Beautiful You (12 page)

Billions of people were watching him—the wealthiest, arguably the most powerful man in the world—and he was watching Penny. The gaze of his camera, the scratched shorthand of his notes, they imbued her life with even more value. Under his watchful eye she felt secure. Cherished. But, no, not loved.

Two weeks before the rollout of the Beautiful You product line, Max abruptly froze in the middle of lovemaking. With a resigned slowness he carefully withdrew the current apparatus from her and laid it on the bedside table. Pulling off his latex
gloves, he said, “You’re of no further use to me.” He lifted his notebook. “The integrity … the authenticity … the
truth
of your reactions have become too compromised.”

As he made his notes, he checked the time on his wristwatch. “My jet is already prepped. You’ll find that your clothes and personal items have all been packed, and your luggage is already aboard, waiting for you.”

Maxwell turned to her, her head still cradled in the white satin pillow. He pressed two fingers to the side of her neck and timed her pulse. “The pilot is instructed to take you anywhere in the world you desire.” Penny had no chance to protest. She had yet to even close her legs.

He wrote down the last statistics of her heart rate and temperature. “I’ve deposited fifty million dollars in a numbered Swiss bank account for you. I will wire you the details for accessing it, if you agree to never contact me again.” To underscore his commands he looked at her. “You must never speak of our experience together or I will block your access to those funds.”

A forever of silence passed. Despite his icy demeanor she sensed Max’s little-boy heart was breaking.

“Do you understand?” he asked finally.

Blinking back tears, pulling her knees together, Penny didn’t answer. She was surprised by the suddenness of the rejection.

“Do! You! Understand?” he shouted. The fury of his words broke her shock and she nodded her head.

“Test subject unresponsive,” he muttered over his work. There was no mistaking it. His voice sounded choked with grief.

Penny curled onto her side, facing away from him. It was over. It had been a dream to be Cinderella, but now it was time to wake up.

“Please know that you’ve made a significant contribution to the development of the Beautiful You line,” his voice continued,
a droning. “As a token of my appreciation I’ve placed a small gift aboard the jet. I hope it will meet with your approval.”

Penny felt the bed shift. His weight left the mattress. She listened as his bare feet crossed the carpeted floor. “You will leave my house within the hour.” The bathroom door closed.

It had been exactly 136 days.

Aboard the Gulfstream, Penny found a small ribbon-wrapped box in the only seat that wasn’t heaped with heavy suitcases and garment bags. She’d been hustled from the penthouse so quickly that she wore nothing except a floor-length chinchilla coat and a pair of Prada high heels. Alone in the quiet cabin, she lifted the gift and held it in her lap as she fastened her seat belt and the pilot announced takeoff.

After they were airborne, she slipped the ribbons from the box and lifted the lid. Inside was a thin gold chain. When she lifted it out, a ruby swung from the lowest point. It was the ruby that Maxwell had always worn in a ring, reset as a pendant, the third-largest Sri Lankan ruby ever mined. Sharing the box was a bright pink plastic dragonfly. Its wings were thick and soft, printed with the curlicue Beautiful You logo. Penny inspected its antennae and the underside of its plastic body.

The dragonfly-shaped souvenir was a sex toy. The mass-produced version of a prototype Max had tested on her several times. She’d never grown tired of the effects the little flapping wings had generated. Those unfettered sessions were among her most intense memories, and the sight of the device made a blush rise in her cheeks.

A trust fund of fifty million dollars. Enough clothes to fill a department store. No, Penny told herself, she hadn’t been too mistreated. As she fastened the chain around her neck and felt the
weight of the frigid ruby between her warm breasts, she slipped the plastic dragonfly into the pocket of her coat and began to plan the first day of her new life. Within reach, an open bottle of champagne bubbled in an ice bucket. The flight attendant poured her a glass and turned off the cabin lights at Penny’s request.

As she sipped the dry sparkling wine, she felt a twinge of sadness in remembering how, just months before, the taste had been a special treat. Between the multiple pounding orgasms and the champagne, life with Max had spoiled her rotten.

She was spoiled but not despairing. If anything, she felt excited about the future. Tonight she’d need something more than champagne to help her fall asleep.

