Waking Beauty (29 page)

I found one. Inside was a smudged-mascara woman, who I realized, as I ducked into a stall, was Tracy Benson, the formerly cherubic child star of
Mother Knows Better
. Tracy Benson,
all grown up with a pierced navel and a piercing nasal voice, scrubbing something off her cleavage-hugging halter top and slurring loud into a cell phone
…. I don’t know, some fuckin’ club. Fuck, I am wasted…What? No. Some fuckin’ guy. I don’t know. Thomas something, some film guy. Yeah. I think so, he was talking about something…I can’t remember, but it sounded, you know, real and everything. I don’t know, Mimi Rogers…Anyway, he better be ‘cause he just cranked all over my new Gauthier. No, I’m not fuckin’ kidding…I don’t know, there’s all these fuckin’ rooms up here. Anyways, fuck it. Who cares. I am, like, totally fuckin’ wasted
.

I was feeling rather wasted myself as I downed my drink and lurched out of there. I moved down the corridor, checking each room, trying to locate George, which is how I finally found my father. He was with a group of people in a large office. He was sitting on a sofa, with his feet up on a glass coffee table. He was wearing white pants and a white shirt open to the navel. A male go-go angel was curled up fetal beside him, passed out with his head in my father’s linen lap. The angel’s hands were tucked between his glittered thighs, and his mouth hung open. His wings had been removed and were lying on the floor beside an overturned champagne bottle.

“Oh, here’s my chancey-chance-chance to get some money back,” said a man who had spotted me peering in from the corridor. “Step in here for a moment, young lady!”

The man was at least forty, but he was dressed like a teenager. I recognized him. A comedian, one of the lesser cast members on
Saturday Night Live
several seasons ago. He was starring in a lousy sitcom now, playing a divorced stay-at-home dad who is hopelessly in love with his jet-setting ex-wife. He sat on a sofa opposite my father, stroking the thigh of another male go-go angel. This one was awake, leaning languidly against the comedian, a dozy expression on his angel face.

“Come in, come in,” said Simon Penny, checking me out as I entered the room. “Care for some champagne?”

“No, thanks.” I was shocked at how much younger he looked than my mom, and how attractive he was. There was
nothing fatherish about him. He was a tanned Rupert Everett with sky-blue eyes and a waxed chest.

“How about a line?” he said. “OxyContin?”

“No.”

He seemed surprised that I’d refused the drugs. I noticed then that the comedian was staring at my tits. Not in a lascivious fashion. He had cocked his head to one side and was rubbing his chin in an exaggerated ironic I’m-trying-to-decide-something pantomime. “Hmmm…” he said. And his angel giggled. “Fake!” said the comedian, as if he were a jury member boldly pronouncing a verdict. Then in a soft and slow voice: “But not saline, no…silicone.”

“Don’t be absurd,” said my father. “Those are obviously genuine. You owe me another hundred, fool.”

“Dream on, bubba,” shouted the comedian, with a Southern accent. Then, evenly, with a British accent: “Young lady, would you be so good as to clear up the matter and set this poor boy straight—Oops! Unfortunate choice of words that. We don’t want to confuse him any more than he already is!”

“I’m not confused. I’m omnivorous.”

“Oh pul-ease!” said the comedian. “Pick a fuckin’ team, asshole.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said my father. “Why don’t you pay up and shut up.”

“They’re fake! Tell him, sweetheart.”

I said, “Your little game is almost as pathetic as that sitcom you’re on.”

“Ooh, feisty!” said my father.

“Feisty
and fake,”
said the comedian. “So hump you, Jack.” He bent forward to inhale a pile of white powder off the table.

“You’ll have to forgive my friend….” My father pushed the unconscious angel off his lap and stood up. He moved toward me. “He thinks he knows everything, but clearly he doesn’t know anything about beautiful young women.” He pushed a strand of hair off my face and smiled crocodile. “What’s your name?”

“Oh, vomity-vomit!” said the comedian, pinching his powdered nose and snuffling with his head back. Then, as if he were Mr. Rogers patiently explaining something to a retarded child, he added, “You’re right, I don’t know anything about beautiful young women. That’s because I am a fag, and fags don’t give a hoot about beautiful young women and their beautiful fake boobies,
remember
?”

“Shut your jizz-hole,” said my father, smirking at the comedian. Then he leaned in, dropped the grin, and fixed me with a penetrating blue-eyed gaze. “You sure I can’t offer you anything?” he said softly. “A toke? Or a drink? We could go to the lounge.” He moved closer, brushed his hand across my bare thigh. “I’m sure there must be something you want….”

Yes. Something. But what?

Initially, I wanted connection. Access. His side of the story. I suppose what I wanted was a parent, someone who would give a shit, maybe even love. Recently, I wanted confrontation. Attack. Words that would wound. Perhaps somewhere in the worm holes of the unconscious I may have even wanted approval. And regret.
Hey, look: picture perfect after all, but you blew it, asshole!
In the past I wanted all of those things. But now that it was real, now that this obnoxious zero was standing in front of me with his waxed chest and his powdered nostrils and his phony blue gaze right in my face, I was almost entirely free of want. Now all I wanted was to leave the club.

