face slowly became encased in the hardening plastic.

"There!" he exclaimed finally. "I'll be buggered-oh, excuse me-but I'll really and truly be damned if you don't look exquisite even like that. Now the gel will begin to pull, just the tiniest bit, and that means it's setting. It will feel good, I promise you. You mustn't laugh or cry, promise? For thirty minutes, and then I'll come and peel it off-ever so gently-and voila! You are going to be beautiful forever, my love, I promise you that. If God can make such a miracle as you, it is my sacred trust to keep it that way. Now, don't you worry. Do you want something to read?"

Her eyes stared straight ahead through the green slime, and she lifted her hand to signify "no."

"Well, it's back to the piggies. I'm going to set this timer, and you can watch how long it takes. I'll be back when it's time to remove the yum-yum, all right?"

She didn't respond. Eugene unlocked the door, held up the key to show her that he was going to lock it from the other side, and in a moment she heard him turn it.

She sat staring at herself, without moving or twitching a muscle, for the whole time. She was not bored. Under the smock, her hand cupped itself around the rise where her legs met, but the hand didn't move either. She sat absolutely still, in a reverie, gazing at herself and waiting.

When the key turned in the door again, she was startled. Eugene stepped inside quickly and locked it again. "Oh, my dear, those women! AH your friends are here today, would you believe it? Poor Lilly Sanford, she simply can't stop herself eating those lurid chocolates. She brings in a whole one-pound box of Fanny Farmers now every time she comes in here, and she polishes it off while she's under the dryer. Poor old fat thing."

Catharine couldn't talk because of the stiff masque, but she thought, she's not old, she's my age.

Eugene picked up the timer. "Half a minute to go. Are you comfortable?"

Catharine waved playfully with her hand, and Eugene smiled encouragement. When the little buzzer went off, he whispered dramatically, "It's time, Catharine."

As he pulled away the green snake-like skin, her own face was revealed in sections, like a tantalizing striptease. The color was marvelous, especially in contrast to the masque, with vibrant inner warmth pulsing beneath her pale-veined temples. Her forehead was clear as ever, unscarred by any hint that she had ever frowned. (Don't frown, Princess, her daddy used to say. Don't ever frown, not ever. It would make an ugly line across your beautiful forehead. Daddy couldn't stand to see that. ... So she had tried never to frown.) Around her eyes, as Eugene's careful fingers peeled away the rubbery gel, she looked as young as ever. She leaned forward, anxiously, toward the mirror. Wordlessly, Eugene handed her a magnifying glass with a long pearl handle. She watched for the line, but it was gone. (Had it ever really been there?) Her nose was revealed, her fine patrician narrow nose with elegantly flaring nostrils. The space over her lip had never shown a trace of shadow; the masque came away easily and then her mouth was free to smile her special gratitude at Eugene's reflection as he watched the mirror for her reaction. For the first time since she had sat down in the chair, she took her eyes away from themselves.

"What do you think, Eugene?"

"Perfection," he said simply.

"It feels-tingly."

"That's the important thing. It keeps the blood circulating, the capillaries and all that. That's what will keep you beautiful forever, Catharine."

She laughed up at his solemn face.

"Now, the makeup," he pondered. "The makeup must be very subtle, very special. I'm going to give you something entirely new and unique. We'll emphasize-ever so slightly, you really don't need it at all-those marvelous angles and the drama of those eyes. The hair, I think, should be stark and classic this week. To get used to the new face."

"I don't want a new face!"

"No, no, of course. I didn't mean that. I meant the new makeup. My dear Catharine, do you trust me or don't you?"

"Yes," she said, subdued. She slid back down into the chair. "Go ahead, Eugene."

Someone knocked on the door. "Eugene, I've got Mrs. Doughty here, are you finished with the room?"

"A minute, Debbie, a minute!" Eugene called. He grimaced apologetically down at Catharine's reflection. "You don't mind, do you, love? Your secret is safe, but could we move into the other room just while I do your gorgeous hair? Mrs. Doughty has to get her legs waxed. She's like a grizzly bear, you know, poor old thing."

