B
Chapter 3
illie made coffee for both of them the next morning when she got up. There were three
mugs and a few mismatched plates in the kitchen cabinet and nothing in the fridge.
Mickie showed up in the kitchen before her go-see, drank a cup of coffee, and put her
portfolio in the tote bag she used for work. Billie could see the bag was Chanel from the
double C’s embossed in the leather. Mickie was wearing a white silk Chanel jacket,
jeans, and high heels. She looked elegant and demure in her daytime persona. It was
dizzying how fast she could switch from one style to another. This was her daytime look
going to modeling go-sees, and at night she looked like a hooker at the bar, but she
didn’t behave like one. Billie was impressed by how different she could look.
“What are you trying out for today?” Billie asked her, as they both drank their coffee.
Billie felt like she was supposed to take care of her sister again, the way she had after
their mother died. But Mickie wasn’t fourteen anymore. She was every bit a woman,
and she knew what she was doing, much more so than her older sister, who felt newborn
next to her and was naïve.
“They told me to dress conservatively. It’s for a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. He’s
running an ad campaign. He moved here from Palm Beach a couple of years ago, and
he’s opening a fancy beauty clinic. He picked eight girls out of a hundred, and he wants
to see us today. Then he’ll reduce it to one for his ads.”
“That sounds pretty brutal,” Billie said.
“It’s how it works,” Mickie said, as she set the empty cup down. “He uses all noninvasive procedures. It’s a revolutionary process.” She was convinced of its success
even before she’d met him.
“Have you seen him?” Billie asked, observing her younger sister. Her beauty was
flawless.
“I’m meeting him today. Good luck at the agency,” Mickie said, and flew out the door
with her portfolio. Billie was surprised that she was actually enjoying being with her.
Mickie lived in a world that was completely unfamiliar to Billie. A world of
appearances where one was constantly judged on how one looked, and daily rejection
was part of it. Just the idea sounded exhausting. Mickie had to claw her way up, start
from scratch at every go-see and audition, and then work hard as a waitress all night to
pay her rent. It seemed much harder than getting a job because of one’s knowledge and
intelligence. Billie was wearing a crisp white blouse, black jeans, and her one pair of
high heels, with her hair pulled back. She thought about wearing lipstick and decided
not to. She didn’t want to look frivolous. She wanted to look serious and professional.
She arrived at the first agency on time, filled out all the forms, met with an older
woman, and answered all her questions. They were impressed that she had gone to MIT.
At the second agency, they sent her on an interview for a temporary job at CedarsSinai’s pathology lab. She would be replacing a lab technician going on maternity
leave. It was a very basic job, and Billie was capable of a great deal more than that, but
she needed the money and had said she would take anything. Two other young women
were interviewed for the same job and the interviewer said they’d let her know. It was
a huge hospital, and Billie walked around afterward and then went back to the
apartment. She wondered how Mickie’s go-see had gone. It had felt good to be in a
hospital setting. It was a world she understood, and where she felt safe and competent.
She would have hated being judged by her looks every day. It seemed exhausting. But
Mickie was excited and energetic when she got home. She said the go-see with the
plastic surgeon had been fantastic. He was setting up a whole beauty center in a
fabulous house in Bel Air.
“His techniques are revolutionary,” she said to Billie, as she sprawled on the couch
and took her Chanel jacket off. “They sent me on two more go-sees after that. And I’m
booked at a trade show at the Fairplex in Pomona this weekend. I think it’s the boat
show. I have to show up for work in a bikini. It’s for two days, so the rent will get paid
this month. The doctor is a really fancy guy. Alexander Addison the Fourth. He
practiced in Palm Beach, moved to L.A., and is opening his beauty center in a week or
two. They’re shooting his ads next week. It’s a three- or four-day job. They’ll use me
for the ‘after’ photos,” she said.
“After what?” Billie asked her.
“After his miracle treatments,” Mickie said vaguely.
“Will he perform them on you?” Billie looked worried. Mickie was so perfectly
beautiful that the idea of anyone playing with her face was frightening.
“No, they do the photos with technology,” Mickie said blithely.
“What kind of technology?”
“You know, Photoshop. The photographer does it. They don’t touch me.” That
sounded even worse to Billie. It sounded like a scam to her.
“Does the agency check the doctor out?”
“Of course. He went to Harvard. He’s a big deal in the East. He wanted to bring his
talents out here. Several major actresses are already his clients.”
“Just be careful,” Billie warned her, skeptical about Dr. Alexander Addison IV.
“Don’t let anyone push you into something you don’t want to do, or feel uncomfortable
about.”
