Waking Beauty (18 page)
Authors: Elyse Friedman
I yanked my arm away and moved off.
As he was stumbling out of the office, Andrew turned and shouted, “Yo, Claudia, don’t forget to LOCK THE DOOR.” He mimed the action so that I would understand.
I smiled and called out the one other phrase Elda had taught me:
“E mana sou einai mounie apo forado
.” Your mother is a horse’s cunt.
“Absolutely,” said Andrew, blowing me a kiss. “I love you, too.”
After they left I did something I probably wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t just been called a smelly troll by that no-good shit smear Andrew McKay. Smelly? I was never smelly. Ugly, yes, troll-like, perhaps, but that was beyond my control. Never was I smelly. As for the “death stare” comment, my God, you think he would’ve learned something! But no, not Andrew McKay, not Mr. I Can Get Away with Anything Because I’m Cute and Popular and My Parents Are Well-to-Do. Okay, hang on, I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the thing I did.
For a few minutes, I just rage-tidied, an anti-Andrew tirade flaming hot in my brain. I was clearing detritus off his desk in an angry and haphazard fashion when I accidentally knocked the mouse to the floor, which caused the computer monitor to flicker out of sleep mode. The screen lit up with the nauseating new cover of
WUT Up
, the summer issue; the one that had just been “put to bed.” It featured a digital composite of a man-machine-half robot, half full-lipped male
model. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE NOW! screamed the headline. A small cursor blinked on and off in the middle of the page.
I picked the mouse up off the floor and placed it back on its pad. Then for some reason I kept my hand on the device, rolling it around so that the cursor moved to the arrow in the corner of the screen. I pressed the left button and began scrolling down. The next two pages came up side by side, as if the magazine was open on the screen. It was an advertising spread for something called Frog March. Those two little words appeared tiny and green in the corner; the rest of the image was a panoramic close-up of a naked young woman lying on her side. Just her torso made it into the two-page spread. Her nipples and pubes had been airbrushed out. Exactly what Frog March was, I couldn’t tell you.
I continued scrolling, and the laid-out magazine went slowly by. More ads, at least eight glossy full-pagers, all of which featured starving, inadequately clad teens draped in or around ostensibly must-have products. Next up was the table of contents, followed by Andrew McKay’s column—an insufferable block of vainglorious drivel called “True Confessions.” Above the text was a picture of Andrew, laughing and holding out his hand as if to block the lens and hide from its prying eye. Of course, it was a shamelessly premeditated pose. You could tell by the careful positioning of the hand and the way the fingers were spread just wide enough to reveal his dimpled, allegedly bashful cuteness.
This is where I stopped.
The “True Confessions” page appeared in every issue of
WUT Up
. In it, Andrew McKay would stray from the digital-culture mandate of the magazine and simply divulge his guilty pop-culture pleasures to readers. I had read one in which he “confessed” to harboring libidinous feelings for the stern host of
The Weakest Link
, and another in which he’d admitted to reading
InStyle
magazine in the bubble bath. As if anyone gave a flying fuck. In the new issue Andrew claimed that he felt a
grave and overpowering need to unburden himself. He confessed to having an addiction—a junk-food addiction. Gasp! He then went on to list and tally up his daily intake of empty calories.
Gee, what a load off. No doubt, peace of mind and restful slumber were immediately restored after that powerful unbosoming.
As usual, the faux-dramatic cuteness of the piece galled me. And as usual I thought: Yeah, right, he feels the need to get this inanity off his chest, but Andrew’s real sinister secret can stay hidden forever without any deleterious effects on his mental or physical well-being. Then, suddenly, I felt a tingle of brave in the fingers and the back of the skull as I fantasized about revising the text and offering up a truly true confession from Andrew McKay.
Yes.
And I wasn’t afraid of being found out or losing my job. I realized that, looking the way I did, it probably wouldn’t be difficult to get another job. Hell, maybe I could even try out the modeling thing, just for laughs. Didn’t Fiona say the money could be very good?
