Gorgeous

by Rudnick, Paul

  “How do I look?” asked Tom.

  “Fuck you,” I replied, and Tom laughed.

  As Drake opened the limo door for me, he gave a low, appreciative whistle, which convinced me that he was in on Tom’s diabolical scam.

  “Eat shit,” I told Drake helplessly. “Eat shit and die.”

  As we drove uptown, Tom rolled down his window to take in the city. Through my furious tomboy funk I asked, “What are you looking at?”

  “New York City.”

  “But you live here. Don’t you see it all the time?”

  “Not at night. Not like this. You see, I haven’t really gone out.”

  “In how long?”

  “Almost twenty years.”

  Then, as the car rounded a curve, Tom turned his face toward me, without meaning to, and I saw that his eyes were wet with tears. And even though I was still busy hating him, I wanted to touch his hand, to comfort him in some blundering, small-town way, but I didn’t dare. He wouldn’t allow it.

  After a few more blocks, Tom told me that we were headed to Lincoln Center “because there’s a lot going on. Multiple events. There’s a film festival tribute to someone and a ballet premiere starring a French someone else and some absurd benefit for the rain forests, where all sorts of people are going to pretend, not just that they care, but that they even know where the rain forests are. But we’re not going to any of that. I just needed a circus.”

  The car pulled up to a block-long row of marble steps climbing to an open-air plaza bounded on three sides by buildings that could’ve either been museums or airline terminals. The whole place was a coliseum, as if people were going to be seated along the balconies, judging us and providing a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, before starving lions would be released.

  “Do we really have to do this?” I asked.

  “We made a deal. And this is only your first dress.”

  Drake ran around and opened the car’s rear door, and Tom stepped out and offered me his hand, as if I were a child being coaxed toward her first morning at preschool or maybe an electroshock treatment for early-onset depression. Tom smiled at me, but we both knew that support and understanding weren’t his strong points, so he began tugging me along, like an arthritic donkey, up the wide marble steps, along a red carpet probably soaking in gallons of just-spilled blood.

  “I hate you,” I told him. “I really, seriously hate you.”

  “I know.”

  As we climbed the steps, inch by agonizing inch, I heard the notes of my mom’s ringtone again, and I thought they were coming from Tom’s phone, in his breast pocket, but he didn’t answer it and then the plaza came into view. Through my Goodyear blimp–load of self-pity, I took in an enormous, weirdly silent, expectant crowd. Tom yanked me up a final step and then we were facing them, easily more than a thousand people, all staring directly at us. I wished I were blind so I’d never have to know, under any circumstances, that people were looking at me.

  As I stood beside Tom, a murmur rippled through the mob and built furiously as so many people repeated Tom’s name. No one had seen him, not just in public, but anywhere, for almost twenty years. Tom’s expression combined amusement with something like endless regret.

  As I tried to enter the thoughts of someone like Tom, someone so forbiddingly private, a fireball the size of Manhattan burst from the sky and filled my eyes and the plaza and the world with the most impossibly blinding yellow-white light, as if we were stranded at ground zero during a nuclear blast, in the eerie pause before your skin begins to melt from your bones, when the glow is pure and alive and beckoning, like the heavenly tunnel you’re supposed to see just before you die. But I wasn’t incinerated, or going anywhere: The blindness and the dazzling whiteness only continued and intensified, backed by a chattering thunderclap of clicks and whirs and beeps along with a hollering chorus of insistent voices, which, as far as I could tell, weren’t shouting but shooting the words “Tom!” “Over here!” and “WHO IS SHE?”

  As we were bathed in, and almost raised off the pavement by, the shrieking glare of the flash attachments and the pulsing strobes and the bobbing TV lights attached to high aluminum poles, and as the voices slammed out questions that Tom and I couldn’t even begin to answer, I wondered if this was fame: the total loss of your senses. I couldn’t see, hear or identify anyone, or smell anything except the mechanical smoke and the crisp October air. I felt adored, for absolutely no reason, and erased, by all of that sound and light and attention. As my brain rebooted its most primal functions, its notions of left and right and right and wrong, a fresh mantra took hold: WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

  The clamoring focus had to be all about Tom — everyone must want to know why he’d retired and why he’d returned and there’d be a premium on photos of this rare and haughty creature who hadn’t aged an instant. And while there was plenty of interest in Tom, he took a half step to one side, as if he was presenting me, but out of what? A smidgen of good manners? Gracious superiority? Or was he just hoping to calm everything down?

