The Makeover

Dell Hastings sat on stool in the dark room. The single naked bulb overhead offered a weak light that illuminated his features. Everything else remained in shadow.

Dell smiled. He'd once been considered handsome. His smiles

provoked warm feelings in others. But now?

They three most obvious scars on Dell's face you could see from

across a banquet hall. They looked like giant, flesh toned centipedes had taken

residence there. One ran down from his left temple, across his eye and ended

near his nose. A second ran a jagged course across his forehead. The third

crossed both his upper and lower lips on a slant and continued on across his

chin to his neck. Dell avoided banquet halls now. He avoided pretty much everything.

The lopsided smile produced when stretching this last scar into a grin was hideous. It provoked anything from mild disgust to overt revulsion. Dell once thought he might get used to this. He didn’t think that anymore.

He shook his head. “I still remember that night. Not that I could ever forget. Not with these reminders,” Dell said, motioning to his face. “What’s it been? Four five years? I’ve always found dates slippery. The other details? I keep a grip on those. With both hands. I remember what you told me. Just a little makeover, you said.”

Whoever Dell spoke to made no response.

“I remember waking up that morning. Laying there in the dirt. Looking up through cornstalks at the grey October sky. It ached. My face did. Like a tooth might ache. But it wasn’t an intense ache. A violent pain to double you over. Make the breath catch in your chest. I mean, I knew it was bad. All that blood. But I didn’t yet know how bad.”

He paused here. Rubbed his chin.

“So, there I was. Limping down the road. Cornfield. Trees. Old crows squawking up on the telephone wires. Here comes this old farmer puttering along in his pickup. He slowed down. Pulled to a stop. And I knew, when he looked at me up close, I knew how bad it was. The old boy’s eyes nearly popped right out of their sockets. Opened his mouth to speak and couldn’t find a word. I must’ve looked like I’d butchered a hog and rolled in it. That’s how you left me.” Dell paused here. “Yeah. That’s how you left me.”

He traced the scar across his forehead with a fingertip.

“The ambulance arrived. The medics tried not to look at me on the ride to the hospital. The emergency room doc actually winced and sucked in his breath at the sight of me. Blood transfusion. IV morphine to take the edge off while the nurse cleaned me up. That’s when the nerve endings really woke up and starting singing. Not enough morphine in the world for that job.”

Dell uttered a humorless laugh, adjusted himself atop the stool.

“There was the trauma surgeon. The plastic surgeon. The operating room. The recovery room. Day after day of wound care nurses and their furrowed brows and puckered lips and dressing changes. These were ladies who could grin while working on decubitus ulcers that eaten through skin, fat and muscle to expose raw bone. Their faces said a lot, as faces tend to do.”

The man patted his jacket and produced pack of cigarettes and a light. He lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and let out a plume of white smoke that dissipated into the darkness of the room. “A vile habit, smoking. I do realize. But I take pleasure where I can. I think it was ten days after surgery, maybe twelve, before I actually took a look at my bare face in a mirror. Again, dates escape me.”

Dell took another drag on the cigarette, then tossed it aside.

“I was still on pain pills when I finally got back to the office. They slowed down my thinking. Made it hard to focus. I’d try to talk to clients and struggle to find simple words. And there weren’t many clients. People hire lawyers to represent them. To be the face of poise and confidence in the mediation chamber and the courtroom. What could my face represent? A haunted house? Most people were polite about it. Polite and very, very brief.”

He laced his fingers and extended his arms, palms out, cracking his knuckles. “Another bad habit,” said Dell. “That’s supposed to cause arthritis.” He shrugged.

“So, I was out of work. The story thereafter is predictable. Lost the nice apartment. Lost the pretty girl. Traded in the fast car for a Honda. Sank into a pretty pathetic depression and used pills and bourbon as Prozac. Bought a gun with thoughts of remodeling my brains into modern art. All the while, I never forgot you. Maybe now you wish I had, but I didn’t.”

Dell paused here. He looked down at his shoes and up at the light to work a kink out of his neck. “I was good, man. Really good. Top of my law school class. Won some cases that other guys never would’ve touched. Then you came along, needing a lawyer. Desperate and able to pay. Trouble with your sex life. You, a man of thirty years. And those girls were what? Fourteen? Barely out of middle school. Made me sick. Made me want to look at you the way people look at me now. But I took your case.”

The man paused again, seemed to draw into himself. Into some recollection.

“Nobody could have done better. I kept you out of jail, though you deserved it. Jail and whatever the animals inside would have done to kiddie perverts like you. You avoid jail and you paid a little bit of money and got a little bit of parole and it wasn’t good enough. You were cheated. By me. Cheated and angry and wanting justice. That’s what you called it. Justice. And that meant tracking me down, dragging me out into the countryside and carving me up like a jack-o-lantern. Isn’t that right, Jack?”

Jack Murphy sat tied to a chair. Tied and gagged and soaked with sweat. His chest heaved with panic.

Dell stood and took the little folding knife from his pocket. Jack’s scream was a muted groan. He thrashed vainly against the cords.

 “Don’t worry,” said Dell. “Just a little makeover.”