“I have to go,” I said finally.

He looked at his watch. “It is late. Maybe you’d like me to give you a ride somewhere?” Again with the hand on the thigh.

“No, thanks.”
Thing doesn’t want to go play in traffic
.

“Well, maybe I’ll see you here another time. What’s your name?”

“Allison Penny.”

He didn’t even blink. “You’re on the list?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not on the list.”

“Would you like to be?” He reached out and squeezed my right breast. Hard.

I knocked his hand away. “No, I wouldn’t!” Much laughter as I stumbled out of the office, as I heard my father say to the howling comedian, “Yeah, well, you owe me a C-note, dumb-ass!”

Down the corridor I went, through the VIP lounge, past the wasted Tracy Benson in her George-soaked Gauthier, across the catwalk and down the stairs that were no longer being guarded, through the beautiful empty club, toward the front exit. But just before making my escape, something popped into my head, and I didn’t leave the club. No, I didn’t. I headed back down to Earth, hid behind a sofa, and didn’t leave the club until I was certain everyone else had. Until just before dawn.

And if you want to know what it was that popped into my head, it was this: Thing doesn’t want to go play in traffic, no. And Thing doesn’t want to be on the list. But maybe Thing would like to take you up on one of your other charming suggestions.

Maybe Thing would like to go down to the basement and play with matches.

12    

Burning down Heaven & Earth was my last ugly act
.

I was furious when I lit the first papier-mâché tree trunk on fire. I was thrilled and delighted when I saw how quickly the blaze leaped and licked across the thousands of paper leaves on the ceiling,
*
but when I dashed to the exit and caught a glimpse of myself in the long mirror behind the bar,
I was stopped in my tracks by fright. This is what I saw in the reflection: a warped smile, blond hair streaming, flames dancing around a red dress…I looked satanic, like a beautiful demon. A false Eve in a fiery faux-garden. I thought: Who in the hell is that?

Then I ran.

As I sped from the conflagration in George’s baby-blue Vanquish, I tried to make sense of the past week, my first week of beauty—all the astonishing new experiences, all the uncharacteristically ugly acts: breaking up Virginie and Fraser, kicking my mom off the wagon, exposing Andrew McKay, sabotaging Igel, scamming photos from Fiona, shamelessly using George…and worst of all, most excruciating of all, betraying the one human I truly cared about, the only human who cared a little about me.

And now this. It didn’t have to come to this. I didn’t have to be that girl in the mirror. I didn’t have to burn down the beautiful exclusive club. I could have just stayed where I belonged and longed to be: at home with Nathan, eating deathbed lasagna on a lumpy mattress.

13    

The sun was coming up warm and yellow as I got the
Vanquish back in the garage and slipped quietly into the cottage. George was passed out in the big bed, snoring. I collected my things and carried them across the hall to the small room in which I was ostensibly sleeping. I changed, packed, and wrote out a note for him to find when he awoke (including an IOU for three thousand dollars and one bug jacket). I had just opened the front door when I heard, “What’s going on?” George was standing nude in the hallway behind me, rubbing one eye. “Where are you going?”

“I’m gonna walk to town and grab the bus home.”

“Home? Why, are you still sick?”

“No. I feel much better, actually.”

“Then why are you leaving?”

“Well…” I could have told him that it was because he’d abandoned me, left me alone and panicky in the cottage, or because he’d gone off and shot his load on the formerly cherubic child star Tracy Benson. I could have said that it was because he cared more about his lousy carpet than calling Phil Hanson, or because he lost his erection when he saw a few bruises on my hip. I could have told him that it was because his obsession with celebrities sickened me, or because I detested his smug, racist friends, or because he was so damned easy to beat at Trivial Pursuit. I could have told him that it was because he had made fun of those kids swinging lovely into the lake, or because I couldn’t endure one more day in his presence, not for all the swimming and banana-leaf wraps and martinis in the world.

But I didn’t.

I said, “Because I came up here for the wrong reasons. I’ve been seeing you for the wrong reasons, and I’m sorry about that. To be honest, I’m interested in someone else. Well, more than just interested.”

“What are you talking about? Who?”

“Someone I met at work.”

“What, cleaning that building?”

“Yeah.”

“Some janitor guy?”

“He waters the plants.”

George looked incredulous. “Is this that guy I saw you talking to when I picked you up?”

I nodded yes.

“That bald guy in the bad Dockers?”

“Bald
ing
,” I said.

George laughed. “You’re shitting me, right?”

I smiled and stepped out onto the porch.

“Some balding geek who waters plants and wears bad Dockers…You’re telling me that’s what you want?”

“Yup,” I said, closing the cottage door behind me. “That’s what I want.”

14    

Unfortunately, what Nathan wanted, seemingly, was
for me to leave him alone. I had called him at the video store as soon as I got back to the city. Another clerk answered, told me to hold while he got Nathan, then came back on the line to inform me that he had left for the day. Right. At 11:55 A.M.? Perhaps Nathan didn’t want to get into things while he was at work. I left a message at his apartment, asking him to please call me when he got home. Then, since Virginie had buggered off with her answering machine, I arranged for voice-mail service with the phone company.