O Beautiful

by Jung Yun

  “Kids,” he says.

  Yes, they’re kids, Elinor thinks. And the three of us are adults with adult responsibilities.

  When the applause dies down, Gary makes a big show of looking at Maren, then Elinor, then Maren again. “You know, I don’t think I would have been able to tell who’s older or younger if you hadn’t said something. You’re like twenty-five-year-old twins.”

  “El’s always been prettier,” Maren says.

  “Bullshit. You’re the prettiest woman in town.”

  He gives her a kiss on the neck and gooses her lower back, which causes Maren to jump. Elinor shoots the rest of her second drink, setting the empty glass on the table harder than she means to. Gary points at it with the gun of his thumb and forefinger. Then he scans the crowd for a server. “Let me get you another.”

  “You have to order from the bar,” she says, hoping to get rid of him for a while. “That’s what the waitress told us.”

  He knocks on the table with his giant knuckles. “No problem. I’ll be right back. Don’t you two go anywhere.”

  This strikes her as a particularly dumb thing to say. As he gets up to leave, she notices the back pockets of his jeans, which have eagles wildly embroidered on them with shiny gold thread. The sight of his idiotic party jeans makes her irrationally angry. Her sister has lived a sheltered life. She doesn’t understand what’s so painfully obvious to Elinor. Gary isn’t a guy worth waiting for. He’s just a roughneck on the make.

  Maren catches her rolling her eyes. “You’re not even trying.”

  “But you have a husband. You have kids.”

  “You don’t need to remind me,” she snaps. “I know what I have.”

  “Then why are you doing this?”

  “Because he makes me happy, okay? As my sister, you should be happy for me—”

  “But—”

  “No. No buts, El. I really like Gary. He likes me, and he’s fun. You know how long it’s been since I’ve had even a little bit of fun? Am I not allowed to have that in my life?”

  Elinor picks up her empty glass and rolls it back and forth, warming it between her hands. By virtue of being the oldest, by virtue of being the one who stayed, Maren had to be the responsible one. She never got the chance to be young and stupid and make foolish mistakes. The part of Elinor that still feels guilty about this wants Maren to be happy, to have her share of fun like everyone else, but the thought of what she’s doing to her children is intolerable. What if she leaves them like they were left? For most of her life, Elinor has carried around two equally plausible stories about their mother. One is that Nami ran off because she met someone, a man she loved. The other is that she ran off because of Ed, a man she didn’t. Elinor always assumed that if Nami met someone, he was a good and deserving person who promised her a better life than the one she had. But what if he was just some guy? What if she left them for just another goddamn Gary?

  “Was I your excuse to get out of the house today?” she asks.

  Maren looks at her over the rim of her glass. “I wanted to see you.”

  “But you also wanted to see him, right? That’s why you’re dressed like that, why you decided to put makeup on before you left. You arranged to meet him here after we had some time to ourselves, didn’t you?”

  If Maren is planning to respond to this, she doesn’t get the chance. Gary returns to the table, shaking his head. “The line’s three deep just to get a drink and there’s only one bartender working. How about we take off and meet up with my friends downtown?”

  Elinor begins to collect her things, grateful for the excuse to part ways. “Thanks, but I have an interview to prep for tomorrow. I should probably head back to my hotel now.”

  “No, not yet,” Maren pleads. “Come with us. We’ve barely spent two hours together.” She turns to Gary for help.

  Of all the irritating things to happen tonight, it’s the turn that frustrates her the most. What does Maren expect Gary to do? Why should this stranger be the one to convince her? They used to be everything to each other once, and now Elinor just feels like an excuse to get out of the house.

  “You can take a night off to spend time with your sister, can’t you? You’re not here for long. Plus the Depot’s the big place to be in town. You shouldn’t leave without having at least one drink there.”

  She’s about to ask him to repeat the name of the bar, but she knows that she heard him correctly. She just doesn’t believe it. The Depot is where Leanne Lowell used to work.

