The Botox Diaries, page 20
“I’m sure he’s fine,” I say. But I do wonder where he is. The Carlyle? The Pussycat Club? Camped out in Central Park with a bottle of gin? Not Dan. My guess is he’s tossing fitfully on the couch in his office.
“Somebody should tell him that this isn’t the way to win me back,” Lucy grumbles. “But if you’re alone, that means Jacques’s not there. How come?”
“Had to fly to Washington for some meetings. He’s coming back this weekend. And we’re not doing anything that has to do with canoes or cows.”
“Want to surprise him when he gets back?” Lucy asks. “We could do something to make you really beautiful.”
Not pretty enough for either Dan or Jacques, I guess. Amazing they let me out of the house. “Didn’t know I look that bad,” I say.
“That’s not what I meant at all,” she says appeasingly. “It’s just that now that we’re over forty—I hate saying that number out loud—we have to be realistic. Give Mother Nature a helping hand.”
“She did pretty well on the trees, the flowers, and Mount Rushmore,” I say. “Did she do so badly on me?”
“Darling, Mother Nature didn’t make Mount Rushmore. That’s the one with the presidents. See, even the mountains needed some cosmetic work. A little chiseling, a little nipping, a little shot now and then.”
I sigh. We’ve been around this block before. “No way I’m getting Botox injections,” I remind her. “And no way I’m seeing your favorite plastic surgeon again. Once in Dr. Peter Paulo’s apartment was enough, thank you. I don’t need to go to his office.”
“Oh, forget about Peter. I don’t go to him anymore,” Lucy says, shrugging off Dr. Paulo as being as yesterday as Jenny Jones or Susan Powter. Wonder whatever happened to her. Disappeared faster than the pounds she was supposed to help you lose.
“So who’s the new miracle worker?” I ask. “Annie Sullivan?
“Better,” Lucy laughs. “Dr. Herb Parnell. He has a new book that’s going to be huge. The Needle of Youth. There’s a bagels-and-Botox book signing party for him tomorrow.”
“That’s an interesting menu,” I say. “Actually, I prefer my bagels with cream cheese.”
“But this is so much fun,” Lucy says. “You eat a little, you have a happy hour, and you all have your Botox done together.”
“Of course it’s a happy hour. You can’t move your face to frown,” I say. “Anyway, how much does this little Botox-and-lox event cost?”
“No lox—it’s in Connecticut,” Lucy says. “And since it’s a book party, the shots are free. Besides, it’s at Dahlia Hammerschmidt’s. You’ll love seeing her country estate.”
“Dahlia Hammerschmidt? I thought she was Dr. Paulo’s patient.”
Lucy pauses, suitably impressed. “Jess, you never know anything about anyone. How in heaven’s name did you know that?”
For once, I’m feeling unbearably smug. Liz Smith has nothing on me. At least I don’t think she does.
“Not revealing my sources,” I say.
“Oh, I’ve got it,” Lucy says, making a quick deduction. “I bet Peter was name-dropping during your date. Seduction by celebrity-association. That’s so New Jersey of him. Just one of the reasons we’ve all moved on. Well, that and the rumor about Farrah Fawcett’s droopy eyelid. Not that I ever believed it.”
I sigh. “So what’s so good about this latest Merlin? Other than that he’s newer than the old one?”
“He’s got the latest of everything,” Lucy says conspiratorially. “All the drugs that haven’t been FDA approved yet.”
“That’s confidence-inspiring. I thought FDA approval was a good thing.”
“Please, they move way too slowly for us. At our age we can’t wait for those ten-year studies. What’s the worst? You blow a few dollars and it doesn’t work?”
“Or you blow a few dollars and end up dead. But with a perfectly unlined complexion.”
“At least you look good for your funeral,” Lucy says flippantly. “Be ready. I’ll pick you up at three.”
Lucy pulls up to my house in a flashy silver Porsche 911 Carrera convertible. The top is down and she’s wearing dark oversized sunglasses with a scarf tied around her hair.
“I didn’t know I was going to Connecticut with Grace Kelly,” I say, climbing in and landing on the low-slung seat with a thud. “What’s this all about?”
“Traded in the Mercedes. Way too matronly. Fabulous acceleration on this baby,” Lucy says, zooming away from the curb.
