Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [103]
She had been through many facials before, all kinds of facials, decades of facials. Most had been entirely cosmetic, pleasant but essentially worthless. Some had been functional, high-tech, genuinely restorative facials that left one’s face raw and unsettled, the kind of face that wanted to be left alone in a warm dark room to collect itself. But Philippe’s work was artifice. Still a Maya face—but a composed, radiant, flawless Maya face. Curled and slightly tinted lashes. Smoky eyelids. Brows like wings. Skin to shame damask. Pellucid irises and eyewhites as glossy as china. Lips like two poppy petals. A finished face. Human perfection.
Then they put the new wig on and she left human perfection for a higher realm. It was a very smart wig. This wig could have leapt from her scalp like a supersonic octopus and flung its piercing tendrils right through a plaster wall. But it was the tool of a major couture house, so it would never do anything half so gauche. It was merely a staggeringly pretty wig, a wig in rich, solid, deeply convincing, faintly luminescent auburn, a wig as expensive, as cozy, and as well designed as a limousine.
The wig settled to her scalp with an intimate grip rather more convincing than the grip of her own hair. When it curled lustrously about her neck and shoulders it behaved the way a woman’s hair behaved in daydreams.
A gonging alarm sounded. The last men cleared out of the room. Four female models sauntered in. The women were tall and slender and fully dressed except for shoes. The shoes were being a lot of trouble, and anxious runners kept hauling new pairs in and out. The models, bored and patient, sipped tinctures and puffed at inhalants and ate little white sticks of calorie-free finger food. They nibbled and dabbed at their hors d’oeuvres, and their preternatural arms moved with perfect eerie grace, from painted plate to painted lip.
The models were old women, and they looked the way that modern old women looked when they were in truly superb condition: they looked like amenorrheic female athletes. Like pubescent female gymnasts who’d been bleached completely free of any youthful brio. They showed none of the natural signs of human aging, but they were just a little crispy, a little taut. The models were solemn and sloe-eyed and dainty and extremely strong. They looked as if they could leap headlong through plate glass without turning a hair.
Their clothes were decorative and columnar and slender hipped and without much in the way of bustline. To see these clothes was to realize just how garments could be beautiful, impressive, even feminine, while being almost entirely free of sexual allure. The clothes were splendidly cut and defined. Rather ecclesiastical, rather bankerly, rather like the court dress of high-powered palace eunuchs from the Manchu Forbidden City. Some of the clothes showed skin, but it was the kind of skin a woman might reveal as she conquered the English Channel.
The clothes were very rich in feathering. Not frail or showy feathers, but feathers in gleaming businesslike array, feathers in swathes like chain mail. Giancarlo had been very reliant on feathers this spring season. It was mostly the detail work with feathers that had sent these garments soaring into the unearthly realm of luxe.
“[It’s not just the risk reduction,]” said the nearest model, in Italiano. “[You get a six-point-five percent rate of return.]”
“[I’m not sure the time is right for medical mutual funds,]” said a second model. “[Besides, I’m Catholic.]”
“[No one says you have to take a treatment on the banned list, you just invest in them,]” said the first model patiently. She was deeply, spiritually, untouchably beautiful; she looked like a bit player in Botticelli’s Primavera. “[Talk to any Vatican banker sometime, darling. They’re very simpatico and very up to speed about this.]”
The second model looked at Maya in surprise, and then at her wristwatch. “[When do you go on?]”
Maya touched her necklace and her ear. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Italiano.”
“Your diamonds are so true to