It made a hell of a lot more sense for a woman to buy her own little cottage than to wait for Prince Charming to come along and make a down payment. These days, Prince Charmings were in short supply.
The mention of a job possibility had caused Holland to sit up straighter. "Anything in it for me?"
Joanna shook off her pensive thoughts. "Only if you want to play a man who ages fifty years waiting in line for a bank teller."
"Forget it."
"Not even for your art?"
"Not even if it comes with a Tony, an Emmy and an Oscar." Holland shuddered. "Why would you want to take on such a depressing job?"
"I think it's intriguing," Joanna countered. "I've spent the last ten years making septuagenarians look like teenagers. Why not see if it works the other way around?"
"You're perverse."
"Maybe, but think what fun I'll have." Holland reached for her concealer again and Joanna grabbed it from her. "I could show you how you'll look thirty years from now."
"Bite your tongue!"
"Why this sudden panic over a few laugh lines? You weren't like this when I saw you back in October."
"I wasn't forty-two in October."
"I doubt if your social life has suffered because of it." Holland always had a string of eligible and not-so-eligible men vying for her favors.
"Well, I haven't joined the Sisters of the Celibate Poor, if that's what you mean."
Joanna ignored the jab at her own currently dull social life. "Level with me, Holland."
Holland sighed. "I need more sleep, more makeup, and a hell of a lot more guts to make it against the competition these days, Jo, both on and off the stage." She turned slightly and looked out the window. "And it's scaring the hell out of me."
Joanna was quiet.
She'd spent the past few months in Europe doing the makeup for three top American stars who were filming a miniseries in between temper tantrums and anxiety attacks.
America's insane devotion to youth and perfection had turned three supremely gifted adults into neurotics. However, the fear in Holland's eyes was something else again. It wasn't a performer's fear; it was a woman's fear. A fear Joanna had seen in her mother's eyes, a fear that went deeper than the bone.
"When's the audition?"
"Tomorrow morning." Holland turned the magnifying mirror facedown. "Can you perform a miracle?"
"Let me look at you."
Joanna studied Holland's flawless cheekbones, clear green eyes, and thick auburn hair. Laugh lines or not laugh lines, Holland was a classically beautiful woman and was destined to remain so well into old age.
But Joanna knew that was the last thing her friend wanted to hear and the last thing she would believe.
"I don't know," Joanna said with a smile. "It'll be a tough job."
"I'm shameless," Holland said, "You make me beautiful and I'll take you to lunch."
"Tavern?"
Holland winced. "Would you settle for Jake's on the East Side?"
"You're buying?"
"I'm buying. Miracles don't come cheap."
"You're in luck," Joanna said, reaching for the Pure Beige 004. "Miracles just happen to be my specialty."
Chapter Two
Jake's turned out to be a marvelous art-deco-style restaurant that made Joanna forget all about Tavern on the Green. She and Holland had a great lunch, then the two women said goodbye at the corner of East 41st and Second Avenue and Joanna took a cab back to the Carillon.
On her way to the elevator, Joanna remembered she hadn't checked for mail in two days so she doubled back toward the mail room off the main lobby. Swinging open the door, she bumped smack into Stanley Holt, the superintendent of the Carillon Arms, who was crouched down beneath the long row of shiny brass mailboxes with his tool kit by his side.
"Miss Stratton! Sorry! Really sorry! 'Scuse me but I didn't hear you come in." He picked up his battered green cloth tool kit. "I'll get out of your way."
What an odd thing to say. There was nothing even vaguely unusual about either a tenant fetching her mail or a super performing his duties, but then Stanley always managed to hit just the right note of slippery subservience that set Joanna's teeth on edge.
He brushed off his hands on the legs of his khaki-colored coveralls and stood up. His short, powerfully muscled body seemed more imposing than usual in the confines of the tiny mail room.
