“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I wasn’t going to send you alone on your first job!” she said as if she had been sitting outside kindergarten on my first day of school. Crazy as it was, I felt a certain tenderness that made me collapse in her arms crying.
“My first job? Clearly I’m not even ‘fat enough’ to do this,” I sobbed.
She held me in her arms and softly whispered in my ear, “Honey, that crazy bastard does the same thing to every girl I’ve sent.”
“He’s done this before?” I asked.
“Over and over.”
“What?” I yelled, pushing her away. “And you sent me to this asshole just to be rejected?”
I got out of the car in one swift motion—thank God it was waiting for the red light to change. This revelation was just way too much for one night. Not for anything I closed the deal with this woman in a roller coaster. It was going to be an emotional one for me.
“B, come on!” she said as the car followed me down the street.
“How could you?” I cried.
I had left Mr. Rauscher’s money on the seat of the car, so Madame pulled it out and started counting it. The nerve!
“B, don’t be silly! It’s easy money! Look!” she said, dangling the stack of bills in my direction.
“Don’t you understand that I don’t care about the money? I feel like shit!”
“I’ll never send you again to someone like him. I promise. I just needed to see if you could take it.”
“Oh! You wanted to see if I could take rejection. I guess, being the whale that I am, I should be used to it, right?”
That’s when she went from sweet to sarcastic. She had a way of switching back and forth that always threw me off.
“Oh, boo-hoo!” she said, mocking me. “Poor little me!”
“Yeah, poor little me!” I snapped back.
“Honey, there are no victims, only volunteers.”
I could have punched her. She made me think of my mother at her worst.
“Look,” she said, switching from sarcastic to impatient. “I don’t have time for this, I have a business to run. If you want to feel like a victim, go home, cry on your pillow, and stop wasting my time. But if you want to learn something from this experience, get back in the car, and let’s talk like civilized people.”
Her words made me feel like a screaming baby having a temper tantrum. I felt weak and silly and immature—but I continued walking as if I were Joan of Arc on my way to the bonfire. However, she had made a dent in my will, and she probably noticed it, because she softened her touch.
“B, you know that he’s a moron! Are you feeling bad because a moron doesn’t like you?”
“Yes! I feel bad because a moron doesn’t like me!”
“Why?”
I stopped walking. I needed to think; even though I seem to have an answer for everything, I didn’t have an answer for this.
The limo stopped next to me, and Madame, still sitting by the window, waited patiently, knowing that I had finally reached a dead end.
I took a deep breath, and—still frowning—I stepped back into the limo. Madame smiled and handed back to me a stack of bills, which I took reluctantly.
“Congratulations,” she said.
“For taking the money?” I asked.
“No. For growing up.”
Was I growing up? I had no idea. I just needed a bit of time to understand what this crazy Russian Madame was telling me. If she was trying to screw with my pattern of thinking, she was off to a damn good start.
CHAPTER 9
All my Latino friends in school had what, to me, seemed like a determining influence in their lives: an abuela. They all had a granny that lived at home with the family. For everybody else, it might be acceptable to send Granny to a nursing home, but for Latinos, sending la abuela to an institution is unthinkable. If there’s money, she gets her own house or apartment next door. If there’s no money, she will live in the same home with the family, and it’s very likely that she’ll share a bedroom with the youngest kid. That’s how it works, and nobody can question that. Some of my friends had both grannies living with them, for better or for worse.
Unfortunately, I grew up missing the granny link. My granny Brígida died when my father was only fifteen, so she wasn’t around when I was growing up. My granny Celia refused to leave Cuba. She hated Castro, but she just couldn’t move to another country with a different language at seventy. On top of that, leaving Cuba meant leaving her eight sons and thirty-two grandsons behind, and that was something her poor heart just couldn’t take. So, basically, I grew up grandmotherless.
