Кэндес Бушнелл - Four Blondes

“Mr. Smith doesn't dribble," I say, unable to even get angry because of the aforementioned state I'm in. "Oh. I'm sorry. I meant you," D.W. says.

I allow myself (still clutching Mr. Smith) to be led from the town car out onto Madison Avenue, where someone is jack hammering the sidewalk, and a Mercedes sport-utility vehicle passes blaring rap music, and people walk by all emitting high-frequency vibrations of "Look at me, look at me, look at me," so that even in this brief moment the noise of the city is crushing and I feel like everything is collapsing in on me. We walk up narrow terra-cotta stairs and enter the beauty salon, which is all skylights and marble columns with a fountain in the middle (meant, I believe, to be some kind of imitation Roman baths), around which women in white robes with turbans on their heads lounge reading magazines.

I'm whisked off to the private area, where they minister to "celebrities," and someone dressed in a sari keeps trying to give me coffee, tea, or water (when I ask for a Bloody Mary, they all look shocked) and keeps shoving bowls of water with lemon slices floating on top under Mr. Smith's nose, which he sensibly refuses.

And then they begin cutting. Cutting away my long hair which I've had all my life (which is my life—long hair, men 'ove it), and which has gone through various and sundry colors of blond, depending on whether or not I actually had money at the time to pay someone to color it or if I had to do it myself with Sun-In or if one of my gay friends took pity on me and arranged for someone to do it for free (that was easy, as soon as it came out in the gossip columns that I was dating the prince of Luxenstein), and D.W. comes over and says, "So many people have worked so hard to get you here, Cecelia," blowing smoke out of his nostrils. I say, "So I am supposed to feel guilty?”

"Just grateful," he says, and walks away.

And I swear, as they're cutting, I keep hearing people talking about me Whispering my name. Until finally, ifs too much and I scream, "Will everybody please shut up?" And they all do, except for one unfortunate soul who goes on and on, speaking into his cell phone in a high-pitched nasally voice, ". .. That’s right, Dick. She's here now. Complete makeover. And completely loony. She won't let go of that dog. Won't speak to anyone. She's got the worst energy of anyone I've ever met. Maybe she should try crystals....”

Finally, he looks up, and after that, nobody says anything at all.

"What did I ever do to you?" I whisper hoarsely.

I stare at myself in the mirror. My eyes are very wide and blue. Very wide because I KNOW this isn't a good time to start crying, not with all these PEO PLE (if you can even call them that) standing around in various forms of emotional attitude, ranging from disdain to shocked horror to pity, reminding me of the first time I had to go to that school in Massachusetts when I was ten years old and taller than all of them and they stood around in the playground and called me "Miss ... Cecelia," the colorist says. She has a long face and large teeth and she looks like a talking horse, but a kindly one. "I hope you don't think that was a reflection of ... our salon. He's new. I'm going to fire him immediately.”

I could have someone fired?

"Oh," I say softly, nodding over the top of Mr. Smith's head.

"That was very, very wrong of him," she says, pumping the back of my chair so it goes up and down. "David," she snaps. "Pack your things and don't come back.”

This David person, who is lurking around the edges, is thin and dark-haired and sloe-eyed with dark circles, and he reeks of anonymous sex. "Whatever," he says haughtily. Our eyes meet for one second in the mirror and I see his whole pitiful story: fresh off the bus from some lousy town in the Midwest, ambitious and a born hustler, will do anyone for a piggyback to the next rung (for fun or profit), anything to erase his dirty origins and make believe he is someone else. Mostly, though, he'll talk about how I got him fired, and talk and talk, and he'll spread this topic of conversation among his acquaintances like a virus.

I know. I used to hang out with people like that. I used to be like people like that.

I can deny it. Even to myself.

"I'm really very ... normal," I say softly.

And isn't this one of my problems? I'm normal? "Oh yes. I can see that," the colorist says.

I'm just like a million other girls in New York. "Aren't you from ... ?”

"Massachusetts," I say.

"My grandmother was from Massachusetts.”

"That’s nice," I say. Realizing that for the first time in—what? weeks?—I'm having a normal conversation. She paints white goop on my hair.

"What’s your doggie's name?" she asks.

Dr. Q. licks the tip of his pencil.

"You think that ...," he says, consulting his notebook, "your husband and this, this friend of yours, D.W., the publicity man, have formed a conspiracy against you and are forcing you to become ... let me see here ... the American version of Princess Di. Who, you so adroitly pointed out, is dead. Meaning ... you believe that, consciously or subconsciously, your husband secretly wants ... you dead." Pause. "Well?”

"I heard them discussing it on the phone.”

“Your death.”

"NOOOO," I scream. "The conspiracy.”

“Oh. The conspiracy.”

"D.W. told me there was that tell-all book.”

“Cecelia," Dr. Q. says. "Why would anyone want to write a book—an 'unauthorized biography about you?”

"Because the press ... they're always after me ...

and there's that girl, Amanda. The one who ... died.”

"You call someone who was, according to you, your best friend 'that girl'?”

"She wasn't my best friend by then.”

“That girl?”

"Okay. That woman." Pause. "My photograph was in all the newspapers this morning. From last night. At the ballet ...," I whisper.

"Was that you, Cecelia? That girl with the short white hair, running down the stairs, looking over her shoulder, laughing, holding the hand of an unknown boy?”

"Yes! YES. Didn't you see my NAME ... ? Princess Cecelia...." I'm breaking down, crying, covering my face with tissues. "There are photographers outside the window!”

Dr. Q. stands up and pulls back the blind. "There's no one there. Except the doorman and old Mrs. Blooberstein and that disgusting Chihuahua.”

“M-m-maybe the doorman sent them away.”

“Cecelia," Dr. Q. says, returning to his chair. "Where were you in August 1969?”

"You know where I was.”

“Where were you?”

"Yazgur's Farm," I say defiantly.

"And what were you doing there? Gonna join in a rock 'n' roll band?”

"Dr. Q., I was three years old. My mother dragged me there. No one paid attention to me. I had shit in my pants for hours. My mother was on an acid trip.”

“And everywhere was a song and a celebration. “

“It wasn't a celebration ... the hippies made me dance ... I was lost ... my mother was on an acid trip....”

Dr. Q. turns into Mrs. Spickel, the guidance counselor. "Hello, Cecelia. Your mother is dead. Aren't you lucky it happened now, when you're seventeen, and not when you were a little girl. I hear your mother was very wild....”

I'm crying. I'm crying hysterically like I'm going to break in two. I wake up.

Of course, ifs Hubert's mother who is dead, not mine.

She died in a freak skiing accident when Hubert was seventeen.

Poor little lost prince, standing on the deck of his twenty-two-foot racing sloop, one hand on the rudder, staring out at the sea, wistful and a little bit fierce (like someone training himself to hold back tears), a forelock of dark hair falling over his forehead. He is a teenage girl's dream: hurt, in need of rescue, a prince, a teen idol.