Gorgeous

by Rudnick, Paul

  The two girls who lived in the apartment both claimed to be nineteen but they were most likely in their late twenties or older; Rocher and I really were nineteen and we looked like their little sisters. They introduced themselves as Aimee Cheviot and Suzanne Morgyn Reed, although later, after checking their phone and utility bills, Rocher and I saw that their real names were Amy Farn and Susan Durkheimer, but I was in no position to snub anyone for manufacturing a new name and personality.

  “So hi hi hi hi hi,” said Aimee as we settled onto Aimee’s aunt Renee’s donated sleeper sofa in the cramped living room of the two-room apartment. Aimee and Suzanne had laid claim to the bedroom and if we met with their approval, Rocher and I would be bunking together on the sleeper sofa, which was upholstered in what seemed to be the skin of a really unpopular teenage boy and which wasn’t a treat even to sit on because the inner mechanism was broken and the hidden, barely folded-up mattress was attempting to lurch its way to freedom.

  “So we’re both aspiring actresses,” said Suzanne. “I’m from Tampa and Aimee’s from Teaneck.”

  “Not ‘aspiring,’” Aimee corrected. “We agreed not to say that anymore, because even if we aren’t, at the moment right now, working in any of the artistic or commercial mediums, we’re still doing scene work and learning audition monologues, which makes us actresses. You have to own it, you have to say, ‘I am a whatever.’ Although, of course, I’m really a leading lady–type category, while Suzanne is more of a, like, still totally attractive and sexually viable character person.”

  I decided that Aimee was the leading lady because she was taller, with wider hips and probably more than one nose job. Like many people who have plastic surgery, Aimee had gone too far and her nose now resembled a tiny wad of tip-tilted chewing gum stuck dead center in her face. Aimee also had dark, waist-length hair and she’d used a curling wand to mold cylindrical corkscrews, so she came off as either an octopus wearing too much blush or an old-time telephone switchboard operator wrestling with clusters of dangling wires. Suzanne was shorter and rounder, with hair the color of a semi-successful tooth bleaching razored into a frenetic shag, so if you only saw her in passing, you’d think her head was glued with a haystack of forgotten Post-its. They were both members of a comedy improv troupe that posted its skits on YouTube, where the only comment any of the videos had received was “Are you all guys?”

  “Oh my God, before we, like, decide if we’re all gonna do this,” said Suzanne, standing abruptly and holding out her arms with her palms raised like a belligerent traffic cop, “you guys have gotta tell me right this second and this is a total deal breaker: What do you think about Rebecca Randle?”

  “Well, uh …,” I said, “I haven’t really been following the whole thing….”

  “WHAT?” said Aimee, as deeply offended as if I’d insulted the Bill of Rights or her chances of being cast as a recurring gorgeous forensic crime-lab specialist on a locally shot procedural. “What is WRONG with you? See, I think that Rebecca is a truly tragic and romantic figure and a great role for me.”

  “It is so a great role for you,” said Suzanne. “I mean, you’re a brunette.”

  “Here’s what I think happened,” said Aimee, leaning forward as if she possessed privileged information and the room might be bugged. “I think that Rebecca was totally and deeply in love with Prince Gregory, I mean enduringly in love, like she would cut off her arm for him and say, ‘Here’s my arm,’ right? But I heard that just before the ceremony, like fifteen seconds before, there was this aide, like, a royal under person, and he handed Rebecca a phone with a video of the prince doing it the night before with that English supermodel, you know, the one who did crystal meth but still has her own line of yoga wear? So Rebecca sees the video and she just snaps, and then she was, like, reaching out to the prince and telling him, ‘I love you but I can’t marry you, not till you get your shit together and stop fucking supermodels who take drugs and do yoga, because that is just not what yoga is all about.’ And so Rebecca was all heartbroken and heartsick and heart … heart …”

  “Heart shat on,” suggested Suzanne, who was by now so committed to Aimee’s story that she was miming all the participants and sobbing.