Once she was sure the flight crew wouldn’t see, she opened the front of her coat and slipped the dragonfly between her legs, settling it snugly in place. She’d watched Max do this dozens of times. As a special selling feature, he’d designed the toy to automatically warm itself to the perfect temperature. Even without looking she felt the button that activated it.

She wondered how he would fill his time once Beautiful You was launched. Maybe he was already planning new additions to the product line. Maybe he’d find another girlfriend with “ideal” genitals on which to test his prototypes. Someone who didn’t hesitate in expressing her arousal.

Girlfriend
was the wrong word. More like
guinea pig
.

In the inky blackness high above the Atlantic, Penny poured herself a second glass and lay back to enjoy the delicious pulsations between her thighs.

Her first weeks back in New York were a blur.

The money Maxwell bestowed on her came in the form of an annuity. She couldn’t withdraw the entire lump sum, but she
could live very well off the accruing dividends for the rest of her life. Prudently, she invested in a small town house on the Upper East Side. When the realtor had shown her the sunny tiled kitchen, the elaborate scrolled-ironwork elevator, and the carved marble fireplaces, Penny had written a check for the full asking price. It had plenty of closet space, which Penny’s burgeoning wardrobe almost filled to capacity.

On her first day back at BB&B, she found someone to share the house.

Despite her self-professed identity as a crunchy bohemian, Monique was thrilled to give up the squalid studio she shared with two ethnic roommates under the Kosciuszko Bridge. Before Penny could entertain any second thoughts, Monique was dragging cardboard boxes from a taxi into the town house’s elegant foyer. The smell of sandalwood was inescapable, but Monique’s weird sitar music helped to fill the emptiness. To celebrate their first night together the transplanted neohippie cooked a curried tofu feast. Afterward, the two young women flopped on the sofa in the media room. Each with a bowl of popcorn in her lap, they watched the Academy Awards ceremony being broadcast live.

As the camera in the Kodak Theatre panned the crowded audience, Penny couldn’t help herself. She searched for Maxwell’s pale boyish face and limp blond hair. There, seated on an aisle, was Pierre Le Courgette, Alouette’s boyfriend. Of course he would attend; she was a shoo-in to win best actress. Other faces Penny recognized, powerful people who had snubbed her or leered at her. It was hard to believe she’d rubbed elbows with them. That part of her life was fading like a sexually charged dream. She’d allowed Maxwell to isolate her in a fantasy of addictive pleasure and no emotional attachment, but now she was free.

Between being constantly examined by Maxwell and judged
by the thoroughbred jet-setters they met in public, Penny had shed any sensitivity she’d had about getting ogled. She might occasionally hear it, the clicking of paparazzi camera shutters, but she no longer reacted. She’d come to assume that every eye was always on her, and she carried herself with a new relaxed poise.

Whether it was this new self-confidence or the new clothes, she often caught men staring. Whenever she walked down Lexington Avenue, she almost didn’t recognize her own reflection in the windows of Bloomingdale’s. Striding along was a leggy Amazon. Gone was the layer of baby fat. Her hair swung in a shining wave.

In retrospect, Penny was glad the City of Light had never heard of butter brickle ice cream.

In the media room, she and Monique fought good-naturedly over the remote control. Both shouted jibes at the screen, where lesser-known cinematographers and producers expressed their verbose gratitude. The winner of best documentary was ushered offstage, and the network cut to a commercial.

The television showed a group of delighted, smiling young women gathered around a table. In the center of the shot the prettiest of them blew out the candles on a birthday cake as her friends pressed gifts upon her. To comic effect, every gift turned out to be a bright pink box emblazoned with a very curlicued white logo.
Beautiful You
. The girls rolled their shoulders and giggled. As if sharing some glorious secret, they pursed their lips and leaned to whisper in one another’s ears. The birthday girl squealed as if the pink boxes contained nirvana.

To Penny, it was unlikely that girls like these—thin, doe-eyed, clear-skinned—would have any problem finding men who’d romance them. They were the last women who’d need to buy Maxwell’s throbbing whatchamacallits.

Suddenly Penny envisioned a billion lonely wives or single
women abusing themselves in isolated resignation. In ghetto tenements or tumbledown farmhouses. Not bothering to meet potential partners. Living and dying with no intimate companions beyond their Beautiful You gadgetry. Instead of being either whores or Madonnas, they’d become celibates who diddled a lot. To Penny that didn’t seem like social progress.

