Altar Ego by Kathy Lette Read Free Book Online Page A

advisable …’ The wind-up, white-coated doll prattled on with a lot of euphemisms for the war against decrepitude – refining, enriching, recovery, rejuvenate, protection …
    I glowered at her.
    ‘I’m just trying to give you a clearer view of your flaws and provide helpful hints on how they can be overcome.’
    ‘Oh truly, your selflessness knows no bounds.’
    ‘There’s also an Electrolysis special on offer,’ the android added in that professionally insulting manner they have.
    Wielding a cotton bud like a miniature police truncheon, she pointed to one small black hair I’d never noticed sprouting from my chin. It looked, in the magnified looking glass, like a sequoia tree.
    ‘Where the hell did
that
come from?’
    ‘It’s normal as we age that …’
    ‘Would you stop with all this ageing crap, already. I have one facial hair. It’s not as though I’m about to start baying at the moon …’
    ‘Well then, why not try this.’ Lunging forward, the saleswoman attempted to sandpaper my face off with a brusque rotary action that would have been better employed in the resurfacing of airport tarmac.
    ‘Hey! What the …’
    ‘Retin A peels away at the skin …’ Her voice rasped insistently, a wasp caught against a window pane.
    ‘Eats away at the skin? Jesus. What is it? Eboli in a jar?’
    She handed me a refining gel tester for the thigh zone. With that bizarre combination of humiliation and desire that is central to every make-up purchase, I looked at the price tag on the tube … Christ Almighty. How could a cream cost more than a dream retirement home?
    ‘There’s always liposuction,’ Anouska suggested helpfully.
    ‘“Fridge-o-suction” would be more useful,’ I said half-heartedly. ‘Just suck the food right out of the refrigerator, you know. Go right to the source, Can you believe this woman?’
    Anouska eyed me critically. ‘Well, doll, your lycrapanel days are kind of over, ya know?’
    ‘I am
not
descending into tan medical hose cronedom quite yet, thank you very much. Come on, I’m outta here.’
    The make-up assistant smiled at me; a complicit, grinning jackal. ‘Have a nice day.’
    ‘Sod off,’ I told her. ‘I’ve got other plans.’
    Having come in for one lousy tube of moisturizer, I left Selfridges ten minutes later so laden down with pungent unguents, enzyme creams and crater-fillers, that I had to sign the credit-card slip with a pen clenched between my teeth. Now all I needed was some shaving foam for the handlebar moustache I seemed to have sprouted, like Jack’s beanstalk, over bloody night. It was just as well I didn’t want children because I’d obviously be giving birth to a litter of she-wolves. A compulsory broomstick was no doubt waiting for me at Customer Services.
    And there was worse to come. Anouska left me with an air kiss on the corner of Regent Street. She was off to prepare for her date with the dreaded Darius. Preparation would involve her usual DIY lobotomy. Anouska’s technique for getting a man was to act happy, busy and swallow at all times. Not a technique that had ever worked for me. Hell, Julian says my neuroses are the only interesting thing about me. (Besides my ability to hook my legs behind my head.)
    ‘If I don’t ring by nine tonight, sub-let my apartment, okay, doll?’
    I continued my walk to work unaware of the body blow awaiting me. As I approached a building site, I prepared for the sexist onslaught. I mentally rehearsed my barbed ripostes … And then it happened – or rather, it didn’t. Not one whistle. Not even an ‘Oy!’ I told myself the builders must have been engrossed in some high-tech, hydraulic manoeuvre demanding maximum eyeball riveting – and retraced my steps. I sashayed past again, this time with a little more swing in my hips. Nothing. Zilch. Having raged against building-site harassment my whole life, when it didn’t happen I felt inexplicably devastated. I was also devastated about
why
I should feel