Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

After showering I peeked out Nan’s front door. Unlike Roosevelt Island, a stream of trucks and bodies crisscrossed on the street above me. Only five steps, the garbage can, and the wrought iron railing, between me and the traffic. The whole block shook —a bus over the metal plate in the street eight feet away, a trash can turned over, the deep and repetitive thud and piercing screech of concrete being jack-hammered down the street. Nighttime would be better for picking up my things at The Octagon.

I tried calling Elizabeth several times for an update on work. The cell service in the basement apartment was non-existent.

Except for the violin case and the collectible X-Men Wolverine comb I’d found in the Moroccan Room, the only things I came across in their immaculate apartment were occasional artifacts of elaborate bronze, ceramic or alabaster placed strategically apart —a pitcher, a small cuneiform, an urn, a small primitive sculpture with large eyes, little else, and an odd earthenware and skin-like figurine of a mermaid, no more than eighteen inches high. Even during the day, with so little natural light, the tiffany lamps glowed seductively. Beauty everywhere. Everything shipshape. Everything orderly.

It kind of made me crazy,
so
much order, and I can’t tell you why. But I liked it too.

By late in the afternoon, waiting for darkness to fall, I lay in bed staring at the ornate hammered-tin ceiling, contemplating my next moves. I ran a series of lists through my head then realized I was absentmindedly exploring my own body. Something I’d never before given myself permission to do. My breathing accelerated. I shut my eyes.
Beyond the pleasure of the winter cold or the water . . .

Nan’s keys were in the front door and she called out, “Eunis, it’s me, I’m home.”

“I’ll be right there.” Heartbeat intercepted, I removed my fingers from the undiscovered mystery.
Breathe
.

I tugged on the sheath dress Nan had left for me, straightened myself up, decided I’d broach the subject of beauty with her, and met her in the kitchen where she unloaded groceries.

“Hi,” she said, put down a bottle of red wine, and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the mouth.

“Oh, huh, hi.” My voice cracked, finger to my lip. I wasn’t sure if I should wipe it off.

Nan resumed organizing the groceries as if we were an old couple with thousands of homecomings like this, except my spine vibrated. She pulled a Star magazine out of the brown bag and shoved it toward me on the counter.

“You like celebrities.” Her voice had a flat nasal quality I hadn’t noticed before.

“Not celebrities exactly. But thank you,” I said tapping the magazine. “How did you know?”

“At the hospital.”

“A bad habit.”

“A guilty pleasure. But if not celebrities, then what?” A tinge of blue collar, but it had an unremarkable quality that didn’t fit her exquisite face. She was tired.

It was as good a time as any to explore her willingness to lend her beauty to my research. “My work is around beauty?”

“That’s always nice.”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” I fidgeted with the bottle of wine. Nan put away jars of elegantly labeled gourmet items I’d never heard of.

“What do you think it is?” I said scraping on the wine label.

“What?” She glanced at me.

“Beauty. Like you. You’re beautiful, exotic. People can agree on that, just like they can agree on Jennifer Lawrence, even though you two look nothing alike.”

Nan stopped and turned to me. She let the light bless her sculpted cheek and let her eyes go soft and deep. She held that light as if she’d been born with it. “Thanks, Eunis. Not everyone thinks so.”

I swallowed. “But most do. Like most find me unattractive and frightening.”

“That’s not true.”

“Of course it is. What do you think beauty is? How do
you
measure it? I’m not talking about attraction, that could be body type, physical, sentimental. Any number of things.”

“Yeah.” She perked up.

“I’m searching for the quintessential components of
facial
beauty, the ideal. It’s what I do. But I don’t seem to get any closer to the answer.”

“Why not just enjoy it?”

“I do.”

“But that’s not enough?”

“Beauty has no practical use.” As soon as I said it, I knew it was received wrong, her face flattened out. I stammered, bubbled with positivity. “It’s what makes us all go, and it makes some people money, but couldn’t we also put it to a shared practical use?”

Anger started to fill her eyes. I’d made it worse.
How
, I didn’t understand.

“What the hell does
shared
mean?”

Tell her the truth
. “Your beauty . . . if others looked even vaguely like you, we would be seeing beauty in everyone.”

