Waking Beauty (19 page)

Nathan always came to the patio on Mondays. We’d blab about our respective weekends, and he’d fill me in on the new films he’d seen. I invariably looked forward to these encounters, but on this night the impending tête-à-tête filled me with equal measures of anticipation and dread. On the one hand, I was itching to test-drive my charms on the object of my affection for the last eight months. On the other hand, I was sure that Nathan would recognize me as the chick who had blundered the Antonioni title. Would he think that I was stalking him, following him from workplace to workplace? Probably he’d just think it was a coincidence, and that I was a bonehead. But even if he didn’t think that, what about the Paulo Effect? Now that I was growing accustomed to my status as stately long-limbed goddess, would Nathan suddenly seem lusterless? Would the crush crumble and the fancy fade when I next set my new blue eyes on him?

As it turned out: no. My heart did the usual triple lutz/double salchow combo when Nathan stepped onto the dark patio and I caught sight of his balding, curiously shaped head glinting in the moonlight.

“Hey!” he said, coming to an abrupt halt when my presence registered. “Oh, sorry. I thought you were someone else.”

I am someone else
. “It’s okay,” I said. “Plenty of room and the weather’s fine.”

“I was just—I thought my friend was out here.”

Friend! I loved that he called me that. “Who, Allison?”

“Yeah. Is she around? I saw her cart at the door.”

“No. I left the cart there. I’m filling in for her tonight.”

“Oh.”

“She’s a friend of mine, too. A good friend.”

“Oh, really?” He appeared confused and I couldn’t tell if it was because Allison had a friend who looked like me, or because someone who looked like me was scouring offices, or because someone who looked like me was standing up and advancing toward someone who looked like him, with a long arm outstretched for a shake.

“I’m Allison as well.”

“I’m Nathan.”

“Right, Allison has mentioned you. Nice to meet you.” I held on for a second longer than appropriate. Then I gave him the smile, the one I had been practicing, but it just seemed to unnerve him.

He took a step back. “So, is Allison sick or something?”

I told him the tale about the father ill in Los Angeles, adding a coma element and a bedside vigil to zing it up a bit.

“Oh, boy. I’m really sorry to hear that. Holy cow.” He did look sorry. “Well, if you speak to her, please send my best wishes.”

“I will, thanks.”

“I guess I should…” He gestured toward the building, then executed a move in which he tried to back away and turn around simultaneously, resulting in a small stumble. He laughed self-consciously. “Nice meeting you,” he said, and disappeared inside.

So much for test-driving my charms. Clearly, I made
Nathan uncomfortable. In the video store, he’d gone out of his way not to look at me. Now he couldn’t wait to get away. He probably felt intimidated, considered me out of his league (the way I felt about him just a few days earlier). It occurred to me that, so far, only handsome/successful men and sleazebags had come on to me. Would it be possible for New Allison to hook up with a balding, insecure video clerk? Would that make sense?

Nathan’s rapid retreat left me a little lugubrious. Or maybe it was the patio working its melancholy magic. For the first time since the Big Change I felt like singing. I began. “‘When the wind howls in—’” I stopped. Cleared my throat. Started again. “‘When the wind howls in from the north—’” Holy shit! My voice! My voice was gone! Well, not gone, but different. Not nearly as good. I stood up. Paced. Cleared my throat and tried again. “‘When the wind howls in from the north. And the stars are hiding inside. When you know your baby ain’t coming home—’” I couldn’t hit the high note! My range was kaput! I took several deep breaths to calm myself down and then tried something less octave spanning. “‘No moon, no June, no prairie sky. No lips, no eyes, no gentle sigh…’” Bizarre. My pitch was still accurate, but the range and nuance had vanished. Clearly, the transmutation had caused my vocal cords to shift and reshape. Of course. It was understandable.

I sang a bit more, trying to get used to the second-rate sound, and the fact that my best Old Allison virtue had vanished. I tried telling myself that it could have been worse; at least I could still carry a tune, and I reasoned that a trade-off was probably in order. I mean, was I not still way ahead of the game? So my lovely lilt had flown. So what. It’s not as if it was doing me any good anyway, right?

