Eventually we moved from the couch to the kitchen where Jack brewed coffee and made sandwiches.
Emotion is a hungry business. We polished off a plate of sandwiches, a bag of chips, most of a package of cookies and a pint of Rocky Road ice cream.
Linda called at six to ask if Ben could stay for dinner, leaving us to continue our get-to-know-each-other marathon into the evening.
Somehow in the course of this extended and intimate afternoon, he had become the listener again, with Maggie and Chrysalis the topics.
“She’s on a collision course with disaster. What am I going to do about her?”
“She’s a grown woman. She can do what she wants.”
“Makeover shows have made women cavalier about cosmetic surgery. They see condensed into quick shots what is actually hours in a surgical suite and weeks of recovery—if all goes well, that is.
“People choose from a menu of improvements like they order at a deli. ‘I’ll have a tummy tuck, something done with my jowls and do my eyes while you’re at it. Oh, yes, my thighs are too thick and my teeth are uneven. Why don’t we take care of it all at once?” I shuddered and Jack rubbed my arm. Even the fire he’d built to ward off the coolness of the fall air didn’t help. The source of my chill was purely internal.
“It gives me the creeps. Maggie stands at the bathroom mirror sucking in her cheeks and asking me if I think she’d look better if they removed some fat from her face. She’d never even thought of that until Frank suggested it to her.”
“This Frank is quite a salesman.”
“Frank is a manipulator. I’ve watched him since day one. Pete said as much but now I’ve seen it for myself. Pete is beginning to suspect Frank bought her onto the show because he was attracted to her, not because she needed help. He is always thinking of reasons to cozy up to the women on the set and he’s relentless once he decides to pursue one of them.”
“I take it you know from experience?” Jack frowned at the idea.
“I’m usually tutoring around the lunch hour so it is easy to say no to him. Several evenings Pete was at my house and picked up the phone when he called. I guess he finally got the idea that I wasn’t available—to him, at least.”
“I wonder why he’s a partner in the business.”
“He knows how to pump up ratings, for one thing. And he’s very good at what he does. I’m afraid he’s going to bring up the idea of a nose job and chin reduction for Maggie next. He wouldn’t care a bit if she was unrecognizable by the time he was through. It would be quite a triumph if he could made a beautiful woman into a spectacular one.”
Jack set a cup of steaming hot cider in front of me. “It’s unethical for a doctor to suggest procedures that might distort a patient’s face or body.”
“But Frank isn’t a doctor and I’m not sure he has any ethics. Or maybe I’m being too hard on Frank. Perhaps it’s Maggie I’m most upset with for buying into this.” I scraped my fingers through the hair tumbling around my shoulders. “I feel so helpless.”
“Maybe you should be on that television set,” Jack commented casually, “to protect her. If they still haven’t filled the hostess spot they may be waiting for you to change your mind. You said they’re still pressuring your friend Pete to talk you into it.”
Would a voice of reason be heard over the circus atmosphere developing around this show? If Maggie went ahead with everything Frank suggested, it would be a disaster. It was surgery, not the trip to the beauty parlor as my roommate seemed to think. Sometimes things go wrong in surgery. Sometimes people come out damaged—or dead.
“It goes against everything in me to encourage this.”
Jack absently played with the fingers of my left hand as it lay on the table. I did nothing to pull it away.
“If I could convince these women of their real, innate beauty, their beauty in God’s eyes, maybe they wouldn’t embrace such radical measures. Would that make me some sort of undercover agent trying to destroy the show’s concept?”
“You told me the show is about all kinds of beauty, inner as well as outer. They want you because you have something more, something they can’t quite define that goes beyond medical advancements.”
“So they say.”
He picked up a banana from the fruit bowl on the table and spoke into it like a microphone. “And to what do you attribute your inner beauty, Ms. Hunter?” he intoned, sounding remarkably like Frank.
“God, of course. You can’t shine from the inside out unless you’ve got the light.”
“And you have that light?”
Suddenly an idea actually did spark in my brain. I jumped to my feet and dashed for my cell phone.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m calling Eddie. If he is serious about letting me share what real beauty means to me then he just might have a hostess for his show.”
“Besides—” I covered the phone with my hand as it rang “—I don’t want to take any chances that Maggie or any of the others go over the deep end.”
A voice rumbled into my ear.
“Hello, Eddie? It’s Quinn Hunter. I’d like to make an appointment to talk with you….”
“You are going to do what?” Pete stared at me in dumbfounded exasperation.
Eddie Bessett, on the other hand, looked calm and thoughtful. “So you will do the show if we give the internal beauty parts at least equal time with the external. Stuff like poise, self-respect…”
“Faith.”
“Only if it is genuine, Quinn. I don’t want this to be some kind of revival show.”
“That’s been the sticking point all along,” I pointed out patiently. “You say you want to show inner transformation as well as the outer one. My roommate has indicated that she’s had consultations with cosmetic surgeons, dentists and hairstylists. Eddie, you have a contestant who is willing to cut off her little toes so that she can fit into prettier shoes! It sounds like you are chronicling insanity, not transformation.”
Eddie turned to Pete with a sour look. “I blame you for this.”
“Wha-what’d I do?”
“If you hadn’t brought Quinn here in the first place, I wouldn’t have gotten so stuck on the idea of having her in the show.”
“And you’d have the same repetitive show that we’ve already seen,” Pete answered.
“What if she talks them all out of having anything done? Frank’s already complaining.”
“If Quinn talks through the process with each of these women, they’ll become real people to the audience, not stick figures to watch for a few minutes before turning to the nightly news. The audience will recognize themselves in the contestants. That’s what made your show Hide-and-Seek such a hit. People identified with others like themselves. I remember watching the show and wondering where I would look for the treasure.”
“I saw the show once, too,” I added. “All I could think about was how I’d spend the money.”
“You only watched the show once?”
“Well, it was the end of the season when Pete told me about it.”
Eddie looked steadily at me. “What made you change your mind about Chrysalis?”
“My friend Jack suggested that perhaps it was God’s will that I do this so initially I prayed for wisdom and discernment about the show. I was sure His answer would be ‘No, don’t be ridiculous’ but it wasn’t. He’s been surprisingly quiet on the subject.”
Pete’s eyebrows shot upward at the mention of Jack.
“Jack suggested that being with Maggie on the show might be the right thing to do.”
“And what did God say to that?”
Eddie meant to be sarcastic, but I smiled at him. “I expected Him to put all sorts of stops in my way, but it hasn’t happened. My growing sense is that it is what I’m supposed to be doing. God is always reaching for His children. If they’re watching television, then that’s where He’ll go to find them.”
The strange look on Eddie’s face almost made me laugh. He hadn’t expected that. God and reality television?
“Be forewarned, Eddie, if you want me to do this, you’ll be putting a Christian woman on air.”
“I said no sermons.”
“I’m not hiding my light under a bushel basket, either.”
Eddie assumed a pained expression.
Pete looked at me askance and mouthed, What do you think you’re doing?
Putting out a fleece like Gideon, I realized. If, after what I’d said, Eddie still let me on the show…
“Frank already thinks I’m nuts. He’s complained all along about the ‘internal beauty’ thing. I’m the one who thought it was a good idea,” Eddie said. “Well, if God wants it, who am I to stand in His way? Just don’t get preachy on me, Quinn.”
A sense of calm washed over me and I smiled serenely at Eddie. “I won’t have to, Eddie. Faith speaks for itself.”