“But a silver Porsche?”
“Trite, isn’t it,” Lucy says, smirking as she revs past a gawking teenage boy in a Honda Accord. “Turn forty-two and buy a sports car to try to prove I’m still young. Just like the guys. Midlife crises are equal opportunity these days.”
“My understanding was you have an affair or you buy the midlife crisis car. How come you get both?”
“Just lucky,” she says, lovingly stroking the stick shift.
“Guess when I have my midlife crisis I’ll have to get a tattoo or dye my hair purple. I never learned to drive a manual.”
“Neither did I,” Lucy admits. “On this car, you can leave it in automatic. Then the stick’s just there for show.”
“Wonder if Mario Andretti used it that way.” I want to stretch my cramped legs, but there’s no room. Lucy turns onto the highway and whips into the left lane. My hair is flying wildly around my head and I try to tie it back with my fingers. Lucy purses her lips, jams her foot on the gas and hits eighty.
“A little reckless today?” I ask, clutching the sides of my seat.
“Sorry,” she says, dropping back down to seventy-five. “Check the glove compartment. I have just what you need.”
“A steel-plated crash helmet, I hope.” But I should know better. I reach in and find an extra head scarf. Won’t save my life, but at least it’s Gucci.
By the time we hit Route 7 in Connecticut, I’m enjoying the wind in my face and the envious glances of every man we pass who’s trapped in a family sedan. I’m starting to feel like the coolest girl in high school—if only my aching, scrunched-up knees weren’t reminding me that I won’t be trying out for the cheerleading squad anytime soon. With Metallica blaring from the CD player, we pull into Dahlia Hammerschmidt’s circular driveway and the young valet eyes us—or maybe the car—approvingly. Lucy springs out and tosses him the keys.
“Hope you can drive stick,” she challenges as she waltzes away.
We walk past perfectly manicured hedges that must keep a topiary-team of Japanese gardeners working 24/7. I can’t even keep my bushes from drooping over into the neighbor’s yard, and Dahlia’s evergreens are a menagerie of bears and elephants. Once inside the massive ornamented front door, a butler hands us a small bound pamphlet with a grand, curlicued title page that reads “The Hammerschmidts at Versailles.” I look helplessly at Lucy.
“Dahlia’s ballroom is an exact replica of the Hall of Mirrors,” Lucy whispers. “She figures if it was good enough for Marie Antoinette, it’s good enough for her.”
We walk down an endless parquet hallway hung with dozens of ancestral portraits. The Hammerschmidts have either a fine family tree or a good art dealer. Once we reach the football-field-sized ballroom, I stop short, awed. Probably the desired effect. The room is done entirely in white and gold and mirrors—the same decorating scheme of every apartment I’ve ever seen in Miami. But this faux-French rendering boasts a dozen enormous hanging cut-crystal chandeliers, two-dozen statues of gold nymphets hoisting up shimmering candelabras, and enough three-story-high arched French doors and windows to have kept the Pella company busy for two years. Dahlia even copied the red velvet ropes currently used at Versailles to block eager tourists from touching the gilded treasures. Apparently nobody told her Louis XVI wasn’t the one who put them there.
Lucy spots an editor of Allure across the room and goes off to compare notes on their slow-weight training class. Talk about the latest. Instead of hours in the gym pumping iron, the new in-the-know technique requires hefting something the weight of a small Brinks truck just once or twice. Verrryy slowwwly. Makes no sense, but apparently it works. Just twenty minutes a week and they both look like goddesses. Muscle-spasmed goddesses, but goddesses. I decide to get something to eat, but all I can find here at Versailles-on-the-Housatonic are a few bacon-wrapped figs and one tiny tray of cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Dahlia must be very, very rich, if she can afford not to feed her guests and expect them to come back.
But obviously they do. Looking around, I realize the room is packed with celebrities—or people who think they are. Fox News anchors, ’70s sitcom stars, and the local weather woman from WPIX. Wouldn’t they prefer to get their Botox shots in private? No, maybe not. Letting people know you’ve had plastic surgery is the fastest way to land a People cover these days. Right behind starting a twelve-step program for sex addiction. Or hiring a surrogate to give birth to your babies, preferably triplets.
