by Paul Briggs
Because they weren’t equals, that was why. They hadn’t been equals when Isabel had blindly reached up to pull a foreign object out of her hair and Sandy had taken a bee sting to save her life. They hadn’t been equals when Sandy had been teaching her more about science than she was learning in school. And they sure as hell weren’t equals now.
Dear God, were they ever not equals. Sixty-one billion dollars. That kind of money had its own gravity, like a giant planet, and if Isabel’s little asteroid wandered too close it might be pulled into Sandy’s orbit and end up mooning her. Okay, that metaphor or simile or whatever it was needed to be taken out and shot in the back of the head, but the point was that with the best intentions in the world, a couple months of being around Sandy and Isabel would turn into a hanger-on, one of the entourage of borderline parasites that every seriously rich person seemed to collect. The one thing Isabel treasured about herself was her independence, and now she was supposed to just hang out and be pals with somebody who could give her everything she’d ever need or want in life as easily as paying for a cup of chyq. That was why, despite all sense and reason and personal obligation, a big part of Isabel wanted out of this deal right now.
But you’re not independent, she thought. You can look after yourself, but you can’t help your family. To the extent that you care about them, which is a big fucking extent, you’re not independent. Some women become prostitutes to support their families. You just have to be nice to somebody you like. And what does it say about you if you find that so difficult?
But that’s not the problem. The problem is, why doesn’t she have any other friends she can talk to? She left Tilghman Island at fourteen—what about all the people she’s met since then? The ones she was in college with, worked on Verdissimus with? Granted, she seems to have ended up in court battles with most of them…
Oh.
Sandy hadn’t talked much about any of those people… but that was a clue right there, wasn’t it? She hadn’t talked about them because she hadn’t wanted to talk about them, because it was still too painful. The closest she’d come was to drop a little hint—“If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past couple years, it’s which of my old friends are motivated by greed and which ones are not.”
She’s been betrayed and hurt. She’s lonely as all hell, but she doesn’t know who to trust. She needs me.
And just like that, Isabel’s instincts changed their minds. She suddenly felt sure she was exactly where she ought to be.
* * *
It was just before seven. Isabel was already showered and dressed. Sandy was in either a kimono or a bathrobe that looked like a kimono.
The kitchen was bigger than Isabel’s apartment, and had equipment in it that she’d only ever seen in coffeeshops and the kitchen of Celebrazione. Every surface, tool, and appliance gleamed as if freshly polished and never used. A screen on the wall showed a restaurant menu. Another screen, on the refrigerator, was on a news channel showing the crisis in Saudi Arabia. The one thing this kitchen didn’t have was the makings of an actual meal—only drinks, snacks, and protein shakes.
“What’s for breakfast?”
“That’s right, I didn’t tell you,” said Sandy. “This building has a private restaurant. I’ll show you.”
Sandy got up and tapped the menu on the wall screen. “Here’s where you order,” she said. “They bring you the food in just a few minutes. I think I’ll have one of these Belgian Chocolate Waffles this morning.”
“That sounds great.”
About ten minutes after Sandy ordered, when they were both seated at a table near the silent fountain, the doorbell rang. Sandy escorted in a waitress pushing a large cart with a waffle iron, a wide thermos, and a variety of other things on it.
She took two small waffles off the waffle iron, put them on plates and set them in front of Sandy and Isabel. They were the color of chocolate brownies and smelled so good that Isabel was really sorry they were only about six inches square.
Then she picked up the ice cream scoop, opened the thermos and put one scoop of dark chocolate ice cream on top of each waffle, where they immediately started to melt. She then covered the waffle and ice cream with blueberry syrup, then added a layer of whipped cream. On top of the whipped cream, she arranged raspberries, blueberries, and a single plump strawberry in a complex pattern with precision a neurosurgeon might have respected. Then she picked up a pepper grinder and dusted the whole thing with what smelled like ground hazelnuts.
No wonder Sandy’s still so thin, thought Isabel, trying to savor hers instead of wolfing it down right away. This thing was delicious, but she could have eaten both and called it a light meal.