My mom, like most moms nowadays, had to go to work, so I ended up in the hands of idiotic nannies like Ino, and a long list of other caretakers for whom I have little sympathy. Now that Mom is semiretired and I see her being a granny with my nephews, I realize how special the bond that a grandmother establishes with her grandsons is. It can be a bit irritating when I see that Mom didn’t let us get away with half the crap she condones in her grandsons, but I understand that maybe this is the right balance of life. Parents are supposed to be strict, and grandparents overindulgent. But since I had no granny, I ended up only with the strict side of the equation. And since the amount of time that my mom could dedicate to me was limited by her responsibilities in the family business and fulfilling her family’s basic needs, I ended up with a mom who only paid attention to me when I needed to be yelled at.
Everything has been understood and processed in psychotherapy: my mom did what she had to do, considering her circumstances. I forgot and forgave all these growing pains a long time ago. But here’s my problem: I never had an older woman who sat down calmly with me to explain the mysteries of life, and I’m not just referring to sex or menstruation. I mean deeper and subtler tips on how to grow up to be a woman, things that you can only learn with a patient coach.
I’m telling you all this because that night, after I got back in the limo with Madame, made peace with her, and understood that she had every right to test my emotional capacity to perform the job that she was recruiting me for, she invited me to go to her apartment. And that brought up all those nonexistent memories of my absent grandmothers.
Madame’s loft was part of an old factory in the Long Island City section of Queens. It was a huge space, with sky-lights, French windows, tons of antiques, and colorful carpets and pillows.
Have you ever seen Citizen Kane? I bring it up because Madame’s apartment looked a bit like the Xanadu palace of Charles Foster Kane: exotic and overdone, with every possible antique from every possible corner of the world. Delft porcelain from the Netherlands, a silver samovar from St. Peters-burg, ivory carvings from China, ceremonial masks from Africa. Every single element in that room had a story to tell.
Among the many objects that she had lying around was a clothing rack full of elaborate evening gowns. While I looked around, fascinated by the Renaissance paintings and the marble sculptures, Madame went through the clothing rack fast, picking large and elegant dresses that she threw on the couch behind her.
“Take these dresses. I have the feeling that you don’t have anything decent in your closet. Tomorrow, call Gerik,” she said, referring to the Russian optometrist of her choice. “He’ll give you a good price on your contacts. Tell him I sent you. Your eyes are beautiful. You have to show them. If you get colored contacts, just do hazelnut, or honey—don’t do blue or green. Those look too fake.”
“I’ve had contacts in the past, but I’ve been so crazy busy at work that I haven’t had time to get a new prescription,” I apologized.
“Well, get them now. Don’t give up your looks for your job,” she advised.
At that point I found a photograph of Madame in what I assumed was her twenties.
“Wow! Is this you?” I asked.
She was breathtaking. She reminded me of a young Ann-Margret, with a fabulous figure and long red hair.
“Yes,” she said
without paying much attention. “I was thinner then, but at my age a woman has to trade her face for her ass.”
“What?” I had never heard that before.
“Honey,” she explained, “past a certain age, the skinnier you are, the older you’ll look. Your figure might be slim, but you’ll look wrinkled and emaciated. If you keep some weight on—she winked at me—“your ass will be bigger, but your face will stay tight and soft.”
I’d never thought about that. Maybe that’s why Madame—who was well into her sixties—had the youthful glow of a matron of the Pyrenees, with virtually no wrinkles, and pores so tight you couldn’t see them with a microscope if you tried.
As I was entertaining those thoughts, I found a bunch of diplomas hanging on the wall.
“Do you have a Ph.D. in psychology?” I asked, surprised.
“I have three of them.”
“You have three doctorates in psychology? How come?”
“I like people,” she replied, without giving any importance to her academic accomplishments.
“Then why don’t you just work as a therapist?” I asked.
“Well, I like people…but I like money too.” She smiled.
“So why do you prepare taxes, then? That can’t pay well. Do you do it just to recruit girls?” I asked with a drop of sarcasm.