“He’s going to pay me a fortune, Billie, if I get the job. And I’m very comfortable
about that.” Mickie grinned at her older sister. This was how big careers were made,
and a lot of money, which was what Mickie was after. She had grown up poor and hated
it. She was convinced that she was born to be rich, and she was willing to do whatever
she had to do to get there. Dr. Alex Addison looked like a golden ticket to the moon to
her. She just hoped she’d get the job. She had met him and he was a good-looking,
successful rich guy. That was good enough for her, no matter what Billie said.
They worked at the restaurant that night, and the manager let Billie wait on tables.
She made a healthy amount on tips, and Mickie made four times as much. Men loved
even just talking to her. They always had, even when she was a teenager.
“I’m going shopping with this wad tomorrow,” Mickie said with a grin in the Uber on
the way home. It had been a long, busy night, but it was well worth it. Billie was just
glad to have some money to add to her dwindling savings, and she was praying she’d
get the path lab job at Cedars-Sinai. She wasn’t going to set the world on fire with it,
but maybe she’d learn something from the practical experience. It was a steady income,
and she wouldn’t have to wait on tables half naked, looking like a chorus girl in Vegas.
She missed talking to Tom at times like this. He always saw the humor in things, and
would make her laugh about it. Instead, she was well out of her comfort zone, and living
with the sister who had been the bane of her existence for most of her childhood and
adolescence. The irony of it was amusing, but Billie just wanted to retreat into her safe,
familiar world, out of sight, using her brain and everything she had studied for four
years.
She wondered about what Mickie was getting herself into. She had looked up
Alexander Addison online and found several articles by him in respectable
publications. The guy was either a genius or a brilliant charlatan, and Billie always
favored the cynical, conservative point of view. She would be suspicious of him until
proven wrong. But medical treatments that were related to beauty were foreign to her,
and Mickie knew a lot more about them. Billie knew chemistry and science, and had
won the physics prize in high school. Dr. Addison’s particular brand of voodoo and
witchcraft sounded like science fiction to her, but clearly his magic had worked on
some people who had written rave reviews, so more power to him.
They both got lucky the next day. Mickie got the call first from her agency. She had
gotten the shoot for Dr. Addison’s ads. He had stretched it to four or five days. They
were starting on Monday. They wanted her to bring some of her designer wardrobe, and
he would provide the rest and fill in any gaps. They would be shooting at his beauty
center in Bel Air, which he was calling Bellissima. It was still in the process of being
decorated. They were putting the finishing touches on it. Addison was paying Mickie
top dollar, and she ran around the apartment screaming and jumped up and down on the
sagging couch like a little girl, while Billie grinned. The poised, sophisticated mask had
slipped for a minute, and Mickie looked like a kid as she squealed and hugged her
sister.
“Good job, sis,” Billie said, genuinely happy for her. It was the first really big job
she had landed since coming to L.A., and the agency was pleased. It would push her up
to the next level of the jobs they would send her to. Success was beckoning and the
doors were slowly opening, and Mickie couldn’t wait to walk through them. This was
what she had come to L.A. for.
She had to go to the agency a few hours later to sign extensive confidentiality
agreements that the doctor was requiring since the ads were about medical treatments.
Mickie would have signed whatever he wanted.
Billie was alone in the apartment when the employment agency called her about the
job at Cedars-Sinai. It was a much quieter call than Mickie’s, for a lot less money. But
it was security, and money she could live on. She had the job for four to six months to
cover the lab tech’s maternity leave. She was expecting twins and was on bed rest, and
her leave might go longer, which suited Billie. She was going to be working in the
pathology lab of the most prestigious hospital in L.A. The cases would be interesting.
She’d be working with highly trained technicians and outstanding doctors. It was the
perfect job for her. She was due to start in two days and she could hardly wait. She
didn’t run around the apartment screaming. She sat quietly on the couch, all alone, with
a broad smile of relief on her face.
The move to California had been the right one, and she was actually enjoying getting
to know her sister as the person she had grown up to be. Mickie had been fifteen when
Billie left for college, and she had changed a lot in the last four years. Their paths and
personalities were completely different, but the nasty little brat Mickie had been as a
young teenager seemed to have metamorphosed into a somewhat interesting young
woman. Billie was beginning to feel a deep-rooted affection and respect for her. It
reminded her of something her father always said, and had reminded her of often when
Mickie drove her crazy when they were both younger. He had told her never to forget
that blood was thicker than water, and bottom line, they were sisters and that meant a lot
more than friendship. Billie was beginning to discover that, and almost forgave her the
trials of her childhood. Maybe they didn’t really matter once you grew up. She was
beginning to suspect that was the case.
