Scarlet Stiletto - the First Cut Read online

  “How are you, Mum?”

  “Good, good, good.”

  Her mother always was, and is, ‘good’. She’s lived her life believing it and, Cyndi supposes, it’s too late for her to see the truth.

  They talk of old times. But the old times are censored recollections. Never a hint of violence or unhappiness. Cyndi’s father remains the hard-working man, the good provider, and the sadly missed husband.

  Cyndi doesn’t miss him at all. Sometimes her mother gets confused and thinks he’s still alive. Her face clouds over and she looks frightened, like now.

  “I’d better get back to cleaning under the bed,” she says. “Your father won’t be pleased if the place is untidy when he gets home.”

  Cyndi nods. Trying to explain that he is dead, that he isn’t ever coming home, only upsets her mother. Cyndi remembers how it was back then. How it really was.

  Each afternoon at 5.30, the tension in their home would mount to an unbearable hum. The sort a vacuum cleaner might make when the bag is overly full. Her mother would dart about the house searching for something else to clean. Dinner was always ready and waiting, but it wasn’t enough. Her father would find fault with something. Cyndi had often caught him hunting for something—anything—in the house that wasn’t exactly right. Once he fished a broken glass out of the bin to grumble about it.

  Her mother says something that jolts Cyndi from her memories.

  “What did you say, Mum?”

  “That man is a nasty piece of work,” her mother repeats, sticking her head back beneath the bed.

  Cyndi can’t believe it. She tugs at the hem of her mother’s dress.

  “Dad is a nasty piece of work?”

  The head reappears frowning. “Heaven’s no. Your father’s passed away, you know. I was speaking of that Daniel you married. Nasty, nasty, nasty. Don’t know why you can’t see it for yourself. It’s as obvious as dirt.”

  Cyndi stands in the lower level of Kmart, but it feels more like the lower regions of Dante’s Hell.

  “... And it has the features you asked about. Suction and blow.”

  Cyndi smiles at the Godfrey’s salesman. It’s her best housewife smile, pilfered from her mother.

  “Are you sure it’s powerful?” Cyndi asks.

  The salesman gives his best smile. She isn’t sure where he got his from; a horror movie perhaps. He leans toward her like a conspirator, which he unknowingly is.

  “Why, madam,” he says (Cyndi hates being called ‘madam’ marginally less than being called ‘high maintenance’), “you could perform an abortion with this sucker,” and he laughs.

  Cyndi laughs, too. Her mouth feels stuffed full of cotton—or maybe it’s dust devils. They seem to be everywhere.

  That evening, Danny comes home to a house completely depleted of dirt, grime and spider webs. His expression is one of stark amazement.

  Dreamily, he wanders into the bedroom where the dustless bedside table gleams in clear lamplight, linen washed, clothes folded away.

  “Wow!” he says.

  The kitchen sparkles like something out of a television commercial. Cyndi used a toothbrush to remove the built up grunge around the hotplates. She even cleaned in the crack between the oven and the bench, but Danny doesn’t notice.

  In the bathroom, the shower curtain has been washed with White King, the basin is scrubbed and the floor mopped. Her raw fingers have swollen up to being fat, purple leeches. Danny doesn’t notice her hands, either.

  His satisfied and scowling expressions meet and merge into something new and, Cyndi thinks, ugly.

  “I can’t remember a time the house looked like this,” Danny says. He glances at her suspiciously, as if she may have emerged from a ruptured seedpod as the alien duplicates did in The Body Snatchers.

  Cyndi’s back aches, her arms feel weighted down with bags of wet cement, her ankles are bulbous slugs spilling out over the tops of her shoes.

  “I bought a new vacuum cleaner,” she says, showing her teeth in what she hopes is a wide smile. “Would you like to see it?”

  Speechless, Danny wanders into the living room and collapses onto the clean, covered couch.

  Cyndi leaves him in polished splendour and gets the new Volta vacuum cleaner.

  She hauls it into the room and plugs it into a socket between him and the television set.

  “Here it is,” she announces.

  He gazes at it, then at her.

  “Well,” he says. “Well.”

  Cyndi smiles smugly. Danny is at a loss for words, which is so unlike him. He has nothing to complain about. Nothing to put her down over. The poor thing. Look at him sitting there, with his mouth hanging open.

  He clears his throat and wheezes. “Now you need to do something about yourself.”

  His satisfied expression resurfaces.

  “Look at you,” he says. “You’re fat and your hair is a sight.”

  Cyndi’s smile dies. He’ll always be the same. Just like her father.

  From inside the Volta, she hears muffled voices.

  “He is unkind.”

  “Bosses you, he does.”

  “Speaks down to you like ... dirt.”

  Cyndi bends over and removes the Volta’s hose. She re-connects it to the ‘blow’ outlet and flicks the switch.

  The accumulated dirt of the day’s cleaning erupts forth in a fluffy grey cloud as she releases dust devils and bunnies alike.

  Coughing, Danny grabs for his throat.