She laughed. “I only do it once a year, in April. I’m good with numbers, it keeps my mind active, and I enjoy meeting new people. I don’t like watching movies; I prefer watching people. Reality is much more interesting than fiction.”
As she invited me to sit next to her on her big, comfortable couch packed with silky pillows, she pulled out a little red cell phone.
“This is going to be your work cell phone,” she said. “Don’t give this number to anybody. Only I will call you on this line. I’ll call you every day at noon to give you your instructions, and if you ever need to reach me, just press one. Alberto will be your driver and bodyguard. If you ever have a problem with a customer, press two, and he’ll come in to help you out. If you get paid in cash, you will deposit twenty percent of the payment—including the tip—into my account,” she said as she gave me a piece of paper with a number written on it. “Then you’ll call me, and you’ll tell me the amount and the number of the transaction. Yes?”
“Yes,” I replied. “But, you swear that I will not be expected to have sex with anyone, right?”
“Honey, there are better things than sex.”
“What do you mean by that?” I said, confused.
“Honey…sex is totally overrated. And most people only have bad sex anyway.”
“I’ve never had bad sex,” I defended myself.
Madame looked me in the eye.
“Honey, if you think you’ve never had bad sex, chances are you’ve never had good sex either.”
And with that line she shut me up.
“Let me explain,” she continued. “My clients are not into sex per se. They have fetishes. It changes from customer to customer but, essentially, they are buying your trust. Understand?”
“No.”
“Okay, let me put it this way,” she said, taking a deep breath, “do you like when people make fun of you?”
“No.”
“Well, my customers don’t like it either. So it doesn’t matter how silly or weird their requests are—do not ever make fun of them. They are putting themselves in a very vulnerable position, and they pay well to make sure that they can trust you, and that it all remains confidential. If they ask for something you don’t want to do, just say no, but don’t judge them. Understand?”
I nodded, but I still didn’t understand—I was so naïve. Madame continued while casually retouching her lipstick.
“Now…can you take a little constructive criticism?” she said.
“Sure, I guess,” and once again I was surprised to see how afraid I was of any criticism.
“You dress to hide. From now on, you have to dress to show.”
“Show what?”
“Your assets. You can borrow these dresses until you find your style, but I want to see cleavage and I want to see ass. I want you to wear jewelry that trickles between your breasts. You have a gorgeous bust, so always bring attention to it.”
“Gee…thanks,” I said, realizing that I had been hiding my breasts all my life.
“But most of all,” she continued, “I want to see you comfortable in your skin, because nothing is sexier than a woman who’s comfortable with her body. Cotton might be the fabric of life, but—trust me—spandex is the fabric of love. Now: your posture…”
“What about my posture?” I asked.
“You slouch.”
“I do?” Honest to God, I didn’t know it—but I stiffened up immediately.
“Now you look like a soldier,” she said, and I collapsed in my bones, slouching again. Madame lifted her head up as if she were giving a master class at Harvard, and explained, “The posture comes from within: when you love yourself, you offer yourself. The head is high, so that you can look at everyone straight in the eye. The expression is confident. The lips are soft, ready to be kissed. Your bosom rests in bloom under your chin, your shoulders are relaxed, so your arms are open and free to embrace the man that madly desires you. And never, never forget”—she looked at me in the eye when she said this—“that you are beautiful.”
My reaction to her statement was completely physical. I squirmed, and sank in the couch.
“Well, that’s the problem,” I said.
“What?”
“I don’t feel beautiful.”
Vaguely annoyed by my whiny attitude, she just looked at me—mercilessly—and said, “Well, honey, you’re going to have to fake it until you make it. Yes?”
“Yes,” I said, as if I were signing up to cross the North Pole on my knees.
“Honey, the obstacle is in your mind. It’s not what you have, it’s how you feel about it.”