She couldn’t wait to tell Mickie that night that she got the job at Cedars-Sinai. It
wasn’t as glamorous an accomplishment as Mickie’s. It wasn’t glamorous at all. But it
was solid and she would be able to pay her half of the rent. And it gave her time to look
for an even better job while she had the safety of the long-term temp job at Cedars for
the duration of someone’s maternity leave. It gave her breathing space, and was exactly
what she needed right now. Their prayers had been answered. Mickie had gotten the job
that would push her up the ladder to greater success, and Billie had gotten the security
she needed to retreat into peaceful anonymity in the pathology lab of a terrific hospital.
Mickie was happy for her too. She had come home after signing all the confidentiality
agreements, with half a dozen enormous shopping bags filled with never-worn designer
clothes at bargain prices. They looked as though they had been made for her, and would
enhance her image whenever she went out in public wearing them, to go-sees or
publicity events she might get invitations to, which was the next item on her wish list.
Her face and name had to become known to achieve the fame she wanted. Celebrity
meant everything to Mickie, and would have been Billie’s worst nightmare. She enjoyed
being invisible, and unknown. She just wanted to be part of a team that did great things
in medical research. The sisters’ dreams were very different, and always had been. It
was hard to believe they had the same parents and had grown up in the same house.
They were both busy getting ready for their new adventures. Billie opened her boxes of
books and reread the two she had on abnormal clinical pathology. She did her laundry
and picked out her best T-shirts and blouses and newest jeans to wear under her lab
coat. There was no dress code, and she would have no interactions with the public, only
with the medical staff, but she wanted to look neat and presentable.
Mickie picked the outfits she wanted to take to the shoot, the shoes that went with
them, and some vintage Chanel costume jewelry she had bought at her favorite store.
She had her hair lightened again with highlights, and bought a bottle of champagne to
celebrate with Billie. Mickie was being paid twenty thousand dollars for the shoot, and
she wanted to be as perfect as she could be. She had a manicure and pedicure and tried
to get Billie to go with her, but Billie did her nails herself, wanted to wear them short
for the lab, and didn’t like wearing nail polish. Their mother hadn’t worn any either.
“I must have been switched at the hospital at birth,” Mickie said as they finished the
champagne the night before they started their jobs. “Some glamorous movie star must
have given birth in that miserable hellhole we grew up in. She left me by mistake and
took the daughter who would have been happy working at the dairy for the rest of her
life, and she’s miserable now somewhere here in L.A., desperately searching for a cow
to milk on Sunset Strip.” Billie laughed. Mickie could be funny at times, usually at
someone else’s expense.
“Where does that leave me? How do you explain me landing in the middle of Iowa?”
Billie said, and emptied the last drops in her champagne glass.
“Oh, for you, my darling older sister, our mother must have had a clandestine affair
with Albert Einstein, who drove through town on a secret mission, fell in love with our
mother, and nine months later, she gave birth to you, our very own little genius.” They
both laughed and went to their bedrooms to finish preparing for the next day.
They were both dressed when they met in the kitchen the next morning for a cup of
coffee. Mickie looked exquisite in her white Chanel suit, which was her favorite, and fit
her perfectly. It looked like haute couture on her, and she was wearing her fake diamond
studs in her ears, and had a pair of pearl earrings in her purse.
Billie was wearing a brand-new pink T-shirt, with matching pink sneakers, her hair in
a neat ponytail down her back, and a brand-new pair of Levis.
“Do you want to borrow my Chanel jeans?” Mickie asked Billie. Her sister laughed.
“They’ll be two feet too long on me, and they’d probably think I stole them. They
aren’t going to pay me enough for Chanel jeans, but thank you anyway.”
They left at the same time in two separate Ubers and wished each other luck. Mickie
hadn’t been to her waitress job in three days and had told them she wouldn’t be in for
the next week, and nor would Billie. She had only been a fill-in anyway. The restaurant
rearranged Mickie’s shifts. She was a good waitress and they didn’t want to lose her,
and they’d made adjustments for her before when she got modeling shoots. With her
looks, they knew they wouldn’t have her forever. They had enough unemployed
actresses to draw on who were always looking for work.
Billie headed for Cedars-Sinai, and still looked like a kid going to camp. She was
immaculate and tidy. She’d even pressed her jeans, but she barely looked like a grownup. Mickie looked as though she should be riding in a limousine as the car headed for
Bel Air with garment bags, two tote bags, and everything she needed for her change of
outfits at the elegant house that would soon be the home of Bellissima, under the
auspices of Dr. Alexander Addison IV. And he lived in an apartment upstairs.