  “Heart shat on,” said Aimee, “and so she ripped off her wedding gown and ran away and now she’s in this Buddhist spa somewhere. Don’t you think that’s what happened? I do, I mean, at least that’s how I’m gonna play her, when they make a movie about the whole thing.”

  “Rebecca was messy but special,” said Suzanne. “And I mean, Aimee is incredible at both of those things.”

  By completely and instantly agreeing with Aimee and Suzanne about everything and by solemnly swearing that the people who said that Rebecca Randle was a crazy bitch were just jealous and evil and wrong, we managed to sign a lease that entitled us to the sleeper sofa, and half a shelf in the mold-encrusted student-sized refrigerator that stood in a corner of the living room beside a toaster oven sitting on the floor, defining an area that Aimee and Suzanne referred to as the kitchen. It was weird because while I’d grown up in a trailer that hadn’t been any larger or nicer than this roach-happy apartment, my year as Rebecca had turned both me and Rocher into secret snobs.

  “We have to get jobs and get out of here,” Rocher whispered forcefully to me on our first night using the partially unfolded sleeper sofa. We knew that Aimee and Suzanne were in for the night because, after using the bathroom down the hall, they’d both crossed through the living room. Suzanne had been wearing her basketball-hoop-sized wire retainer and Aimee had spread three strips of cloudy, crinkle-edged hair-set tape across the bridge of her nose, so that her old nose wouldn’t grow back.

  “This place is so filthy,” I told Rocher, “but do you remember our bathroom in London?” This memory caused the two of us to moan with such violent, passionate nostalgia that the next day Suzanne asked us if we were, “You know, not that it matters, I mean, I would have no problem playing, like, someone’s beautiful but feisty lesbian daughter on a soap, but are you two, you know, together?” Rocher and I denied any same-sex attraction, not because we minded being mistaken for lesbians but because we dreaded the idea of Suzanne using us for research.

  The next morning Rocher and I were hired on the spot, without even much of a job interview, as cashiers, by the manager of the Valu-Brite drugstore just a few blocks from our new address. Valu-Brite was a national chain and every Valu-Brite was pretty much the same, especially the merciless fluorescent lighting, which always made the stores feel as if the lights had been bumped all the way up, to spot shoplifters and deliberately abandoned children. The stores sold everything from budget cosmetics and hair-care products to adult diapers, cat litter, singing Christmas stockings, home pregnancy tests and every brand of cookie, cracker and chip. Everything was vacuum-sealed and labeled in the brightest colors and there were always stacks of partially unpacked cardboard cartons clogging the aisles, left unattended by clerks who were on their breaks or on the run from their underage girlfriends.

  Rocher and I began working at the Valu-Brite on West 48th Street that afternoon, right after we’d been issued Day-Glo purple vests with other peoples’ name tags still attached; “Let’s just use their names,” said Rocher, “it’ll be fine, because you know they’re probably dead.” Rocher was installed at a register to my left and on my other side was Vivian, a veteran cashier who glanced at the two of us and grunted, “New bitches on the block. You better be watchin’ your behinds.”

  Vivian was four feet eleven inches of undiluted spite and swagger. She was muscled and wiry and she wore only a tight wifebeater under her vest, exposing the tattoo that covered her left shoulder of a laughing clown with a hatchet buried in his forehead. Vivian’s eyeliner was tattooed on and she had a heavy iron cross dangling from an ear, but people mostly noticed the thick five-inch pointed metal spike, the base of which was embedded beneath the skin at the top of Vivian’s shaved head. The spike made Vivian look like either a heavy-met
al unicorn or an Aryan Nation ringtoss game.

