She made a small, totally ambiguous smile. Then she pulled at the tape. It came away with a gentle tug. He felt the gauze loosen. He stared down into her face, wondering — in this long moment before it was done and beyond saving — if she would reject him when she saw the scars and the swelling. A scene from that same silent horror movie he’d seen in his mind’s eye many times since Burrows had done his brutal work, flickered in his head: Katya as the appalled heroine, reeling away in disgust at what her curiosity had uncovered. He the monster, enraged at her revulsion and murderous in his self-contempt.
It was too late to stop it now. She was pulling at the gauze, coaxing it away from the hurts it concealed.
He felt the cool air upon his wounds, and cooler still, her scrutiny. The gauze dropped to the floor between them. He stood there before her, more naked than he’d ever been in his life — even in nightmares of nakedness, more naked — awaiting judgment.
She wasn’t horrified. She wasn’t screaming, wasn’t flinching. She simply looked at him, without any interpretable expression on her face.
“Well?” he said.
“He made a mess of you, no doubt about that. But it’s healing. And if my opinion is worth anything to you, I’d say you’re going to be fine. Better than fine.”
She took a moment to assess him further. To trace the line of his jaw, the curve of his temple.
“But it’s never going to be perfect,” she said.
His stomach lurched. Here was the heart of it: the bitter part nobody had wanted to admit to him; not even himself. He was spoiled. Perhaps just a little, but a little was all it would take to shake him from his high perch. His precious face, his golden face, the beauty that had made him the idol of millions, had been irreparably damaged.
“I know,” Katya said, “you’re thinking your life won’t be worth living. “But that’s just not true.”
“How the hell do you know?” he said, smarting from the truth, angered by her honesty.
“Because I knew all the great stars, in the silent days. And believe me, the smart ones — when they weren’t making the money any longer — just shrugged and said okay, I’ve had my time.”
“What did they do then?”
“Listen to yourself! There’s life after fame. Sure it’ll take some getting used to, but people have perfectly good lives — ”
“I don’t want a perfectly good life. I want the life I had.”
“Well you can’t have it,” she said, very simply.
It was a long time since somebody had told Todd Pickett that he couldn’t have something, and he didn’t like it. He took hold of her wrists and pulled her hands away from his face. A quick fury had risen in him. He wanted to strike at her, knock her stupid words out of her mouth.
“You know, you are crazy,” he said.
“Didn’t I tell you?” she said, making no attempt to touch him again. “Some nights I’m so crazy I’m ready to hang myself. But I don’t. You know why? I made this hell for myself, so it’s up to me to live in it, isn’t it?”
He didn’t respond to her; he was still in a filthy rage about what she’d said.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I think I’ve had it with your advice for the night,” he said, “so why don’t you just go back wherever you came from — ” In mid-sentence he heard Marco calling. “Boss? Are you okay? Where the hell are you?”
He looked towards the door, half expecting to see Marco already standing there. He wasn’t. Todd then looked back at Katya, or whoever the hell she was. The woman was retreating from him, shaking her head as if to say: don’t tell.
“It’s okay!” he yelled to Marco.
“Where are you?”
“I’m fine. Go make me a drink. I’ll meet you in the kitchen!”
Katya had already retreated to the far end of the room, where the shadows from which she had originally emerged were enclosing her.