B as in Beauty

by Alberto Ferreras

  I suspect that that night God spoke to me through two people, Richard—the loneliest man on earth—and Alberto—the luckiest one. Thanks to them, I finally realized what I wanted: to fall in love with someone, but from the inside out. Someone I could love the same way I wanted to be loved.

  When I got home, I had the urge to play one of my favorite songs, “A Sunday Kind of Love” sung by Etta James. There was something warm and fuzzy about those lyrics that made me feel great. It says that “Sunday” kind of love is the love that lasts past the sexy thrills of a Saturday night. And that is exactly what I wanted: a very Sunday kind of love.

  Now it was just a matter of finding it.

  CHAPTER 14

  I’ve always been fascinated by words. I’m particularly tickled by the emotions and feelings that they can trigger, and how they sometimes translate, and sometimes don’t. One of my favorite examples is the word “blue.”

  In English, blue is a color but also a state of mind. Whoever came up first with that association was a genius, because the color blue chromatically represents sadness like no other. “Feeling blue” paints a perfect picture of your mood.

  But in Spanish “blue” is just a color. We call it azul, and there are no depressing feelings associated with it. When I say “blue” I think of sadness, but when I say azul I think of the sea or the sky: wide, open, beautiful, but never sad. It’s funny, because, even though it’s the same color, the word doesn’t have the same feeling.

  In Spanish we have an expression that doesn’t translate well into English, but it reflects the type of prejudice that the “weight-challenged” have endured through history. If you like a woman you may say, “Me cae bien.” It translates roughly as “She falls nice on me.” But when you don’t like a woman you say, “Me cae gorda,” meaning, “She falls fat on me.” It doesn’t matter how skinny the woman is, if she’s a pain in the ass she feels gorda. For obvious reasons, it’s not the kind of expression that I use lightly (pardon the pun), but the morning after my rendezvous with Richard Weber, “Me cae gorda” was the first thought that came to my mind when I had to deal with Lillian at the office. She is quite slim, but she was starting to fall really gorda on me. She showed up early at my cubicle, looked me straight in the eye, and asked point-blank, “Are you avoiding me?”

  “Of course not,” I said casually, while organizing my pens in a coffee mug as if I were putting together a prize-winning flower arrangement.

  “Why aren’t you returning my phone calls?” she fired, immediately adding, “I love that top—where did you get it?” In case I haven’t explained it yet, Lillian is known for her short attention span.

  “Barney’s. By the way, I did return your phone calls. I told you that I wasn’t in the mood to go out,” I said, removing the remains of last night’s chocolate from under my fingernails.

  “You’re freaking me out. Are you, like, staying home and feeling sorry for yourself? Did you change your makeup?” Again she rapidly switched topics, while examining the contents of my handbag.

  “It’s Susie May,” I explained.

  “Susie May? You gotta be kidding me! That’s what my mom wears. Why the hell are you using Susie May?”

  “I prefer Susie May. And to answer your question, no, I’m not staying home feeling sorry for myself. I’ve been hanging out with an old friend,” I said, hoping to end the discussion then and there.

  A week ago, I would have reacted very differently to Lillian’s questions: I might have been docile and apologetic. But today she was pissing me off. While still looking at my makeup kit, she continued in a half-concerned, half-superficial tone.

  “B, I can see that you’re not in a good place, you’re isolating yourself, and if you fall apart—I love this color; what is it called?” she interrupted herself, referring to my new lipstick.

  “Temptation Red,” I said, pointing to the label.

  “Anyway, so if you fall apart I’m your best friend and I’m gonna have to pick up the pieces.”

  Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that this is the most condescending bullshit I’ve heard in my life. I looked at Lillian, trying to control my fury.

  “Do I look like I’m falling apart?”

  “I know you well. You are up to something. You can’t fool me,” she said.

  I realized that Lillian probably had no idea that any honest concern she was showing was overshadowed by her patronizing tone, but at that moment I didn’t feel like making my usual excuses for her narcissistic behavior. Just as I was gearing up to send her to hell in a handbasket, my cell phone rang. Lillian grabbed it and, looking at the caller ID, immediately asked, “Who’s Natasha Sokolov?”

  Beyond angry, I snatched the cell phone and my handbag away from her.

  “She’s nobody. And don’t worry, I don’t have any plans to fall apart. And if I do, I certainly won’t be asking you to pick up my pieces. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to take this phone call.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was hurt or offended. A sudden cramp in my stomach indicated that maybe I had been too hard on someone who ultimately cared about me, but I chose to ignore it and answer my daily call while Lillian quietly disappeared down the hallway.

  “Madame?”

  “Alberto will pick you up at nine-forty-five p.m.”

  “Who’s the client?”

  “Guido. You’ll have fun, he’s quite a character.”

  “Any special instructions?” I asked.

  “I’ll fax you the instructions later. I’ll call you beforehand, so you can wait by the fax machine.”

  I was still wondering what could be so complicated that it required faxed instructions when Bonnie called me to her office.

  “B, I want you to set up a mandatory brainstorming this afternoon.”

  “With the copywriters?” I asked.

  “With everybody. We need ideas for the UK Charms slogan.”