Still, it troubled me. And as I sat there alone in the not-quite dark, I couldn’t help wondering if anything else had been lost.

6    

Model portfolios. Actor headshots
. Aside from her
name, address, and phone number, that was all the text in Keneisha Clarke’s brochure. I sipped my coffee and eye-balled the well-composed, attractively lit photos in her promo piece. Usually, I’d be reading the morning newspaper, but few things were very usual anymore.

George had called earlier—in mid-squash game—to invite me to spend the day at his club. I could hear ball smashing wall as he breathlessly, reverberatingly told me to take a cab, and provided me with his father’s account number so I wouldn’t have to pay for it. He advised me not to wear jeans.

I had called the taxi. Now I had my hand on the phone again.

“Keneisha speaking.”

I hung up.
Fuck it. I’ll just go to the photo booth in the subway
. I drained my coffee. Stared at the brochure.
Of course, even if the booth is working, the lighting is ghastly, and I’ll only get my head in the shot…
I couldn’t help but notice that the female models in the brochure weren’t nearly as beautiful as I was, and surmised that they were probably outearning me by a ratio of at least ten to one.

I picked up the phone.

George was waiting outside when my cab arrived at the swanky old-dough digs. He looked tanned and healthy in his squash outfit, the sun shining all over him. “Hey, babe. I’d kiss you but I’m all sweaty.” “It’s okay.” I didn’t detect any evidence of sweat. Perhaps even perspiration was tasteful and understated around here. George escorted me past various riffraff screening posts to the interior of the club. I got spooked by a sign that said WHITES ONLY, until George assured me that it referred to nothing more than racket-sport garb. Still, the notice could
have easily applied to the members I saw milling about as George took me on a tour through the luxe labyrinth.

“And this, finally, is the entrance to the women’s spa area.”

“Uh-huh.”

George smiled. “I took the liberty of booking you some treatments.”

“Really?”

“You’re into the spa thing, aren’t you?”

“Um…sure.” The closest I had come to the “spa thing” was when my toilet malfunctioned and sprayed like a bidet for two hours.

“Well, I’m doing a massage, facial, and manicure. I timed your stuff so we could meet for a late lunch in the atrium. Around three. That all right?”

“Of course. Thanks.”

“Eva’s expecting you. She helped me pick the treatments, but feel free to substitute.”

“Um, do I need anything…?”

“Nope. They have robes, combs, shampoo, hair dryers, body lotion, shavers—”

“Wow.”

“Yup,” said George. “Everything you need.”

“Everything I need” included having my face exfoliated with a kiwi-pineapple peel and hydrated with a truffle-butter mask. In between those two procedures, my pores were coaxed open with an orchid-infused steam, only to be shut tight with glass wands full of antifreeze gel. I had my hands “polished” with ground Thai rice, then massaged with fragrant oils. I had my feet dipped in a mixture of hot paraffin wax and something called fango mud, then wrapped up like take-out sandwiches, in paper-lined foil, and set under heat lamps for fifteen minutes. After that, I was bathed by an attendant in a dimly lit chamber that smelled of cedar and citrus—the first part of my Ayurvedic body wrap. I was then slathered neck to toe in heavy cream mixed with cocoa, and
rolled up, I kid you not, in banana leaves. Giant banana leaves. I was like a human fajita, like a five-foot-nine-inch packet of dim sum sticky rice. It took two attendants to peel, rinse, and rouse me—I was relaxed practically into a coma. I took a steam bath and a shower, drank peppermint tea, lounged in a wicker recliner in a terry-cloth robe, and flipped through
People
magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People issue until it was time to get ready and meet George.

“There she is,” he said as I glided around members lunching lovely in the atrium. “How do you feel?”

“Wonderful.”

George was seated with two friends who rose to shake my hand. “Glen, Doug, this is Allison.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said.

Glen and Doug were clean-cut, propitiously born, Delta Kappa Epsilon types in their late twenties. I wasn’t expecting a group meal, and I gleaned pretty quickly that I was there to be displayed, like a pretty new Patek Phillippe. After polite preliminaries, the boys launched into a conversation that, while often meant to impress me, was never really intended to include me—joshing about mutual friends, boasting about business matters, spewing sports statistics, etc.