  Instead, the media cataclysm just expanded into the uncontrollable photo-lust that only descends on a sexy new president waving at his inauguration, or a shackled serial killer during his perp walk into a federal courthouse, or — me.

  As Tom withdrew, I stood alone and unprotected as the flash-bulbs became an X-ray device, recording and exploring and exposing every ounce of my body. As I tried to comprehend why anyone would want a picture of a dumpy, barely post-adolescent zilch from a Missouri trailer park, Tom reached for my hand. A platoon of burly men in dark suits, barking into their earpieces, cemented themselves around us and became a human wedge, allowing us to make our way through the mob without getting torn to bits, or giving autographs. As we were hustled along we passed a wall of darkened windows, and I caught sight of someone’s reflection. She was gliding along beside Tom, gleefully and professionally bodysurfing the tsunami of press. And although I only saw a fraction of her face, a flash of eye and a quarter inch of cheekbone, for less than a second, I could tell that she was staggeringly beautiful, someone undeniably worthy of all the frenzy and fuss. I jerked my head around to see who she was, and how she’d joined us without squeezing through our wall of human defense, but there was no one. The only people within the wedge of black-suited brawn were Tom, and me.

  The security team hoisted us past the glass doors and into the soaring lobby of the opera house at the far end of the plaza; there was more red carpeting along with a double coil of winding staircases and crystal chandeliers swinging overhead. The lobby was ringed with additional guards, so we were momentarily safe among an entirely different throng of well-dressed people who were all strenuously involved with their handheld devices, as if they’d just overheard an illegal stock tip and needed to text their brokers. Then, from everyone’s defensive, furtive glances, I knew that their texts were about me.

  We passed a large framed poster, under glass, announcing the schedule for upcoming operas and concerts, and I was inches away from the glimmering reflection of a woman who was not only unthinkably beautiful, but at ease with herself and entertained by my gaping. And that was when I first suspected that the reflection, and the woman, and the miracle, might be me.

  My instantaneous response was a screaming brainload of panic. I pulled my arm away from Tom and I ran down the nearest available hallway, to the ladies’ room. The room was deserted, so I all but long-jumped past the stalls to the row of mirrors over the sinks, where I saw Becky Randle. I’m not sure if I was relieved or crushed or more confused than ever, but I steadied my hands on the countertop and took a deep breath, peering at that ordinary, panting, discombobulated girl, shifting uncomfortably in her way-too-luxurious dress. Then the door opened and I turned to see a woman in her forties with wild, choppily cropped hair, like drunken platinum toothpicks. She was wearing extremely high black satin spike heels and a narrowly cut tuxedo with an open, formal shirt, revealing a hint of tattoos. She could’ve been the jaded maître d’ o
f a members-only, all-lesbian nightclub in Berlin.

  “Who are you?” the woman asked, blocking any possible exit and making sure I knew she’d deliberately followed me.

  “I’m … nobody,” I said, and as I went back to the mirror to verify my statement, I saw that I’d just lied, big-time, the biggest, because smiling back at me was the image of a woman so beautiful that my first response was, oh my fucking holy shit, I think I want to be a lesbian too.

  I was in shock. I was euphoric. I was scared beyond death. I jerked away from the mirror, my stomach churning as if I’d had a rifle pointed right at me and I was going to will it away and run. But the woman in the tux was staring at me with such breathless wonder that I turned slowly back to the mirror, pretending I was a bystander who just wanted to see what all the gawking was about. And once I caught sight of my reflection I was riveted, hopelessly enraptured, as if I were watching the most impossibly glamorous car accident, or the birth of the baby Jesus, if Jesus had been the world’s first supermodel, or something even more unbelievably alluring, something which used to be and might still be — no. No. No fucking way.