“Should I leave a tip or something?” whispered Isabel as soon as the waitress was out of the room.
Sandy blinked. “I’d forgotten people still do that out there,” she said. “Anyway, no. She makes twenty-seven fifty an hour.”
After breakfast, Isabel was about to take the dishes to the kitchen, but Sandy stopped her and took them herself. “I’m afraid I’m going to be a terrible host,” she said. “Work to do, the big fundraiser to organize… no time to hang out today. This is your first time in New York, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Then go forth and see the sights.” Sandy placed the dishes in the sink and left them there. Isabel assumed she had somebody come in here to wash up for her. “We’ll take in a show tonight and tomorrow we go shopping. You’re definitely going to need a new outfit for what I have in mind.”
“Um, just out of curiosity…”
“Shit, I never got around to telling you, did I? The Symcox Foundation is holding a charity event on New Year’s Eve to raise funds for Monsoon victims. We did this last year, and I hired a model to come with me wearing advance copies of the spring/summer line. This year, I would like that model to be you.”
“You’re kidding.”
“The pay is seventy-five thousand dollars, plus you get to keep the outfit. Not the diamonds, of course.”
“I’m… not exactly built for modeling.”
“First of all, your face is awesome, and your body is better-looking than you think. Second, plus-size models aren’t even a new thing anymore. Third, you’re modeling diamonds, not swimwear.”
Isabel wanted to argue, but… this was something she might have done as a favor to a friend, even if she didn’t already owe that friend more favors than she had any hope of repaying. And she was being paid for it—paid more than what she’d gotten for any of her “real” work, which was completely unfair.
Life is unfair. Sometimes that works to your advantage.
* * *
Irene J. Harris’s shop was small, but—as far as Isabel could tell—tasteful. An Asian woman about Sandy’s age came out from behind the counter. “Sandy! I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon. How are you?”
“Hi, Lynn,” said Sandy. Or it might have been Lin—the woman wasn’t wearing a nametag. “Is Reenie in?”
“She’s away for the holidays. Can I help you with something?”
“This is Isabel. She needs a black velvet dress to present the spring collection on.”
“For tomorrow, I take it?”
“Afraid so. I’m sorry—I know this is kind of last-minute.”
“That’s all right. I’ve got a pretty simple pattern that should work. I’ll have it delivered around five p.m. tomorrow.”
Nobody had ever made a dress just for Isabel before. She’d hardly ever worn dresses. Lynn took her into a back room, and she stripped to her undies to let the assistant take her measurements.
Lynn was very professional, noting Isabel’s hips and thighs without a hint of reaction. Which was good. Isabel wasn’t bothered by her weight, but the reactions of other women tended to send her into spiny mode.
Lynn worked quickly. The only thing slowing her down was that she kept having to use a stepladder—everything was on the top two shelves. This Irene J. Harris had to be just abou
t the tallest woman in the city. Isabel was sorry to have missed her.
Sandy came in while Isabel was pulling her pants up. “Trust me, Isabel,” she said, “you’re going to be a hit.”
On most of the planet it was the last day of the old year, at least according to the Gregorian calendar.
In San Francisco it was just past midnight. A very important man was disembarking from his business trip to Hong Kong. He was not important enough that we need to go into the details of his business, or even mention his name, but he was important and wealthy enough to have a private plane—old, heavy, diesel-guzzling, and swift—which let him cross the Pacific before the virus in his lungs had finished incubating.
In Dhaka it was early afternoon. The next national election was a week away. Over one million people were demonstrating in the streets in support of a political party which demanded that “the perpetrators of crimes against humanity and the world be brought to justice.”
In Ürümqi the time of day didn’t really matter. The city was just north of the Tien Shan range, and had hardly had a chance to recover from the floods of the Monsoon. Now it was in the process of being buried under five feet of snow.
