State of Dreaming

Makeup and Rage

Soft, wet mist tingles my skin. I can feel it travel over my lower back, then my stomach. I hold my breath as it moves up towards my bare chest then my throat. It's not the sort of stuff you want to be breathing in. Distinctly remembering the chalky taste, I make sure my lips are clamped shut this time. Every time. My eyes too, but not squeezed so tight so as to wrinkle the skin around them, as the mist settles on my face.

"Blair darling, your hands." Says a bored sounding voice.

I unclench my fists, annoyed that he is telling me how to do my job.

"Pedro, for the love of god, move that hair off her goddamn neck." He speaks again.

A freezing hand roughly shoves an impossibly small lock of my hair into my cap and I curse, allowing the mist to find its way between my parted lips. I curse again, mentally this time.

"And now she's frowning." The sprayer says to nobody and everybody. "Blair, get it together, we don't have time for this."

I smooth my brow but inside I'm a tempest.

When I was 14 I thought being scouted would change my life forever, that I'd be the most important person in every room for the rest of my life. And despite those sentiments being true all these years later, five to be precise, I still feel like I'm treated like a child. And by people who don't even matter.

My agent insisted that I receive personality coaching after an incident with the help last season, but for the life of me I can't comprehend why it should be anybody's business how I act. In fact, calling the help 'the help' is one of the things I'm not permitted to say aloud anymore. Ridiculous.

"Thank god that's over." I hear him mutter as he turns off the airbrush and the whirring noise stops.

I open my mouth to give him something to complain about but he simply holds up a hand, pointing at my creased brow.

"Ah ah ah," he tuts condescendingly, wagging his finger inches from my face, "no facial expressions for the next 5 minutes. That includes talking."

His little name plate reads 'Ken'. I curse Ken. Mentally again.

I plaster the most angelic expression on my face and stand utterly still in the freezing room like the professional that I am and watch him silently as he packs away his equipment to go find the other models and Jala takes up the space on the table with her case.

Jala is one of the few 'artists' that I don't despise. For one, she has an actual talent for makeup. And by that I mean all Ken does is stand there being a prick while a machine does all the work for him. I've also worked with Jala for most of my career. In fact she likely owes her success largely to me for allowing her be my exclusive makeup artist. And since my face is one of the most well known on the planet, that's a pretty huge contract for someone like her. I get hundreds, if not thousands, of so-called MUA's write to me, DM me, email my agent and a lot more just to get a chance of having their work seen by millions on my face. Fat chance of that happening.

"Jala thank god." I check the clock, four and a half minutes but Ken can suck my dick. "I swear I was about to chip a nail on that bastard's stupid goatee."

Jala's lips twitch in a smirk as she lays out her products on the table and begins sanitising them. Then an egg timer pings and a figure bustles over to place a robe over my shoulders as those freezing hands start in at my head again. Pedro I assume.

"Pedro? Is it?" I snap at the hands. No reply. "If you're going to be ripping my hair from the scalp, like it feels you're trying to do, have the decency to do it with warm hands next time, ok? Now get off, I want someone else."