First Look the Second: My Lady Lipstick (Diana)

Diana Beckinsale put two blocks between herself and the helpful but unsettling Paris before she paused in her brisk pace to savor the moment. The wind snatched at her cap but the bobby pins held. She imagined her package whisked away instead, carried over the green expanse of the impossibly large American continent until it floated to a gentle rest on the desk of the one person she was certain would recognize the contents.

As soon as she could confirm that it had arrived she’d trash the burner cell phone, bow out of playing Dorine and be home in time to help her sister plan her wedding. It was a shame—Tartuffe was a lot of fun, and setting a play about avarice behind fake piety inside the West Wing of the White House was brilliant. The director thought it could earn more backing and was probably right. But not with any of the current good-enough-for-local-gigs cast. Besides, Diana wasn’t looking for that kind of notoriety.

The only oddity of the whole Boston job was that woman, Paris. Diana really hadn’t had any intention of prying, but once opened it was impossible for her not to take in the contents of the letter she’d found. Queen of the Bodice Rippers Anita Topaz was really a tatty, hoodie-clad twenty-something? Okay, she might be thirty—her light brown skin would resist wrinkles for years. Not that Diana had ever seen a photo of the writer for comparison, but it was surprising nonetheless. When she’d first entered Mona Lisa’s and assessed the occupants, she’d mistaken the figure for an underaged boy hiding his face in a bar.

When Lisa had pointed her that way to return the letter, Diana had been gobsmacked. As she’d approached the huddled figure she’d realized that her presumption of gender had been wrong. She also hadn’t expected large, deep brown eyes to greet her with open suspicion. The snarl in those eyes left Diana with the impression of a formerly gentle dog that had been kicked so often it growled a constant warning at the world to keep its distance.

And in the chaos of her reactions she’d mistakenly given the woman her real first name. Not that it mattered—they were unlikely to meet again.

What mattered was that her feet hardly seemed to touch the ground. She was floating with the elation of a job completed. The beautiful day had burst into pure glory as the package had slipped from her hand.

She came to the mud-filled gap in the sidewalk she’d been going around for the last several weeks. Between the sun and her exhilaration she decided it was time to show it who was boss. With one running step for momentum, she jumped it cleanly. And laughed at herself for putting her arms up as if seeking a perfect ten for the dismount.

“Nice move!”

Diana turned to find Jeremy, who played the titular Tartuffe, applauding her. “Thank you kind sir.”

He gallantly tucked Diana’s hand under his arm as they crossed the street to the theater. Decades in local theater with a love of performance for its own sake, Jeremy had no illusions about the scope of his abilities. He made rehearsals lively and wasn’t fond of behind-the-scenes drama. Of all the small, local productions Diana had crashed for cover, this one had at least been among the most pleasant.

As she shed her coat off stage and found her curled and ragged script where she’d left it before the lunch break, Diana flashed again on the puzzle of Paris’s surprising identity. The woman had been dressed like someone one paycheck from homelessness. Diana didn’t know much about publishing, but a writer with a name she recognized from the grocery store, well, wouldn’t she be more like a Meryl Streep in She-Devil? A mansion on pristine headlands, diamonds glittering from a hat pin? More like Diana’s own relatives for that matter, with their ostentatiously casual wealth dripping from every spa-tightened pore?

She wondered about the incongruity of the puzzle until the smell of old dusty seats and stage floor varnish pushed all thoughts but the production out of her head. She did like the play and the players. It would be hard to walk away this time.

 

Hours later Diana’s back was the only thing on her mind. As she climbed the steep, linoleum-covered stairs to her attic apartment, every step was accompanied by a pulse of tear-inducing pain. Her ebullient mood had masked the warning signs. The Nurofen tablets she’d hastily swallowed had helped, but the annoyed and aching vertebrae hated the stairs. Well, it was only for a few more days. The privacy and week-to-week cash rental were exactly what she required.

Her first stop was the bottle of Tylenol 3 she kept in the cupboard next to the fridge. The milk was a little iffy, but she didn’t want to wait until she’d heated a tin of soup to take the medication. It would blunt the edge and getting off her feet plus a good night’s sleep would do the rest. The rock-slab of a chair at the tiny dinette table gave her immediate relief and for a moment she closed her eyes and willed the pain to subside. She’d had years on the gymnastics circuit to learn how to play hurt. Ten years after her last competition she was still playing hurt.

When the pain had faded from a hot red to a tolerable yellow on her personal meter, she eased the wig off with the help of a cotton swab and baby oil, and set it carefully on its pedestal. The windy day meant she had new snarls to brush out later. Feeling better by the minute, she wrestled her way out of her boots and carried them to the closet alcove. Her Irish lass attire fell onto the laundry pile alongside last night’s perfect costume.