In Riyadh it was still the middle of the morning. For the past few days, the city and its suburbs had echoed with the sound of gunfire, artillery, and air strikes. Now it was silent. A strange black banner was flying over every government building. The new regime was already taking steps to reassure the population that the lives of the truly righteous would be spared.
But the real story was what was happening down south…
* * *
It was almost time to go to the fundraiser. Sandy and Isabel were in the apartment with a hair stylist named Isidore, a makeup artist named Loretta, and a massive guard whose name no one seemed inclined to ask. He stood over the case of diamonds, as still as a gun on a nightstand, his eyes quietly taking in everything in the room.
Sandy took out a large box with the name “Irene J. Harris” signed on it in big, florid letters. “Take a look,” she said, opening the box. “This is what I’m wearing tonight.”
Isabel lifted the top part of the dress out by the shoulders. It was white and glossy without a hint of translucence. It was embroidered around the edges and over the left shoulder in a sort of frost-fern pattern of deep blue and purple. There was something odd about the pattern that made Isabel look closer.
When she realized what it was, she had to fight the urge to let go and step back a pace. It was definitely embroidered in fine thread, not printed, and the pattern didn’t repeat anywhere. No loom could have made it. Someone whose time was worth thousands of dollars an hour had spent more than a few hours hunched over a sewing machine… or possibly doing all this by hand.
“Are the sleeves supposed to be different lengths?” said Isabel.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” said Sandy. “It’ll look a lot better when I put it on. Let me show you what arrived for you this afternoon.” She opened another, unsigned box and took out a black velvet dress. Then she stepped behind a partition with Isidore and Loretta.
Putting the dress on, Isabel found that it was very tight around the waist—it almost seemed to have a built-in corset. It was low-cut in front, but had tight sleeves coming up from under the roomy shoulders.
Isabel put the shoes on, looked in the mirror—a real old-fashioned mirror, not one of those screen-mirrors—and blinked in surprise. She had always thought of her looks as okay, but not gorgeous. Maybe it was the dress and the shoes doing things to her posture, but she seemed to have gone up several steps in attractiveness without warning.
Isidore emerged. “Black is so slimming, isn’t it?” he said. Isabel wasn’t sure if that was a general remark or a veiled insult, so she just nodded and let him start arranging her hair. Then Loretta started working on her makeup. When they were done, Isabel took another look, and blinked. This time the woman in the mirror was downright beautiful. Not exactly familiar, but beautiful.
And then… Sandy stepped out from behind the partition. It was an appearance that deserved to be preceded by an ellipsis.
Isabel couldn’t tell if her shoes were high-heeled or platform or some combination of the two, but she’d definitely gained at least one more inch in height. She still wasn’t as tall as Isabel, who was already five foot six barefoot, but she was definitely taller than before.
And then there was the dress. It left her right arm mostly bare and her left arm mostly covered, but the asymmetry somehow worked in its favor. The line of embroidery ran over her torso like a sash, and for the first time it was clear how many little details in the frost pattern drew the eye up toward her face. Isabel knew nothing of the history of women’s fashion, but the lines of the dress put her in mind of Greek and Roman illustrations she’d seen. It wasn’t quite the same, but the overall effect was timeless, like a universal symbol for “very important woman.”
Then there was her face. Isabel’s first thought was why is she wearing so little makeup, and how did she suddenly get so pretty? Then she realized the source of the confusion. She had just never seen makeup applied that well before.
Finally, there was her hair, tied back into a single braid that was intertwined and wrapped with long strands of gold ribbon as thin as rice paper. Not gold-colored ribbon. Gold ribbon. That combination of malleability and ductility was only found in one metal. And then there was the sort of lace hairnet on top of her head, made of cobweb-fine wires that had to be platinum. Put it all together, and the whole ensemble set off some ancient warning system in the hindbrain—this isn’t just money, this isn’t just power, this is royalty. Start showing deference NOW.
“Open up the case,” said Sandy. “Let’s get this girl good and stoned.” The guard opened the case. Sandy took out the various bits of jewelry and started decorating Isabel with them. They were turquoise, periwinkle, and shades of blue ranging from sky to electric to an indigo just above black. Isabel had already committed the names of the different colors to memory in case anybody asked her, but there is no need for the reader to do the same.