  She directs the humming hose directly at him. “You’re nasty, nasty, nasty,” she says. “Now SHUT UP!”

  The grey cloud envelops his face. Danny slithers off the couch and lands on his knees. She switches off the machine and drops the nozzle. That has shut him up wonderfully.

  Danny gasps for breath. When the grey cloud settles, he’s still kneeling, arms outstretched in a plea for compassion. Cyndi decides he looks like Al Johnson in the midst of a rendition of ‘Mammy’.

  Cyndi walks to the kitchen and locates his Ventolin. When she returns, she tosses the inhaler at him. It bounces off his forehead, leaving a white dot, before it slips between the couch cushions and disappears.

  “Now.” she says. “I missed all my shows today because I was cleaning. But I’ve taped them.”

  On the dusty couch, Cyndi sits and presses the remote control. Dust devils nestle on the pillows. Danny wheezes by her feet.

  Tomorrow she’ll call the hostel and tell them that her mother is coming to live with her. It should work out perfectly. Her mother loves to clean and won’t she marvel at the new Volta vacuum cleaner? But Cyndi will have the house squeaky clean before her mother arrives. Dirt isn’t a bad thing—unless it’s evidence.

  By the time Oprah finishes and Maury Povich begins, Danny’s wheezing has stopped. Without emotion, Cyndi realises he isn’t breathing at all. Chronic asthmatics often die from their affliction.

  Extraordinary things happen all the time.

  Julie Waight

  First Prize Trophy, 2005

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Concealer

  I am a makeup artist. My job is to transform people. I turn them into what they want to be.

  Actually, that’s not quite true. I change them so they look like what they want to be, which is of course not the same. Although I deal with their surfaces, it’s really a very intimate process. People talk of closeness with their hairdresser, who stands behind them, touching their hair. I stand in front and touch that most intimate of places, the face. Impossible not to make a connection, to feel things coming up through the point of contact where the skin on the face meets the skin of my sensitive fingertips. So I feel things, I know things, but I am discreet. I have a certain reputation. I never ask questions.

  So you could say I acted out of instinct. But it was instinct based on a great deal of experience and a sensitive touch.

  You might be surprised at the requests I get. Women, of course, and girls. I can make a twelve ye
ar old look thirty, and a thirty year old look ... well, eighteen. Men, too. Highflying corporate types who want to look different—perhaps younger—when coming up against a younger competitor but insist that no one should ever guess they are wearing makeup. Right through to the most outrageous of transvestites; although they usually prefer to do their own. Sometimes they come for a lesson, or if they want to achieve a particular look. There is a wide range between these extremes. At my age, with my history and my current profession, I can truly say very little shocks me.

  Usually my clients are seeking mainly to deceive themselves, although I have hidden the odd love-bite in my time. Usually harmless stuff, or at least matters that fall within the parameters of normal life. Love, loss, denial, seeking, deceiving. Usually.

  I do not advertise. My clients are all word of mouth. I prefer it that way. I sit in my front parlour and they come to me with their requests, some simple, some more ... exotic. I ask very little, although some are keen to talk. I prefer the honesty of touch to the interpretation of words. I don’t ask how they found me. But, find me they do.

  So I thought nothing of it when the phone rang, a new client. Even when he asked questions about how close together the appointments were, whether he could have the last one for the day, and so on. Many of my clients are anxious about this at first. They don’t want to run into anybody on the way out. As usual, I subtly assured him that my appointments were spaced far enough apart that he need not fear unwelcome confrontations. I gave him the address. I have to be very explicit with first-timers, telling them to look for the little gravel road that runs off what looks like a dead-end street, ending at the creek. It is quite dark, but I have always liked looking down to the creek across the dirt and stones. I like the sound of the water and the coolness of the air rising off it on a warm night.

  But he found his way okay. He had requested an evening appointment and promptly at eight I heard his wheels on the gravel. I had not long finished a small group of teenage girls going off to their formal, and the house still smelled of their perfume and excitement. They had gone out into the night like princesses in the their long, floaty dresses, sparkly jewellery and high heels. I suspected that the moment they stood up and saw themselves transformed from schoolgirls to fresh young beauties would be the highlight of their night. I smiled as I swept up a little bit of clutter with my straw broom.

  The man rang the bell and I answered.

  “Hello, Lou,” I said with a small smile. He looked a little nervous, but that was not unusual, either. I led him into my little front room, which was not much more than an enclosed porch, really. But I have made it look pretty with two comfortable chairs, some tea and coffee things on a table, a soft lamp. Then, through the archway, is another room with my proper makeup chair and my bright mirrors and my shelves of magic potions. I find people are more comfortable sitting in the darker room first to discuss their ... needs.