  I flapped my hand up and down, cautiously, as if I were a marionette working my own strings, or as if the mirror might actually be a window and I needed to see if the woman trapped behind the glass would copy my gestures, which she did. But no matter how quickly I moved or turned my head, she followed me so precisely that I knew, that I had to accept, that I had to somehow internalize the fact that I wasn’t looking at someone else, someone imprisoned and imitating my movements. I was looking at — no. It couldn’t be. It didn’t make any sense. NO.

  I raised my right hand, which had once been square and stubby and scrubbed raw, and saw that it was now slim and graceful, with each aerodynamically tapered fingernail glossy with Tom Kelly’s Savagely Scarlet polish. I gingerly touched my new, ungodly perfect cheek with a fingertip to see if my face had become a fragile porcelain mask that might crack or crumble, or be removed, so I could sleep and wash my real face, which must be lurking underneath. But my face wasn’t cold or kiln-glazed or removable; all I grazed was flesh. The creamiest, most petal-soft, flawless complexion I’d ever seen, let alone touched, let alone owned. I saw amused, almond-shaped, emerald green eyes, and when I say emerald green, I mean that my eyes glistened like precious gems and were many karats more valuable than most people’s eyes. I saw a nose that wasn’t coy and unbreathably small, or honkerishly bold. It was a nose, perfected. My lips were not only sublimely outlined in Tom Kelly’s Lip Lust and bright with Tom Kelly’s The Only Red You’ll Ever Need, they were the lips used in an ad for a concert or a movie, where all you see are the lips of the star because her lips alone are more than enough to identify her and sell out every available ticket at indefensibly jacked-up prices.

  And this was the most unexpected and chilling detail: I saw me. While I was unrecognizable, I hadn’t been leveled and demolished and replaced, I hadn’t become an opposite, alien being. I was, I guess I’d have to call it, an impossible version of myself. It was as if God had taken a time-out from guiding the fate of humankind and had dedicated Himself only to me, until we were both completely satisfied, no, not just satisfied, but dumbfounded, at what we’d accomplished.

  But how had this happened? What had been attached onto or stirred into or sprinkled across my DNA? I remembered what Tom had said when we’d first met, about how he was going to change me. So I was now — what? A supernatural science experiment? Was I Cinderella, or Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, and were both of those creatures equally freakish? And why did I feel so unbearably exhilarated, and also like I’d just dropped acid and jumped happily off the tallest building I could find?

  Whatever had occurred, whatever had been done to me, whatever or whoever that phenomenon was looking right back at me, for the very first time in my life, I was absolutely certain about something. There was no back-and-forth, no second-guessing and no need to consult with Rocher or Shanice Morain and her cafeteria coven or the Pope or the Joint Chiefs of Staff or even Tom Kelly. Without bragging or exaggerating or deluding myself, I was now, I had become, I inhabited, the most beautiful woman in the world.

  I turned to the woman in the tuxedo and I said, “I’m Rebecca Randle.”

  As the short-haired woman was about to ask me another question, the lights flickered, indicating that the evening’s entertainment, aside from what I’d just seen in the mirror, was about to begin. The woman continued to study me, as if she were a private detective and I were her favorite sort of person: a murder suspect. Then she left and I pivoted back to the mirror, only to find Becky. Old Becky. Real Becky. Me.

  I was getting handed the rules of my new life. It seemed that when I was with at least one other person I would become Rebecca, but when I was alone, I would remain, I would dwindle into, I’d be back to Becky.

  The rest of the evening was a blur as I sat in a box seat beside Tom, high above the crowd. I could barely concentrate on the stage, where a plump, older woman, in an elaborately sausage-curled wig and a floor-length, stiff-collared velvet gown, was singing. I’d never seen an opera before but from what I could tell the woman was supposed to be a beautiful young girl, a courtesan, which Tom told me was a French term for a fancy hooker.