Mickie was excited as she stepped out of the car, looking like a movie star, and the
photographer the doctor had hired, Zack Campbell, snapped her picture as she was
arriving. After that, he took her bags and carried them inside for her. He shot a lot of
models, and was indifferent to most of them, but Mickie had caught his eye at the go-see
and captured his attention from the first moment he saw her. There was something
special about her. When she looked you in the eye, you felt as though you were all that
mattered to her.
The doctor was waiting in the living room, which had been turned into a studio for
the shoot. Zack’s two assistants had lit the scene, and they were going to photograph
Mickie looking relaxed and at ease in a corner of the area that would be used as a
waiting room. Alex Addison loved the Chanel suit, and wanted Mickie to wear it in the
first shots. A stylist went through the wardrobe Mickie had brought and approved
almost all of it. A makeup artist put some finishing touches on her face, and the
hairstylist brushed her long blonde hair and laid it carefully on her shoulders. They had
a full crew for the five-day shoot. The photographer’s assistants were already lighting
the next setup.
They worked straight through until one o’clock, and did several shots in the exam
rooms. The catering truck had already arrived by then and set up food for all of them in
the gorgeous black granite kitchen, which was in sharp contrast to the white expanses of
the house. It had been done by a well-known Italian designer. Dr. Addison had gone all
out to staff the shoot adequately. Right before they stopped for lunch, Zack, Alex, and
Mickie, who called herself Michaela for the shoot, went into Alex’s private office,
closed the door, and took the close-up headshots that were going to be the essence of his
ad campaign and the centerpiece of a very expensive brochure he was having made.
After he took the shots, Zack made several adjustments on his computer and had Alex
watch the progression of the image closely. Mickie wasn’t paying attention to what they
were doing. Alex narrowed his eyes as he watched it, and then held up a hand and
spoke sharply, “There! Now! Stop, back up a hair . . . perfect. You got it!” He beamed at
Zack and patted him on the shoulder. Both men were the same age, forty-two, but Alex
had an air of command that took over the moment he walked into a room. He had
electric blue eyes, and when he and Mickie looked at each other, she swore she could
hear sparks flying and feel them. He exuded a kind of mesmerizing electricity that
paralyzed you for a fraction of an instant, and then energized you. She could feel it in
her bones and so could he.
“You’re a very special woman, Michaela,” he said to her again and again. “You have
powers that come from another lifetime, another world, possibly another universe.”
He escorted her into the kitchen to get something to eat. They put food on their plates
and he led her out the back door to a cabana by the pool with a table and chairs, where
they could have privacy and eat, while the others ate in the kitchen. He talked about
growing up on an estate in Southampton, living with his grandparents after his parents
died in a horrible accident on their yacht. Boarding school in England after his
grandparents died, undergraduate and medical school at Harvard, living and working in
New York, five years of practicing in Palm Beach, and needing a more dynamic city to
work in. L.A. appeared to be the perfect place, so here he was, and he told Mickie that
she was part of the magic now, the destiny that controlled them all. He had no wife or
children, and said he had put all his love and energy into his medical practice.
“You must think I’m crazy for saying that,” he said gently, “but I felt an incredible
connection to you from the first time I met you.” He was mesmerizing, like a magnet she
couldn’t pull away from and escape, and didn’t want to. He wanted to be near her and
soak up her energy and combine it with his own. They lay down on the lounge chairs at
the pool, waiting for one of Zack’s assistants to come and get them for the rest of the
shots. Zack was sure that he had already gotten some very important shots, but he sensed
that there were others too.
Before they left the comfortable chairs, she asked him a direct question: “How do the
treatments really work?” she asked in barely more than a whisper. She called him
“Doctor,” and he corrected her immediately.
“Alex,” he said firmly. “The answer to your question is easy. Your skin has a
memory, your body, your heart, every part of you. The chemicals I use in the injections
waken the memory cells in your skin, and tell them to go back to the way they were
twenty years ago, and they do what they’re told. It’s really as simple as that. I could
look twenty now if I wanted to, but I don’t want to. Those weren’t the best years of my
life. These are, truly helping people to look the way they feel, the way they want to be
remembered and remember themselves when they meet someone now. We can achieve
some amazing results, both physically and psychologically. I’m honored to be a part of
it.” Mickie was so taken with him and so in awe of him.
She couldn’t take her eyes from his, as though they had gotten tangled up together, and
his gaze on her was like an embrace.
