A Thing of Beauty

by Lisa Samson

  And isn’t that just the way?

  I separate those buttons and brush the rest aside.

  Sixteen buttons.

  I hold one up and examine it under the current desk light I’ve come to favor, lacquered a bright red, the inside of the bell a reflecting white. “Yes, yes,” I say. “Let’s start with you.”

  All I can think to do, as I sit there for what feels like hours, is cut off a piece of twine from the ball on one of the shelves at the back of the table and thread it through the nub on the back, knot it, then hang it around my neck.

  I turn off the light.

  “Well, at least that’s something.”

  Eight

  I meet Jack at his rowhouse at three the next day. He’s just worked out and is heading toward a shower when I arrive. Smoothie in hand, he offers me one. I’m not stupid. Jack doesn’t hold back on his smoothies, and the man loves a good strawberry, my own favorite fruit. So much goes on in that one sweet little package, and no matter how you look at it, how you cut it, it’s still pretty.

  “Hey, Fi,” he says after I take a sip. “I’ve got a surprise for you. On the bed. Also, I made an appointment for you at Alpha’s to get your hair done.”

  I follow him up the stairs to the floor that’s benefited the most from Jack’s knack with a hammer, saw, and local contractors. “Why?” I purposely don’t follow up with the ringing next question, “What’s wrong with my hair?” It’s easy to forget Jack’s a client sometimes, and I know that’s because he wants it that way.

  “We’re going out.”

  “I take it this is something more than just the Eastern House.”

  The Eastern House restaurant in Highlandtown, a Greek diner that seems to check people’s licenses to see if they’re over fifty, is the least likely place in all of Baltimore for me to be recognized. And their moussaka quite possibly contains all seven keys to happiness, thereby forgoing the need for any kind of self-help guru to pen his thoughts for your progress.

  “I know it’s against the rules, but, Fia, just this once I need you to do something that’s a little out of the ordinary.”

  “Jack. I don’t know.”

  Our assignation is simple. His place or the Eastern House. If things don’t happen at either of these places, they just don’t happen. He can’t pretend I’m his girlfriend either. This is a business arrangement, pure and simple.

  He’s been pretty good about this. Until right now, obviously. But I’m going to give him a chance here because Jack’s not one to ask for anything without a good reason.

  We enter his bedroom. The bed, wide enough for a family of eight to sleep comfortably, sits on a raised platform of mahogany, the mainstay lumber of the room. Everything is clean and straightforward in its design, as if an Asian designer used French influences, decided that cinnamon and a lusty gold were the only two colors in the world, threw in some black, and carefully arranged it all together for “the man who has everything.”

  Laid out on the bed, a cocktail dress in a retina-vibrating peacock blue provides the first inclination that maybe he’s not crazy in asking me to appear in public with him.

  “Where did you find this?” I ask.

  “New Orleans.”

  “So what’s the occasion?” I roll the chiffon between my fingers. Vintage. And it looks like it will fit perfectly. One of the prettiest dresses I’ve seen in years.

  My hair will definitely have to change if I’m going to wear this.

  And hence the appointment.

  “Lucy is coming to visit,” he says.

  He calls his mother by her first name too. Only he does it to her face. She hates it, so he tells me; and he only does it to remind her what a good son he is in all other regards, so he tells me.

  “Why is she coming?” Normally he’s the one who has to visit her in South Carolina, where he’s from.

  “Her girlfriends from college are having a weekend in Baltimore together, so she’s coming a day early, beginning tonight.” He grins and shrugs. “You know, she’s got her ways. But Lucy’s not bad, all in all.”

  He’s adorable today. I’d probably get tired of him in a typical relationship as he seems to be out of town more than he’s home, not to mention the fact that, even at the Eastern House, he warrants all types of feminine attention. The accidental drop. The “Do I know you?” line. They ask for ketchup or Sweet’N Low. Even in the jeans and T-shirts he wears when we go, he can’t simply blend in. Plus, he has no clue about any of this. He’s a typical engineer in that regard. He thinks the women really do want his Sweet’N Low.