Catharine laughed. With one hand holding the damp towel wrapped around her head and the other clutching the huge folds of the smock, she stood up and followed Eugene out of the cubicle.

"Catharine! I didn't know you were here. I mean, I knew this was one of your regular days, but I didn't see you when I came in. Been getting a special private treatment of some kind?" Her old friend Karen Makepeace was sitting in one of the chairs in the long row facing the communal mirror. Karen's hair was sticking straight up from her bare scalp in weirdly pointed clumps of color, red and bluish as the dye took hold. Karen wagged her hands at Catharine, showing off the gleaming talons of artificial fingernails, blood-red daggers encased in temporary stainless-steel braces.

"Hello, Karen," Catharine said pleasantly. "No, I had a bit of a headache when I came in, and Eugene was kind enough to let me have the private room for a while."

"He's a darling, our Eugene," Karen agreed.

"All right, Mrs. Makepeace, I get your point," Eugene said. "Goodness, everybody's so owly this morning. I did apologize for being so late getting started, didn't I? Shall I apologize again? I am truly sorry, love. This place is getting like a doctor's office. Didn't you ever have to wait for a doctor....? Now, let's admit it, ladies, your hair is more important than, well, some other parts of your bodies that aren't so easily seen in public, if you understand my meaning. I should be making the same money a gynecologist does, if you ask me. Right, my darlings?"

The general laughter of the women lined up in their chairs at his complete mercy restored Eugene's good humor, and the atmosphere settled down after the initial grumble and buzz which had greeted his entrance with Catharine in tow. Eugene began to comb her hair.

Lilly Sanford looked up from the pornographic magazine she was reading under the dryer. She shouted unnecessarily loudly to be heard above the noise her dryer was making in her own, if not everyone else's, ears.

"Catharine! Hi!"

Catharine acknowledged the greeting with a nod into the mirror which reflected herself, Eugene hovering above her, and the rest of the room behind her chair. Lilly's fat legs were balancing a box of candy under the magazine, and unfortunately Lilly had just taken a mouthful of chocolate covered cherry with liquid center before opening her mouth to let everyone know that she was on intimate terms with Catharine Burgess.

She continued to shout, too loudly, across the room, under the impression that her dryer was making everyone else as deaf as she was.

"Catharine, that was a smashing dress you wore to the country club dance last Saturday night! So sheermy gosh, you could see everything when the light was behind you! I could never wear a dress like that. Norman wouldn't permit it."

Catharine's gaze had filtered out the rest of the room except for herself and Eugene, although her smile remained fixed in a polite and friendly, even interested, mask. Eugene set the mass of gold in a few large rollers, and placed a net around her head.

"I always seem to be waiting for Gene to finish with her," Ann Birmingham confided to someone next to her in a voice clearly meant to carry down the long row of chairs.

"I think she feels that she actually is above everybody in this town," an anonymous voice agreed.

Eugene helped Catharine down from the chair and saw that she was comfortable under a dryer at the far end of the room from Lilly Sanford. He smiled at her, and she ducked under the private humming sound that would din out the other voices.

"She reminds me of one of those windup dolls," someone said, but Catharine didn't hear it and Eugene clucked his disapproval.

Karen's timer went off. "I'm ready, Eugene," she announced. Her wisps of hair were entirely blue now.

All the women turned their attention to themselves again, but evidently their own faces didn't interest them as much as Catharine's every motion seemed to. When Eugene lifted the dryer from her head and escorted her back to the dressing table, all the chatter in the room stopped and all eyes were on her. She was accustomed to this, and she accepted it with pleasure. Everyone had always stared at Catharine.

Eugene held his little blow dryer in one hand and with the other he brushed her luxuriant hair with a series of slow sensuous strokes. Her eyes closed and her thoughts floated freely while Eugene brushed and blew her.