She shook her head as if as if I was stealing something from her. “What do you mean, if they looked vaguely like me? What the hell does
that
mean?”

“I’m sorry, I’m going too fast.” I put up my hands and hung my head. “I’m sorry.”

She looked at me, questioning.

I lifted my head. “Listen Nan, I really appreciate what you and Levi have done for me—”

Her face turned years younger, childlike, almost pleading. “You don’t like the place!”

“No, no it’s not that, it’s . . . well, I’m used to spending most of my time alone.”

“Do you want me to leave?” Nan took a step toward the door.

“Oh my god, no, this is your place. I would never . . .” I moved toward the door.

She put up her hands. “Because if you do, I’ll get out for a few more hours.”

“No, no.” I reached for her, but she was just out of reach.

“Levi would be very unhappy with me if you left.” She put her arms to her sides. “We want you to be comfortable.”

“I am. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . .”

“Good.” Nan came around the table, rubbed my shoulders and kissed the back of my head. “Good.” She reverted to stacking jars of olives on the shelf.

***

Levi didn’t come home that night either, and Nan convinced me to watch television with her on the couch rather than go to The Octagon. That suited me fine since I was more interested in learning about her. I was very offhand. “Where’d you grow up?”

“Upstate.” The sitcom chattered on.

“What got you into nursing?”

“A means to an end.”

“How so?”

“It gave me access.” Nan changed the channel.

“To helping people?”

She sat upright. “Are you grilling me again?” But this time instead of anger she smiled sweetly. She let out an exaggerated sigh, turned down the volume, and faced me. “I knew early on —probably high school— that I wanted different things than my folks and most of my friends. Was that true about you too?” She took my hands in hers.

“Actually, I
wanted
what most people wanted.” I let her hold them.

“Oh.”

“Looking like this kind of limited my opportunities.”

“You look great.” She put her hand on my shoulder.

“Thanks, but that’s not how my momma saw things.”

“My mom was a cunt too.”

It took me a moment to regroup. “That’s not what I meant.”

“No, really? Because if your mother didn’t treat you like the incredible woman that I see in front of me —sexy, vibrant, unique, a magnet— then she was a cunt. Mine was. She wanted me to go to church and lie. It wasn’t even her religion.”

Nan was opening up.

She continued. “Muslim. My mom wanted to keep me —the whole family— as far away from the myth as possible, to clean up our public image, the
American
version. So we —I— was told to go Christian. The sacrificial lamb. But with religion you’re just trading one myth for another. The message was the same: sit on feelings, abstain till the next life, whenever that is. It wasn’t until I met up with Levi that I realized I could feel whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, without guilt.”

Without guilt?
I couldn’t remember a time when I wasn’t wearing it. Often multi-layers. I understood the concept of no guilt, but I didn’t know anyone like that. Maybe my sister Carly.

“Where’d you meet him?”

She looked surprised, even ambivalent. “I met Levi at a party. They were showing movies.”

“What was it about his face that you found handsome?”

“Look, I don’t know.” She fiddled with the remote again, surfed the channels.

I took a deep breath.
Tread lightly
. “How long have you been together?”

“Enough about me. Tell me about yourself.” She flashed a congealed smile.

“What do you want to know?” I sat back. If I was going to expect her to be forthright I guess it was fair to offer the same.

“Do you have email so we can notify your family where you are?”

“I don’t do email.”
Who would I email?

“Do you have any family locally?”

“No.”

“Wherever they are, you’re not close with them, are you?” A small, empathic tilt of her head.

“No.”

“We’ll be your new family.” She casually stroked my arm.

I drew it away. “I’ve got a friend here in the city.”

Nan’s eyes flickered. “You do?”

“A woman I work with. But I’m not sure . . .”

“Not sure of what?”

Time to admit. “That she’s my friend.”

“Be careful then. Those are the ones that can kill you.”

“She may already have.”

“I’m so sorry.” Sympathy rose in her beautiful lake green eyes. “If you don’t feel comfortable talking about this I’ll understand.”

I shook my head and went on to tell her the story about work. “But I think,” I said realizing it for the first time, “that I may get an attorney involved if I can pull together the money. They can’t just take my job away.”