  Lou refused tea and coffee. He seemed to have decided to get it over with quickly. “I want to look like a woman,” he blurted. I inclined my head. “Of course.” As always, I speak the minimum. Sometimes telling people that their requests are not unusual makes them more uncomfortable. Sometimes the whole point is that they want to be unusual. Sometimes they have sectioned off part of their mind so they can still judge other people who indulge in the same behaviour they are indulging in themselves. Often, in fact, the people who hate difference the most do so because they see a little of themselves in the people they despise. But best not to get into it. People’s motives are their own business.

  “What kind of look were you after?”

  He had, as it turned out, a very particular look in mind. Not the usual. As a general rule, men getting in touch with their feminine side want to look as feminine as possible, and I sometimes have to dissuade them gently from too much eyeshadow or too bright a shade of lipstick. But Lou did not want that. I led him into the other room and set to work.

  An hour later I asked, “How’s that?” I may modestly say I have never been too disappointed in the reply to my question. I pride myself on having a sensitivity to people’s needs, to match my skills with my coloured liquids and creams.

  We looked together into the mirror. After a very close shave I evened out Lou’s skin tone with a natural-look foundation, which perforce I had to apply quite heavily, and then just enough blush to give him a little warmth. I added some eyeshadow in natural tones, and lengthened and thickened his eyelashes. Some mousse in his black hair—long for a man but shortish for a woman—to give it a tousled look. Eyebrows tidied up but not too thin. Nose and chin refined by a bit of careful shading. A bit of lip gloss over just a smidgen of colour. The man who had come through the door was transformed into a woman— a natural woman—perhaps a bit masculine.

  Lou gave a small smile. “Perfect.” I felt a chill. I had spent the time focusing on the task at hand. It always takes a bit more concentration the first time, getting to know the tones and textures of a client’s skin, the thickness of their lips, the shadows of their hair. But as I worked, I had felt uneasy. Not something I could put words to. Words are so inadequate, don’t you think? Just a tingling, as if my fingers were in contact with something unsavoury.

  Now I looked into his eyes. The excitement in them had a nasty edge, something I had never seen before. He caught my glance.

  “We do what we have to do,” he said. “It’s not about pleasure.” He paid me—in cash, as I expected—put his leather jacket on over his jeans and t-shirt, and left. I stood at my door and watched the lights of his car disappear down the creek road, with his money still warm in my hand.

  Then soon after, one of my favourite customers arrived. This woman had a pact with her husband that once a year they would transform themselves almost unrecognisably and pick up each other in a bar. Each year was a new challenge and we both thoroughly enjoyed the experience. “Hi,” she cried as she got out of the car. “This year I thought I’d really fool him—I’m going to dress up as a man!” I had to laugh. I quietly hoped Lou would not become a regular, and put him out of my mind.

  He did come back, though, and I liked it less and less. As I said, it is impossible to stand there for an hour touching someone’s face without getting a feeling for them. And, I did not like him. There was a coldness in his eyes matched by a coldness in his blood as it pulsed under my fingertips. He became impatient for me to finish, an ugly excitement quickening his breath and the cruel smile made more abhorrent by the cherry gloss on his thin lips. We spoke little and I was always glad, though uneasy, when he left.

  ‘SERIAL KILLER FEAR’, said the headline. I buy many magazines, from the high-end of fashion kind for the product adverts, to the tabloids for the latest looks of starlets. There, in one of the more sensational ones, was an article about the murders. I had heard bits and pieces about the first murder. I don’t watch the news but I like to have the radio on through the day and it was in the news bulletins. 1 prefer not to think about the nastier aspects of human nature so I always turned it off. But there had been a murder of a second woman. As with the first, it was a young woman, single, who lived alone but liked going out. Something troubled me about the reports, an uneasy nameless disturbance at the back of my mind.

  I looked at the magazine pictures again. Neither of the victims was a client—I never forget a face—but I was studying them closely and so I jumped when the doorbell rang. It was Lou. I do not normally lose track of the time and was uncommonly flustered as I let him in. We went straight to the makeup room: I knew what he wanted by now. But as we walked through he saw the magazine open on the little table. He looked sharply at me, then away.

  Unusually, when I had almost finished his face, he spoke.

  “Very quite place you’ve got here. Dark. Isolated. You’d never guess you were so close to town. I’m surprised you live here.”

  I hesitated, my fingers deep in icy cold cream.

  “Oh, I like it,” I said.

  “Anything could h
appen here. No one would ever know. Not for ages.”

  My mouth was dry. I wanted to say I was perfectly capable of looking after myself. But I didn’t want to inflame the situation. So instead I took a light tone.

  “And what a shame that would be. Who could make you look so perfect?”

  He took his eyes from mine and looked at himself in the mirror. He gave a small smile.

  “There are always others,” he said. “Any type of women; there are always more.’ He looked almost weary.

  After he had gone I read the article again. I checked the dates against my appointment book. I considered my options. I prefer not to get involved with police. Like many of my customers, I have had my own share of ... shall we say ... youthful indiscretions. Nothing bad, of course; a few vices that hurt no one but myself, a couple of unconventional (and, absurdly, less than legal) career options. A not entirely unblemished record.