  I wouldn’t want to be part of all that just because.

  Not only that, his world is too regular, even if it does include money, too open and “Here I am!” My world is quirky and dank and littered. Our arrangement is perfect. But still, he’s always been kind and sweet to me, so maybe this once I can agree to a departure.

  “Just dinner?” I ask, praying the answer is yes.

  “No. We’re going to a concert too. It’s always best to keep Lucy occupied, otherwise she starts prying.”

  I sit down on the bed. “Is she pressuring you to find a lady? Get married?”

  He steps into the dressing room connecting the bedroom to the bath. It’s Jack’s one little piece of mayhem.

  “Yes,” he calls as he opens and closes drawers. “I figure a nice dinner and a concert with you along will ease her mind.”

  “But then she’ll start hounding you about our supposed relationship.”

  He stands in the doorway. “Supposed?”

  Sometimes life throws what appears to be a curveball. I want to laugh. Is that what he thinks we’ve been doing here? Building a relationship?

  “Well, you know, we’re hardly exclusive.”

  “Maybe not on every level, but you’re the one I can really talk to. You know my secrets.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  Sort of. Maybe. In that “I kinda get it in an overarching sense, but the specifics aren’t quite adding up” variety of understanding, in that “guestimation” mode. That’s fine if you’re making lasagna, not so good if you’re building a bridge from your head to someone else’s heart.

  “Okay. I’ll go, to dinner only. I can’t risk a concert. But as pretty as this dress is, I have a feeling it’s more for Lucy than Fia.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.”

  “I’ll find something of my—”

  “Take my card and go shopping.”

  “No. That’s way too Pretty Woman,” I say.

  He barks out a laugh. “Yeah, it is. Not sure what I was thinking.”

  “Honestly. I’ve got loads of good clothing. Remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” he says over his shoulder as he steps into the bathroom. “I forget about your other life sometimes.”

  And this is why I’m here.

  I could save a little money and have a good cut and style on Jack’s quarter, but the interview is still three months away, and I want it to be fresh and perfect. Having my hair done while sitting in a chair lost its mystique by the time I was fourteen.

  “And I’ll just do my own hair.”

  “Suit yourself, Fia. I just want you to have a good time and my mother to stop worrying about me.”

  Still in a state of amazement at the sudden turn of events at Jack’s, I let myself into the house. The two crib ends lean back against the wall in their original placement, no note attached. In other words—message received all the way to the point that I won’t communicate outside of the established boundaries.

  First Pretty Woman, now The Jerk. I seem to be playing the defining roles today.

  I don’t exactly know what Josia is doing in there, but I know it’s an improvement, and I know he won’t ask me to pay a cent for it or if he can take some money off of his rent.

  I try not to be a taker in this life. I saw enough of that in LA. But I also don’t want to be a beggar to another’s capacity to give. It’s a fine line I don’t know how to da
nce upon, but like any dance, you’ve got to at least get out on the dance floor and move that first foot a little. Just a tap. Hopefully on the beat.

  I scribble a note, I’ve changed my mind, and tape it to one of the crib ends. My heart lightens a bit. Well, good. That feels nice.

  It’s time to go up to the yellow bedroom and the attached dressing room. It’s even larger than Jack’s.

  Knowing some improvement is happening in one part of the house makes the rest of it feel a little less hopeless somehow. The marble floor of the entry is still in good shape, as are the handrails and steps leading upstairs. The brass chandelier that most likely welcomed ladies and gentlemen to soirees (whatever they are) and parties, illuminating the fine fabric of their garments and shining its light into their diamonds to throw it back on their healthy necks and bosoms, just needs a good polish to resurrect it.

  The ghostly sound of a band leading people in the Charleston fills the hall of my mind, and I’m suddenly thrown into a party scene in The Great Gatsby, sitting silent and invisible in the eerie echoes.

