magazine?” she asks.
“Um, yes, sure. Thanks. Again.”
I’m not sure whether Carol is generally grumpy or if I made her that way. I thumb through the copy of The National Enquirer . MICHAEL GOES AFTER ELVIS’ $200 MILLION! CORDELIA BISCAYNE SHOPPING SPREE! CANDICE BERGEN DEATHBED DRAMA! I wish I’d brought something else to read. This magazine makes my stomach hurt.
So many people on a set to get to know, I think, while skimming PRINCESS DI’S LOVE LETTERS! So many names. How can I remember all the names of all the people I’m meeting in just one day? But isn’t it rude to not at least try? Mavis, Alicia, Carol , I say to myself. Mavis, Alicia, Carol .
“Do you like to do this yourself?” I look up from my magazine to find Carol waving a strange metal object in front of my face. I have no idea what it is or what it might be used for.
“I’m sorry—what is that?”
Carol peers over her glasses at me in surprise. “You’ve never seen one of these before?”
“No.”
“But of course you have. It’s an eyelash curler! I’m sure your mother has one.”
My mother could have had one, it’s true, but I didn’t have my mother during the time I might have been interested in what it was, something I don’t feel like explaining to Carol.
“Oh yeah, probably,” is all I say.
Carol brings the menacing instrument to my face, clamping my lashes between the narrow opening and then squeezing hard. I feel as if my whole eyelid is being stretched up and over the top of my head, and my eyes start to water.
“Feel okay?” she asks.
“Fine,” I say through gritted teeth. I want to ask Carol if I can do the second eye myself, but I’m afraid I’m already on her bad side, so I endure the discomfort once again. When she’s done, my lashes look like the ones on a doll I had when I was little whose eyes never closed, even when you laid her down.
Finally, I’m done in Makeup and shuttled two chairs down to Hair. “Hi, I’m Debra, I’ll be doing your hair.” ( Mavis, Alicia, Carol, Debra .) Debra is a black woman with dimples who appears to be about fifty, and not grumpy at all. “Look at those curls! You sure you don’t have one of my people mixed up in your family?” She laughs, squeezing my shoulder. “Don’t you worry. I know just what to do with this mess.”
Miraculously, she does know what to do. Instead of trying to flatten my hair, she curls it with a curling iron, which is the last thing I would ever have thought of. It makes all the curls look neat and shiny instead of the irregularly frizzy, uneven way they usually look.
Debra tilts her head and regards me in the mirror. “There we go,” she says, wrapping a curl around her finger, smoothing it down. “They’ll drop a little more, too, by the time we’re on set. Pretty girl.” She pats me on the head and starts unplugging her irons.
I smile at Debra, and the person in the mirror with the Manhattan face and hair smiles back. I look so little like me, the Brooklyn me, that I can actually enjoy looking at myself without most of the usual dissection. Maybe the trick is for me to always be in some sort of disguise, to always be dressed to play someone else. Only then can I really appreciate myself.
“ T he client,” as it turns out, isn’t one person but a group of seven people, five men and two women, all with suits and shiny hair, whose names I barely catch, so I don’t even try to add them to my list. One by one they shake my hand and introduce themselves, and then I don’t see them for the rest of the shoot. I do periodically get reports as to their levels of enthusiasm delivered from behind the video monitor where they’re watching.
“The client loved that take,” Bobby the director (Mavis, Alicia, Carol, Debra, Bobby) occasionally says, or, “The client is wondering if you could smile more?” I sit in a chair and do the monologue into the camera lens, my too-tight khakis split open in the back, my too-loose shirt
“Um, yes, sure. Thanks. Again.”
I’m not sure whether Carol is generally grumpy or if I made her that way. I thumb through the copy of The National Enquirer . MICHAEL GOES AFTER ELVIS’ $200 MILLION! CORDELIA BISCAYNE SHOPPING SPREE! CANDICE BERGEN DEATHBED DRAMA! I wish I’d brought something else to read. This magazine makes my stomach hurt.
So many people on a set to get to know, I think, while skimming PRINCESS DI’S LOVE LETTERS! So many names. How can I remember all the names of all the people I’m meeting in just one day? But isn’t it rude to not at least try? Mavis, Alicia, Carol , I say to myself. Mavis, Alicia, Carol .
“Do you like to do this yourself?” I look up from my magazine to find Carol waving a strange metal object in front of my face. I have no idea what it is or what it might be used for.
“I’m sorry—what is that?”
Carol peers over her glasses at me in surprise. “You’ve never seen one of these before?”
“No.”
“But of course you have. It’s an eyelash curler! I’m sure your mother has one.”
My mother could have had one, it’s true, but I didn’t have my mother during the time I might have been interested in what it was, something I don’t feel like explaining to Carol.
“Oh yeah, probably,” is all I say.
Carol brings the menacing instrument to my face, clamping my lashes between the narrow opening and then squeezing hard. I feel as if my whole eyelid is being stretched up and over the top of my head, and my eyes start to water.
“Feel okay?” she asks.
“Fine,” I say through gritted teeth. I want to ask Carol if I can do the second eye myself, but I’m afraid I’m already on her bad side, so I endure the discomfort once again. When she’s done, my lashes look like the ones on a doll I had when I was little whose eyes never closed, even when you laid her down.
Finally, I’m done in Makeup and shuttled two chairs down to Hair. “Hi, I’m Debra, I’ll be doing your hair.” ( Mavis, Alicia, Carol, Debra .) Debra is a black woman with dimples who appears to be about fifty, and not grumpy at all. “Look at those curls! You sure you don’t have one of my people mixed up in your family?” She laughs, squeezing my shoulder. “Don’t you worry. I know just what to do with this mess.”
Miraculously, she does know what to do. Instead of trying to flatten my hair, she curls it with a curling iron, which is the last thing I would ever have thought of. It makes all the curls look neat and shiny instead of the irregularly frizzy, uneven way they usually look.
Debra tilts her head and regards me in the mirror. “There we go,” she says, wrapping a curl around her finger, smoothing it down. “They’ll drop a little more, too, by the time we’re on set. Pretty girl.” She pats me on the head and starts unplugging her irons.
I smile at Debra, and the person in the mirror with the Manhattan face and hair smiles back. I look so little like me, the Brooklyn me, that I can actually enjoy looking at myself without most of the usual dissection. Maybe the trick is for me to always be in some sort of disguise, to always be dressed to play someone else. Only then can I really appreciate myself.
“ T he client,” as it turns out, isn’t one person but a group of seven people, five men and two women, all with suits and shiny hair, whose names I barely catch, so I don’t even try to add them to my list. One by one they shake my hand and introduce themselves, and then I don’t see them for the rest of the shoot. I do periodically get reports as to their levels of enthusiasm delivered from behind the video monitor where they’re watching.
“The client loved that take,” Bobby the director (Mavis, Alicia, Carol, Debra, Bobby) occasionally says, or, “The client is wondering if you could smile more?” I sit in a chair and do the monologue into the camera lens, my too-tight khakis split open in the back, my too-loose shirt
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