Although he treated her with respect, Joanna detected an unmistakable flicker of male interest alive in his dark brown eyes each time he looked at her, and so she always went out of her way to be scrupulously polite and businesslike and not the slightest bit interested.
"Don't leave on my account, Stanley. I just popped in to get the mail." As if there could be another, more pressing reason for showing up in the mail room at one o'clock in the afternoon.
However, Joanna knew that when dealing with Stanley's type of man, even the obvious had to be made more so.
She rummaged in the pocket of her coat for the tiny mailbox key, searching through loose change and crumpled dollar bills. "I really should take a course in organization," she muttered as her fingers finally closed around her key chain. "One day I'll . . . "
She looked up and her words died off as she saw two men, just past their teenage years, standing by the open door. Neither one looked familiar. One had longish red hair and bright blue eyes, while the other had close-cropped red hair and brown eyes, the same as Stanley. Both of them watched her with avid interest.
She turned to Stanley.
"Don’t worry about those two, Ms. Stratton," he said, picking up a tool from the floor and putting it in his tool kit. "They look like trouble, but they're okay."
"Yeah," said the shorter of the two helpers. "We look like trouble but Stanley keeps us in line."
"I wasn't worried," Joanna lied over the accelerated thumping of her heart. "You just surprised me."
"They're my new assistants," Stanley said, his dark gaze fastened on the two younger men who lounged in the doorway. "We got a lot more work around here since we went co-op and the boss said I could hire on some help."
Joanna unlocked the mailbox and pulled out Time, People, a fat phone bill and a thin airmail letter from one of her friends in Scotland.
"Well," she said, acutely aware of the three men surrounding her, "I'll let you get back to your work." She noticed one of Rosie's fliers, advertising a tenants' meeting, on the floor near Stanley's foot and she bent down to retrieve it.
Stanley motioned quickly with his right hand and the two young men parted like the Red Sea and made room for Joanna to pass. She paused just long enough to tack the flier to the bulletin board opposite the mailboxes.
"You have a good day now, Miss Stratton," Stanley called after her. "You have a real good day."
As Joanna turned the corner toward the elevator, she heard the rumble of male laughter and it wasn't difficult to imagine the kind of crude sexual innuendo that had precipitated it.
To hell with Stanley and his pals, she thought as she pushed the button for the ninth floor and the elevator doors slid shut. The Carillon and its employees were Cynthia's problems, not hers.
At the moment, Joanna's most pressing problem was figuring out how she would manage the makeup techniques Benny Ryan's job offer required.
Although she fought Holland every step of the way when it came to aging and its inherent problems, much of what her friend had to say about the subject was painfully on target. Joanna had only to look at her own mother to see that.
Cynthia Hayes Stratton Donato VanDyke del Portago prized beauty and youth above all else and, at the moment, she was enjoying both on a small Greek island with a bronzed giant named Stavros, who was young enough to be Joanna's kid brother.
Cynthia had been chasing the fountain of youth for the past thirty years, stubbornly refusing to believe that nothing could stay the hand of time. Her search had led her through multiple marriages and numerous heartbreaks on five continents while Joanna grew up un
der the watchful eyes of a series of nannies.
Joanna's search had been for something else entirely. Her father was a dim memory; her mother, a shooting star. The love and guidance her starving heart had craved couldn't be found in the paid affections of housekeepers and baby sitters. The pretty child had turned into a beautiful young woman raised to believe her own happiness was dependent upon the protection of a man.
So it was no surprise that Joanna tumbled into love with the first young man who offered her a way out. Her brief marriage had been the one time in her life when she felt totally loved, totally necessary to another person's happiness. That made Eddie's death – and its shocking aftermath – that much harder to bear. But bear it she did, and in so doing she gained in an inner strength that no age spot or laugh line could destroy.
Joanna got out at the ninth floor and let herself into her temporary home, closing the series of locks and bolts securely behind her.