The first paragraph I left almost unaltered:
Gentle
WUT Up
Reader
,
There is something I must share with you, something I am deeply ashamed of but can no longer conceal. For years, I told myself that I was fine, that I didn’t have a problem, but lately my secret has been weighing heavily on my mind, even affecting my mood and performance (or so friends and loved ones tell me). Therefore, I must have out with it: I am an addict…a junk-food addict
.
I moved the cursor into the body of the text and clicked in after the colon, just before
I am an addict…a junk-food addict
. I hit the insert button and typed,
I am a liar…a liar and a killer
.
I was able to retain the first sentence of Andrew’s next paragraph:
It all started years ago when I was just a lad
. I clicked in after that and continued typing.
It was back in high school. As you may have guessed, I was wildly popular (please see photo above). I was captain of the intramural hockey team, Student Council president, and a member of the Special Events Committee. I was also senior co-editor of the yearbook, and if it hadn’t been for Miss XX, my Theater Arts teacher, I would have undoubtedly played the lead opposite Nicole Mackenzie in the school’s award-winning amateur production of
Oklahoma
!
Miss XX wasn’t always my enemy. Initially, I was one of her pets (probably because I flirted with her in spite of her disfigurement). Yes, Miss XX possessed an unfortunate facial distortion: seriously protruding eyeballs, which made her appear perpetually horrified and rather insane. Of course, students made fun of her, but I was one of her staunchest defenders. That is, until she made the grievous gaffe of casting Robbie Kerr as the lead in
Oklahoma
! I was flabbergasted and irate (even though it was widely acknowledged that Robbie was truly talented—a natural actor with a big voice). But I looked like Curly. Hell, I
was
Curly—handsome, strapping, and heterosexual. Robbie was a bone rack, he had acne, and he was gay. I’d like to add that Nicole Mackenzie, the beauty chosen to play Laurey Williams, happened to be my girlfriend, so it would have been perfect for us. Honestly, I found it hard to believe that after months of smooching Miss XX’s ass, she actually wanted me to accept the role of Jud Fry. The villain
!
I dropped out of the production and went on a bitter campaign against Miss XX, dreaming up a raft of new and spectacularly cruel jokes about her visage (my anonymously authored list “Top Ten Reasons Miss XX’s Eyes Are Popping” circulated for weeks). I also started the rumor that she was a lesbo. After all, she never wore dresses, she had her hair cut
short like a man’s, and she picked Robbie Kerr to star in the play. Clearly it was a gay-solidarity thing. Clearly if she was immune to my prodigious charms, it was because she preferred fish to meat
.
My campaign of ill will gained momentum, and I can assure you Miss XX was not unaware of it. Still, nothing tragic would have happened if I hadn’t gone that one step further. Had I not been a total scoundrel, Edwin Fung would still be alive
.
Edwin Fung was co-editor of the yearbook, a grade-twelver. There were five or six of us on staff, but Edwin and I were the top guys. I was the content side; Edwin was the technical side. He also snapped most of the photos. Edwin was a quiet student in the Enriched Program. He planned to study science and become a medical researcher (I know because I read it in his obituary). His parents were immigrants from China, very conservative and strict. Edwin must have been deeply afraid of shaming them, because after the police came to the school to interrogate him, after they tried to extract a confession by suggesting that only he had the technical expertise to alter the yearbook at the last minute, after they informed him that he would almost certainly be expelled, Edwin panicked. And that night Edwin, who obviously took things much too seriously, jumped off the Bloor Street viaduct
.
Of course, anyone with a smattering of brain cells knew that it was I who had altered the yearbook—specifically, the quarter-page photo of Miss XX leading the relaxation exercises that took place at the beginning of each drama class. Edwin had taken the snapshot of her hovering over the prostrate forms of Jessica McBain, Debbie Alexander, and Christa Vukovics. But it was not Edwin who drew the squiggly lines to make it look as if rays were coming out of Miss XX’s eyes, and it was not Edwin who added the offensive caption to the bottom of the photo
:
Miss XX incapacitates the gals with her gorgon death stare before dragging ’em to the portables for some alternative-lifestyle lovemaking
.