  “Have you seen the slogans we submitted already?”

  “I’ve been too busy. Just set up the brainstorming and e-mail me the results. It’s urgent.”

  It was urgent, but she hadn’t taken the time to read the ideas that she already had on her desk. How typically Bonnie. The general brainstorming probably looked like an innocent request. She wanted to give everyone the chance to come up with the million-dollar idea. Very fair, very democratic, right? Well, bullshit.

  These general brainstorming sessions are useless for several reasons:

  First, the other departments couldn’t care less about being included “in the creative process.” They just want to leave the office at five-thirty—or five-fifteen, if possible.

  Second, it’s a slap in the face for the whole creative department, whose job is actually to come up with the damn slogans.

  Third, nothing gets accomplished. Half the people don’t show up, and those who do, come mainly because we cater the session with chocolate-chip cookies. The copywriters are too pissed to give any ideas, and the others just sit there staring at the wall while chewing chocolate morsels.

  I always end up running the meeting with a room half full of summer interns who will not stop playing with their cell phones, some graphic designers who became designers precisely because they care about images—not about words—and a bunch of copywriters who resent Bonnie’s assumption that anyone in the company can come up with a better slogan than they. The only thing that these open brainstorms accomplish is to piss off my group.

  And to top it off, all of us know that if we come up with a half-decent idea, Bonnie will twist it and mangle it before we have the chance to show it to the client. But, as with everything Bonnie does, there was a secret evil purpose behind it. I just didn’t know what it was quite yet.

  “Okay, guys, let’s go through it one more time: we need something young, something British, something catchy and irreverent. The target audience is fourteen-to-twenty-four-year-old girls. Anything, anybody…? anything…?”

  After an hour of trying to pull ideas out o
f them, I gave up and started coming up with something—pretty lame—myself, so I could prove to Bonnie that I went through with the meeting.

  “How about ‘da bomb’? ‘UK Charms…da bomb’—they look like firecrackers anyway, right?” I said.

  But my group didn’t even respond. The interns chewed their cookies absentmindedly, and the creatives looked at me with profound disdain.

  “How about ‘gag the rag’” Joe Peters finally said, and the whole room burst into laughter.

  “Okay…it’s a little graphic, but I’ll write it down,” I said, trying not to discourage anyone from participating.

  But once the cookies were gone, almost everybody was gone as well. As I was wrapping up these two hours of nothing, my red cell phone—which was carefully stored in my cleavage—vibrated, so I excused myself and, skipping like a schoolgirl, rushed to the fax machine to pick up my instructions for that night’s customer.

  I waited by the fax machine for a few seconds until the page came through. Then I read the short text three or four times, trying to make sense of it:

  …you will find a set of ankle weights in a box placed in the backseat. You must fasten them to your legs before you leave the car. Wear a long skirt or pants to conceal them. Walk slowly and be careful not to trip on them…

  Ankle weights? Why? What for? I folded my instructions carefully and placed them in my brassiere, next to my red cell phone, for safekeeping.

  I left the office without saying goodbye to anybody. I was too busy thinking about the scenario I would encounter that night.

  “Ankle weights?” I muttered to myself on my way to the subway. This was weird.

  Very, very weird.

  CHAPTER 15

  That night I decided to wear a cotton-Lycra bodice, a dark-purple bolero jacket, and a new pair of black silk Palazzo pants that I bought on the way home from work that same afternoon. The pants were so ample that from afar they looked like a long and flowing skirt. If I needed to hide something underneath them, they should do the trick. I took one last look in the mirror before I left the apartment.

  “Good,” I said to myself, approving of my outfit, “pretty damn good.” If it didn’t sound immodest, I would say that I looked like a million dollars. Half a million at least.

  I rushed downstairs to meet Alberto, but before I could enter the car he stopped me.

  “Wait! Wait, Miss B,” Alberto said when he saw me. “Can I take a picture before you come into the car?”

  “Of course,” I said. Using the sidewalk as an improvised runway, I pranced and posed for him while he took a few stills with his cell phone.

  “Wait till my brother sees you,” Alberto said with a big smile.

  I was just about to thank him for his matchmaking services when I found the box on the backseat. As Alberto drove north toward the Upper East Side, I opened the box and found a set of ten-pound ankle weights.

  “Miss B, walk slowly with those. I’ve seen girls trip and fall in them.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I promised, while I strapped them to my legs.

  Alberto pulled over in front of an elegant condo on the Upper East Side, and I descended from the car with considerable difficulty. Turned out that the “walk slowly” advice was totally unnecessary. It was impossible to walk fast on high heels and with those twenty extra pounds anchoring me to the ground.

  The load was so heavy that I couldn’t really walk. I just dragged my feet across the lobby as if I were escaping a chain gang. On every step you could hear the loud clinking-clanking sound of the weights. The doorman didn’t seem intrigued by my odd walk, making me think that I wasn’t the first fat chick dragging her feet around that lobby. Soon I confirmed that I wasn’t the first, and wouldn’t be the last one either.

  As I dragged my feet into the elevator, I heard a woman’s voice behind me.

  “Hold it!”