  I couldn’t pay attention to any of this because my mind was careening. And when I shook my head, to clear my tumbling, ricocheting thoughts, I saw that almost no one in the opera house was facing the stage. People were craning their necks and nudging their seatmates and passing around pairs of miniature brass-and-mother-of-pearl binoculars, all for a closer view of me. I felt terrible for the singers because there was now an audible buzz of feverish gossip as theater goers held up their phones to take my picture and transmit my face all over the world. People were kneeling or standing backward on their seats and others were streaming down the aisles and up the stairs toward where Tom and I were sitting. And strangely, I felt both insanely exposed and completely anonymous. I was the center of everything, and yet I was entirely hidden.

  “That’s enough for tonight,” Tom told me, and we stood and left our seats. The bodyguards were waiting in the hall to ferry us to our limo. As we fled the opera house with half of the mesmerized, jibbering audience in our wake, I heard the singer unleash a piercing high note, which sounded like music and a scream. This was followed by an actual scream as the singer demanded, “WHO WAS THAT BITCH?”

  Once we were in the car heading downtown, Drake asked, “So how did it go?”

  “Let’s ask the lady,” said Tom, turning to me. “How do you feel?”

  “I have no idea,” I said, bobbing my head to sneak a look at myself in the rearview mirror. I didn’t want to say anything else because I knew I’d stutter.

  “Things went quite nicely,” said Tom. “Let’s just say that — people noticed. And, Becky — or is it Rebecca?”

  I could see that Drake was watching me in the rearview mirror and that he was deeply impressed, because he was no longer the prettiest person in the car.

  Tom continued: “I’m only getting started.”

  One of Mrs. Chen’s assistants came to my bedroom and helped me out of the red dress, which she draped over her outstretched arms as if she were returning it to a lead-lined crypt, or some mystical dry cleaner. I wondered if once the dress came off, my beauty would leave with it, if I’d become the ultimate advertisement for Tom Kelly since I wouldn’t exist without his label. But before the assistant went out the mirror confirmed that Rebecca was still in place and looking right back at me.

  As the door shut, my cell phone rang. It was Rocher, who’d seen footage of someone on both a late-night entertainment news show and all over the Internet.

  “Oh my God, Becky,” she said, “that woman, that person, with that Tom Kelly guy, in all of those pictures is that, Jesus, I can’t believe I’m even asking this, but, was that — you?”

  “Why can’t you believe it?” I asked. “Because on some level she looked like me or becau
se I’m usually so gross and hideous that we could never possibly be anywhere near the same person?”

  “No! Of course not! I mean, the captions on all the pictures say Rebecca Randle and the pictures do almost remind me of you, I mean, if you sort of …”

  “If I sort of what? If God came down and said eat shit to Cal Malstrup and Shanice Morain and anyone who ever made fun of my mom? If some wizard from another planet waved his wand over my life? If you took all of my bones and eyeballs and blood and mixed them all up in a blender and put the setting on ‘Most Beautiful Woman Who Ever Lived’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rocher, I’m freaking out. I have no idea what’s happening. I know that I wore the first dress, the red one, and I know that Tom Kelly thinks he can do anything but Rocher, tonight, at that opera thing, there were all these people and they wouldn’t leave me alone and when I looked in the mirror, I mean, as long as someone else was in the room — that woman, the unbelievably beautiful one, the most beautiful woman in the whatever, she was me. We’re me. I think.”

  “Jesus holy motherfucking fuck me until I bite off my own head and eat it with canned frosting Christ Almighty.”

  “Rocher, please, I’m not being a bitch or a snob, but there’s something I have to do, right now. And I can’t even really explain it but can I call you back?”

  “Okay, but first you just have to answer me one thing and you have to swear to tell me the God’s honest motherfucking truth.”

  “What?”

  “Where can I fucking buy that dress?”

  Once I was off the phone I calculated how I could do what I needed to do, which was to get a hard, specific look at Rebecca. I was alone, so I couldn’t use a mirror because all I’d see would be Becky. So instead, I found some footage of Rebecca on a cable show, on the huge flat screen TV that filled the wall opposite my bed, and I waited for a close-up and I froze the image. And I sat on the bed in my T-shirt and sweatpants, hugging my knees, and then, just like everybody else, I stared at Rebecca’s face. At my face. At it.