“I don’t know about attorneys.” She sat up, teased her fingers through her abundant midnight hair. “They’re a greedy bunch, pretty much out for themselves. I’d be careful. Besides, sometimes it’s better to take care of things your own way, more direct.” Her eyes unfathomable, reminiscing a vision. Whatever it was, a small smile emerged on her lips. They curled back showing her eyeteeth.

Where were we?
Attorneys. Greedy? I didn’t feel that way about Roddy. Maybe it was his skin. Or that foolish smile.

“Anyway,” continued Nan, “Levi has a friend who’s an attorney, if it comes to that. But for now it sounds like your best option is to lay low.”

“I guess so, but I hate to be wasting my time, doing nothing.”

“You’re not wasting anything. You can read your textbook, keep studying, work on your research. We can play. What else do you want to be doing?”

“Make money, I have a job —well, I thought I did—”

“I told you, you don’t need to worry around money just yet.”

“I’m restless when I’m not doing enough.”

“Not doing enough? Well, we’ll see, you’ve only just arrived.”

I was so tired. “It’s nothing, it’s stupid.” I picked up the TV remote. “How does this thing work?”

Nan sat back and met my eyes, as if she divined my fatigue. “I think you’re gonna like it here.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“The primary control point for gene expression is usually at the very beginning of the protein production process.”

I kept reading and re-reading the same text, waiting for Nan to go to sleep. When I finally remarked that I was going to the apartment to get my things and to see if I’d been formally evicted, Nan insisted on accompanying me. Even though it was after midnight. “You’ll need extra hands.” She wouldn’t take no for an answer.

The empty subway car lurched and clacked like the Bemidji hockey rink. We settled into our seats, my head down and hooded, Nan with her head held high and imperial in a strobe of showering black and white light.

Especially on my late night trips from work I’d fancied being packed among people but didn’t have to experience it. Illogical: a place where I could be near people but must not. Nan patted my knee.

As we pulled into the Lexington Avenue station, a clean-cut guy in his late twenties stood alone on the platform. He peered into our car, looked both ways down the station, and stepped in. Something wild in his eyes. He sat right next to me, even though our car was empty. I didn’t look up.

“There’s plenty of space,” said Nan pointing at the empty seats. “Why don’t you give my friend a little breathing room?”

“I like it here. This is my favorite seat.” He shuffled closer to me. He was sweating. He smelled musty. He placed his left hand on my thigh. His jacket fell open. His pants were unbuttoned.

“Please move away,” I said heart accelerating. I knocked at his arm but he’d braced himself for that and actually ran his hand to my crotch.

“You did hear my friend, didn’t you?” Nan leaned forward to make eye contact with him.

“Who wants to be first?” he said. “The ugly one with the great tits or you?”

I shoved him and he stumbled getting up. “Okay, then it’s you,” he said to me, releasing his stiff member. “And you,” he said turning to Nan and revealing a letter opener, “do not make a sound or I will hurt her.” He began to pull at my pants.

I kicked at him but he stepped back and laughed. “Let’s make this pleasant for everyone.”

She was on her feet and showing him her neck. “You see this?” She pointed to her tattoo.

He turned. “You want to be first?”

And from nowhere she had a knife in her hand and the blade swept across his face. Deep. High cheek to mouth.

He screamed. The right side of his face peeled open. Before the blood started flowing I could see inside his cheek, his tongue spasm. He grabbed the flap, his fingers inexplicably in his mouth without resistance. He moaned, “You bitch!”

“Want more?” She raised her knife above his left eye, ready to plunge it in. “Or maybe I should cut this off.” She reached for his cock.

He stumbled backwards, catching a pole and leaving a handprint of blood on it.

She turned to me with the same hellbound look I’d seen on the Johanson’s dog when it attacked Nemo. “Should I finish him off?” She grinned. “I can be quick. No one will ever know.”

“No,” I stammered.

He looked in disbelief at his hands, then at his reflection in the dark window. “You fucking bitch!”

Another strobe of light as we crossed under the Queensboro Bridge and East River. He stumbled out of our car leaving his bloody handprint on every surface he touched.

She looked as if she’d go after him.

I laid a hand on her arm. “Our stop,” I said.