Even though Holland's apprehensions were the direct result of a career that placed as high a value on beauty as it did on talent. Joanna hated to see her friend begin the downward spiral that finally destroyed a woman's self-esteem.
Joanna was sick to death of pretending she could make time stand still, of playing tricks with shadow and light to soothe the blistered egos of stars who had spent too many years in the Hollywood sun. The years of traveling from place to place, always one step ahead of her loneliness, held no further appeal. Love might not be on her horizon, but professional satisfaction was within her grasp if she was willing to branch away from the familiar and take a few chances.
The more she thought about it, the more Benny Ryan's offer appealed to her sense of perverse whimsy. The prestige of fighting the tide of youth intrigued her. Maybe her work would never win the Nobel Peace Prize, but the thought that there was an alternative to discovering the perfect eye shadow applicator was incentive enough.
The question was: Could she pull it off?
She sat down at the desk and set the magnifying mirror into position,. Grabbing a headband she scraped her shiny black hair off her forehead and studied her face the way an artist studied a fresh canvas. Large, slightly slanted eyes. Thick, well-defined black brows. Narrow nose. High cheekbones, full mouth. Thanks to Cynthia and good genes, it was a face many directors had felt belonged on the other side of the camera. Now the trick was to take that particular combination of features and project them forty years into the future.
Paler foundation. Heavy face powder and latex spirit gum to give the appearance of heavy lines beneath her eyes. Her fingers traced the hollows beneath her cheekbones. A fleshier face would be easier to work with. She'd have to remember to tell Benny that when it came time to cast the commercial.
Quickly she daubed on some brown and grey shadows to simulate the effects of age on a woman's skin. She would need a trip to Ranaghan's for supplies if she was going to do this up properly, but she had enough materials at hand right now to start.
Twenty minutes later Joanna looked into the mirror and saw her future self, circa 2025. The sight was enough to extinguish that lustful light in Stanley's eyes permanently.
But she still hadn't faced the acid test: Central Park West in full early March sunshine, surrounded by Yuppies and street people and the usual Wednesday phalanx of ladies-who-lunch that moved up the avenue like a flotilla of mink coats with feet.
If no one handed her a pack of Kleenex and a jar of cold cream, she was in business. And, if they did – well, it would still make a great dinnertime topic at Rosie's that evening.
Joanna stuffed her hair into a bright red wool cap she'd bought in Switzerland, grabbed her coat and house keys and set out on a fact-finding mission; Whistler's Mother, in sweatpants and Reeboks, conquers the Upper West Side.
#
The laundry room of the Carillon Arms reminded Ryder of an old Odd Couple episode, the one where Felix and Oscar entertained dates to the accompaniment of soapsuds and liquid fabric softener. Despite the champagne and soft music, romance rarely flourished by the light of the Whirlpool.
Of course, romance was not what Carillon's management had had in mind when they decorated the laundry room, but they certainly had tried very hard to lift it out of the ranks of the utilitarian and into the exalted realm of high-tech trendiness.
However, not even wall-to-wall carpeting, over-stuffed chairs and a soda machine that dispensed both Pepsi and Perrier could hide the fact that whenever you put a washer and a dryer in the same room, you meant business.
It was a far cry from the ultraexclusive, ultraexpensive O'Shaughnessy's in Boston, where he'd spent most of the afternoon enjoying lobster and shrimp and some of the best gossip that side of the White House. Alistair had gone all out to lure Ryder into reconsidering his threat to retire from PAX.
Little did Alistair know that last month's trip back home to Omaha had done more to lure Ryder than all of the fancy apartments and private jets PAX could provide. He'd gone back for his niece's christening, expecting to be greeted as the conquering hero, his broken leg a testimony to the glamour and danger inherent in his mysterious profession.
His suburban brothers, whose Bible was Consumer's Digest and whose creed was the adjustable-rate mortgage, would gnash their teeth in despair and yearn for days gone by. His sisters, mired in motherhood and drowning in domesticity, would sift through their lists of single friends, wondering if any of them would be sophisticated enough for their world-traveling brother.
