“I taught myself.”
I wait for any questions from her side or even a follow-up answer but she’s content to eat in silence. Ball’s in my court. “Does Sam have an assistant as well?”
She pauses. “Deng is ill and Mr. Yao decided to make do.”
“That’s too bad. I hope he gets better.” The polite words come automatically.
No reply. I decide to get some external confirmation of what Fangli said the night before. “When I was doing research, there were a lot of pieces about Sam and Fangli being a couple.”
“Yes.” Her voice is wooden. I can’t read this chick worth beans.
“Is it true?”
Mei’s cheeks pinken. “Mr. Yao and Ms. Wei are good friends. I believe Mr. Yao’s attentions are elsewhere.”
He has a girlfriend. I stuff some ruby-red tuna into my face. This is disappointing and should not be, not by a long shot. He’s rich, famous, and incredibly handsome. He’s a UN ambassador. It should be Amal Alamuddin Yao instead of Clooney.
Mei is now fully red and I wonder what gossip she has that she’s not sharing. I shouldn’t put her on the spot so I change the topic. “Are there plans for tonight?”
“An art exhibit.”
That’s why I’ve been crammed full of knowledge today. My heart thumps. “I have to talk?”
“About art.” She glances at her watch. “Time for the facial.”
***
I know about art now, I text Anjali.
She sends a photo of the Mona Lisa smoking a blunt.
It’s good to text with Anjali, a bit of normalcy in what is turning out to be a whackadoodle week. She tells me about work; I tell her about how to walk upstairs in a miniskirt. (Apparently the key is to angle your body to the side.) We’ve been talking more since I’ve been living at the Xanadu. Anjali says she wants to live like the one percent vicariously through me but it’s obvious she’s checking in to make sure I’m safe. Her concern touches me more than I thought it would, and I make an effort to text her every day so she knows I’m alive.
Then she’s off to a meeting and I prepare to be pampered.
The aesthetician comes to the room and sets up shop with bottles and vials and bright-white towels before inviting me to lie down with a smile filled with teeth so bleached they’re blue. Then comes an hour of cosseting, from cold masks to face rollers from the top of my head to the tops of my boobs or, as the aesthetician calls it, my décolletage. There are many creams and smells. My multiple imperfections are poked and prodded and eventually eradicated under the skillful hands and tweezers of the aesthetician. It finishes with a face mask that warms and tightens my skin as ten fingers rub and scratch against my scalp. If I’d been a cat, I would have purred. I think I purr anyway because I am a gooey, limp jellyfish with no visible pores. The aesthetician assures me this is a new process so I can go out right away instead of letting my skin settle. I take her word for it.
I lie there in a blissful daze of relaxation until she starts to pull off the mask, which has cemented itself to my face. At my mewl of protest, the aesthetician pauses. “This shouldn’t hurt,” she says.
I would have answered had I been able to move my lips, but the mask has glued them in place. The woman tugs at the mask and lifts my head right off the table.
“I haven’t seen this before,” she says in a thoughtful tone.
There are certain times I don’t want to hear that I’m special. The first is from any healthcare professional. A close second is from a woman who’s slathered me with goop she can’t get off my face. Mei materializes beside me like Porella, the Avenging Angel of Skincare, as the woman slowly peels the mask off. I swivel my eyes to her face and see the droplets of stress sweat on her upper lip as Mei murmurs a stream of low-voiced encouragement that the aesthetician and I both interpret as thinly veiled threats.
I’ve never been flayed but I have ripped off adhesive bandages. I imagine this experience is somewhere between the two. I’m no yeti but whatever hairs were on my face bid my skin an unwilling farewell as she detaches the mask millimeter by millimeter and I try not to squeal. It’s hard.
When she gives a final rip, I screech.
The door bangs open. “What the hell’s going on?”
A lot of things happen at once. Sam comes through the door in a dark blur. Shocked, I pop up from the table like a jack-in-the-box, forgetting that I’m only wrapped in a towel that immediately falls off. Sam makes eye contact with me before his eyes dip down to my gigantic heart-polka-dot granny panties and he freezes before he slaps his hands over his face and stumbles back making inarticulate sounds. I scramble to pick up the towel, in the process knocking the portable table with my butt. It slams into the poor aesthetician, who is gawking at the beauty that is Sam Yao. She falls back and then lets out a high keening sound as her hand plunges into the pot of whitish devil goo that has made such a mess of my face.
Mei rises up and gets us organized without a single word. Sam is sent to wait in his room. I’m directed to get back on the table with a finger jab. She gives a look to the aesthetician—a marvel of expressionless eloquence—who wipes her twitching hands with a towel.
All that beautiful relaxation has gone. How could I have forgotten to get the key from Sam? My face, the skin much thinner than it was ten minutes ago, burns with shame. How much did he see? Once I’m not dressed in a towel, we’re going to have words, but now I’m a beaten human sprawled across the table with Mei bending over me shaking her head and the aesthetician poking at me with cautious fingers.
“Nothing a cooling mask won’t solve,” she chirps finally.
I catch Mei’s eye and we have a moment of communion as I beg her through an interpretive eyebrow dance to save me.
“We’re due for another appointment,” she says smoothly.
“Then I’ll use a toner and…”
“I’m good!” I swing my feet down and slide on the thin terry cloth slippers. I finally manage to back out, holding the towel around me. Mei follows me into the bedroom, me poking my head around the door to make sure it’s Sam-free, and we both look in the mirror to survey the blotchy patches that cover my face like an infectious disease.
I crane my neck to the side and suck in my cheek. There’s a patch that resembles Australia. “It’s not that bad,” I say. “A little sore, maybe. That’s the point of exfoliation, right? To get rid of dead layers to get your skin softer?” I’ve never done more than a crushed-apricot-seed scrub, so this is out of my realm of experience.
I splash cold water on my face to relieve some of the burn and then dampen a towel to press against my cheek. There’s no point getting angry at the aesthetician, who probably did the best she could, so I keep my mouth shut and try to look on the bright side. Mei watches me in the mirror. “Did she ask about your skin type? What medications you’re on? If you had previous allergies?”
“What does that matter?” I move the towel to the other side.
“It’s her job and she failed if she didn’t check.”
“Well, it’s too late now. I’m sure she did her best.” I don’t want to get her in trouble. I grab a vial of hotel moisturizer and slather my face with the smell of vanilla and nutmeg. I read a study that said that men like women to smell like sweet foods but I don’t think this is what they had in mind. I now smell like a bakery prepping for the holidays.
Perfect.
***
I decide to ignore Sam’s spectator status in my latest disgrace and pray he’ll do the same. There’s no need for either of us to relive that moment of grooming chaos, and now that we’ve called a détente, it would be rude of him to try to lord it over me.
Mei puts the shopping visitors off for an hour as she works over my face with a solid inch of foundation.