  There were plenty of customers so Rocher and I were busy, although the line at Vivian’s register was always the longest, as she practiced a deeply personal business technique. Vivian would weigh each item in her hand and she’d inspect the product from all angles and then, while still ignoring her customer, she’d make loud comments directly to the item, such as, “This bitch is buyin’ pantyhose, I guess she’s got herself a date, or maybe she’s gonna stroll on over to the supermarket and shove some ground chuck right down under that control-top panel and walk herself back outside. Either way she’s gonna have herself one fine night.” After holding extended, skeptical chats with the entire contents of a shopper’s wire basket, Vivian would finally advance to the next person in line and a new set of brand-name friends. “This dude is gettin’ all up with, now what is this damn thing, a Fleet enema? What’s he gonna do, clean himself out for the holidays, so he can stick his damn Christmas tree up his butt? He could save himself some serious money by just climbin’ into the tub and standin’ on his head, and stickin’ the faucet up his no-no hole. And he could just hold it all in and then shoot himself right up to Mars, like an ass-tronaut.”

  At one point, because I was working faster, Vivian turned her head slightly toward me and said, “You’re lookin’ at my spike, aintcha? You’re wonderin’ if it hurt when I got it stuck in there. Damn right it hurt! It hurt damn good!” That was when an impatient customer made the mistake of saying to Vivian: “Miss, oh Miss?” in a huffy, pretending-to-be-polite way. “I’m on lunch and I have to get back so could you please just ring me up, please?” Vivian looked at the woman, at which point all of the other customers, waiting on all three lines, crouched down to avoid whatever Vivian was about to spit or throw.

  Instead Vivian removed a magazine from the woman’s shopping basket and got acquainted with the cover story. “Runaway Rebecca, the Disappearing Princess,” said Vivian, noting a fuzzy photo of me from behind, snapped by a security camera in Westminster Abbey’s back hallway. Every cover on every magazine in the racks by the registers was devoted to Rebecca, her wedding fracas and the ongoing mystery of her current whereabouts. There were also Special Issues, the sorts of one-time-only almanacs which most often follow a presidential election or the early, substance abuse–related death of a revered pop star or sex goddess. The very latest Special Issues, with their “Collector’s Edition” medallions, included a Rebecca Report, a 101 No-Show-Weddings-Palooza, documenting the rash of worldwide, copycat jiltings that had mimicked Rebecca’s example, with lurid photos of weeping, discarded brides and drunken, suicidal grooms, and Where in the World Is Rebecca Randle?, a three-hundred-page, triple-priced, photo-heavy guide to all things Rebecca.

  “Ya wanna know about that Rebecca bitch?” Vivian asked the entire store, holding aloft her customer’s magazine, which promised a “First Exclusive Post-Wedding Interview with Rebecca!!!” “Ya wanna know the super-duper-secret, only-I-can-tell-you inside poopedy-poop about where she’s been hidin’ herself at?”

  The store became very quiet as at least twenty people, including Rocher and me, waited for Vivian’s inside information. Vivian’s unshakable confidence made me wonder if she knew details even I wasn’t aware of.

  “I am Rebecca Randle!” declared Vivian. “I got myself put under a magical spell, but then right before that royal weddin’, the crazy witch-bitch reversed herself and when I was liftin’ up my weddin’ veil, that Prince Gregory, he’s goin’ all, ‘What?’ and then he’s looking all surprised and shit and then he’s sayin’, ‘Shee-it! Vivian? Is that you?’”

  Everyone burst into uproarious laughter, accompanied by supportive shouts of “You got that right!” “That’s who he shoulda married!” and “The Princess Vivian! Rulin’ the Valu-Brite!”

  “You know what I really think?” Vivian continued, warming to her subject, with her audience in thrall. “I think that Rebecca bitch ain’t even that pretty. I saw her movie and I seen her in all of them magazines and I’m just thinkin’, huh. I know a million bitches a whole lot prettier than that little look-at-me–my-shit-don’t-stink pissy-pants bitch-hole.”

  “She was not a bitch-hole,” said Rocher from behind her own register. I recognized her dangerous tone, from so many schoolyard brawls, not to mention the Royal Enclosure at Ascot.