That's the only kind of blowjob I'll ever get, she thought dreamily. Ironic. Uptight, conservative, unimaginative Richard, whom she truly loved, of course, could never really satisfy her ... and this gaunt, aging homosexual knew how to please her so much that sex was almost unnecessary. The sensation of being admired and touched and made beautiful was a thrill that transcended the mere physical. You and I, Eugene, she thought to herself, we know what I need. We're the only ones. How sad. Is everyone else in the world so alone...

Eugene had finished her hair, and she almost gasped with pleasure when she opened her eyes and saw how richly it shone, how every curve and wisp of it maximized the elegant sculpture of her face. Quickly, feeling the envious stares around her, she broke into a modest smile, and Eugene was satisfied, too.

"Oh, dear, I've left my special hairspray in the other room. Would you mind coming with me, Catharine, love? We can put your little bit of lipstick on in there."

She followed him past the row of women into the private room again. Eugene was grinning at his own wit.

"Now they're all going to insist on my special hair-spray," he said, "and of course there isn't any. I'll have to invent one and charge a little extra for it! It's just that I wanted to get you off alone for the makeup, right, love?"

"Thank you, Eugene."

His expert blending and application of exactly the right base, powder, eye shadow and liner, highlighting gels, and lipstick took another hour. Catharine sat absolutely motionless, watching attentively. She bought all the preparations from him and touched each container with a freshly manicured fingernail as she carefully repeated its use, much as students of wilderness survival do before setting out on their long journeys in the desert. When the work was done, Catharine appeared natural, fresh and as young as ever, under all the different combinations of lighting that Eugene could devise.

"You look marvelous," Eugene said, finally.

"Yes."

The other women, who were fretting with grim impatience in the outer room, could not hide the envy in their stares as she and Eugene walked out among them. At the door, she pressed a fifty-dollar bill into his hand.

Abel had been pacing up and down the street for hours, proudly guarding the shiny Lincoln and waiting for her. He had also been doing a bit of window-peeking into the beauty shop, rewarded by nothing more exciting than a glimpse of ugly old ladies in plastic curlers, and the usual dark tunnel of fat pink flesh, stocking tops and garters that Mrs. Sanford offered to anyone who bothered to stoop low outside the end window and stare upwards. But now Abel stood properly alert and attentive, holding open the back door of the car for his mistress.

Ah, mistress! What a nice word. He knew what it meant, in both senses. Lisa had explained it to him and he had read it in some of his magazines. In his frequent, almost continuous daydreams and night-dreams, Miss Catharine was his mistress in the way he wanted her to be. He knew how she looked under those sexy clothes. He knew, and the thought obsessed him. Someday ... he vowed to himself for the umpteenth time in his twenty years of service (service, that was another word that meant two things-a stallion serviced a mare, and sometimes in the magazines men serviced women the same way) ... someday.

"Mr. Burgess asked me to pick him up on the way home," he said respectfully.

"So early?"

"It's just almost five o'clock, Miss Catharine."

"Really?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Goodness!" She smiled at him and it was suddenly necessary for Abel to whip off his visored cap and hold it in front of himself. It was a frequent gesture of his, one she thought was just an old habit, a quirk. She never thought of slow-witted Abel as having the same needs and responses that other men did.

He stopped the car in front Of the office building and went in to have Mr. Burgess informed that his car was waiting. Catharine took the hand mirror from the pocket next to her seat, and examined her face and neck and hair. Eugene certainly knew what he was about. She dug into her purse and took out the little magnifying glass. Holding it at an angle to the hand mirror, she scrutinized her eyes. They looked fine. Then she caught something, around her mouth. She tried to recapture the expression she had had a second before, to see if what she had seen was a fact or just a shadow.

The opening of the car door startled her. She tried to hide the mirror and magnifying glass quickly.

"Hello, darling. How beautiful you look, as usual."

"Thank you, Richard."

Abel watched in the rear-view mirror to see if they would kiss each other. They did not.