  “Alright,” she says. “One drink then.” She glances at Maren, who’s beaming now, unaware that this change of heart has nothing to do with Gary. It doesn’t even have anything to do with her.

  23

  They arrive at the Depot to find Gary’s friends, Aaron and Fat Mike, waiting in line outside the squat brick building. Fat Mike’s sister, Dani, is standing behind them, looking pissed off and put out. The line apparently hasn’t moved since they joined it twenty minutes earlier, and all of them are getting impatient. Elinor knows what to do, but she isn’t sure that she wants to do it, not until Aaron starts rattling off a list of nearby bars where they wouldn’t have to wait. She didn’t tag along to spend time just anywhere, or even to keep an eye on her sister. She came to see the Depot.

  “Stay here,” she tells them, grabbing Maren by the hand and leading her toward the front of the line.

  “What are you doing? We can’t just cut like this.”

  “Yes, we can.”

  The only people in line are men, who react exactly the way she expects them to when they walk past. The bouncer turns to see what all the commotion is about. As Elinor and Maren approach, he examines them from top to bottom, then unhooks the rope and waves them in with a gallant sweep of his arm.

  “Wait,” Maren says. “What about our friends?”

  “How many friends?” he asks.

  “Three guys and another girl, so three and three.” Elinor points at the rest of their group, hovering near the end of the line.

  The bouncer scans the crowd until he spots Gary, Fat Mike, Aaron, and Dani. All of them have one foot in line and another foot on the sidewalk, leaning out to watch what happens. “The one in red’s a girl?” he asks, smiling.

  Dani and her brother share the same floppy ginger curls and wide, heavyset build. She’s big, but obviously a woman.

  “It’s three and three. If you don’t want to let us in, we can go somewhere else.”

  The bouncer looks at Elinor for a moment. It’s not quite a glare. But it’s definitely not friendly. “Be nice,” he tells her. “Like your friend here.”

  Maren has barely said a word, which she understands is the point. Elinor feels a current of anger travel through her body, white-hot as it reaches some nerve that she didn’t know she had. She wishes she was taller and bigger and stronger. She wishes she were a man so she could get up in his face, the same way the guy in the computer room did to Brian. If she were a man though, there wouldn’t be any need to. Men don’t tell other men to be nice. This is something they reserve only for women. Elinor wonders if Leanne hired this bouncer, if he treated her like his boss or he treated her like this. As soon as she remembers what she came here for, the heat begins to subside. She wants and needs to go in.

  “What makes you think I’m not nice?” she asks.

  Her response seems to amuse him, so he waves Gary and the others over. The guys in line break out into jeers when they realize they’re being passed by. Gary looks elated as he walks toward the roped-off area, clearly relishing his minor VIP moment, which makes Elinor think even less of him than she did before.

  “That was amazing,” he says to Maren, giving her a kiss full on the mouth.

  “It wasn’t my idea, it was my sister’s. How did you know that would work?”

  Because it always worked in New York, although Elinor thought she’d put those days long behind her. She worries that Maren thinks they just did a good thing. We’re nothing but bait, she wants to expl
ain. Instead, she pretends not to hear the question as she walks into the dark bar, holding her hands out in front of her to feel for walls and corners. She takes baby steps behind Fat Mike, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the low light.

  “I fucking knew it,” he shouts over the music. “It’s not even that busy. They just keep that line going so people think there’s something worth seeing in here.”

  Elinor blinks the place into focus. She suspects he might be right. The Depot is barely half-full, awash in the smell of beer, sweat, and aftershave. It’s actually more of a club than a bar. Dueling purple strobes circle the ceiling as a live band plays a Metallica cover, long hair and heads flailing despite the small, scattered audience. A pair of women stand in the middle of the empty dance floor, drinks in hand as they shout and laugh at each other. Like Maren, they look like they made an effort to dress up for a night on the town. The skinny one in the black camisole and jeans teeters perilously in stiletto heels, while her friend sways back and forth in a miniskirt and fringed crop top. Surrounding them like the outer rings of a bull’s-eye are dozens of men drinking beer, all of whom keep sneaking glances at the pair and mumbling to each other like seventh-grade boys at their first school dance.