The television commercial ended with the familiar tagline; a dulcet female voice intoned, “A billion husbands are about to be replaced …”

“They have a store on Fifth,” Monique said through a mouthful of popcorn. “I can’t wait until it opens tomorrow.”

Penny thought of the flagship outlet. Already a line of women was forming and it snaked for two blocks, down almost all the way to Fifty-fifth Street. The building’s facade was skinned in pink mirror, so anyone trying to peek inside saw only a flattering rose-colored reflection of herself.

Penny hoped the eventual products were better made than the one Maxwell had left for her aboard the Gulfstream. She’d fallen asleep to its soothing pulsations, but as they’d been descending into LaGuardia she’d blinked awake to find it broken. The two wings of the plastic dragonfly had fallen off, and the pink-silicone body had split down the middle. It was almost as if the thing had hatched. Metamorphosed, she’d thought. But it was caterpillars that turned into butterflies. Butterflies just died. They laid their eggs on cabbage leaves and died. As the pilot had prepared for landing, Penny had discreetly picked the shattered scraps of silicone out of herself and stuffed them into her coat pocket.

Resolutely, she decided to find a real, live, flesh-and-blood lover before she’d resort to standing in line on Fifth Avenue.

Monique called, “Pay attention, Omaha girl!” and began to pelt Penny with salty, buttery kernels of popcorn.

On television, Alouette sauntered across the stage to accept
her award as best actress. Her floor-length gown swirled around her toned legs. Her shoulders bare and thrown back, her breasts held high in her strapless bodice, she was the perfect image of self-assurance and accomplishment. It was thrilling to watch.

“God, I love her,” Monique sighed. “Is that bling for real?”

Glowing in the center of the actress’s cleavage was the huge sapphire.

The camera zoomed in on Maxwell seated ten rows back, on the aisle. The lovable dork, he appeared to be playing a handheld electronic game. As his thumbs danced over the keys on a little black box, he seemed to be ignoring Alouette’s triumph onstage.

In vivid contrast, the audience of big names applauded with genuine admiration. Standing behind the clear Plexiglas podium, the French beauty beamed, graciously accepting their accolades. A few people stood. Then everyone was standing. A tidal wave of adoration. As the applause subsided, leaving room for her to speak, a shadow of pain seemed to drift across Alouette’s delicate features. Her lips and brow tightened almost imperceptibly. It passed, and her smile returned. Even under her makeup her face looked flushed, and rivulets of sweat flattened strands of hair to her cheeks.

She looked a little dazed, Penny thought, but who wouldn’t be?

The actress began to say,
“Merci,”
but winced again.
“Alors,”
she cried out. She gasped for breath. Hugging the golden award to her chest, she took a step toward the wings, but looked uncharacteristically wobbly in her stiletto heels.

Taking a second step, she stumbled and fell. The golden Oscar landed with a clunk and rolled a few feet. A murmur of concern rippled through the auditorium.

“Somebody help the lady!” Monique shouted at the television screen.

As she lay on the stage, trying to raise herself onto her elbows, Alouette’s legs began to tremble. A palsy began at her feet, but quickly traveled upward to her knees until both legs were shaking from the waist down. Her ankles moved slowly apart. Positioned toward the audience, her legs gradually spread, stretching her skirt taut between them. Even as Alouette reached down, gripping the hem and trying to keep it at a modest level, the tension on the fabric was too great. It sprang up, collecting above her crotch. She wasn’t wearing underthings, Penny realized. You never did with a gown that clingy and formfitting.

“Are you seeing this?” asked Monique in a whisper. One hand hung frozen in the air, midway between the bowl of popcorn and her gaping mouth.

To Penny, the five-time Oscar winner clearly looked deranged. She twisted her head violently from side to side, lashing the stage with her long hair. Her eyes rolled up until only the whites showed. Her chest heaved, and her back arched, thrusting her hips into the air as if to meet a phantom lover.

In heavily accented English, she was screaming, “No!” Shrieking, “Please, no! Not here!” It seemed as if the suffering movie star was staring directly at C. Linus Maxwell.