A wig of short black hair, a ubiquitous button-up white shirt, black slacks and apron, and carrying a tray—presto! She had become part of the wallpaper in a busy restaurant. Entering the kitchen unchallenged was a simple matter of confidence. In a hotel the kitchen linked to everywhere and security was limited. Nobody noticed room service waiters. Tray lifted to block her face from the security camera, a quick knock, a few moments with her treasured Sissone pressed against the electronic lock and she’d been in the room. The object of her desire hadn’t even been in the hotel safe, just tucked in a jewelry case with other far more precious items. The case had been in the top dresser drawer, right on top.

One of the easiest jobs she’d ever done.

Happy to relax into warm yoga pants and her faded red Arsenal sweatshirt, she filled a saucepan with tinned mushroom soup and put it on the larger of the stove top burners. It would take a while before it reached tepid, let alone truly hot. Even though their ubiquity was a Yankee mystery, she was happy to spot a packet of oyster crackers in the jumble on the table. They would hold her over while she took off her makeup.

The dinette table was just big enough for her makeup mirror and supplies. Witch hazel and cold cream worked wonders. The Irish lass her own family wouldn’t recognize disappeared in minutes.
Color contacts out and the heavy makeup off at last, she became the brown-eyed towhead that Evelyn, Countess Donchester, would acknowledge as the product of her first marriage. Acknowledge—yes. Approve of—heavens no. They loved each other, to be sure. Diana thought that her frequent and lengthy absences made them appreciate each other when they were in the same room.

Feeling much lighter and aware that the codeine was moving the pain from yellow to green, Diana plucked a sepia-toned photograph from its anchor point in the corner of the mirror. She studied the high forehead and long plaits of black hair that framed the woman’s somber face. At the neck of what was probably a deerskin ceremonial dress was a small brooch of ordinary stones and turquoise beads strung and twisted to clasp a small dark feather. The faded coloration of the very old photograph turned the beads a uniform dusty brown.

She allowed herself a grin as she fished out the photo album she kept in the smallest of her half-unpacked suitcases. Flipping it open to the ribbon she used as a bookmark, she slid the photo into its original sleeve and used the mirror’s lighting to study the brooch one last time. It might have been an indication of rank or merely ornamental. It could have been a gift from a suitor who showed devotion by supplying fresh feathers, or a fetish the native woman had made for herself.

Diana now knew the beads were clay red stone and beautifully variegated turquoise. The combination had looked beautiful in the palm of her gloved hand.

She sipped her soup from a chipped mug while ensconced in the apartment’s only other chair. At least the recliner worked, and the floor lamp next to it put good light on her treasured photographs. Turning the pages was a happy journey of past successes and future endeavors. Obsidian earrings, a carved leather choker, a delicate glazed black and white bowl. A tribal gavel, unpolished diamonds set into a ceremonial goblet—so many pretty things. Some of them she’d touched, but for most she was still waiting for that joy. After the wedding she’d pick something new.

All the adrenaline of the past month slowly drained out of her until she was too limp to move. It didn’t matter. The recliner was no worse for her back than the Murphy bed. The thump of her landlord arriving home for the night was the last thing she remembered.

She woke cold and stiff and mightily wished she’d grabbed a blanket. At least her back had stopped aching. The photo album tumbled to the floor as she dragged herself upright. Groggy and yawning, she got the Murphy bed lowered without the usual conk on the head. It was no sooner in place than she realized the album was now out of reach underneath. She could leave it until morning, after she tucked the bed into the wall again. But the knowledge that something so precious to her was on the floor would likely keep her awake, so she slithered under the bed and emerged with the album out the other side. There were advantages to being small and nimble.

About to switch off the overhead light for good, she found herself standing stock still with one hand on the light switch and the other holding the album. It had fallen open to the third page, displaying one of the first photos she’d collected. It featured a burly man at a podium, about to strike an elegant, curved gavel to the wood.

Her sleepy brain slowly called up the object’s data. The delicate handle was carved from highly polished, partially petrified ram’s bone. The head was a stunning single piece of faceted obsidian laboriously and carefully bored to allow the handle to fit through it. A thin disc of rose gold was inset over the eye where the two pieces joined. In spite of disputed provenance, at last auction the artifact had fetched over two thousand pounds. The winning bidder and current so-called owner was the American tycoon in the photograph. A man with fingers in entertainment—television, tabloid news, films. And publishing.

Her drowsiness fled. She closed her eyes to recall the fallen letter. Anita Topaz’s letter. Signed by Ronald Keynes Reynard himself.