  “Let’s grab that big table over there,” Gary says, leading Maren away.

  Elinor ends up sitting next to Dani, whose mood improves considerably once she has a drink in her hand. When she learns that Elinor is writing an article about Avery, she becomes even chattier, eager to share how much she knows about the town. It’s impressive actually, the volume of history she has stored up in her head. The year the high school was built. The number of farms foreclosed on in the eighties. Dani is a lifer, born to a family of lifers, which makes her a good person to know.

  “So what do you think of the Depot?” she shouts. “Isn’t it great?”

  “I like it. It’s different,” she says, aware that Dani wants to hear something positive. “I’ve only been out twice since I got here, and the first place was terrible.”

  “What was it called?”

  “Swift’s. It’s a sports bar near my hotel.”

  “Oh, I know it. I drive by there all the time. You meet the owner, the big guy? Kind of looks like a grizzly bear?”

  Elinor nods, trying not to let her expression sour at the mention of Mitch. Locals know other locals. She already described his bar as terrible. She’s not about to say what she thinks of him only to find out they’re cousins. “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “My brother used to play football with him in high school. State champions, ninety-four. Go, Steers.” She makes a set of horns with her index finger and pinky. “Mitch got a full ride to college after that season. Probably could have gone pro if they hadn’t kicked him out.”

  “Kicked him out for what?”

  Dani lifts and lowers her eyebrows. “Eh. Some nastiness involving a girl. You know. Frat party thing. I think her dad, or maybe her uncle, was some big-time lawyer in Billings who got Mitch expelled, so he ended up back here.”

  Frat party thing. It’s strange, how quickly Elinor can fill in the blanks just based on those three words. Although she doesn’t remember the specifics of her conversation with Mitch anymore, she remembers the general sentiment. He didn’t need any drunk girls hanging around, causing trouble. At least she knows she wasn’t imagining his unfriendliness now.

  “This club used to be an appliance store,” Dani continues. “It went out of business when I was in junior high and sat empty for like fifteen years. Now it’s the biggest meat market in town.”

  “Did you know the woman who used to manage this place? The one who went missing a few years ago?”

  She shakes her head. “Read about her in the papers. But knew her, no.”

  Elinor glances across the table at Maren, who’s listening to Gary, Aaron, and Fat Mike complain about a coworker they all know and clearly don’t like. Their conversation, which she can’t hear well from her end, is liberally sprinkled with words like “cocksucker” and “faggot.” Elinor watches her sister for a reaction. A frown, a raised eyebrow, a subtle crossing or uncrossing of the legs—something to indicate that she’s bothered by this language and understands that it’s wrong. But Maren just sits there, sipping her rum and Coke through a straw, looking as happy as Elinor has ever seen her. Occasionally, Gary leans over her and shouts at his friends, resting his hand on Maren’s leg like she’s an extension of the table. Now Elinor is the one who’s drinking too fast. Her double whiskey, which she’d intended to be her last for the night, is already down to one slender finger.

  “Has your brother known Gary long?” she asks.

  “They started hanging out a couple months ago. I guess they’re on the same crew now.”

  “You think he’s a good guy?”

  Dani shakes a piece of ice out of her glass and chews on it. “He’s got a real dickish sense of humor—sorry—but so do most guys, I guess.”