  It’s too much to bear and all too real how people drown themselves in pleasure to dull the pain and the boredom. Just like Daisy in Gatsby. I turned my back on the pleasure, but the pain and the boredom remain, and it seems they’ve piggybacked onto me for good.

  I hurry up the steps.

  There they all are, “the dresses” on some sort of display, just as they were shortly after I moved in and carefully hung all the expensive designer clothing upon the brass rods. All the shoes are arranged in row after row in the shoe closet. Accessories too.

  All a decade out of style.

  At least a lot of them. Thankfully, my stylist felt I had a classic rather than siren look and dressed me accordingly: no necklines plunging past my navel in a pathetic attempt to get noticed, no panty-revealing, body-con dresses, no stripper heels with straps. “Your work speaks for you,” my best friend, Lila, said. “So you don’t need your boobs to keep you in the spotlight.”

  “Not that I have any,” I said.

  “Maybe not, but I know where you can get some.” And she laughed. Lila was always cracking herself up. I miss her.

  But what looked classic ten years ago may not exactly fit the description now. There’s always the spin of a trend circling through the design somewhere, and it’s too soon to call this stuff vintage. Doubts abound as I look around me at this forsaken space. I only enter it a few times a year, if that.

  I should dub this the Hollywood Room, as I had the movers place any box I labeled “miscellaneous” (which was my code word for “my old life”) in here. While this room may not be filled floor to ceiling, it’s still mindful of a cityscape with its box stacks of uneven heights. The previous owners left all the window treatments behind, and a heavy layer of dust shrouds the palm trees and monkeys on the deep-yellow drapes.

  If Oscar is hanging around anywhere, he’s here, lying underneath whatever else I threw in these boxes, keeping his rigid form tight like a rocket. I should find him, right? Am I ungrateful or traumatized? I’ve had a hard time figuring out which it is.

  I already know which dress I’m going to pick, so I don’t have to stay in here a second longer than necessary. Unfortunately, an open box grabs my attention and I cannot help taking a peek.

  A framed snapshot is the first item up for my viewing pleasure, but viewing it brings me no pleasure at all. The capture of myself and Lila reminds me of the day we wore poodle-curly wigs and fat suits, took a cab over to a Golden Corral, and stuffed ourselves with fried chicken, Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, green beans with ham, salad with creamy blue cheese dressing, Jell-O, pudding, and soft-serve ice cream.

  And rolls, rolls, rolls! With butter, butter, butter.

  Denying ourselves for the Powers-That-Be just couldn’t be maintained a moment longer. She could only do that for so long, she declared in her native Texan accent. However, and though she never said as much, her meal always ended up in the toilet.

  We did everything together when we weren’t on our respective sets or locations. Lila, a natural blonde with natural boobs, met all the appropriate conditions of the description “hot.” She started out on a cable network drama about a family with too many kids, then made a lot of money doing racy teen flicks, showing her breasts and derriere when necessary, kissing a lot of different men, letting them feel her up, and spending a good deal of time on the set in lace bras and undies. I think it tore her up inside. No, I know it did. But in this day and age, nobody told her she was allowed to be bothered. That it was the 2000s, and even though it was just a job and stuff like that didn’t bother a lot of people, it was okay if she felt bothered. That it didn’t make her a prude, it just made her a private person. And isn’t that her right?

  Nobody gave her permission to not be permissive. What a screwed-up world we both found ourselves in.

  I, on the other hand, tore myself up in heavy dramatic roles, doing my best to research thoroughly the lives of real-world victims and, in a couple of cases, teen psychopaths. Yeah, those were happy films.

  Placing the photo back in the box, I shove Lila down deep in my heart where she’s been for more years than I knew her in the flesh, close the flaps, then move on. I can’t think about her even though she is why I am here now, in Baltimore, in this old house.

  But she returns to me in the closet, because the coat she wore on the night she was taken from me is hanging face out from the rack. It is a beautiful coat, wool, light and off-white, but not too off, and stitched with black thread. The buttons were ripped off the night of the incident when someone forced it open to give her air. And though I scrambled around the club, the sticky floors attempting to suck my hands and knees into the grime, I couldn’t find even one.

