Jennifer Weiner - Good in Bed

April bent to peer into the carrying case. “And you must be little Nifty!” she cooed. Nifkin started growling. April appeared not to notice. “What a beautiful dog,” she said. I snorted back laughter, and Nifkin continued to growl so hard that his cage was vibrating. Nifkin has many fine qualities, but beauty is not among them.

“How was your flight?” April asked me, blinking rapidly and smiling still. I wondered if this was how she treated her famous clients. I wondered if I was a client already, if Maxi had gone ahead and signed a pact in blood, or whatever one did to acquire the services of someone like April.

“Fine. Very nice, really. I’ve never been in first class before.”

April linked her arm through mine like we were grade-school chums. Her forearm fit neatly below my right breast. I tried to ignore it. “Get used to it,” she advised me. “Your whole life’s about to change. Just sit back and enjoy the ride!”

April deposited me in a suite in the Beverly Wilshire, explaining that the studio was putting me up there for the night. Even if it was for one night only, I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, if they’d gone with the indie-alterna ending, where the prostitute winds up pregnant and alone, with only her little dog for comfort.

The suite might very well be the one where they filmed Pretty Woman. It was big, and bright, and deluxe in every way. The walls were covered in gold and cream striped wallpaper, the floors were lined with ultra-plush beige carpeting, and the bathroom was a study in marble shot through with veins of gold. The bathroom was also, I noted, the size of my living room back home, with a bathtub big enough to accommodate a vigorous game of water polo, if I’d been so inclined.

“Fancy schmancy,” I noted for the baby, and opened a pair of French doors to find a bed that looked big as a tennis court, all done in crisp white sheets, topped with a fluffy pink and gold comforter. Everything was clean and new-smelling and so gorgeous I was almost afraid to touch it. There was also an elaborate bouquet waiting for me beside the bed. “Welcome!” read the card, from Maxi.

“Bouquet,” I informed the baby. “Very expensive, probably.” Nifkin had bounded out of his carrier and was busily making a sniffing tour of the suite. He glanced at me briefly, then rose up on his hind legs to dip his nose toward the toilet. Once that had passed muster, he scampered into the bedroom.

I got him settled on a pillow on the bed, and took a bath, and wrapped myself in the Wilshire robe. I called room service and ordered hot tea and strawberries and fresh pineapple, and liberated some Evian and a box of Choco Leibniz, king of all cookies, from the minibar, without even blanching at the $8 price tag, which was at least triple what the cookies would have cost in Philadelphia. Then I lay back on two of the six pillows that came with the bed and clapped my hands together, laughing. “I’m here!” I crowed, as Nifkin barked to keep me company. “I did it!”

Then I called every single person I could think of.

“If you eat at any of Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants, get the duck pizza,” counseled Andy, in full food-critic mode.

“Fax me anything before you sign it,” urged Samantha, and proceeded to spout five minutes’ worth of lawyer-ese before I calmed her down.

“Take notes!” said Betsy.

“Take pictures!” said my mother.

“You brought my head shots, right?” demanded Lucy.

I promised that I’d lobby for Lucy, take notes for future columns for Betsy and pictures for Mom, fax anything legal-looking to Samantha and eat duck pizza for Andy. Then I noticed the business card propped on one of the pillows, engraved with the words Maxi Ryder. Under her name was the single word Garth, a telephone number, and an address on Ventura Boulevard. “Be there at 7 o’clock. Drinks and amusements to follow,” it said.

“Drinks and amusements,” I murmured, and stretched out on the bed. I could smell the fresh flowers, and could hear the faint sound of cars buzzing from thirty-two floors below. Then I closed my eyes and didn’t wake up until it was 6:30. I splashed water on my face, scrambled into my shoes, and hurried out the door.

Garth turned out to be the Garth, hairdresser to the stars, although at first I thought the cab had dropped me off at an art gallery. It was an easy mistake to make. Garth’s salon lacked the typical trappings: the row of sinks, the stacks of thumbed-through magazines, the receptionist’s desk. In fact, there didn’t seem to be anyone at all inside the high-ceilinged room, decorated with a single chair, a single sink, and a single floor-to-ceiling antique mirror except… Garth.

I sat in the chair while the man who’d put the buttery chunks into Britney Spears’s tresses, who’d given Hillary her highlights and Jennifer Lopez henna, lifted and replaced sections of my hair, touching and scrutinizing it with the cool detachment of a scientist, and tried to explain myself.

“See, you’re not supposed to color your hair when you’re pregnant,” I began. “And I wasn’t expecting to get pregnant, so I’d just had my highlights done, and they’ve been growing out for six months and I know it looks terrible…”

“Who did this to you?” Garth asked mildly.

“Um, the pregnancy or the highlights?”

He smiled at me in the mirror and picked up another piece of my hair. “These weren’t done… here?” he asked delicately.

“Oh, no. In Philadelphia.” Blank look from Garth. “In Pennsylvania.” Truth was, I’d gotten it done at the beauty school on Bainbridge Street, and I thought they’d done a pretty good job, but from the look on his face I could tell that Garth would not agree.

“Oh, dear,” he breathed quietly. He took a comb, a little spritz-bottle of water. “Do you have any strong feelings about, um…” I could tell he was groping for the kindest word to describe what was happening on top of my head.

“I have lots of strong feelings, but none about my hair,” I told him. “Do with me what you will.”

It took him close to two hours: first cutting, then combing, then snipping the ends, then rinsing my head in a garnet-red solution he swore was completely natural, chemical free, derived from only the purest organic vegetables and absolutely guaranteed not to harm my unborn child.

“You’re a screenwriter?” Garth said once I’d been rinsed. He was holding my chin, tilting my head this way and that.

“Unproduced, so far.”

“Things are going to happen for you. You’ve got that aura.”

“Oh, that’s probably just the soap from the hotel.”

He leaned in close and started tweezing my eyebrows. “Don’t tear yourself down,” he told me. He smelled of some wonderful cologne, and, even inches from my face, his skin was flawless.

Once he’d shaped my brows to his satisfaction, he rinsed out my hair, blew it dry, and spent about half an hour applying different creams and powders to my face. “I don’t wear much makeup,” I protested. “Chap Stick and mascara. That’s pretty much it.”

“Don’t worry. This is going to be subtle.”

I had my doubts. He’d already brushed three different shades of shadow around my eyes, including one that looked practically violet. But when he whipped the cape off me and twirled me to face the mirror, I felt sorry for even thinking about doubting him. My skin was glowing. My cheeks were the color of a perfect, ripe apricot. My lips were full, a warm wine color, curling with a faint hint of amusement even though I wasn’t aware that I was smiling. And I didn’t notice the eyeshadow, just my eyes, which seemed much bigger, much more compelling. I looked like myself, only more so… like the best, most happy version of myself.