Beauty (14 page)

‘Then this is a two-hundred-dollar cream. Top of the line. And we have to test it commercially, here, first.’

‘We can borrow some money . . .’

‘There is no money,’ Dina said. ‘Our customers will have to do the testing.’

She was cautious. At first, there were just whispers to their best, most respected customers: the older ones – the ones who spent all the money.

‘Anti-age. Proprietary. Would you like a sample jar?’

‘Oh, Mrs Cohen, it’s really very expensive. Far more than La Prarie. Will you try it for us?’

When they loved it, Dina expanded just a touch. She gave small jars to students – the ones with the worst pimples; to a pretty girl with blotchy skin; to a rosacea sufferer; to a soccer mom in her thirties with a great look, nice skin, whom she asked to use it as a primer.

Everybody raved. They wanted more. Their friends dropped by, asked for samples of their own.

‘Make up a batch,’ Dina instructed. ‘Five hundred jars.’

Hector was horrified. ‘We don’t have that kind of money. You wiped us out. We’re barely making the bills . . .’

‘Next month will be more. Hector, we have to have a real batch. Get me five hundred jars. I will take charge of the boxes.’ She had the design already: pretty little stars and flowers scattered across recycled green cardboard, with the word MEADOW emblazoned in gold.
Bring fresh to your face
, was the slogan.
Meadow is different.

‘Dina.’ Now Hector’s nerves were returning. He loved going back to the lab, loved making the cream, adored the thankful women as they raved about what it did for their faces . . . But money . . .

He brought Dina in to fix that. For a while, she had. Now there was a black hole again. And she wanted him to borrow, to risk everything he had . . .

‘Go to the bank. We need to sell this cream.’

‘I can’t.’ As soon as he said the words, he knew. ‘It’s my home. I can’t risk that.’

Dina put her head in her hands. ‘Jesus! Then
I’ll
do it. I’ll go to the bank. There’s money in my apartment.’

‘But it’s all you own.’

‘Not for long.’ Dina put her small hand over his large, wrinkled one. ‘It’s mine, though – if I get the cash. You need to give me the formula, let me control the marketing. I take half the profits for that; you take the other half, for inventing it. I’m going to get a lawyer to draw up the papers, and you need one, too. OK, Hector?’

Who could argue with her? He wasn’t going to try. ‘OK.’

By the time Dina came back to her apartment that evening, she was exhausted.

She’d visited five different banks, before she found one that’d lend her the money. Two different attorneys. A horrible meeting in a stuffy West Village office, as Hector passed over the paper, and they both signed in triplicate. Dina Kane was now down most of her life’s savings and, in return, she had a piece of paper, the number of a small factory in New Jersey and half a pot of face cream.

She’d never felt happier. And, as she showered in her unpainted bathroom and scrubbed her body with plain carbolic soap, Dina Kane whistled to herself. She stepped out, towelled off and threw on her white waffle dressing gown. It was dark but, even on the edge of the city, electricity pulsed through her windows: the traffic driving up First Avenue, the lights of the barges on the East River, the looming towers of the UN.

This would be the last year she would see this view, Dina vowed. Next year – Fifth Avenue.

Nothing was going to stop her.

Chapter Seven

‘Pass me that,’ Edward said. He pointed.

The waiter bowed slightly. ‘Yes, sir. Certainly.’

‘No, man. Not the cigars. The paper.’

‘Of course, sir.’

The older man handed over the
Times
with an inscrutable expression on his face. He had learned the hard way never to show any emotion, especially contempt. Johnson was just the latest in a long line of moneyed losers. He showed up to the club at eleven and was drunk by half past; cocktails before lunch, wine with his steak, a digestif with coffee, and an afternoon sherry to pass the time.

It ran in the family, so they said. After the big society divorce, Shelby Johnson had run out of town – left the state altogether. No more Congress. No more Coldharbor Bank. He stepped down with a modest payout and, rumour had it, he was living quietly in Florida. They had sun there, and a law that said they couldn’t take your house. The gossips were having a field day.

Penelope Johnson had really fallen apart. During the divorce – and the huge settlement – ladies around town whispered that she had Shelby over a barrel. How else to explain the giant cash settlement, millions for the maintenance, the way she kept the house?

