Here’s my short story that was published in the literary magazine Thirty-fourth Parallel.
Facelifts and Cigarettes.
I’m going to put a light foundation on; it’s water based.” Like paint from a tube, she squeezed the makeup onto a square hand-sized mirror, spreading it in circles with a tiny spatula.
“I don’t like a lot of makeup,” he said. “It’s not a glamour part.”
“No, not at all.”
“We’re doing a Western.”
He leaned forward in his chair and
picked one of the magazines to read.
On the cover was a movie star who had made a comeback from stints in rehabs and was now sober with the number-one summer box-office film.
“The drugs and alcohol have really aged him,” he said aloud what he was thinking. “He’s my age.”
The makeup lady really looked at him in mirror as though she were trying to figure out where on his face his aged showed. Then glanced down at the cover of the magazine. “I would never have guessed that you two were the same age.”
“I read in the New York Times that if you’re a smoker you can’t have a facelift.”
In the mirror he saw the actor two chairs down look up from the magazine she was reading.
“I had one 20 years ago,” she said. He couldn’t see it. The makeup lady opened a zip-lock bag to get a powder pad. “The doctor told me to quit smoking.”
He wasn’t sure he should be hearing this, it was his first day of shooting, and
they had just met when he stepped into the hair and makeup trailer. When they were introduced he was impressed that he was working with a TV icon, an Emmy winner, who had started out as a child star and never faded. Aren’t actresses
of her stature supposed to be discreet about the work they’ve had done? Anyway, he asked, “You were a smoker?”
“Four packs a day.”
“Really?”
“Yup. When you smoke, the layers
under the skin dies. When you have the surgery, they peel everything back.” To demonstrate her point, her fingers were brushing over her jaw-line. He swiveled in his chair to get a better look. Still he couldn’t see that she had any work done to her face. She must be kidding.
“So you quit smoking?” he asked. “No.”
“Really?”
“What the hell for? It didn’t work,” she
dropped her hands from her face.
She was right, but he didn’t know how
to say it so he said nothing.
“It’s not like I’m going to go back
and get a lift.” Breaking herself up, she laughed, and he couldn’t help but to join her. “But, now I only smoke a half pack a day.”
“There you’re done,” the makeup lady told him.
He looked at himself in the mirror.
“You can hardly see it,” the makeup lady said.
Daniel Beer 