She liked his hands. His eyes. The way he looked at her as if he could see beneath the skin, as if he were modelling her from clay, his fingers there at her jawline, at the orbits of her eyes, feeling their way across her brow.
She'd stepped in out of the hard clean light of early summer, announced herself to the receptionist and barely had time to leaf through one of the magazines on the end table before she'd been ushered into this room, with its quiet shadows and the big black-leather reclining chair in the middle of the floor -- it was like a dentist's chair, that was her impression, only without all the rest of the paraphernalia. And that was good, because she hated the dentist, but then who didn't? Pain, necessary pain, pain in the service of improvement and health, that was what the dentist gave you, and she wondered about this -- what would this give her?
The recliner said nothing to her, but it intimidated her all the same, and so she'd taken a seat in a straight-backed chair just under the single shaded window. And then he was there, soft-voiced and smiling, and he pulled up a second chair and sat close, studying her face.
"It was the Botox I was interested in," she heard herself say, the walls soaking up her words as if she were in a confessional. "These frown marks, right here?" -- she lifted a hand to run two fingers along the rift between her eyes -- "and maybe my eyes too, underneath them? I thought -- well, looking in the mirror I thought they looked a little tired or saggy or something.
"Right here? Right along here? And maybe you could -- if there's some procedure, nothing radical, just some smoothing out there? Is that possible?" She couldn't help herself: she laughed then, a laugh of nerves, yes, because all this was strange to her and he hadn't said a word beyond that first soft hello, just fixed those eyes of his on the lines of her face and hadn't let go even to blink. "I guess it's because I'm coming up on my birthday -- next week, I mean. I'll be 35, if you can believe it, so just &hellip; "
"Yes," he said, rising, "why don't you have a seat here" -- indicating the leather recliner -- "and we'll have a look?"
On the way out, she stopped at the desk to make an appointment for the Botox treatment. Both secretaries -- or no, one was a nurse flipping through files in the far corner -- had flawless faces, not a line or wrinkle visible, and she wondered about that. Did they get a discount? Was that one of the perks of the job? There was a colour brochure to take home and study, forms to sign. The Botox was nothing, he'd assured her -- simplest thing in the world, and it wouldn't take more than 15 minutes -- and the procedure on her eyes was very routine too, a snip of the excess skin and removal of the fat pads, the whole thing done in-office, though she'd be under sedation.
It would take a month to heal, two to three months till it was perfect. He had run his fingers under her chin, stroked the flesh below her ears and pressed his thumbs into the hollows there. "You've got beautiful skin," he said. "Stay out of the sun and you won't need anything major for 15, 20 years."
He gave her a smile. "Yes, sure."
"Bach?"
"Is that what this is? I never know -- it's the music service. But they're good and I think it helps the patients relax -- soothing, you know? Hey, better than heavy metal, right?"
She made a leap here, and everything to come was the result of it, as inevitable and indisputable as if she'd planned it all out beforehand: "The reason I ask is because I have two tickets for Saturday night -- at the Music Academy? It's an all-Bach programme, and" -- she lifted her eyebrows, she could still do that -- "my girlfriend just told me this morning she can't make it. She was -- she had to go out of town unexpectedly -- and I was wondering: would you like to go?"
After the concert -- he'd begged off, said he'd love to go but had to check with Maggie, the secretary, to see if he was free, and then he wasn't -- she went into Andalusia, a restaurant she liked because it had a good feel and a long bar where people gathered to have tapas and drinks while a guitarist worked his way through the flamenco catalogue in a nook by the fireplace.
She knew people here -- the bartender, Enrique, especially -- and she didn't feel out of place coming in alone. Or she did, but not to the extent she felt elsewhere. Enrique took care of her, made sure nobody crowded her. He was protective, maybe a little obsessive even, and if he had a thing for her, well, she could use that to her advantage. A little mutual flirtation, that was all, but she wasn't seriously looking -- or she hadn't been, not since she'd got her divorce. She had a house, money in the bank, the freedom to eat when and where she liked, to travel, make her own schedule, and she was enjoying it, that was what she kept telling herself.
She was having ceviche and a salad, sipping a glass of Chilean red and looking through the local newspaper -- she couldn't resist the Personals: they were so tacky, so dishonest and nakedly self-serving, and how pathetic could people be? -- when she felt a tap at her shoulder and there he was, Dr Mellors, in a pale gold sportcoat and a black silk shirt open at the collar. "Hello," he said, "or should I say buenas noches?" and there was nothing even faintly medicinal in his tone.