But Penny paid the price. Women, slowly but surely, stopped coming to her parties. Invitations dried up. After all, it was so much safer to invite couples. Penny was touched by some hint of scandal . . . Nobody knew exactly what yet. Why had Shelby left? Was it her? Was he gay? Besides, a single woman of fortune might tempt their menfolk . . .

She was drinking . . . even more. And now the doctor had given her pills, too: anti-stress; anti-anxiety; pills to sleep.

Penny showed up at town charity events wearing tight dresses, her hair suddenly dyed blond. She looked desperate. Her eyes shone with a chemical glow.

‘Jesus, Mom.’ Edward watched in horror as she clutched a champagne flute at the Metropolitan benefit. ‘Seriously. You just
can’t.
Stop.’

‘And why shouldn’t I have a little fun? You’re such a party pooper.’

‘Mom, you’re forty-eight. Come on . . .’

‘I’m still attractive. Surgeons can do incredible things these days.’

Edward called her doctor. ‘My mother is sick. If you so much as touch her face, I’ll file a malpractice suit that will knock you off your ass . . .’

It worked. Beaten, bowed, humiliated, Penelope just gave up. She retired to her bedroom and barely came out for weeks.

Edward was almost glad he was out of college. He couldn’t take the snickering. Even now, his phone rang and he heard giggling at the end of it. He changed his mobile number. So they thought it was funny, did they? Fuckers . . .

He let his mother sit there, in the house, rotting with her booze and her pills. He couldn’t take the actual work to get her ‘better’: the AA meetings, the humiliations of rehab. The perfect woman was ruined. He detested her now, like he detested the embarrassment, the weakness of his father.

And most of all, he detested Dina Kane.

The best you could say was that she was some poor little nothing, a shopgirl, a nobody. For weeks, he’d waited for those pictures to appear, waking every morning in a cold sweat, waiting for his phone to ring, for the emails to come in.

Nothing. Every time he picked up a copy of the
Post
, page six was empty. There was nothing.

So that was it. He dropped out; his father vanished. And so had that bitch of a waitress.
Forget it
.

Edward tried to. But his golden world had turned to tin.

He had no idea what to do. His so-called friends were gone; invitations were drying up. Edward was no longer a favoured heir. Instead, he was just the remnant of a family in a social death spiral. The only kids that wanted to know him now were the hangers-on, the poor ones, the middle-class thrusters who liked to be with the rich.

He had dreams, fantasies of revenge, of restoring his family name, acting the way his cowardly father refused to.

‘No, Edward,’ Shelby said on the phone. ‘I’m not coming back up there.’

‘Mom needs you.’

‘She wanted the divorce. She got what she asked for.’ His father’s voice was distant, detached. ‘Maybe it’s all for the best. I’m enjoying my life down here now; I’m finding myself; the sun shines; you know . . .’

‘Jesus! No, I don’t know. I know you ran away.’

‘Edward, my life up there is over. I don’t want to see those people anymore.’

‘Dad . . .’

‘You’re a young man. You have to make your own way.’

‘At what?’ Edward shrieked. ‘I had to drop out of college! Because of you! I was supposed to work at the firm, but you quit! Now what am I to do?’

‘It’s not my problem. You’re twenty-one now, Edward. When I was your age, I was working in Wall Street . . .’

‘I didn’t get to graduate,’ Edward whined. ‘I don’t even have a liberal arts degree . . .’

‘Then find a job. It’s what most men do.’

Edward swallowed hard. ‘I’m not most men, Daddy; that’s not how you raised me.’

A long sigh. ‘“Daddy”! Listen to yourself. Come on, Edward, you need to discover your own purpose, not mooch off your mother and me.’

‘With what? How?’

‘I can’t hold your hand. If you can’t think of anything else to do, join the army. It’s been the making of several young men.’

‘The army!’ Edward’s shriek rose into hysterical, high-pitched giggles. ‘The army! Right – that’s good. Look, just wire me some fucking money.’

‘I need what I have. Your mother has all the money.’

‘I’m your son!’

‘My grown son.’ Another sigh. ‘Obviously I failed you, Edward. You were meant to stand on your own two feet.’

‘Spare me the fucking lecture, old man!’ Edward screeched. But Shelby had already hung up.

There was the trust fund – but that was a pittance.

‘Just advance me some cash,’ Edward said, confidently. He was dressed in one of his best suits – Armani – with a crisp silk shirt. Rutger Helmand was his father’s private banker; he had dined at the Johnson house many times over the years.

