By Chung Yu Kwok
Perfection is not an impossibility. No matter which angle you examine her from, what criteria you judge her with, she will perform flawlessly. Beauty. Wit. Even kindness, which is not so hard to fake but incredibly difficult to sell. And sell, she does. Headlines, one after the other, detail her tremendous success, so at odds with her youth. “The Rose,” a critic once said, “has only just bloomed. She’ll be in season for quite a while.”
The door flies open and collides against the wall. Wood and stone shudder and protest in tandem. She can never enter a room without some noise, both to announce her presence and greet her arrival. There she stands, her statuesque figure framed in the doorway as pink petals flutter and tarnish the pure white of her satin dress. They might have called her an angel, if not for the rose-coloured glasses that sit atop the bridge of that slim, sharp nose.
She closes the door silently behind her. And then she rips off the glasses and hurls them across the room.
“I thought the hair might be the first to go,” I say. Her long, golden curls wrap around her head, excruciatingly woven and braided into a crown. Tiny flowers are laced through each strand. More may grow in the time it will take for me to remove them all. “Or the shoes.”
She smiles, kicking off her diamond heels. Without her feet to give shape, they deflate into plastic and glitter. “I’m sorry,” she says. “They’re just too tacky.”
“The shoes?”
“The glasses. The shoes are a close second.” She holds a bouquet of roses almost tenderly against her chest and closes her eyes to draw in a deep breath. As she sits in front of the mirror, she smiles again, first at her reflection and then at me. “Guess who gave these to me.”
“I don’t know.”
“Neither do I. But for some strange reason, they always expect me to.” She takes a small card out of the bouquet and tilts her head to peer at it. “To the Rose,” she reads. “I can’t decide what’s more beautiful - you or your voice. Well, it doesn’t have to be a competition.” She puts a finger over her lips, both tipped with rose-coloured paint. She is right. It is too tacky, but she knows how to sell: her image, her brand, herself. “Although if it was, this would hardly suffice.” She rips the card in half and throws it over her shoulder. “Tacky,” she repeats. “And terribly ineloquent.”
“Never bite the hand that feeds you,” I tell her.
“That grabs you, I think you mean. It’s time we install glass walls instead of those flimsy barriers. I don’t want any of their fingers touching me.” She shivers - and then catches herself. “But I do wish them the best, really. I wish them good health, and happiness, and I wish they would go back to school, because this…” She stares at the torn card. “This is just, well, inadequate. Oh, perhaps the poor things can’t afford school. They spend too much money on these…concerts. I suppose it’s a good thing. For both of us.” She sends me another secretive smile.
The roses tumble out of her arms. One catches on her arm, its thorn clawing a sharp, crimson line through her dewy skin. I try to snatch her wrist, but she bats me away with a sigh. “Don’t. I’ll be fine. Be happy that it isn’t my face.” When I ignore her command, those fierce blue eyes narrow. “You’re a stylist, not a doctor. Leave it.”
“But you-”
“Never bite the hand that feeds you,” she recites. “Never lick its wounds, either. I have to go back out there in five minutes, and we’ve wasted enough time. Do what you have to.”
The Rose, despite her moniker, is rather pale. A soft pink flush blossoms in her cheeks as my brush drifts over the graceful features and polished surface of her face. She regards herself in the mirror, perfecting that smile until each thorn has been clipped off, until I can almost catch the scent of a flower. They give her that name not only for the glasses, but also the act. She is known for her warmth, her joy and her honest, sweet disposition. The glasses are for a different purpose entirely.
“See,” she says, her voice trembling and glowing with warmth once more, “I know how all this sounds. But I promise I don’t hate my fans. Not at all. I love them. Of course I do!” She twists around in her seat, eyes wide and so very earnest. “I love all of them. I love this life. I’m grateful, really, I am. It’s the truth.”
She glances away before that poised expression can shatter into laughter, and takes a pair of rose-coloured glasses from the dressing table. “They are tacky,” she sighs again. “I can hardly see out of them. But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Looking at all their faces, so hopeful, so eager…it’s the worst part. They’re just so hideously, pathetically desperate.”
I step back, and she slides the glasses over her face. Her smile - her kindness - is much easier to sell when plastic hearts shroud her eyes. Those eyes, almond-shaped with a sapphire twinkle, might have won her fame and success, but not love. I can dust over every pore of her skin until it is painted into a mask of total perfection. I cannot hide that empty, hollow gaze.
She knows it just as well as I do. So as she stands and flashes me one final smile - bright and lovely and victorious - I can only smile back.