Lucy comes wafting back, trailed by an attractive, bespectacled doctor in a polo shirt and cashmere jacket. The man of the hour. And dressed right. If you’re performing appendectomies, hospital scrubs and white lab coats offer reassurance. But for elective beauty procedures, good looks and a custom wardrobe are the ticket.
“Jess, darling, meet the fabulous Dr. Herb Parnell. Every girl’s new best friend.”
“Nice to meet you,” he says, scrutinizing me as he extends his hand, and I notice his long tapered fingers. Concert pianist might have been a more fulfilling career option. Or maybe not. “Lucy tells me you’re a virgin.”
“Plastic surgically speaking, of course,” Lucy adds hastily.
Ever the professional, Dr. Parnell appraises my face. “Even if it’s your first time, you’ll be easy,” he says cupping my chin. “A little Botox on the forehead. Some Cymetra under the cheekbone. A couple of shots of Restylane around the lips. And CosmoDerm to fill in the laugh lines around your eyes. You’re lucky, not too much damage yet. Two, three dozen injections tops and we’re done.”
Done with what? With any chance to remember that forty isn’t twenty and doesn’t have to be? The good things about getting older—wisdom, experience, all that—are fine, but I guess nobody wants them to show up on her face. Still, how can you age gracefully if you’re at the doctor’s office all the time?
“Why would I need an injection under my cheekbones?” I ask Dr. Parnell, curious despite myself. “And what did you say would go there? The one that sounded like a new STD?”
“Cymetra. My new favorite,” he answers, warming to the subject. “All pure. Made from ground-up human skin. A little hard to get since it’s made from cadavers. We’re fighting for FDA approval. But my real dream is to have it part of the donor form on the back of your license.”
What an idea. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to make the ultimate sacrifice and save someone from a lifetime of wrinkles?
“He’s recommended Artefill for me,” Lucy bubbles enthusiastically. “For my laugh lines. Lasts longer than regular collagen. It’s got acrylic beads in it.”
“The beads stimulate your skin to make its own collagen,” Dr. Parnell explains. “There is a little downside, though. Sometimes the beads show through. Especially if you have thin skin.”
“That won’t be a problem for me,” Lucy says cavalierly. “Can’t last in my business with thin skin.”
We’ve obviously monopolized the book-writing doctor long enough, because just then, Dahlia Hammerschmidt sashays over. A diminutive woman in size only, with pouffed-up hair, pushed-up breasts and diamond jewelry that weighs more than she does, she drapes a proprietary arm around Dr. Parnell’s waist.
“Howya doin, Hoib?” Dahlia asks in a perfect New Yawk accent, which reveals that she isn’t old money, she just married it. “Everything still hunky-dory?”
“I’m great,” he says, beaming. He stands up a little straighter—not taller, but straighter—blossoming under her doting attention.
“You all know this boy’s the best, don’t ya?” she asks, squeezing his arm and pressing herself a little closer to him.
“You’re too nice to me,” he says, pretending to be modest, but obviously basking in her adulation. I always wonder how some women do that—make a man feel ten feet tall even if he’s barely five-foot-eight. If I went all honey-tongued and pressed myself against a guy, I don’t think I’d get the same results. I’ve never been good at obsequious. Can spell it, though. Which gets me almost nowhere.
“Another drink, sweetie?” asks Dahlia, still hanging—make that dripping—on “Hoib.”
Another drink? Isn’t he going to be wielding needles soon? I’d like to think the AMA is at least as strict as the pilots’ union. No alcohol consumption for six hours before going on the job.
Dahlia signals a waiter who takes away one empty glass and hands the enthralled Herb a refill. Thank goodness. Seltzer.
“Bottoms up,” Dahlia says, taking wine for herself and clicking glasses with her guest of honor. “As soon as you’re done, I have seven guests ready for their Botox. Don’t worry. They’ve already bought your book. All you have to do is sign and shoot.”
Herb takes a final gulp of seltzer, and lacking a scrub sink, wipes his palms along the side of his pants. Then moving to the center of the ballroom, he sits down at a white and gilded Louis XVI desk and lines up half a dozen ballpoint pens and an equal number of hypodermics.