Naturally, the cops interrogated everyone on the yearbook staff, including moi. But I played it cuke cool. I knew that our headquarters had no lock on the door. So anybody could have fucked with the program, right? The bozo cops were throwing their weight around, but I knew they had no proof. And I knew all about the burden of proof. My dad’s a hot-shot attorney, don’t you know, practically a celeb in this town. Still, there was something of a case to be made against me: my position on staff, my public beef with Miss XX, the fact that it was my responsibility to check the layout and copy before the yearbook went to print (I claimed I was so sick of looking at it, I just skimmed it, and that all I was guilty of was sloth and inexperience)
.
The funny thing is, the day after Edwin took a long walk off a short viaduct, everyone expected me to be so filled with remorse that I would come forward to clear his name. But I figured as long as he took the plunge, he might as well take the blame. Of course, Miss XX was pressuring the school to expel me. The police were threatening to launch a thorough investigation (although they themselves were being scrutinized for leaning too heavy on Edwin and frightening him, literally, to death). I tell you, it was quite the kerfuffle. In the end, strictly as a show of good faith, my dad offered to pay for a reprint of the yearbook. A generous gesture appreciated by all. And that was that. I finished up the year and returned the following September to do my grade twelve. Miss XX didn’t return, though. Miss XX was pretty much forced to seek employment elsewhere
.
So you see, even though she was right, even though I would have been perfect for the role, I never did end up playing the bad guy after all
.
I hit Control S on the keyboard to save the document. I read it over, corrected the typos, and re-saved.
It gave me satisfaction to know that Andrew would read it and have to once more erase the story from memory. At best,
I figured one or two others in the office might get a look at it and force him to dredge up the past. I had no idea that the magazine would go to the printer that way, and that because I had left the first paragraph almost entirely intact, and the length of the text virtually the same, nobody would pick up the difference at the proof stage, and that the new true Andrew McKay confession would be noticed only once seventy-five thousand copies of the magazine had been printed and bound with glue. But several weeks later I learned that that’s exactly what had happened.
Alas, the mags never made it to the stands, but someone at
WUT Up
leaked a copy to
Scoop
magazine and soon after, the mainstream media was gleefully reporting the story. Of course, Andrew denied any involvement in the original incident and threatened to sue the perpetrator of this one once he was found. The funny thing was, he had to admit that, as in the earlier scandal, it was he who had “proofed” the offending issue before it was mass-printed. And once again Daddy had to come to the rescue, tapping the capital to pay for a brand new print run.
This time to the tune of $112,000.
I took the service elevator to the fourth floor. Time for one more office before my break. Contrary to Brendan’s fears, nobody at IZ Talent Management tried to sign me up or offer me the world. Mind you, the place was deserted, so maybe someone would have if they’d been around. Maybe if Peter Igel had been “working” late, he would have told me that I had a special quality, and maybe he would have put the jazz music on and tried to rip my clothes off. Maybe I would have stapled his penis to the desk.
His lamp was on, but Igel was long gone. He had left a Post-it note stuck to the door of his office:
Please Windex and wipe
. An arrow pointed to a greasy handprint on the glass. Igel often left these notes for the cleaning staff.
Please dust
stuck to the Art Deco figurine that stood atop his filing cabinet, or
Please vacuum
stuck to the seat cushions of the sofa. As I lifted his trash can to empty it, I saw that it contained his usual sloppy mess. That night it was a half-eaten bratwurst, sauerkraut spilling from the bun onto a photo of a smiling wanna-be, the left side of her face almost entirely obscured by mustard and cabbage. I fished out the fat brat and balanced it in my palm. Then I opened a sliding drawer on the metal cabinet behind Igel’s desk and filed it away. Under
S
for sausage. I replaced the can without rinsing it. Then I wrote,
Please fuck yourself up the ass
on a Post-it note and stuck it on the December page of his Annie Leibowitz calendar.
I figured wherever I was seven months from that night, I’d have at least one thing to smile about.
When I got to the patio, all my New Allison audacity began to melt away. My stomach felt flippy and I had to resist the urge to gnaw on my nails.