And once we started traveling up the long escalator, I started shaking then crying.

“Are you okay? We’re okay, right?” she said.

“It’s not that.” I turned to her rising just above me on the next step. “No one’s ever stood up for me like that.”

She pulled me to her, my head at her waist, and she stroked my hair. I caught a glimpse of the violence that had just passed. A series of shudders jolted my body. And she held tighter. If we hadn’t eventually reached the top of the escalator, I might have been there still, holding on to her.

“I don’t really want to call the cops,” I said feeling guilty. But I couldn’t meet with them, not with that blurry photo of me on all their corkboards and desks.

She didn’t ask why. She seemed to understand and nodded.

***

When we arrived at The Octagon I’d gathered myself and cautioned her that there could be a confrontation. If it was the police I wasn’t sure what explanation would suffice to ensure she wasn’t snared in the same net.

“We’ve already had ours for the night,” she said as we rose in the elevator. “Besides, it’s the night before New Year’s Eve. People will be resting up for the big parties tomorrow evening.” She took my hand and kissed my hair, an affection I was starting to get used to. “We’ll be in and out in no time, and you can put this place behind you forever.”

But this was my life.
I’d created this . . . with Harold’s help. His sacrifice. Now I’d destroyed it. She watched herself in the elevator glass. I was grateful for her, for the calm of her safe harbor.

My apartment door was still plastered with the original meeting notice but nothing more. Would the inmates attack? The HOA? The police? I flipped on the light.

“Oh geez,” she said.

The tangle of broken glass, scattered books and toppled stools reminded me how disorderly my life had become. I didn’t know my humiliation could run deeper; I didn’t know what to say. “Come on,” she said crushing my wrecked diploma under her foot and moving with purpose toward the small bureau. “Let’s put this all behind you.”

***

When Levi arrived late in the afternoon he wasn’t what I expected. I’d envisioned the DNA of a handsome blonde blue-eyed Adonis to perfectly counterbalance Nan’s dark exotic Aphrodite. But he wasn’t blonde, he was swarthy. He wasn’t handsome, he was melon-faced with a four o’clock shadow, and adding his slight paunch and shaved dome, his head-to-toe appearance was that of Mr. Peanut. A violin player. He did have a princely tan, magnificent, really. Nan draped herself around his taller frame and he around her like teenagers in heat.

I stood awkwardly in the living room, believing that at any moment they’d tear each other’s clothes off.
What if?!
I considered taking the long way around the apartment to my bedroom but Levi finally looked over Nan’s shoulder to acknowledge me.

“You must be Eunis,” he said with a smile and a sonorous voice, a voice that could command a ship or lead legions, completely incongruous with his physical appearance. And in that way he and Nan were a matched set, complimenting each other’s shortfall.

He moved forward, measured me up and down. “Superb. You are quite the specimen indeed. You are . . . superb.” Without warning he took me in his arms and united my body with his. He kissed my mouth and neck. I pushed him away.

“Levi!” Nan said sharply. “Eunis is just getting used to being part of our family.”

“Of course.” But he was barely able to bottle his enthusiasm nor mask the delight in his eyes. His inventory continued, his hands opening and closing as if hoping to put physical dimension to his words.

I explored the carpet pattern. I rearranged myself.
Harold! What do I do?
Yet there was something I liked being so desired and having a body next to mine.

He stood back, giving me a little air. “I’m sorry, Eunis. We’re just so happy to have you here. And on New Year’s Eve. How perfect.”

Perfection, apparently the word of the day. They were certainly an affectionate couple. Still, I didn’t like being referred to as a specimen. A rebuke almost slipped out before I controlled myself. “Thank you for having me.”

“We wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Levi . . .?” she said.

He hadn’t taken his eyes off me. My face flushed.
Oh god.

“Leviathan!” she said again, this time with edge.

“Oh, yeah, right.” He nodded to her.

“Let’s get ready to celebrate Eunis’s freedom.” She sounded cheery, absolving the reckless atoms, though mine still bubbled. “We cleared out her apartment last night so she’s
here
.”

“That’s great,” he said.

But most of my life was still at The Octagon, scattered across my once perfectly constructed asylum.