  You should have seen my face when a black woman, my size, came into the elevator dragging her feet as well, and making the same clinking-clanking noise that I was making. I looked at her, first surprised, and then mistrusting. She looked back and mirrored my attitude.

  “Penthouse, please,” we both told the elevator operator at the exact same time.

  Who was this chick? Was she coming to the same apartment? For a split second I thought that by some mysterious coincidence we were going to different apartments on the same floor, but as the elevator door opened at the top floor, and I realized that at the end of the long hallway there was only one door, my doubts vanished. She was going to Guido’s too. At that point I should maybe have introduced myself, but I was too nervous, so, with a competitive attitude that was completely out of place, I started racing her to the door. We must have looked like two fat idiots running a sack race at a company picnic.

  We both got to the door at the exact same time, and we both reached for the buzzer in unison. That’s when I finally confronted her.

  “Look,” I said, “is this going to be a lesbian scene? ’Cause if that’s the case I’m not staying, okay?”

  She looked at me briefly with an attitude that only black girls are capable of. “Girl, you need to chill,” she said, and rang the doorbell.

  Before I could say anything, I heard a familiar clinking-clanking on the other side of the door. A big red-haired woman opened the door with a broad smile on her face.

  “About time!” said the redhead.

  What the hell was going on here?

  “This way, ladies, watch your step…” she welcomed us.

  I didn’t have time to question the presence of the third girl, because a new piece of the puzzle immediately made my head spin. That fancy penthouse on the Upper East Side was a gigantic mess. There were piles and piles of newspapers and magazines everywhere. There was so much crap in there that the absurd mass of stuff created a labyrinth, literally, which we had to venture through to get to the living room. There, in a small open area, we found our customer: a short Italian guy with a bad case of hair plugs, who wore a ratty bathrobe and a set of gold chains that would put a gangsta rapper to shame.

  “Hawyadoin’, girls! Come right in!” Guido greeted us with his charming New Jersey accent.

  “Puchy,” said the black girl—addressing him by his nickname, I supposed.

  “Myrna, I don’t know how ya manage to look hotter every day,” he told her.

  “Oh, stop it!” she answered back.

  “Yer B, aren’t ya?” he asked me. I nodded, virtually speechless.

  “Yer gorgeous!” he said. “Just like Madame said.”

  “Oh really? And what did Madame say about me?” asked the redhead.

  “She said that ya were a big red pain in the ass, that’s what she said,” joked Guido, and they all laughed.

  “I’m Lorre,” said the redhead finally introducing herself to me.

  “I’m Myrna,” said the black woman politely, but keeping her distance.

  “Lemme apologize for da mess,” explained Guido. “See, my wife, she has OCD, and she won’t throw anything away. Just gimme a second to prepare a place for you to sit.”

  He gave us a collective wink and disappeared into the bedroom. The three of us were left alone in the crammed living room. I thought about saying something, but I was too tense and embarrassed to make small talk with the girls. After a second of uncomfortable silence, Myrna turned to Lorre and asked her about an old acquaintance.

  “Whatever happened to that Greek girl who used to come here all the time? What was her name?”

  Feeling excluded from the conversation, I shied away from them and started looking at the piles of magazines left around the apartment, while discreetly eavesdropping on their chat.

  “Anastasia?” said Lorre. “She got married and moved to Chicago. They bought a nice house in Oak Brook. She’s pregnant with twins!”

  “Good for her!” Myrna said with a laugh.

  A girl who used to do this got married and moved to the suburbs? Interesting…I thought to myself. I g
uess I never stopped to think that the comfort providers were just regular women who were hoping to get married one day and have a house and a few kids. I was happy to hear that story, and it made me feel that we were all in the same boat, and that maybe what I was doing was not a mortal sin after all.

  While I was entertaining these and other thoughts, I started discovering a few little treasures in the piles of old magazines that Guido’s wife had all over the apartment.

  “Wow! Check this out, girls!” I said, picking up a dusty issue of a Life magazine with Eva Gabor on the cover. “Doesn’t she look like Madame?”

  “Yeah, a bit,” Myrna agreed, “but Madame reminds me of this other actress, the one who did that movie with Elvis Presley…”

  “Ann-Margret,” I offered.

  “That one!”

  “Well, check this out,” said Lorre, digging up yet another Life magazine, this one with Ann-Margret on the cover.

  Next thing you know, the three of us were going through the mountains of periodicals trying to outdo each other’s archaeological efforts. These were some of our most valuable findings:

  • The original Cosmo magazine with the Burt Reynolds nude centerfold.

  • A Playbill of the first staging of My Fair Lady on Broadway.

  • A graphic brochure on sexually transmitted diseases issued by the Ministry of Health of Guatemala.

  • Napkins from the old Horn & Hardart Automat restaurant at Forty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue.

  Vanna White paper dolls.

  We could have spent the whole night digging up treasures in this pop-culture mausoleum, and, surprisingly enough, we did, because it in no way interfered with our duties.

  A few minutes later, Myrna, Lorre, and I were sitting on the bed in Guido’s cluttered bedroom. The entire perimeter of the bed was flanked by more books, more magazines, more everything.