  It’s unusual to hear a complete stranger offer her opinion so freely. Elinor is accustomed to people constantly talking around things here, speaking in careful euphemisms or whispering unflattering opinions, but only among themselves. She returns her attentions to the dance floor, which has the quality of a fishbowl. Lots of watching, but very little interaction. A group of men near their table grumble about the cost of Miller Lites at $6 a pop. They seem tired and agitated, and Elinor thinks she understands why. It’s a meat market, with hardly any meat. Aside from the two women on the dance floor, she can only make out eight others in the entire club, plus the two working behind the bar. Most of the female customers are with their boyfriends, signified by a proprietary arm draped around a shoulder or waist. She tries to imagine Leanne here. Pretty, blond, petite. Bait.

  “I would have expected more guys to be hitting on them,” Elinor says, motioning toward the two women dancing.

  “It’s probably because they’re out in the open like that,” Dani says through a mouthful of ice. “Takes balls to risk getting turned down with a bunch of people watching. Plus, it’s early still, so everyone’s probably just holding out to see who else walks through the door. Those two aren’t even cute, not that it really matters with the Avery scale.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Avery scale? I guess it’s kind of like beer goggles.” She frowns, seemingly dissatisfied with her explanation. “Actually, that’s not right.” Dani scans the dance floor, pausing until she lands on something that she wants Elinor to see. “Okay, watch. Over there. The blond guy getting ready to make a move.”

  There are at least ten blond guys near the dance floor. It takes a moment to figure out that she means the tall one with wavy, sun-streaked hair, the one who resembles a surfer.

  “He’s pretty good-looking, right?” Dani asks. “Probably a seven?”

  He’s tan, muscular, and tattooed. Elinor might say an eight, but she agrees that he’s at least a seven.

  “And that girl he’s about to sidle up to … she’s like, what? A four?”

  It’s harder to assign the woman a number than the man. It seems cruel. Elinor takes a drink to avoid having to answer.

  “Maybe she’s a three,” Dani second-guesses. “So keep watching.”

  The blond ambles toward the women, occasionally looking back at his friends with a playful grin. He zeroes in on the one in the miniskirt and starts dancing behind her, moving way too close, too fast. The woman snaps her head back to see who’s rubbing up against her. He gives her a big smile and a shrug of his shoulders as if to say Can’t blame me for trying. She shouts something at him that Elinor can’t hear, but the shape of the word, at least from a distance, looks like “asshole.” Then she shouts something at her friend with an exaggerated roll of her eyes as the blond returns to his buddies, earning howls of laughter and a few good-natured thumps on the back.

  “See what just happened there?” Dani asks. “A three acting like a ten, and a seven getting shot down like he’s a three. That’s what I mean by
the Avery scale. Everything’s all out of whack here.”

  Elinor no longer wants anything to do with systems that class and categorize people by their appearance. That was all her life used to be. Every week, she went to go-sees and stood in front of casting directors, allowing them to examine her and order her around. Walk for us. Pull your hair back. Look over here at the light. Sometimes, they’d make small talk while they flipped through her portfolio. Most of the time, they’d just study her face or breasts or legs, silent with displeasure until they dismissed her and called the next girl in. The prospect of landing work always used to excite Elinor. The more go-sees her agent sent her on, the better. She can’t remember when the thrill of being looked at turned into something she couldn’t bear. She only knows that it did.

  “It doesn’t bother you?” she asks. “Turning women into numbers like that?”

  “Hey, it’s not like I invented the system. And I’ve been on the losing end of it my entire life. I’d be a two anywhere other than Avery.”

  Her instinct is to protest, but Dani just shakes her head. “Relax. I’m not fishing for compliments or anything. I know why you grabbed your sister instead of me when you went to talk to the bouncer. That’s kind of the point. I may be a two where you’re from, but here, I’m a ten. That girl and her friend with the beak? Both tens. We can have our pick of men in this town because there’s so few of us to go around. And you and your sister.” Dani laughs. “Don’t get me started. You’re like thirties here. You can see why Gary keeps pawing at her like that. He wants everyone to know that she’s taken and they should all just move the fuck on.”

  Elinor doesn’t want to look over at Maren. She’s seen enough. She finishes off the rest of her drink, wishing she had another before she even sets the glass down.