Face Value by Kathleen Baird-Murray

earlier at LAX. It was more than just the sound of a car going over bumps, it was a gentle, cushioned thud, reverberating through her limbs like a warm hug from a big man, a movie car noise, marking each meter’s entry into the glistening city.
    “What noise?”
    “You know . . . kerdunk . . . kerdunk . . . there it goes!”
    “Oh! I don’t know. You mean the car going over the seams in the road? I guess I’m so used to it.” He smiled through the mirror at her.
    She resolved to make that her noise, the way she would remember this city and the intoxicating smells that went with it. She wrapped the noise and the smells up in the golden-hour light as it finally faded into night.
    She felt as if she was on holiday. Ready to tune in, turn on, drop out, or was it the other way round? For once, it didn’t really matter in which order the words came, sorry, Timothy Leary. The fact that life could be like this, could be normal for the inhabitants of Los Angeles, was insurmountable for her, made her almost angry that they had kept it a secret for so long. Except of course they hadn’t, it was always on the news even if it was only as a backdrop to some celebrity gossip show on breakfast television (Lise watched them). How could the Angelinos manage to hold down jobs, run up and down beaches in red swimsuits rescuing people, or prance about on red carpets in long dresses, knowing that the sea was two blocks away, the mountains a short drive, and the possibilities—exciting, dangerous, good to know—right beneath their noses?
    She had read—of course she had—of embittered, angry rap stars with bulbous guns and booty-shaking girlfriends; of impoverished Hispanics fleeing Mexico only to court low-paid jobs on street corners; of earthquakes and forest fires tearing through spoiled men’s Malibu beach houses; of androgynous singers and overpaid film stars getting away with murder and molestation; of brown smog that sulked over the landscape refusing to join in the fun; but all these trials, tribulations seemed to have been forgotten time after time in the city’s rush to forgive its own, to embrace the gloss of makeup, lights, cameras, action, and start over. L.A. was one big film set, from the tatty billboards with big-breasted pinups to the mirrored Dallas-type buildings that seemed to offer a token gesture of appeasement to those who wished to do business, needed that veneer of suited conformity. All of which made Kate the next best thing to the aspiring starlet just off the bus from Hicksville (Maidstone). All she had to do was smile, be her witty, charming, English self, and the city would open up its heart to her, transform her into anyone she wanted to be. The waiters, the people at the check-in desk, the driver who had ferried her from the airport into the city the night before, all had been friendly. Like one big aphrodisiac, it could all go to her head, would do if she wasn’t so secure in her own skin. Which she was, wasn’t she?
    In spite of this rapture she was anxious tonight, as she lay on another crisp, white, king-size hotel bed, her clothes strewn on the floor around her, a room-service tray with the slurried remains of spaghetti Bolognese (made with tofu) calmly waiting outside her door to be collected by the Prada-clad waiter. Her anxiety was on a par with her first haunted, epic journey to New York, but this time her worries were more intrinsic to the very core of who she really was. She had been half able to justify the plastic surgery supplement to herself by pretending it was a factual, historical account of surgery in this most vain of cities and among that most vain of professions. She had unearthed contacts: Marilyn Monroe’s last agent before she died, and an elderly, now retired surgeon whose last public appearance was to give a lecture to university students on the history of surgery in Hollywood. But what if in dressing up this story to be some kind of fabulous celebration of surgery at its