I wished I could believe her. But as she kept giving me all the advice that I imagined my grandmothers would have given me, had they been around, I fell in love with her.
“Those shoes are too high and too small for your feet. The angle of the heel is too steep. Have you noticed that you walk with difficulty? It looks like you’re about to fall on your face—and that is not sexy. You must wear comfortable shoes. What size are you?”
“Seven and a half, eight.”
“Try these,” she said as she handed me a pair of platform shoes. “They’re high, but the angle is not so sharp. What do you use in the shower?”
“Antibacterial soap and a rag.”
She picked up a cosmetic bag and handed it to me.
“You will be worshipped from head to toe,” she said, “so I want you to be nice and soft. This is what you’re going to do until your skin gets up to speed…”
She adopted a familiar pose that looked like a lesson in martial arts: with both arms extended and her palms exposed, she started alternating circular motions with her hands.
“I want you to…exfoliate…moisturize…exfoliate…moisturize…”
“It’s like The Karate Kid!” I laughed. “Wax on, wax off—right?”
“Exactly, just like The Karate Kid.”
I was laughing, but she wasn’t laughing with me.
“I’m serious. You have to learn to nurture your skin,” she continued. “I also want you to use a firming cream, and every time you pamper yourself I want you to do it with love. Enjoy your body the same way others will enjoy it. It makes a difference.”
Damn, the wisdom coming out of this woman’s mouth! It felt like the Holy Scriptures taken from the pages of Cosmopolitan. Part of me thought that it was all so silly, and the other part of me was deeply grateful for having her address all these things with me. I wanted to hug her. I felt like I was borrowing her strength. But she needed to hit me one more time.
“And you wear too much makeup. Makeup is to enhance, not to cover. If you cover your face, you are covering y
our natural glow, and those colors you use don’t look good on you. They look artificial.”
“What kind of makeup should I use then?”
“I prefer Susie May.”
“Susie May?” I said, surprised that she wasn’t suggesting some exotic and absurdly expensive brand. “They don’t even sell it in stores! You have to find a soccer mom who sells it! Shouldn’t I use something a little more—” I started saying but she cut me off.
“I prefer Susie May,” she declared to end the discussion.
Overwhelmed by my own ignorance, I dared to joke, “Should I go on a talk show and get a makeover or something?”
Finally, Madame laughed.
“Honey, the only makeover that really works,” she said while tapping her index finger against my forehead, “happens right here. Mind over matter.”
I know, Madame’s advice sounded a lot like “Dear Abby,” but this woman was actually teaching me a course in quantum physics. Needless to say, that night I went to my apartment and I soaked and scrubbed and moisturized my whole body, and—for the first time in my life—I touched and caressed my skin with love and admiration.
And it felt great.
CHAPTER 10
I have a constant battle with time. I have too much or too little of it. I can’t seem to measure it objectively. Sometimes it feels that a weekend flies by, and sometimes Saturday and Sunday can feel like a lifetime. This particular weekend with Madame felt like a month spent away from home, and coming back to the office on Monday was particularly sad. I dragged myself in to work, as if I had just arrived from a holiday in the Bahamas, resenting the very thought of sitting by my desk—never mind dealing with Bonnie.
I decided to lie low and just hang on to my weekend in my mind. I kept myself semi-busy doing some old paperwork, while keeping an obsessive eye on the red cell phone that I got from Madame. I went on the Web, looking for a Susie Day representative in my neighborhood, and it turned out that Mary Pringle, Bonnie’s assistant, was one of them.
Until that day, I knew very little about Mary Pringle. The one thing I knew was that she had the kind of patience that belonged in a nursing home, and that’s why she kept a job that no other secretary in the world would take. She was the last person that you would think was selling Susie Day products in the office. She wasn’t social like Lillian, or exuberant like Madame. Mary was black, petite, quiet, and very low-key. She dressed impeccably, but maybe a little too conservatively for someone in her twenties.
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