‘How do you justify being the public face of an organization that is putting the small-business owner out of work?’ a man in overalls screamed at me, while a woman pushing a baby in a stroller yelled, ‘You’re what’s wrong with America!’
I actually thought this was a little harsh, and not just because I wasn’t who they thought I was. Well, technically.
But I didn’t get a chance to tell them this, because the burly security guard was already hustling me away from the hands that were reaching out, trying to clutch me. He more or less barrelled through the crowd, using his elbow as a battering ram, until we’d ducked through a revolving door, into a vast, green-marble lobby, where we were joined a few seconds later by Brandon Stark and Kelly Foster-Fielding.
‘Good Lord,’ Kelly said, brushing herself off like a cat thats fur has been ruffled. ‘They get worse every day.’
‘Good to see you, Miss Howard,’ the burly security guard who’d shielded me from the protesters’ wrath said with a nod to me. ‘Been a while.’
I smiled at him tremulously, my tears forgotten in my shock over what had just happened. ‘Th-thanks… ’
‘Martin,’ he said to me with a toothy grin. ‘You really did lose your memory, just like they said on the news!’
I was about to assure him I really had, when Kelly grabbed my arm and said, ‘Enough chit-chat, people, we’re running late as it is. Let’s go.’
And then I was being dragged towards an elevator. And I realized I was about to meet Mr Robert Stark himself.
Which was a relief. Because I realized I had a thing or two I wanted to say to him.
Seventeen
Except that I didn’t get to. Say what I wanted to say to Mr Stark, I mean. At least, not right away.
That’s because the minute I stepped off the elevator into Stark Corporate headquarters, a swarm of hairstylists, make-up artists and wardrobe assistants descended on me. Kelly snatched Cosabella away from me, assuring me she’d look after her for the duration of the shoot. And then I — not my dog — was the one swept away for grooming.
At first I didn’t know what was happening. All I knew was that these total strangers were coming up to me, and this one guy kept pulling on my hair and going, ‘Honey, what happened? They run out of product… on the entire island of Manhattan?’
And a woman kept peering into my face and being like, ‘So… we’re going for the natural look, are we?’
And this other woman grabbed my hand — this was all as I was being pulled down a hallway — and went, ‘Yeah, it’s as bad as Kelly said. Get the drill file!’
Drill file? And were those product and natural look remarks of a snarky nature?
They were. Soon I was being berated by Norman for my haircare technique (‘So we fall and bump our heads and lose our memory, and suddenly we don’t know how to deep condition any more?’) as well as my skincare regimen by Denise (‘Honey, what happened to that exfoliant I got you last month? You have to use it for it to actually work.’) and, of course, my nail-biting (‘No! Oh, for the love of God, no. Why would you do this? Why, why, why?’) by Doreen. It wasn’t until the guy doing my hair gave it a bit too hard of a tug and I was like, ‘Ow!’ and Norman was like, ‘Oh, did the widdle baby get an owie?’ with all this fake sympathy, that I went, ‘Yeah, actually, I did,’ and I grabbed his hand and ran it along the raised scar at the base of my skull.
After that, he got very quiet… and much gentler. I don’t know if Norman said something to the others — he must have — because they stopped picking on me too. They also started explaining to me what they were doing. Like the make-up lady — Denise — told me how it’s important to wash your face every night and every morning, and to use a gentle astringent to really get out the dirt. Then, if your skin was flaking, to use a moisturizer… which of course I’ve never used before in my life, because my old skin never flaked, it only broke out from too much oil.
But apparently I have dry skin now.
And then Norman told me it was probably better not to wash my hair every day… that it was easier to style and more manageable if I only washed it two or three times a week. And he gave me some powder I was supposed to sprinkle into my hair every morning, and comb through, so it wouldn’t ever look greasy.
And Doreen the nail lady applied a paste to each one of my nails that quickly hardened to a fake nail that she filed short, then painted black.
Then she went, ‘Bite them. Go on. Try.’
And when I stuck my nail into my mouth, I nearly broke a tooth on it.
‘You’ll never bite them again,’ she said, ‘so long as you wear these.
You’ll come see me twice a month so I can fill the gaps as they grow.’
And then drops were being put into my eyes to get the red out (and I was being gently chastised for crying) while the whole team tried to think of things to tell me that I might have forgotten, like that my skin is too sensitive to wax (like this was actually something that was going to happen), so I have to shave unwanted body hair (including my bikini line, about which Norman said to me, ‘You have to use a BRAND-NEW RAZOR every time,’ which, hello, was totally embarrassing. But also incredibly useful, considering what Kelly had told me in the car about the swimsuit-issue thing), and that processed foods aggravate acid reflux (like I hadn’t noticed), and that (more interestingly) Brandon and I were fully breaking up before my accident because I was sick of him catting around with Mischa behind my back (fortunately they told me this while Brandon wasn’t in the room). None of them seemed to know that Nikki had been catting around behind Brandon’s back with her room-mate’s boyfriend (thank God).
All this made the time pass very quickly, so I barely noticed my eyelashes were being curled, and my hair straightened, and my toenails painted black to match my new fingernails, and that they were even bleaching my arm hairs (yes).
Then they went, ‘OK, off to wardrobe,’ and I was sent to a (barely) curtained-off area of the room where three tiny girls, each about a foot shorter than me, started taking off my clothes (without even asking!) and making me put on new things… things I couldn’t even figure out HOW to put on, so it was a good thing they were there actually, to help.
Then they would look at what I was in and one of them would take a Polaroid and run out of the curtained area and then come back with a yes or no. Finally they settled on this diaphanous white dress that was so low cut it would barely stay on, and these silver stilettos, and no earrings, and finally I was let out of the curtained area and led down a long, plush carpeted hallway, past a lot of stylishly dressed people who stared at me — up at me, mostly, since I was so tall in my stilettos — and a few of whom said, ‘Hi, Nikki.’ I tried to say hi back, but whenever I did, I’d get a shocked look. I guess Nikki wasn’t known for being particularly friendly while on a shoot.
Which I could sort of see why, considering how people poked and pulled her.
Then finally I was led up to a door that had the words ROBERT STARK, CEO written on them in silver letters. And the door was thrown open and I was in Mr Stark’s office at last.
Except that Mr Stark’s office was in total chaos because of the photo shoot. There were power cords running criss-crossed all along the carpet, and giant klieg lights set up all over the place, shining down hotly on everyone, and skinny guys in black shirts and jeans everywhere, and girls in ponytails with fancy glasses holding cups of latte, and big blackout cloths draped over the floor-to-ceiling windows that must have offered a panoramic view of all of Manhattan.
And in the centre of it all was a huge mahogany desk, at which sat Robert Stark in a white shirt unbuttoned about six inches to reveal a lot of grey chest hair. And behind him stood his son, also wearing a white shirt open to reveal his completely hairless chest. Both men looked tanned (thanks, I knew from Denise, to bronzer, which she’d also smeared all over me — and I mean, all over… there is apparently no room for modesty in modelling) and handsome in the lights. Robert Stark, though, looked impatient, while his son just looked bored.