A nurse—or at least someone in a white uniform—makes her way through the gaggle of waiting women. “Ladies, who wants Emla? Emla anyone?” she asks perkily.
“Numbing cream,” Lucy translates for me.
Most of the women accept her offer. Using a long cotton-tipped stick, the nurse swabs their foreheads with a greasy ointment, then slaps a piece of white gauze over it.
“Starting to look like a war zone,” I say to Lucy. “What’ll happen when they’re done?”
“Just some light bruising,” Lucy shrugs. “Usually, anyway. Though there was that one time when I got collagen and the needle marks looked like a row of bullet holes.”
“Great. Maybe after this Botox party we can stage a little reenactment of the War of 1812.”
Could be I really am the only virgin in the room, though, because nobody else seems to be paying much attention to the shooting gallery in the middle of the party. I, on the other hand, am riveted as the good—we hope—doctor yanks on a plastic surgical glove and picks up an oversized needle. His first patient eagerly comes forward.
“So the most beautiful woman steps up first,” he says with an easy charm. A flattering line beats a Harvard Medical degree anytime. Especially if you want all the rich women in New York flocking to your door. “Scrunch that pretty forehead for me and we’ll see if there’s anything at all we need to fix.”
She scrunches and he nods. “We can take care of this little problem quickly,” he says, and rapidly begins shooting into the offending wrinkle. Three, four, five, six quick injections. I stop counting.
“Done,” he says, smiling and bidding the nurse to get an ice pack. “You’ll be perfect. But we want to make sure the Botox doesn’t move around. You know the rules. Don’t bend over or lie down for the next four hours.”
“Another reason I could never have Botox,” I say to Lucy as the first patient moves away, ice pack pressed to her forehead. “How could I ever go four hours without touching my toes or having sex?”
“You can have sex standing up,” Lucy counters.
“I know,” I say grimly. “Did that in Vermont.”
“Good, then there’s no reason not to have Botox,” Lucy concludes, gently nudging me forward. “You can go ahead of me.”
“That’s okay.” I snag the last of the bacon wraps from a passing waiter. “For now, I’ll stick with food fat to fill in the wrinkles. Although usually what it does is fill out my hips.”
“We can make that work to your advantage,” Lucy advises with a laugh. “Herb can liposuction the fat from your thighs and inject it into your face. It’s like winning the daily double.”
An X-ray-thin octogenarian standing behind us waves her cane excitedly. “I’ve done it three times,” she chirps. “You don’t have to worry if you don’t have enough fat of your own, because Herb will arrange for a lipo donor.”
Lipo donor. Now there’s a job I’m well equipped for. I pat my wholesome thighs. Who knew these chubby babies could open up a whole new career for me?
One woman after another comes up to Dr. Parnell for the scrunch and shoot. When it’s finally Lucy’s turn, she gives her copy of The Needle of Youth to Dr. Parnell who scrawls, “In Beauty We Trust,” and hands it back to her.
“So what’s up for you today?” Dr. Parnell asks, quickly getting down to business. “I don’t see a lot of problems but give me a scrunch.”
Lucy tries mightily but she can’t. I know because I can see her nostrils flaring and her eyes half-closed. But her forehead is scrunch-proof.
“I just had Botox five weeks ago,” she says apologetically. “But I was thinking I could use a booster.”
“Don’t think so. Nothing’s moving,” says Dr. Parnell. “Maybe some place other than the forehead?”
“Be careful not to overdose her or she’ll die,” I pipe in, as if I know what I’m talking about.
Dr. Parnell laughs tolerantly. “Nobody’s ever died from Botox,” he says.
Right. Botox is just botulism. I spent my whole life avoiding dented cans and now it’s the choice du jour.
“One thing has been bothering me,” Lucy says, glancing down at the deeply cut V-neck on her wrap dress.
Surely she can’t be expecting Dr. Parnell to do on-the-spot breast implants. And why would she need them? Another new toy? Aren’t the Porsche and the boyfriend enough?
“The top of my breasts are starting to get crinkly,” Lucy whispers so softly you’d think she was a mole for the CIA. “There’s some creasing.”
Dr. Parnell traces an imaginary fault line on her chest. “I think it’s just cleavage. But if it’s bothering you, consider it gone,” he says.