Levi swept up his briefcase and small suitcase. “I’ll put my things away, take a shower, and we can let the party begin. I’m in the Moroccan, right?”

That’s what I called it!

“Of course.” Nan set off behind him, I suppose to tell him what had happened in the subway.

For the first time in my life I had real, functioning, allies. If I took my time, if I explained my work
to them both
, I was sure Nan would consent. But I had to show them that I cared too, that I appreciated their friendship.

***

The evening began around 7:30 with a light meal of wild salmon,
petit pois —
a small sweet French pea, Levi informed me, something I must have missed in the encyclopedia’s volumes— and a mixed green salad with vinaigrette. If Nan had told him about the subway, I couldn’t tell. Perhaps he didn’t want to upset me. The subject never came up again.

“We don’t want to start too heavy.” Levi was a bit more subdued now. He poured more wine.

Worldly
, or maybe it was that the dining room was resplendent with candles glowing all around. I felt . . .
relaxed
. And admired.

“One glass is probably enough for me.” I held my hand over the glass. The luminous first one was already upon me.

“We like our drinks,” he said, looking a bit like I’d slapped him.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean there’s anything wrong . . .”

“You do drink?”

“A little.”

“Well, you won’t join us in this toast?” A small wound clouded his eyes.

This isn’t about Momma or Lyle or Elizabeth
. “Okay. Sure.”

Levi raised his glass in salute. “A new year, the beginning of new adventures. A time to celebrate.”

After dinner the opulent mood, and the three glasses of wine, turned me liquid. Nan put on lush music and my body absorbed it as we moved to the living room. Levi lay out on the wide chaise and to my surprise Nan sat next to
me
on what Levi called the chesterfield —a luxurious couch.

“Nan tells me you’re a geneticist.”

“I work in a lab.”

“And your work involves beauty.” His mouth tightened, smothering
something
as he glanced at Nan.

I shifted in my chair, not sure what I’d seen. “Well, they wouldn’t say so —the research facility— they’re interested in developing drugs with positive side effects, mostly for marketing purposes. I probably shouldn’t talk too much about it. I’m already in enough trouble.”

“But you, you have a more specific purpose?”

That was kind of him, not to push. “I do.” I felt unusually compliant. And after all, he was opening the conversation
for
me.

“And it is . . .?”

I glanced at Nan. She put her arms around me and kneaded my shoulder supportively.

“Beauty. I have to know the archetype of facial beauty.” I laughed self-consciously.

“Because?” He smiled warmly.

“I don’t want anyone to go through what I’ve gone through.” There, I’d said it. “Science can make it better; I know it can. We’ve already made great strides. Think of children with cleft palates or people with excessive facial warts or Proteus, Elephant Man syndrome. Any type of deformity or abnormality. Even the plain would have a better life if we were genetically adapted. Everyone loves beauty, people wouldn’t be lonely.”

“She’s had a tough time,” said Nan.

I sagged.

“Don’t do that,” Levi said rather sharply.

“What?”

“Undervalue yourself.”

“You sound like my husband.”

“Husband?” Levi sat up, alarmed.

“He’s dead.” Nan pressed a hand to her cheek. “Suicide.”

“Oh.” Levi sat back. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. But I could see he was on my side.

He lifted himself out of the chaise and walked over to the grand bar where he materialized a bucket of ice, three stubby thickly-cut glasses, and a bottle of tequila. When he returned he confidently dropped two cubes of ice in each glass. I admired his self-assurance and noticed how Nan also watched him with admiration. He’d help me convince Nan.

“Tequila all right? Or would you prefer something else? Scotch, perhaps?”

My first thought was of Elizabeth. “I’m already pretty good. Maybe I shouldn’t. I’ve never tried tequila.”

Ever courteous, he smiled and raised his glass. Urbane. His mellifluous voice rained down around me. “Let’s toast to exploring beauty.”

***

Sometime after that my skin began to mesh with the air around me, breathing from every pore, turning my body receptive, my mind swimming happily in the same way it did in the Minnesota lakes —
free!
I felt Nan’s fingers running through my hair, my body weight gone, floating. Her mouth found the nape of my neck and, following a bestial tear at my left ear that electrified me, her tongue licked and probed mine.