  I grab the hanger and turn the coat back to its more sensible position, tucked amid my black wool swing coat and a powder-blue satin capelet I wore to premieres when the weather turned cool in LA.

  I lift a pale-beige, almost ivory, sheath down from the rack, as simple as the dot at the end of a sentence. As far as cocktail dresses go, it couldn’t be more opposite from the number on Jack’s bed.

  A pair of simple, low-cut, dark-red pumps, high heels with a rounded toe that I wore to the Golden Globes when I was nineteen, will do just fine. They’ll have to. I can’t stay in this room a second longer, and I can’t quite figure out why I’m here in the first place.

  For Jack?

  Please.

  I’m not sure what kind of woman Jack goes out with for free, but I can almost guarantee she’s a lot flashier than this. Still, a bun is a bun and always looks elegant, and I almost never pulled my hair back in the olden days, so there’s less chance of being recognized.

  It does happen every so often. Thankfully, less and less. And now, the older I get, the more people are unsure they’ve experienced a “star sighting.”

  Why the hell people care so much is something I’ll never understand. I swear, if given the choice to meet some brilliant yet socially awkward and not-so-good-looking scientist who just gave the world cold fusion and a “Real Housewife from Only the Good Lord Knows Where,” a lot of people would go with the housewife.

  I hate people sometimes.

  Wearing the black swing coat, I emerge from the cab Jack called for me earlier onto Lancaster Street and into Charleston’s restaurant. Guess he didn’t want to take his mother too far away from South Carolina in tonight’s dining experience. I comfort myself that the average online Joe most likely doesn’t have a taste for French-inspired Low Country cooking. Judging by my Nutty Bars, I don’t either, but I’m willing to give it a try for a man who wants to make his mother happy. And from everything he’s ever said to me, she deserves that.

  Jack and his mother are already seated in the Palm Room, a dining room rich with dark wood-beamed ceilings, comfortable chairs upholstered in a mild red, and floor-to-ceiling drapes split open to let in the harbor view. White linens, gold-rimmed plates, and
simple flower arrangements rest upon the tabletop. In the mirror before me, as large and round as a temple gong, I watch myself walk across the room to their table. An imaginary clapboard slams its black-and-white strips shut.

  Scene one, take one.

  And there are no other takes, for the record. This is a low-budget film and we don’t have much film left, so take that for what it’s worth, but no pressure, absolutely no pressure.

  Jack stands up and pulls out my chair, then scoops up a set of keys that some woman of indeterminate age due to what looks like a surgeon’s knife and an overall game plan to “fight and reduce the signs of aging” has just dropped near his feet.

  “Thank you,” she says, her blue-tipped lashes dropping against tanned skin.

  He awards her a curt yet polite nod of his head.

  He gently takes my elbow. “Fiona, I’d like you to meet Lucy.”

  “Please, call me Mom,” says a plain woman in a Sunday church dress with feathered golden hair. Judging by the shade, I’d say she probably did it herself in her very own bathroom and didn’t do too bad of a job, actually. Maybe I could have her do mine and save some money for my soon-coming makeover.

  Recalling the necessary acting skills, I broadcast a wide grin while remembering I’ll most likely never have to see her again and say, “Of course I’ll call you Mom if you’d like.”

  “Now, you, darlin’, just sit down right next to me. We girls need to stick together.”

  Is she for real?

  Jack pulls out my chair. “Have a seat, Fi. I already ordered you a cocktail.”

  “Oooh, thank you! What are you having, Mom?”

  Believe me, it feels just as weird to me.

  She clasps her hands together, gardener’s hands I’m assuming, and rests them in front of her on the table. “Well,” she begins, her dripping-with-clarified-butter, coastal Carolina accent coating her words, the softly abraded tones of her voice brought on, Jack told me once, by years of Viceroys and Tareytons. “I normally just sip on a little bourbon, but I let Jack pick for me and I’m trying something new. A gimlet. I’ve never in my life had a gimlet.”