Hollywood Stuff Read Free Page B

jeans?”
    “Okay, I’m done talking about this. I’ll go because you want to go and we’ll find a flea market and take pictures of each other at the Chinese Theatre, but I am not signing away my rights for some ridiculous movie.”
    “Agreed,” said Tim. “That would be a terrible idea.”
    Jane went into the spare room to get out a suitcase and Tim quickly looked over the makeup table. He gathered up Jane’s pathetically small supply of paints and powders and slipped them into a worn makeup bag. “She’s going to need every one of these,” he said softly, shaking his head. “Should have been moisturizing,” he added, giving his own firm chin an appreciative pat.
    By noon, Jane had finally managed to pack a suitcase whose contents met with Tim’s approval. He then drove her to a day spa in Chicago where he knew a friend of a friend. Jane was manicured and pedicured and, in his best while-we’re-here-what-the-heck style, Tim convinced her to get her hair cut.
    Jane had been letting it grow out from a very short experimental phase where she told people she was re-creating a kind of brunette Mia Farrow pixie. Her short hair directly coincided with her temporary separation from Charley, and Jane knew that her style choice had less to do with Mia’s character on the sixties television show
Peyton Place
than her own feelings of guilt. She had to become shorn and penitent. Charley had finally convinced her that although she could pull it off—he admitted she had fine cheekbones—he would love to run his fingers through her hair, her long hair, once more.
    “I promised Charley,” she said, holding up her hand in a stop-sign position when the stylist approached with the scissors.
    “He will approve, sweetie,” said Tim, and nodded at Buzz, the stylist. “Just a cleanup, right?”
    “Absolutely.”
    Jane had to admit, when she was all done, staring at herself in the mirror, Tim might have been right. Her fine brown hair, stretching to almost shoulder-skimming, had looked tired, accentuated her drawn face. Now, with soft layers, slightly spiky on the ends, her whole face lightened. Her brown eyes were bigger, her smile brighter. Jane’s hands were smooth and her nails, red ovals, elongated her fingers. She kept staring at herself, waving her hands next to her head, smiling. Inside Charley’s argyle socks, which she preferred to her own, Jane wiggled her deliciously painted apple-red toes. Although she had begun the ordeal feeling like the Cowardly Lion being groomed for Oz, she wasn’t at all displeased with the result. And her new look did confer courage.
    “Hello, Bix, good to meet you,” Jane said, practicing. “And Jeb, how wonderful to see you again.”
    “Smile with your eyes, babe, and take the voice register down a notch. You can’t miss with throaty,” said Tim, taking her wallet and removing her credit card and handing it to the severe-looking blonde dressed entirely in black at the front desk.
    The girl in black, whose red-shellacked lips barely moved, asked something which Jane heard as, “Could I ask what she thinks she’s doing?”
    “Naturally,” said Tim, taking the bill and writing something with a flourish.
    “Oh,” said Jane, the translation of Lacquer Lips’s remark hitting her. “Would you like to add a gratuity?”
    “Yes,” said Tim, taking Jane’s arm and guiding her through the door that the receptionist had run out from behind the counter to open for them, “and you liked adding a big fat one.”
    By six o’clock, Jane and Tim were buckling themselves into first-class recliners and sipping Grey Goose with bleu-cheese-stuffed olives.
    “How did you manage first class?” asked Jane. “Bix Pix Flix didn’t spring for this.”
    “How do you know that?” asked Tim, holding up two fingers to the flight attendant to signal that they were ready for more. “They might be dying to sign us and want to wine and dine us royally.”
    “I know to you I’m a poor