Now, here’s where you expect me to get all boo-hoo and indignant, right? I was supposed to feel exploited. The browbeaten bauble. Well, the fact is, I didn’t mind. For one thing, the concept that someone would want to show me off was so novel, I was clam happy to play along. More important, I was far too detached from the experience to feel put out by it. After all, I was only
acting
the part of George’s new ornament, and frankly, it was a pretty enjoyable role. The spa treatments had been amazing; every cell in my body was sighing sweet. Did I really need to assert my intelligence, and have Doug or Glen get to know the real me? No. What I needed was something good to eat. I ordered a grilled lamb burger and sweet-potato fries. Glen and Doug and George opted for high-protein low-calorie salads. When I endeavored to pass
the breadbasket around, they all but recoiled (as if the thing contained anthrax, or an economy-class airline ticket). I happily swallowed two rolls with butter before engulfing the rest of my meal like a starving velociraptor.

“Jeez,” said Doug (or maybe it was Glen, I can’t really remember), “where
do
you put it, Allison?”

“Here,” I said, jutting out my chest. There was a moment of silence before Doug and Glen burst out laughing.

“And she’s funny, too!” said Doug. Then George laughed as well, but it seemed to be with relief. After that I kept quiet and finished my lunch, which was actually my breakfast, and much, much better than half a row of saltines. The food at the club was good. Very good. After I had polished off a slab of chocolate mud cake with warm liquid center, I let George take me back to his condo and come on me. He wanted me to hang around and have dinner with him later, but I invented an excuse since I had to go to work.

Strange that after all that swankiness I had to hustle off to my scrub gig. As I went along my route—a quiet, Nathan-less night—I calculated that I would have to empty trash cans for a week to pay for one of those glorious banana leaf treatments.

When I got home, I found Virginie and Fraser cuddling on the sofa, watching
Late Night with Conan O’Brien
. Normally, I would’ve headed straight to my room and stayed there, but I had a mission to complete. So I changed into my Le Château slut dress—sans bra and panties—and returned to the living room to inflict friction and induce dissension.

“Mind if I join you?”

Virginie shrugged. Fraser said, “Why, are we coming apart?” a rejoinder that left him with a satisfied grin.

You will be, I thought. Then I forced out a chuckle at his joke attempt, sat on the love seat opposite them, and crossed my legs high, giving them a nanosecond flash of naked crotch. “You’re a real card,” I said flirty to Fraser. “You ought to be dealt with.”

He blushed and guffawed. Virginie smiled tight. “George called,” she said, trying to pinch off the jovial exchange and get me the hell out of there. “He said to call him when you got home.”

“Well, it’s kind of late. I’ll call him tomorrow.”

“So you and George are together, eh?” said Virginie.

“Well, we’re dating.” I looked squarely at Fraser. “But, you know, not exclusively.”

“So, um, George sent all the flowers?” said Fraser.

“Yeah.”

“It’s a bit much,” snipped Virginie.

“Feel free to chuck some,” I said. “I’m not really a rose person anyway.”

“Oh, really?” said Fraser.

Virginie glared at him for giving a shit, or pretending to.

“I’m more of a tulip person,” I confided. Then I looked at Virginie. “Roses are pretty, but sort of common, you know.” I looked back at Fraser and crossed my legs as high as I could go without getting gynecological. “Tulips are much more stately and beautiful, don’t you think?”

“I guess.” He put his hands over his crotch.

Virginie cranked the volume on the TV.

All three of us stared at it then, at Conan O’;Brien interviewing Gisele Bundchen, but none of us was paying attention. I could tell. The room was vibrating with a hot preoccupation. Our TV viewing was like a flimsy sheet tossed over a tangle of wrestlers—a thin veneer atop the pulsing horniness and sexual jealousy raging big and silent in the room. Three people ostensibly focused on giggly Gisele, but clearly preoccupied by pudendum. I was so close to a full and deliberate flashing, mere millimeters away from seriously breaking the social code, that it was impossible not to obsess about it, each one of us in a different way. It was tantamount to having the coffee table burst into flames, and the three of us just sit there, gawking at the tube as if mesmerized.