As casually as she could, she turned slightly away from him and checked out the room in the mirror over the bar. If this was a bust, there would be other agents backing him up and watching the doors. Then a woman came through the door from the direction of the ladies’ room and sat between Bob and Shelley. Another agent. Was this socializing or a setup?
Shelley drained her glass, put a twenty on the bar, and walked past the jazz group. A man was leaning against the wall beside the door, snapping his fingers to the rhythm of the group, and he gave her a good once-over. She left the hotel and threw herself in front of a passing taxi.
“Lady, you want to watch it,” the driver said. “I nearly clipped you.”
“I know, my fault. Go up to Seventy-ninth, then left on Fifth, then down to Seventy-sixth and take another left.”
The driver stepped on it. “That’s a complete circle,” he said.
“I know, but on Seventy-sixth, cross Madison and let me out at the other hotel entrance on Seventy-sixth.”
“It’s your fare,” he said.
“And let me know if anyone seems to be following us.” She didn’t want to look back herself, exposing her face.
“Jealous lover?” the driver asked.
“Jealous ex-husband,” she said.
“Yeah, I got an ex like that.” He turned left on Seventy-ninth, then again on Fifth Avenue and started downtown, then he made the left on Seventy-sixth, crossed Madison, and stopped at the hotel’s side entrance.
“Here you go,” he said. “Would you like some company tonight?” He turned and looked at her.
He wasn’t bad, she thought: young, good haircut. “You ever been shot by an ex-husband?” she asked.
“Not so far.”
“Let’s not start tonight.” She handed him a ten, got out of the cab, and ran into the hotel, making for the elevator bank. She pressed the button and waited nervously for the car to arrive, forcing herself to look neither to the left nor to the right. Finally, it arrived, and she got in and pressed the button two floors above her room, then she got off and took the fire stairs down two floors and let herself in.
She leaned against the door, breathing hard. Two FBI agents in one evening was too much to take. She hoped to God neither of them had noticed her in the bar. Maybe the hair color would be enough to throw them off.
She undressed, then removed her makeup and checked out her face in the bathroom mirror. She had never liked her nose much; maybe this was the moment to do something about it.
She sat on the bed and picked up a copy of New York magazine, remembering an ad she had seen in the back pages. She found it and read it carefully, looking at the before-and-after photos of a woman who had had cosmetic surgery. There was an 800 number and a notation that it was manned at all hours.
“Doctor’s office,” an answering service operator said.
“I’d like to make an appointment for a consultation,” Shelley said. “The sooner, the better.”
“I can give you ten tomorrow morning,” the woman said.
“Perfect.” She gave her traveling name and her cell number.
“Please, how did you hear about the doctor?”
“His ad in New York magazine.” She hung up and got ready for bed, calming herself the whole time.
Shelley presented herself on time at the doctor’s office, which was only a couple of blocks from the Carlyle. It was in a brownstone, and the reception room was nicely decorated. A nurse came and took her to the doctor’s office.
“Good morning,” he said, offering his hand. “I’m Dr. Charles.”
He looked awfully young, she thought.
“I’m thirty-four,” he said, laughing. “That’s always the first question. I’ve been in practice for six years, and I’m board-certified. How can I help you?”
“Well,” she said, tapping her nose with a finger, “I’ve finally decided to do something about this.”
He motioned for her to turn her head. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Let’s photograph you, and then I can give you a very good idea of what changes we might make.” He sat her in front of a camera and took shots of her from ahead and both sides, then he tapped a few computer keys, and her image, in right profile, appeared twice on the screen.
“Now,” he said, using a laser pointer, “my guess is you’d like this bump to go away.”
“Yes,” she said.
He tapped a few more keys, and the bump went away on the right-hand photo.
“Wonderful!” Shelley said. “I’d like my nose to be a bit shorter, too.” She watched as her nose changed. “That’s very good,” she said.
“Perhaps, since we’re shortening your nose, we should make your nostrils slightly smaller, in scale with the new length.” He tapped a few more keys.
“Yes, that’s perfect.”
“One more suggestion,” the doctor said. “We can turn your nose up just a bit. That can be very attractive.” He made the change.
“I like it,” she said. The upturned nose made her look very different from her old self.
“Now, let’s take a look from the left profile and the front.”
Two more shots appeared on the screen.
“I think it looks great from every angle,” Shelley said. “And I’m very impressed with your equipment.”
“Eliminates guesswork, doesn’t it?”
“It certainly does.”
“How quickly would you like to proceed?”
“As soon as possible,” she said.
He opened his diary and flipped through it. “Tomorrow is a surgery day,” he said. “How about two p.m. tomorrow?”
“Very good. How long will I be in the hospital?”
“The hospital won’t be necessary,” he said. “I have a complete operating suite upstairs, and a recovery room where you can spend the night. After that, you can go home, then come back to see me in a week. We’ll remove any stitches at that time, and any swelling will have gone down by then, and you’ll be able to go without the bandage, using makeup to cover any temporary redness or bruising. A month from tomorrow no one will be able to guess that you’ve had the procedure.”
He told her the price. “That includes your recovery and all follow-up visits. The entire fee is payable today.”
She agreed.
“Just give your check or credit card to the receptionist,” he said, “and we’ll expect you at one o’clock tomorrow for prep for the two o’clock surgery.”
She thanked him, then gave her credit card to the receptionist. Twenty minutes later she was back in her room, watching a movie on TV and ordering lunch from room service.
26
Herbie Fisher was sitting in his Eames lounge chair with the plans of Mark Hayes’s renovation in his lap. James Rutledge sat in a chair across the Mies van der Rohe Barcelona table.
“I wanted you to have a look at these, Herb, before I get final approval from Mark,” James said.
Herbie looked at the floor plan of Mark’s projected duplex penthouse, which had four bedrooms, as many baths, living room, dining room, kitchen, a large study with a utility room to one side, to hold unsightly equipment that Mark would need to work at home. “This looks wonderful, but I don’t understand how Mark gets to his apartment,” he said.
“Via a spiral staircase from his offices one floor below.”
“It’s going to be a bitch getting his furniture up a spiral staircase,” Herbie pointed out.
“Oh, we’re going to extend the freight elevator shaft up a floor, so he’ll be able to get anything, up to and including a concert grand piano, in that way.”
“So, let’s say he’s throwing a dinner party for a dozen friends. Are they going to take the freight elevator up to the executive floor, then walk up a flight? That’s awkward. What I think you should do is make a street entrance that opens into a private lobby with an elevator going straight up to both floors of the apartment. You can build a new shaft inside the building. There’s plenty of square footage for that without crowding the space, isn’t there?”