Just This Once

by Judith Arnold

  “Would I do that?” Donna pressed a hand to her chest and shaped her face into an expression of great indignation. “I am going to go a little strong, because TV washes you out.”

  “You’re an expert on TV?”

  “I’m an expert on cosmetics. Turn sideways—I need more light on your face.”

  Loretta obediently repositioned her chair, closed her eyes and tilted her face upward. She heard the click of Donna opening her tool chest, then felt light pats of a damp sponge on her cheeks.

  “I like the outfit,” Donna said. “Is smoking allowed in here?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve gotta go all the way downstairs and outside if I want a cigarette? Shit. Anyway, it’s a good color on you, that soft green. Very elegant.”

  For her appearance on the Becky Blake Show, Loretta had donned a forest-green satin jacket over a lacy white camisole and tapered gray slacks. Elegant had been the look she was aiming for, but she didn’t dare to smile at Donna’s compliment, because she knew Donna would kill her if she moved her facial muscles while undergoing cosmetic resuscitation.

  “So, this guy they’re gonna hook you up with, you know anything about him?”

  If Donna was going to ask her direct questions, she’d have to move her mouth, cosmetics or no. “All I know is that I won’t run screaming from the set when I see him,” she said. Everyone had believed Bob when he’d presented himself as Josh Kaplan’s acquaintance. Loretta wasn’t going to risk revealing the truth, not even to her cousin.

  “He’s like, what? Older? Younger?”

  “About my age, I guess.”

  “Try not to move your eyes when you talk.”

  “My eyes are closed.”

  “But they’re moving.” Donna had spent a bit of time dabbing stuff under Loretta’s eyes—to hide the shadows and bags, Loretta guessed—and now she began her assault on Loretta’s eyelids. “Is he good looking?”

  “Bob says he is.”

  “So, what’s Bob? An expert on good-looking men? We’re supposed to trust his taste in these things?”

  “It’s just a blind date,” Loretta said, trying very hard not to move her eyes. Donna applied something wet along the fringe of her eyelashes—liner, no doubt. When Loretta put eyeliner on herself, her fingers always twitched or her eyelid fluttered and the line wavered and wiggled. But Donna’s motions were smooth and confident. She was a pro, an artist. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter what he looks like,” Loretta added. “It’s not as if I’m planning to fall in love with him.”

  “Nobody ever plans to fall in love. Not real love. Real love sneaks up on you when you least expect it. Look at me and Lou. Don’t move—I’m doing mascara. Me and Lou, I was hanging out with my girlfriends. I didn’t want to meet a guy. I’d had my fill of guys. I was taking a break from the whole thing, right? And there we were at Coney Island, and suddenly this guy is standing there in front of me on the beach, wearing a big sweatshirt and these ugly shorts, and I was like, holy shit, who is that?”

  Loretta had heard the story of Donna’s first sighting of Lou many times. Donna offered a few versions of it: in one, Lou’s shorts were sexy. In another, his hair was so windblown she wanted to race across the sand to his side so she could run her best comb through it. In one, she was like, hot damn, who is that rather than holy shit, who is that.

  The moral was always the same, however: love couldn’t be planned or explained. It must simply be accepted.

  “Okay. Open your eyes,” Donna ordered her. Loretta did. Her lashes didn’t stick together too much. “I’m not going overboard here, but you know, you’ve got great eyelashes. I was always envious of your eyelashes, even when we were kids.”

  “I was envious of everything about you,” Loretta told her. “I’m still envious of your boobs.”

  “Have two kids. That’ll make your boobs bigger. Are you gonna wear that teddy I gave you for your birthday on the blind date?”

  “Of course not,” Loretta said, glancing over her shoulder to check out her reflection in the wide mirror above the sinks. Her eyes looked enormous and sultry.

  “You need some color on your cheeks,” Donna told her, gripping her chin and twisting her head back to where it had been. “What do you mean, ‘of course not’? Maybe you’ll hit it off with this guy.”

  “Even if I hit it off with him, he’s not going to see my underwear when all we’ve had is a blind date.”

  “It’s for you, not him,” Donna explained. “It’s to empower you. It’s to make you feel strong and sexy, like a real woman.”