Ryder's expectations had been well defined.
And none of them was met.
#
Omaha had changed. That was the first thing Ryder noticed as he drove into town. Where once it had ended around the Westroads Shopping Center, now it sprawled outward and beyond, a great, thriving city unlike the sleepy town he remembered from his childhood.d
The old landmarks were still there – the signs to Offutt Air Force Base, Southroads, the kids from the University of Nebraska and Omaha and Creighton dragging up Dodge Street – but somehow none of them seemed to fit any longer. Progress had swept through Omaha, surrounding Addison's Soda Shop and Swatek's Delicatessen, threatening to engulf them in nationwide chain stores that were the death knell of regionality.
He chuckled as the limo driver turned onto L Street, which headed toward his mother's house. Ridiculous, sentimental thoughts. He'd been born with a passport in his hand, as eager to be free of familial restraints as he'd felt his family eager to see him go. His first memories were of his mother weeping in a dark corner of the bedroom while his father got ready for another night out with the boys.
He'd hated his father for the demons that finally drove him out of their lives but Ryder had sensed early on that the placid domesticity that his brothers seemed born to had somehow passed him by. The world outside had called to him and he'd answered that call and never looked back until now.
The limo pulled into the rutted driveway in front of the big white frame house with the black shutters that always managed to look just slightly askew. This is it, he thought as he maneuvered himself and his crutches out of the Lincoln. After two days of being treated as the conquering hero, of fielding his brothers' envious questions and the outright hero worship of his nieces and nephews, he'd be reassured that what he had with PAX was exactly what he wanted.
#
Nothing had worked out as planned.
His brothers and sisters understood more about life and happiness than Ryder had ever dreamed of. They had woven their lives into the fabric of community and family, fitting their hopes and dreams into the pattern of continuity. No one wondered about his mysterious profession. No one seemed willing to trade Kmart and Baker's for the south of France.
They were happy with their lives and with themselves. They were curious about his travels but not envious. Where once he'd believed his brothers to be lacking in daring, now his perception of what constituted daring changed.
What really took more courage: facing bullet or facing up to the responsibil
ity of family life? Years ago he would have known the answer. He laughed hollowly and, in that laugh, heard the echo of his father.
Hell, years ago he wouldn't have asked the question. Time, however, didn't stand still. Not even for men like Ryder O'Neal.
He wanted everything. He wanted the excitement of PAX, he wanted the danger and drama and, now in this thirty-fourth year, he wanted the one thing he'd always turned away from: he wanted love.
Normal men didn't know how to disassemble a Kalashnikov rifle or understand how enough FOAM-X to blow up the World Trade Center could be hidden in a can of shaving cream.
"You're not cut out for real life," Alistair had said when he dropped Ryder back at the Carillon an hour ago. "You're meant to live on the edge. You wouldn't know how to manage a normal existence."
Ryder watched his laundry tumble around in the Whirlpool and wondered if maybe Alistair had a point.
#
The sullen teenager on the other side of the deli counter chomped on her gum and tapped her acrylic fingernails impatiently on top of the cash register while Joanna fumbled through her coat pocket for her money.
"I know I have a single somewhere in here," she said with a smile of apology. "It'll just take another moment."
"I don't got all day," the young blonde snapped, barely glancing at Joanna,. "There're other people in here, you know."
Joanna went to step out of the way of a man who was waiting to pay for a pack of Camels when the sleeve of her raincoat brushed against the counter and tipped a cup of coffee down the front of her coat.
The counter clerk's sigh of disgust could be heard in Delaware.
"Do you have some tissues?" Joanna asked. "This is soaking right through."
The clerk rang up the man's cigarettes and said, "In the back, behind the soup."
Joanna took a deep breath. "I mean, do you have some you could give me right now."
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