Member-only story
FABULOUS FIFTY FOREVER
Beauty knows no pain
Dense fog drifted over the City of Angels as ‘June gloom’ crept in from Marina Del Rey.
From time to time, the latest upstarts poked through the gloom. The Wilshire Grand, Two California Center, and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel — looking for all the world like an Egyptian sarcophagus. But LA was still LA. No glittering skyscrapers would ever change its nature, like the allegory of the scorpion and the frog.
Outside one of the new condo buildings — the TEN50 on South Grand — a stretch limo idled. From her fifth-floor window, Wendy Adair looked down at it as she enjoyed her last cigarette. She was not about to be rushed. After all, she was the patient, paying the earth for a full face and neck lift. Doctor Sloan could wait for her for a change.
Men had always waited for Wendy—slathering like dogs. Now Paul Sloan could take his place in the queue along with that limo driver on the street.
She exhaled a last stream of smoke, then crushed the cigarette in a heart-shaped ashtray that once belonged to Marilyn Monroe. Then she scrubbed her nails with the antibacterial soap the doctor made her buy. She sniffed her fingers to make sure no trace of smoke lingered, though why the man made such a big deal about smoking was beyond her. Every model and Hollywood star smoked. They had to…