  “Underwear’s going to do all that for me, huh.”

  “Do I know about this stuff, Loretta? Have I told you everything you ever needed to know about the opposite sex? Yes, underwear’s going to do all that for you. There, a nice hint of blush. Now I’m going to do loose powder, and then your lips last of all. Think about what color you want your lips to be.”

  “Not too bright,” Loretta said. She didn’t want her mouth to detract from the haunting darkness of her eyes.

  “Dark Mocha,” Donna announced. “It’s a great shade. Perfect for someone with your coloring. Red would be great too, but you don’t want bright. So, are you going to wear the teddy?”

  “Sure,” Loretta said, because it was easier than arguing with Donna. And what the hell—a bit of empowerment on a blind date, even if it wasn’t really a blind date, wouldn’t hurt.

  “So, have you told your parents you’re doing this?”

  “I told Nicky. He called last night. He’ll tell them.”

  “Nicky?” Donna plucked a Q-tip from her supplies and ran it under Loretta’s eyes. “Is he still acting like you’re the Old Maid card in the deck?”

  “Yeah. The jerk. He was pleased about this, though.”

  “Really?”

  “He thinks if I’m willing to do this I’ll be willing to go out with his friend Marty.”

  “Who’s Marty?”

  “Some dentist he knows. Marty Calabrese”

  Donna curled her upper lip into a tidy little sneer. “How are your nails? Did you do them?”

  Loretta folded her hands. “No.”

  “Shit. How much time do we have? I’ll give them a quick coat. I’ve got some polish that’s pretty close in color to Dark Mocha.”

  “They won’t dry in time,” Loretta argued.

  “Then you’ll sit with your fingers spread open. You’ve got to have nail polish. I wish I had time to do a full manicure. Are they even, at least?”

  “They’re short.”

  “I should have brought fake nails with me. Okay, we’ll make do.” She whisked a brush all over Loretta’s face, dusting puffs of beige powder onto her cheeks, forehead and chin. Loretta sneezed. Before she could recover, Donna had hauled one of her hands out of her lap. “Spread ’em,” Donna commanded as she shook a small bottle of nail enamel.

  “No one’s going to see my hands.”

  “And the blind date guy isn’t going to see your teddy. The key is, you’ve got to know your nails look nice.”

  “It’s going to empower me?”

  “You’re catching on.” She flicked polish onto each nail with a deftness that awed Loretta. One reason she rarely polished her nails was that polishing them was such an arduous process for her, one that usually left globs of enamel along her cuticles. She simply didn’t have the patience or dexterity to do it well. If she had more money, she might splurge on a professional manicure every now and then, but given the exorbitantly high cost of living in Manhattan—and the looming possibility of unemployment—she couldn’t waste money on such luxuries.

  The room filled with the scents of perfumed powder and acetone. Loretta obediently extended her other hand to Donna, who slicked those nails. Abruptly, the door to the hall swung open and Kate stuck her head in. “Loretta, it’s time.”

  “I’ve got to do her lipstick,” Donna said.

  “Yeah, well it’s time,�
� Kate insisted.

  Donna reared back and aimed her chin imperiously at Kate. “Becky Blake can cool her heels for a minute. Loretta’s not going on TV without lipstick.” To Loretta she said, “Keep your fingers still and shut your mouth.”

  Unlike Kate, Loretta knew better than to argue. She shut her mouth and Donna went at it with a lipstick brush, smearing, smoothing, outlining and smoothing some more. “Done,” she said, standing back and appraising Loretta. She ducked into a stall and returned with a square of toilet paper. “Blot,” she commanded.

  Loretta blotted.

  “Okay. You look good, except for your hair. If I had a little more time—”

  “You don’t,” Kate declared, for which Loretta was grateful. Altering one’s coiffure wasn’t the sort of project a person should rush into. It required contemplation.

  Of course, if Loretta had engaged in any contemplation lately, she wouldn’t be going through with this at all. But contemplation had never been her long suit, and here she was. She supposed her hair ought to match her mental state: disorderly.

  “All right,” she said, keeping her fingers splayed as she stood and assessed her reflection in the mirror. She tilted her head slightly and gave herself a Dark Mocha grin. “God, I look fabulous.”