‘From which account do you want it?’ Rutger smiled sympathetically. They were meeting on Park Avenue, in his office, which resembled an English country drawing room. This was how the upper classes did their banking, with Persian rugs on the floor, oil paintings of pheasants on the walls; nothing so vulgar as a rack of terminals. He was glancing at the discreet computer monitor placed on his mahogany desk.

‘The family trust.’

‘Of course. I’m authorised to make disbursals. How much would you like, Edward?’

He shrugged. ‘Not much. Just half a million dollars?’

Rutger’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, no. I can only allow you to have five thousand, every six months.’

Edward’s eyes narrowed. ‘I have a trust fund, don’t I? Three million?’

‘It matures when you’re thirty-five.’

Thirty-five? He may as well be dead.

‘And your father’s sign-off will still be required.’

He buried his head in his hands. That only left his allowance. Ten thousand a month: it was a pittance.

‘Goddamn it, Rutger.’

‘You must talk to your parents. By the way, you do know your allowance has been stopped?’

The head shot up. ‘Huh?’

‘Your father wired me this morning. I’m afraid it’s all in order. He says you will be earning your own money from now on.’

‘That’s . . . that’s not right.’ Edward started to panic. ‘Call him!’

‘I did.’ Rutger began to squirm slightly, and Edward had that sinking feeling, that all too common feeling. He was in the middle of a scene. Only this time, he was causing it. ‘Really, Edward, I can’t interfere. Have you spoken to your mother?’

She was at home, no doubt, wearing a silk dressing down and downing her third vodka gimlet of the morning.

‘No. But, of course, I will.’ Edward pulled himself together, forced himself to stand up. ‘How much is left in my own account?’

‘Almost two hundred thousand,’ Rutger replied, reassuringly.

Peanuts. That wouldn’t get him to first base
.

‘Terrific,’ Edward forced himself to say. ‘I think I’ll head out to the club.’

The waiter handed over the copy of the
Times
, and Edward snatched it closer.

His heart thumped. Now, even his sanctuary was about to be invaded. The club . . . He was listed on his father’s membership. The Farmers’ Club was one of the oldest in the city, with burgundy leather armchairs, fine wines, a smoking terrace for cigars and a reassuringly white, male and exclusive membership. Edward enjoyed the calm, the obsequiousness. His mother was nowhere about. He moved in the pleasant hush of old money, the hush he’d been born into. And nobody objected to his drinking.

If he wanted coke, he went elsewhere, stumbled out on to the street, fished the tiny glass vial and miniature spoon from a hidden inner pocket. Not in the Farmers’ Club . . . Edward had no wish to get banned, not from his last, best home.

And now, there was that flash of recognition. His heart thumped. He snatched the paper off the silver tray, greedily holding the newsprint to him, reading it.

Dina Kane is a newcomer to the world of beauty. The twenty-year-old has impressed with early sales of the ‘Meadow’ facial cream, reported to deliver superior skin toning, priming and moisture benefits. Now stocked at Saks, Bergdorf’s, Glamour and other high-end stores, ‘Meadow’ is already racking up healthy sales, with a local New Jersey factory struggling to keep pace.

‘We’re different. We’re chemist-designed. This is beauty for all skins,’ Ms Kane said.

Challenged on the soaring $300 price, she replied, ‘Meadow isn’t for everyone. With no compromise on ingredients, it means no compromise on price.’

Ms Kane reportedly has a fifty-per-cent interest in the new company. ‘Meadow’ cream is now obtainable at all fine stores, or direct via the company website. But, be warned: there’s a waiting list.

Edward read the item twice, three times. His head was pounding. The dry text swam before his eyes.

Oh, it was her, all right. The grainy black-and-white photo showed that. The pretty, cruel young face next to the delicate jar of product.
Beauty
. Somehow it did not surprise him. Beauty was the one thing she had in abundance. Style on a shoestring. And, now, maybe not such a shoestring.

He hated the words ‘Kane’ and ‘company’. That slut was nothing. She was a gold-digger like the rest of them, only more vicious. She was meant to be serving coffee – and more – to him and his friends.

Dina Kane had not gone away. Edward was here, drunk, lonely, almost broke. His mother was a slave to her addiction, his father a dropout. And she was attempting – actually managing – to move up in the world.