"Oh, hi," she said, taken by surprise. Here he was, looming over her again, and though she'd been thinking of him all through the concert, trying to fit him into the empty seat beside her, for one flustered second she couldn't summon his name. "How are you?"
He just smiled in answer. A beat went by, Enrique giving her a sidelong glance from the near end of the bar. "You look terrific," he said finally.
"All dressed up, huh?"
"The concert," she said.
"Oh, right, yeah -- how was that?"
"All right, I guess." It had served its purpose, giving her an excuse to put on some make-up and leave the house, to do something, anything. "A little dreary, actually. Organ music." She let her smile bloom. "I left at the intermission."
His smile opened up now too. "So what do I say -- I'm glad I couldn't make it? But you look great, you do. No complications, right? The headache's gone away? No visual problems?"
"No," she said, "no, I'm fine," and then she saw Maggie, with her hair down and a pair of silver chandelier earrings dangling above her bare shoulders, watching them from a table in the dining room.
"Good," he said, "good. Well, listen, nice to see you -- and I guess we'll be seeing you next week, then?"
The first thing she did when she got home was to put on some music, because she couldn't stand the silence of an empty house, and it wasn't Bach, anything but Bach, her hand going to the first disc on the shelf, which turned out to be a reggae compilation her husband had left behind.
She poured herself a glass of wine as the chords fell like debris into the steadily receding sea of the bass line, a menace there, menace in the vocals and the unshakable rhetoric of the dispossessed. Reggae. She'd never much liked it, but here it was, background music to her own awakening drama of confusion and disappointment. And anger, anger too.
Maggie greeted her with a plastic smile. She was wearing another revealing top -- borderline tacky for business dress -- and she seemed to have lightened her hair, or no, she'd streaked it, that was it. "If you'll just follow me," she chirped, and came out from behind the counter to lead her down the hallway in a slow hip-grinding sashay, and then she was in the examining room again, and the door closed softly behind her. Awaiting an audience, she thought, and this was part of the mystique doctors cultivated, wasn't it, and why couldn't they just be there in the flesh instead of lurking somewhere down the corridor in another hushed room identical to this one? She set her bag down on the chair in the corner and settled herself into the recliner. She resisted the impulse to lift the hand mirror from the table and touch up her eyes.
"So," he was saying, gliding through the doorway on noiseless feet, "how are we today?"
"Okay, I guess."
"Okay? Just okay?"
"Listen," she said, ignoring the question, "before we go any further I just wanted to ask you something &hellip; "
"Sure," he said, and he pulled up a stool on wheels, the sort of thing dentists use, so he could sit beside her, "anything you want. Any concerns you have, that's what I'm here for."
"I just wanted to ask you, do you think I'm pretty?"
The question seemed to confound him and it took him a moment to recover himself. "Of course," he said. "Very pretty."
She said nothing and he moved into her then, his hands on her face, under her eyes, probing along the occipital bone, kneading, weighing the flesh while she blinked into his unwavering gaze. "Which is not to say that we can't improve on it," he said, "because it was your perception, and I agree with you, that right here" -- his fingers tightened -- "there's maybe just a few millimetres of excess skin. And &hellip; "
"I don't care about my eyes," she said abruptly, cutting him off. "I want you to look at my breasts. And my hips, and, and" -- the formal term ran in and out of her head -- "my tummy. It's fat. I'm fat."
She watched his eyes drop away. "I don't, uh," he began, fumbling now for the right words. "You appear to be fine, maybe a pound or two -- but if you're interested, of course, we can consult on that too, and I've got brochures &hellip; "
"I don't want brochures," she said, and she began to unbutton her blouse. "I want you to tell me, right here, right now, face to face, because I don't believe you. You say I'm pretty but when I asked you to -- to what, accompany me to hear Bach of all people? -- you said you were busy, too busy, and then I see you out on the town. How am I supposed to feel?"
"Whoa," he said, "let's just back up a minute -- and don't do anything, don't unbutton your &hellip; because I have to ask Maggie into the room. For legal reasons." He was at the door suddenly, the door swinging open, and he was calling down the hall for his secretary.
"I don't want Maggie," she said, and she had her brassiere off now and was working at the hook of her skirt. "I want to look real, not like some mannequin, not like her. Leave her out of this."
She was looking over her shoulder at him as he stood at the door, the skirt easing down her thighs, and she hadn't worn any stockings because they were just an encumbrance and she was here to be examined, to feel his hands on her, to set the conditions and know what it would take to improve. That was what this was all about, wasn't it? Improvement?