  “I’m not gonna argue,” Donna agreed. “If you get a chance to plug my salon on the air, don’t hesitate.” She flashed a smile at Kate to indicate she was joking, although Loretta suspected it wasn’t really a joke.

  “Kate, you’ve got a seat reserved for Donna in the audience, right?”

  “Sure, if you two ever get your asses down the hall to the studio.”

  Donna tossed her implements back into the metal case and closed the latch, and they followed Kate out of the bathroom. They paused by the production team room so Donna could lock her supplies safely inside, then hurried down the hall to the studio. “Break a leg,” Kate whispered to Loretta before whisking Donna away to her seat.

  Loretta would indeed like to break a leg, preferably Becky Blake’s. She was willing to forgive Kate, Gilda, and Bob for pushing her into this ridiculous act. Like her, they were operating under the threat of imminent unemployment. And Bob deserved extra credit for making sure the blind date involved an apparently sane, pleasant looking, intelligent and generally unobjectionable man.

  But Becky… Instead of fighting Harold, Becky was going to offer up one of her essential staff as a sacrifice for the supposed good of her show. Plus, she was a simpering little twit who relied much too heavily on Easter-egg colors in her wardrobe. She deserved some pain.

  A monitor near the alcove where Loretta stood showed the opening credits rolling for the show, and a speaker above her blasted the soundtrack music, a jingle as cheery as the show was sleazy. Maybe with the show’s new trend away from sleaziness, they could come up with an equally misleading soundtrack. Heavy metal would work.

  “Welcome!” Through the speaker, Becky’s voice sounded tinny, but her spirited delivery was as bubbly as a just-opened can of ginger ale. “We’ve got a very special show for you today, something fun and romantic and oooh! Well, who knows?” Watching the monitor, Loretta saw her pound her small fists against the air in front of her as if it were a door she was trying to break down. The impression she gave was of such excitement she could barely speak. Yet Loretta knew she was reading from the meticulously crafted script Gilda, with extensive input from the others on the team, had written last Friday. They’d typed, “…fun and romantic and oooh!…” because they’d known Becky would be able to give such cute phrases an authentic lilt.

  “You know we’ve often done shows about romances that have gone rotten, romances where someone’s cheating on someone, where there’s betrayal or heartbreak or revenge.” The audience greeted this statement with lusty cheers. They sure did love to witness betrayal, heartbreak and revenge. Maybe today’s show would bomb because, as Bob claimed, Becky’s fans didn’t want kind and gentle. They wanted vile and vulgar.

  But Harold wanted them to do kind and gentle, and he was the boss. Loretta only hoped that once she emerged onto the set, the audience wouldn’t hoot and holler and hurl insults the way they did at the suburban sluts or the dentist with the fetish. She hoped they wouldn’t roar as if this were a WWF match and she was the bad guy they hoped to see stomped and pummeled and tossed out of the arena.

  Her heart skittered upward, rattling against her ribcage as if it wanted to escape. The audience craved blood. They always did. This show was going to be a fiasco, and she was going to be that fiasco’s star.

  “…To contribute to the happy part of love, the part that occurs before the lovers start looking for creative ways to destroy each other,” Becky was saying. Loretta knew the lines better than Becky did. If not for her Teleprompter, Becky would be paralyzed out there on the stage, staring silently at her studio audience, utterly tongue-tied. She would be a perky little Barbie-doll dressed in a daffodil-yellow size-0 minidress, unable to come up with a single word to say.

  “…From our very own staff, right here at the Becky Blake Show. Loretta is a member of our show’s production team, and she’s single, and she’s very, very eager to meet the blind date we’ve lined up for her. Come on in, Loretta!”

  Loretta swallowed, forced a smile and strode from the dark wing onto the brightly lit set. She was not “very, very eager” for any of this. “Very, very eager” made her sound desperate. If Gilda had written that line into the script, Loretta would have edited it, deleting the “very’s” and maybe even the “eager.” She would have written the line, “Loretta is being a good sport about this whole ridiculous charade, because she doesn’t want to get fired.”

