Page 11 of Gone Before Goodbye
On the too-small screen, Marc shrugs. “He was your favorite teacher, right?”
“Yes.”
“Your mentor. Close to your family.”
Maggie nods. “He told me tonight that he’d always been in love with my mother.”
“So maybe that’s it. Maybe he just wants to help you out.”
“How?”
“Give you a job at Barlow Cosmetics.”
“But I lost my license. I can’t do surgery.”
“You could still do some other kind of work for him.”
“Like what? I’m only good at one thing.” Maggie sees the smirk on Marc’s face. She sighs and rolls her eyes. “Don’t say it.”
Marc smiles. “What?”
“Just don’t.”
“You mean about you only being good at one thing?”
“Stop.”
“Okay, okay,” he says, raising his hand in mock surrender. “But I still think it’s most likely Barlow knows your situation and wants to help.”
Because her head is down and her eyes are on the screen, Maggie nearly bumps into a group of students walking in the other direction. One of them mutters something about watching where she’s going, and she offers a sincere apology because, to be fair, she hates when people are walking with their heads down and eyes on the screen.
“What else do you see?” she asks.
“He opened the first Barlow Cosmetic Center seventeen years ago. Supposedly it’s cutting-edge and state-of-the-art.”
“What’s the difference between those?” Maggie asks.
“What?”
“They always say that in ads. ‘Cutting-edge and state-of-the-art.’ Aren’t they the same thing?”
“Cutting edge refers to the most recent and advanced tools or platforms in a particular field. State of the art refers to the best technology or techniques made up of the most modern methods.”
Maggie makes a face. “You just looked that up.”
“I did, yes.”
“He wasn’t a billionaire when we were at Columbia,” she says. “He did cleft lift and palates, burns, reconstructive surgery. Worked almost exclusively with the underserved.”
“Like you,” Marc says.
Maggie shakes her head. “Like us.”
“I never did a cleft—”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do, yeah. Either way, all that is probably in his past. My guess is, Barlow does mostly breast augmentation and facelifts now. The details on his practice are pretty secretive.”
