Chapter 6
Alex was in a black T-shirt and jeans with his white coat, waiting for Marilyn Hodges, their hostess of the night before, when she arrived at nine the next morning.
His office wasn’t open yet, but he had seen her text on his phone when he and Mickie had finally gone to his bedroom at four A.M. and he had set his alarm for eight.
He took his practice and his patients seriously.
Marilyn was a slightly overweight, moderately attractive blonde woman.
She was turning sixty and spent a fortune on her appearance and her clothes.
She was the wife of one of the most successful men in Hollywood, the head of an important streaming platform.
Their marriage had been shaky for years, and she was well aware of the scores of other, younger women in her husband’s life.
He was extremely generous with her as a result.
He had no desire for an astronomically expensive divorce, and let her spend whatever she wanted to keep her happy.
She arrived as though meeting her drug dealer, almost shaking with anticipation.
Alex had met her two years before at the opening of an ultra-luxurious spa in Miami, and she had given him the idea of moving his practice to L.A.
His nonsurgical elite practice in Palm Beach had been a discreet secret for several years, and had grown exponentially by word of mouth.
He had perfected his new techniques there.
It began with a select few clients and had expanded.
His most devoted patients had enlisted their husbands as the first investors in the center he had just opened in Bel Air.
Marilyn looked around the new center for the first time.
Her husband, Roger, had paid for a good part of it.
Alex was treating her for free to thank her for all the patients she had sent him, literally almost all her friends in L.A.
He had recently tried some of his newest procedures on her with excellent results.
She said he had magic hands. She was willing to try anything he suggested.
She had total faith in him and loved the result of the fillers he used and gave her with shots.
He led her into one of the beautiful treatment rooms after she had looked around.
She was proud of the contribution her husband had made to help him set it up.
Alex always did fillers on her lips and face.
She never asked him what he used, she didn’t care, she loved the end result.
He was like a sculptor making each patient more beautiful than she’d been before.
She’d already had two facelifts by other doctors before she met him, but Alex didn’t use a single procedure that required a scalpel.
He did it all with chemicals and injections and his “secret formulas.” The results were remarkable.
She lay expectantly on the table while he worked on her, and sat up and looked at him adoringly when he had finished.
He had heard his assistants arrive while he was working.
He had opened the locked closet in the treatment room and prepared the injections himself.
He preferred it that way. He didn’t like even his assistants observing the combinations he used.
“Thank you, Alex,” she said, as though relieved of a great burden.
The agony of age. And then she asked him a question.
“How old was that girl you had with you last night?” He smiled when he answered.
The treatment he had just performed on Marilyn had gone well.
He had found just the right sequence of procedures for her recently, and was pleased with the result.
He knew she would be happy with it this time too.
“She’s thirty-three, almost thirty-four,” he said simply about Michaela.
“She looks like a teenager. What do you use on her? She’s a beautiful girl.” Marilyn was in awe of her figure and face and her youthful appearance.
“Yes, she is,” he agreed, looking vague for a moment, thinking of their hours in the pool the night before, and he forced the images from his mind.
“She came to me when she was very young. We’ve been perfecting her treatments for five years,” he said quietly.
“It’s mostly mesotherapy with a little magic thrown in.
” Marilyn was an expert and knew that mesotherapy meant injections that combined pharmaceuticals with hormones and enzymes that had been controversial for years and could be dangerous in the wrong hands.
But she trusted Alex totally. Alex was a master at it.
“Do you think we should give that a try?” Marilyn had been more willing to be daring ever since she was facing sixty. She knew that her husband had been cheating on her for years, and had a new young mistress in Newport Beach people said he was mad for. She was twenty-two.
“I think we’re doing fine with the serum we’re using,” Alex said seriously.
“We can try mesotherapy if you like, but everyone responds to it differently. Michaela has had a particularly good reaction to it, but I really love the effect of what we’re doing on you right now.
” He looked pleased. Many of his clients came to him for simple Botox shots, and Voluma for their lips, but he had experimented with many other procedures over the years, depending on the patient’s needs.
He tailored each formula precisely to them, and believed that surgery was never the right answer. Every treatment he gave was chemical.
“I’d like to try laser lipo or body contouring one of these days,” Marilyn said, always desperate for a better result in the ongoing fight against weight and age.
“I’m liking cryolipolysis or cool sculpting these days. Michaela, whom you met last night, has done quite a lot of it,” he said confidently. “You saw the result.” He had no problem attributing Michaela’s naturally perfect beauty of body and face to treatments she’d never had.
“Let’s do that then.” Marilyn had total faith in Alex, as all of his patients did.
His Harvard diplomas were proudly displayed on his office wall and inspired confidence.
Most of his patients tried anything he suggested.
The less adventuresome ones stuck with the tried-and-true procedures they had used for years before they met him.
But some, like Marilyn, were desperate enough to try anything, as long as Dr. Alex gave it his blessing or had suggested it.
She picked up her large pink alligator Birkin and gave him a hug as they left the treatment room.
He had spent an hour with her, and his office was in full swing when she left.
She was delighted with the look of his new offices that her husband had paid for a good part of.
Roger did it willingly in order to keep Marilyn happy and off his back.
He didn’t ask questions, he just wrote the checks.
“How many patients do I have today?” Alex asked his assistant, Wendy.
She was Korean, in her mid-thirties, and had a delicately beautiful face and exquisite skin.
She’d had extensive work done on her face in Korea and he helped her maintain it as a perk of her job. He loved having beauty all around him.
“You have nine patients today,” Wendy said, consulting a list. He liked to see ten or twelve.
It gave him time to give special attention to those who needed it.
Some were confident and experienced enough to come and go in a few minutes.
Others needed to be hand-carried psychologically through the procedures.
Each of his patients was special to him and got the support they needed.
He had spent a year in another house in Beverly Hills adding to his client list, while he got his new center ready, after he moved from Florida.
He had the solid, steady, regular local clientele to support it now.
Some women flew in, from Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma.
He had opened Bellissima with infinitely careful planning and forethought.
He was well aware too that many of his patients came to him to fix ills and sorrows in their lives that even his treatments and procedures couldn’t touch.
The psychologically unstable frequently sought the services of plastic surgeons to change things they couldn’t cure, unfaithful or lost husbands, disappointing lives, ungrateful children, financial reversals and lost fortunes, and the final cruelties past a certain age or the tragedy of terminal illness.
He spent time with his patients before they began their treatments to make sure he didn’t miss a loose cannon among them, or someone seriously disturbed.
He was extremely vigilant about that, as most plastic surgeons were.
And in some cases he asked for a psychiatric evaluation before he would treat them.
Wendy lowered her voice to say something to him the other two women in the office couldn’t hear. “I believe you still have a guest upstairs.” He smiled.
“I believe you’re right. How long until my next patient?” She glanced at her watch.
“Forty minutes. Elizabeth Marcus. She usually comes late.” All she did was lips and Botox.
He nodded and left the room where they were working on billing.
He was making a fortune and had been for the last two years.
Before that, he had made a very handsome living in Palm Beach, but it was out in the stratosphere in L.A.
, mostly by word of mouth thanks to other satisfied patients.
And after his ad campaign, it would be at an even higher level.
He headed for the white marble staircase to his apartment, and used the code to let himself in.
His patients didn’t know that he also lived there, nor did his investors.
He had designed the upper floor himself with the developer.
It had everything he needed and provided him a huge, very elegant apartment.