  Holding her smile in place, she swept across the stage to where Becky stood. The set was smaller than it appeared on TV: a three-sided cream-colored wall angled like a hinged mirror in a fitting room, a sturdy gray carpet and several upholstered chairs that weighed enough to discourage infuriated guests from throwing them at one another. Today, a coffee table had been added, with a vase of red roses at its center. They were silk, but they’d look real enough on the tube.

  “Here she is!” Becky welcomed her with a hug that startled Loretta. Becky had never hugged Loretta before—not on her birthday, not on the day she’d announced to everyone that she and Gary had called off their wedding, not when they’d found out that the dentists-with-fetishes show had kicked butt in the ratings. Becky wasn’t a hugger. Loretta had never even seen her hug her mother.

  Loretta hunched slightly, trying not to tower above Becky, and then took her seat in one of the chairs. Becky immediately moved into the audience, where she spent most of each show, allying herself with them against the guests. She held her mic in front of her, and the lights brightened in the house, making it impossible for Loretta to ignore the one hundred-twenty-four individuals she knew were seated in the tiered seats. “Loretta, why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?” Becky said in a deceptively gracious tone.

  Loretta had been prepared for the question—the team had scripted it, after all—but she hadn’t written or rehearsed an answer. She had wanted to sound spontaneous.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t feel spontaneous right now. Queasy was more like it. Her heart was still rattling against her ribs and her fingertips had gone numb with cold. She curled her fingers into her palms, effectively hiding her quickie manicure. “Well,” she said, and her voice cracked.

  “A little nervous, are you?” Becky seemed delighted. She swiveled her head back and forth to give the impression she was addressing the live audience and not the camera aimed at her. “Loretta works behind the scenes here at the Becky Blake Show. She’s not used to being on camera.”

  Becky’s words were true—and they were ad-libbed. Good for Becky, abandoning her teleprompter with such aplomb, Loretta thought. She swallowed, felt her cheeks struggle to maintain her smile, and said, “I guess I am a little nervous. It’s not every day I meet a blind date on national
TV.” Not really a blind date, she consoled herself. It’s just Josh Kaplan.

  “How about if we take some questions from the audience, then?” Becky said.

  Loretta’s abdomen tensed. She didn’t want to take questions from the audience. Questions from the audience were likely to be hostile, nosy or silly. Hostile, nosy, silly questions defined the show—and people who’d had their breasts enlarged to 44-double-D or who’d slept with their sons’ varsity basketball teammates deserved hostile, nosy, silly questions.

  Loretta didn’t.

  A beefy, red-faced guy in a tank top that displayed his assorted tattoos rose, and Becky steered her mic toward him. “I wanna know,” he growled, “what’s wrong wit’ you, you can’t get a date wit’out goin’ on TV.”

  Great. Nicky must have planted this guy in the audience, just to make Loretta feel like a loser. “I can get a date,” she answered, clinging to her temper. “I’m just doing this for fun.”

  “And for romance!” Becky added. “Because the Becky Blake Show wants to contribute to some happy romance. Question? Over here.” She climbed a few steps to reach a skinny, freckled woman wearing a multitude of gold and silver crucifixes on chains around her neck. “I’ve got two questions,” the woman announced. “Number one, how old are you, and number two, how come you aren’t already married?”

  Another Nicky plant. Christ. If this show made it to broadcast, her family would give it a standing ovation. They’d videotape it for posterity. They’d make her watch it every time she went out to Long Island to visit them.

  “Number one, I’m twenty-nine,” she said, because if she lied Becky would correct her, and also because she didn’t believe twenty-nine was an age that placed an unmarried woman on the threshold of disgrace. “And number two, I’m not married because right now I’m having too much fun being single.” This answer inspired a chorus of yelps, whoops and whistles. Loretta wasn’t sure whether they were supportive or jeering. On the Becky Blake Show, either was possible.

  A third audience member, her hair a mass of flouncy platinum-blond ringlets and her blouse revealing prodigious cleavage, rose to ask, “Do you think it’s harder for people in show biz to find true love?” It took Loretta a minute to realize this woman believed she was a person in show biz. She stifled a laugh. If working with the production team in that cramped back room was show biz, the real glamour profession must be dentistry.