11

Apology with Paint

Carolyn

 

A second coat of makeup didn’t help any more than the first. The colorful bruise on my cheek, courtesy of Charles de Gaulle, canine abuser of American ladies, was only slightly less obvious. I wondered if the periwinkle blue blouse and slacks I had chosen to wear were bringing out the blue of the injury the way a blue dress is said to bring out the color of one’s eyes. I could change my clothes certainly, but there was nothing to be done about my eye. From the green lacquered armoire, I selected an off-white jacket and held it up to my shoulders in front of the mirror inside the door. No help at all. Either the bruise had darkened or the jacket’s color made it seem so. At least my cheekbone had stopped aching.

Just as I was about to try a black jacket, someone knocked on my door. Assuming it to be the maid, I opened the door without inquiring, only to be faced by Albertine Guillot, looking wonderfully chic at such an early hour in the morning in her perfectly cut black dress and gold earrings. Her dog, thank goodness, was nowhere in sight.

“Just as I feared,” she said, accent dripping with French hauteur. “Your face looks very battered. However, I have come prepared to help you with that problem,” and she brushed right by me without even asking my permission to enter the room. How did she plan to help? Put a bag over my head?

She studied the room, and then proceeded to drag a tall stool from the bar toward the window, drawing open both the green and beige striped drapes and the white sheers behind them. “Sit here, Madame Blue,” she ordered. “I can see that you applied makeup in front of the mirror in your bath. I myself find that natural light is much more effective, but then you Americans are so naïve in matters of appearance.”

Since I had continued to stand still, amazed by her effrontery, she took my arm and escorted me to the wicker-backed stool. However, once she had me perched there, she was not happy with her access to my face. “You are too tall,” she complained. “And why do you not wear eye makeup? A blonde such as yourself will lose the effect of the eyes without the proper color on eyebrows, lids, and lashes.” She opened a capacious handbag and laid out various pots, brushes, and the like on a table by the window.

“Really, Mrs. Guillot—” I protested.

She waved me to silence and began to remove, with brisk and painful strokes of some stinging liquid on cotton, the two coats of foundation I had applied. “Your skin is quite good,” she remarked, “for a woman of your age and coloring.”

“How very kind of you to say so,” I muttered.

“It has been my observation that you fair-skinned Germanic types tend to develop fine lines a bit early.”

“Earlier than you dark-skinned Mediterranean types?” I asked.

“Exactly.” She studied the bruised side of my face and then selected a small pot of thick white stuff, which she patted, again painfully, onto my injuries.

Clown makeup? I’d have to remove it as soon as I managed to get her out of my room.

“Poor Charles de Gaulle,” she murmured. “We were served a spicy pasta on the plane from Milan, and he ate it up before I could stop him. I attribute his naughty behavior yesterday afternoon and evening to a serious case of indigestion.”

The pasty white stuff dried almost immediately. I could feel it draw against my skin.

“I do hope you understand,” she continued.

I didn’t, of course. If he was sick, why hadn’t she left him in the room or taken him to a vet?

“I had ordered him something I thought might prove agreeable to him, but the Italians are so inefficient. The stewardess gave us all the same meal and then patted my poor dog on the head with some adoring comment when he plunged his nose into the dish and all but inhaled the whole serving, garlic bread and all.” She was now smoothing foundation over the white paste and the rest of my face. “I assure you that the stewardess was not so adoring when he had an accident on the seat. In fact, she was quite insulting, although the incident was entirely the fault of her incompetence.” Mrs. Guillot selected a pot of rouge, contemplated the color, and nodded.

Oh God, I thought. I’m going to have a white face with round red circles on my cheeks. And how will I remove the dried paste?

“Of course, other Italians, such a noisy people, made a fuss as well. Please stop wiggling, Madame Blue.”

“I wasn’t wiggling. I was about to say something.”

“Oh, very well. What is it?”

“I didn’t realize that large dogs were allowed in the cabin of a plane. Is that customary in Europe?”

“Where else would he sit? We paid for his seat, of course. Now, do not talk. I must apply lipstick.” And she did. “And now the eyes.” She stared into mine, as impersonal as if I were a canvas upon which she planned to paint an eye.

“Actually, I’d rather not—”

“I insist,” said Albertine Guillot sternly. “My dog is responsible for your injury to the detriment of your appearance, so I am, as the owner of the dog, responsible for what repairs can be made.” And she selected an eyebrow pencil from the array of cosmetics she had laid out, clamped a finger to my temple, suggested that my eyebrows could use a professional plucking, and drew lines. “You may talk while I work on your eyes, as long as you do not become so expressive as to move your head, brows, or eyelids.”

Well, that was very thoughtful. Now I could talk. As if I wanted to talk to Albertine Guillot. “Your English is very good,” I said grudgingly.

“But of course. I studied it from childhood. I cannot imagine why you Americans allow your children to grow up with only one language.” She had outlined my eyes with another pencil.

“Are you well acquainted with the Riccis?” I asked, thinking that I might obtain some information for my investigation into Paolina’s death.

“My husband has known Ruggiero for some years,” she replied. “Signor Ricci is, as you might imagine, a man given to many indiscreet liaisons with young women. The death of his secretary, however it happened, will no doubt prove to be embarrassing to him and to Constanza for a time.”

She was now applying eye shadow. I hadn’t noticed the color and hoped that it wasn’t red, which does not look good on me, or anyone else, in my opinion.

“And have you met Mrs. Ricci before?” I asked.

“Several times. Her taste in designers is excellent, although her Italian ancestry skews her color selections.”

I remembered a trip to Paris and the realization that all the women were wearing black. No doubt Albertine Guillot felt that any choice other than black was in poor taste. “I understood that Signora Ricci was of Norman ancestry.”

“Quite true,” my snobbish, multilingual cosmetician agreed as she brushed mascara onto my eyelashes. “And she is most fortunate that her Norman-French blood guides her to some extent in her wardrobe selection. There.” She put away the mascara brush and box, gathered up the cosmetics she hadn’t used on me, and informed me that she would leave the others so that I could take care of my appearance myself in the days to follow.

Then she left! She didn’t even hand me a mirror and ask what I thought of the remodeling job. She had closed the door before I climbed off the stool and went over to a mirror. And I must admit that one would never know her dreadful dog had attacked me. In fact, I looked quite dramatic, although I doubted that I’d ever be able to reproduce the effect.

So Ruggiero Ricci was given to many indiscreet liaisons, was he? Did that mean that Paolina had been the first woman to cheat on him, and that he had been so indignant that he killed her? Or did it mean that his wife finally got fed up with his infidelity and killed Paolina to give him a scare?