Isabel put on her new coat, covering all the diamonds except for the earrings. It was a fur coat that cost as much as a year’s rent on her apartment—one more thing Sandy was footing the bill for. It was summer and winter ermine. The different strains of skin cell that produced the chocolate-brown and white furs had grown together in unique and complex fractal patterns, like a drop of ink or watercolor paint falling into a glass of water.
Sandy’s coat was similar to Isabel’s, but its pattern was one of white marbled with slate-blue. “Arctic fox, white and blue phases,” she said. “I’m helping save the species—I figure they can spare me a few skin cells.” Catching a glimpse of the two of them in the mirror, Isabel was reminded again not only how much money, but just what kind of rarefied environment they were headed into. Not even in Texas Foxtrot had she been so far outside her comfort zone.
Sandy started talking business as the car drove itself to the hotel. “One of the keys to making smart decisions,” she said, “is to think of what you’d do if you were stupid, and then do something else.
“Here’s what I’d do if I were stupid. I’d pick some loser candidate whose campaign was hard up for money, set up a PAC, spend millions of dollars advertising this candidate, and then tell him or her, ‘Okay, now I own your ass.’ Then I’d stand around rubbing my hands with glee and cackling evilly at how awesome I was because I had the power to turn this bag of hair into a major political player. I’d dream of the day when he or she was in the White House and I was pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Then my candidate would lose anyway, because he’s still the same schmuck he was before, and I’d basically have spent a big pile of money to cackle and rub my hands with glee for a few months. Which I would normally do anyway for free.
“What I’m getting at here is that the sort of person I’m interested in supporting is the sort of person who might benefit from my help, but doesn’t a
bsolutely require it. Which means they’re also the sort of person I can’t control. I try to choose these people carefully, because I have to treat them as equal partners. You’re about to meet some of these people.”
“I promise to behave myself.”
“Relax.”
Isabel took several deep breaths as the car approached the hotel. She had half expected the front of the hotel to be crowded with paparazzi and lit up by flashbulbs going off. For all she knew, it was. The car pulled into a parking garage built into the hotel, so it didn’t really matter.
The elevator ride to the penthouse seemed somehow longer than the trip to Sandy’s ninetieth-floor office. I have no idea what to say or how to walk or how to do this. Help.
“When I enter the room,” said Isabel, “should I smile, or go for that pissed-off model look?”
“Whatever feels natural.”
As they left the elevator, Sandy put her hand on Isabel’s arm. Under other circumstances, this might have bothered her a little, as if the other woman were somehow claiming ownership of her. Now it was like a message to everybody—It’s cool. She’s with me. She belongs here.
They stepped through the doorway. Isabel half expected there to be some kind of announcer at the door saying “LADY SANDRA SYMCOX! And guest.” In lieu of that, somebody near the door just said, “She’s here!”
Sandy nodded. “And this is Isabel Bradshaw, wearing next year’s spring collection,” she said. “If you have any questions about them, you can ask her.” Sandy gave her a little pat her on the back. Isabel strutted into the middle of the room, trying to manage a relaxed and friendly smile that on another occasion might have come naturally, and also trying not to wobble on her new shoes. She took off her coat and handed it to somebody who would presumably put it somewhere safe until she needed it again. God help me, I am starting to get used to this lifestyle.
Not so easy to get used to was the dozen women of various ages, all obviously rich, who immediately gathered around Isabel like buzzards around a deer carcass and started talking about the diamonds. They didn’t engage Isabel in conversation except to ask her the names of the various colors. A couple of them called their husbands over to point out various colors of diamond. “Look at this one.” “Doesn’t this look nice?” They never actually asked for anything, but they were dropping massive hints. Mayor Lopez and his wife showed up and said hello to everybody. His wife had just enough time to cast a meaningful glance at Isabel’s right armband before they left to grace some other gathering of notables with their presence.