Before they went back to the others to continue the photo shoot, Zack beckoned them
both back to Alex’s office. There was a light box sitting on the desk to view slides, and
a computer where Alex wrote his emails and the occasional article to share his
discoveries with the world. Zack had already sent the images to Alex’s computer, and at
a mere touch, two faces appeared on the screen. One looked vaguely familiar and the
other was clearly Mickie. When you looked again, like an unsolved mystery, you saw
that the first image was Mickie too. Zack had advanced it in time, and the technology
allowed them to see what Mickie would look like at forty, and then a third image
appeared of Michaela at forty-five. She stared at her image.
“Wow, I look like shit at forty-five,” Mickie commented.
“I think maybe forty-five is too much,” Alex said critically. “Forty is better.” The
changes in her face at forty were noticeable. She was still a ravishing woman, but her
face had lost some of its definition, the spark in her eyes, the glow of her skin. It was a
realistic view of Mickie in twenty years, twenty-one years, to be exact.
Alex looked across at Zack then, and nodded. “It’s perfect. We got it. That’s done.
Freeze it,” he said with an intense tone in his voice that shook Michaela to her core.
“What are you going to do with those?” she asked him innocently, and he smiled at
her. She felt as though she had won the lottery when he did.
“Those are our before and after pictures,” he answered simply. Mickie looked
puzzled.
“Which is which?” He pointed to the digitally aged photograph of her at forty.
“That is when you first came to see me, isn’t it, my dear,” he said, looking deep into
her eyes. “And this one,” he pointed to the real one of Mickie as she looked now, “this
one is after treatments. The after picture.” She looked shocked for an instant, as though
she was trying to compute it in her mind, and it didn’t.
“It’s what they will understand. And it’s true, really. I could make you look twenty
years younger, if I chose to, right now. But at your age that would be a bit silly, wouldn’t
it? They’d be looking at a newborn baby. So we fast-forward to now, and then up ahead
at how you will look, and the photograph today is the after picture.” He said it so
smoothly that it was like watching an expert of the shell game move the shells swiftly
around the table until you were no longer sure what you had seen or where the pea was.
“Is that really honest?” she asked him.
“Yes, it is. It’s a projection of reality and there is nothing wrong about that. This will
be very helpful to people trying to make the decision about whether to proceed with our
treatments.” Even Mickie knew they wouldn’t look like her at nineteen, if they already
looked like the older version. But somehow she wanted to believe him and broke into a
broad smile.
“That’s genius!” she said. He nodded at Zack and they went to find the others to
continue the shoot, but he had what he wanted for his ads, gorgeous photographs of
Michaela now and later. He whispered to her as they went back to the crew.
“Don’t say anything to the others. This is just between us. People get funny about
things like that. Small minds.”
“When will the center be open?” she asked him.
“In two weeks. We have some carpentry to put the finishing touches on, the rest of the
art is arriving in a week, and we’re done. I’m giving a little opening party,” he said,
speaking close to her. “I hope you can come.”
The rest of the day slid by effortlessly and ended with champagne and some informal
portraits of the two of them. Then an Uber drove her back to West Hollywood, and she
drifted up the stairs, feeling as though she had been in a magical place all day with a
genius.
She tried to tell Billie about it when she got home, but it was all hard to put into
words. She had forgotten all about the before and after pictures, which didn’t seem
important. It was just a little sleight of hand, and the way he explained it made perfect
sense. She had no problem with it. She was the perfect partner for him. She had never
had a strong attachment to the truth. The end had always justified the means since her
earliest childhood and she still felt the same way about it.
Billie’s first day at work had been more mundane, and she had enjoyed it. They had a
wonderfully efficient pathology lab at Cedars-Sinai. She liked the people who worked
there. The equipment was spectacular, thanks to enormous donations. She wasn’t doing
research as she had hoped to. She was performing tests, but it was good experience, and
a pleasure to work for such a well-run institution. She needed the salary and it would
look good on her resume for a first job. She was grateful that they had hired her.
Michaela went back to the house in Bel Air every day that week. Zack took gorgeous
photographs of her. The house was coming together rapidly, and Alex was already
living there. And being within the aura of Alex Addison was an extraordinary, almost
out-of-body experience. She had never known anyone like him. Mickie felt as though he
had cast a spell on her, but if it was true, she liked it. By the end of the week she had
made twenty thousand dollars. She wasn’t sure if she had sold her soul to the devil, or if
he had. But Michaela had figured out that their ambitions were similar and dovetailed
nicely, and Alex thought so too. Mickie was exactly the woman he wanted, with a brain
and without a conscience, and with a gorgeous, flawless face.
