He treated her like a queen and it seemed to work. Heather’s initial urgency to schedule the surgery had subsided during the day-long shopping sprees, the four-star meals, the midnight yacht cruises up and down the Intracoastal. In recent days, though, she again had begun to press Rudy not only about the date for the operations, but the cost. She was dropping broad hints to the effect that for all her bedroom labors she deserved a special discount, and Rudy found himself weakening on the subject. Finally, one night, she waited until he was inside her to bring up the money again, and Rudy breathlessly agreed to knock forty percent off the usual fee. Afterwards he was furious at himself, and blamed his moment of weakness on stress and mental fatigue.
Deep down, the doctor knew better: He was trapped. While he dreaded the prospect of Heather Chappell’s surgery, he feared that she would leave him if he didn’t agree to do it. He probably would have done it for free. He had become addicted to her body—a radiantly perfect body that she now wanted him to improve. The task would have posed a career challenge for the most skillful of plastic surgeons; for a hack like Rudy Graveline, it was flat-out impossible. Naturally he planned to let his assistants do it.
Until Heather dropped another surprise.
“My agent says I should tape the operation, love.”
Rudy said, “You’re kidding.”
“Just to be on the safe side.”
“What, you don’t trust me?”
“Sure I do,” Heather said. “It’s my damn agent, is all. She says since my looks are everything, my whole career, I should be careful, legal-wise. I guess she wants to make sure nothing goes wrong—”
Rudy sprung out of bed, hands on his hips. “Look, I told you these operations are not necessary at all.”
“And I told you, I’m sick of doing sitcoms and Hollywood Squares. I need to get back in the movies, hon, and that means I need a new look. That’s why I came down here.”
Rudy Graveline had never tried to talk anyone out of surgery before, so he was forced to improvise. By and large it was not such a terrible speech. He said, “God was very good to you, Heather. I have patients who’d give fifty grand to look half as beautiful as you look: teenagers who’d kill for that nose you want me to chisel, housewives who’d trade their firstborn child for tits like yours—”
“Rudolph,” Heather said, “save it.”
He tried to pull up his underwear but the elastic snagged on heavily bandaged kneecaps, the product of the disco tryst in the fireplace.
“I am appalled,” Rudy was huffing, “at the idea of videotaping in my surgical suite.” In truth he wasn’t appalled so much as afraid: A video camera meant he couldn’t hand off to the other surgeons and duck out to the golf course. He’d have to perform every procedure himself, just as Heather had demanded. You couldn’t drug a damn camera; it wouldn’t miss a stitch.
“This just isn’t done,” Rudy protested.
“Oh, it is, too,” Heather said. “I see stuff like that on PBS all the time. Once I saw them put a baboon heart inside a human baby. They showed the whole thing.”
“It isn’t done here,” Rudy said.
Heather sat up, making sure that the bedsheets slipped off the slope of her breasts. “Fine, Rudolph,” she said. “If that’s the way you want it, I’ll fly back to California tonight. There’s only about a dozen first-rate surgeons in Beverly Hills that would give.anything to do me.”
The ice in her voice surprised him, though it shouldn’t have. “All right,” he said, pulling on his robe, “we’ll video the surgery. Maybe Robin Leach can use a clip on his show.”
Heather let the wisecrack pass; she was focused on business. She asked Rudy Graveline for a date they could begin.
“A week,” he said. He had to clear his mind a few more times. In another week he also would have heard something definite from Chemo, or maybe Roberta Pepsical.
“And we’re not doing all this at once,” he added. “You’ve got the liposuction, the breast augmentation, the rhinoplasty, the eyelids, and the rhytidectomy—that’s a lot of surgery, Heather.”