  “Maybe she was a bitch-hole,” I said, hoping to sound impartial. “Or maybe she wasn’t, but who really cares, right?”

  “No man, I just gotta say it, it’s been itchin’ at me like somethin’ that would make me shave the affected area,” said Vivian. “That bitch-hole had everything, she had, like, stylists and hair people and her own signature trademarked fuckin’ butt-spray, she’s gettin’ herself in the movies and doin’ the nasty with Jate Mallow, who is one fine-lookin’ piece of man-meat, and then she’s gonna be the motherfuckin’ Queen of the whole damn England! And she just walks away! She runs away! And she leaves her man cryin’ where everybody can see! I think she’s just a selfish, spoiled, scaredy-ass little bug-up-her-butt bitch!”

  “You take that back …,” said Rocher, slamming the drawer to her register closed. “You didn’t know her. You didn’t know what she was going through.”

  “Oh, and you did, little missy new-bitch at the Valu-Brite?” said Vivian, who now slammed her own register shut.

  “Girls, ladies, Valu-Brite employees,” I said desperately, trying to defuse or at least contain the situation. “It doesn’t matter, Rebecca Randle is gone and she’s not coming back and nobody knows anything, so it’s all guesswork, right? And hey, look at this, it’s really interesting,” I insisted, grabbing another tabloid from the rack and opening it to a non-Rebecca-related story. “How about this woman in Pennsylvania who married her own grandson and gave birth to three sets of conjoined twins? Isn’t that amazing?”

  But I was too late, because Rocher and Vivian were now both inches away from me, on either side, puffing out their chests. Rocher was wielding the metal tool that stamped “Valu-Brite X-tra Valu!” adhesive stickers onto sale items and Vivian had peeled off her press-on fingernails, which had been airbrushed with happy yellow smiley faces, and replaced them with longer, sharpened metal talons airbrushed with ravenous hammerhead sharks.

  “I’m glad that Rebecca bitch-hole didn’t marry that prince!” shouted Vivian. “He should marry himself somethin’ special, not some ugly-ass Rebecca pig-butt! She don’t deserve to be no Queen! That Prince Gregory, he’s a fine hunka man chunk, even if he’s a little pasty and vanilla bean! But that Rebecca bitch don’t love him! She only love Re-bitch-a!”

  “Fuck you!” howled Rocher as the crowd, thrilled to be witnessing such a boisterous lunchtime smackdown, began to chant, “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”

  “Oh yeah?” said Vivian, reaching over my left shoulder and under my right arm, trying to grab, slap or stab Rocher. “Ain’t nobody gonna love that bitch, not no time never! She don’t deserve to be loved!”

  “What … did … you … say?” I asked. I could take the insults and the smears but Vivian hadn’t merely touched a nerve, she’d yanked on it with both hands and started to braid it into a pain pretzel.

  “I’m just sayin’ …,” said Vivian, her smile now stretching wide and mean because she’d located her true rival. “I’m just sayin’ that Rebecca Randle, wherever she is, she is gonna die alone and nobody’s gonna care. And I bet she knows it.”

  I felt like after swinging a sledgehammer and slamming it into my stomach, Vivian was now gleefully Rollerblading through the store, looping my intestines around the pyramids of avalanche-fresh mouthwash and ultimate-strength, power-propulsion laxatives. I let loose with something midway between a samurai shriek and the anguished, moonlit cry of a wounded animal with her paw caught in a rusty iron trap.

  “AAAACHHHAAKKKKWAIII!!!” I bellowed as I grabbed Vivian’s spike and tried to slam her head into the register, but she managed to dig her talons into my cheeks, leaving deep and blood-gushing groove
s as she yelled, “Rebecca’s gonna die alone in a mudhole, ho-bag!”

  Fifteen minutes later, after the police had come and gone and Rocher and I had both been fired and our cashiers’ vests revoked, we sat on a high step of the broad outdoor staircase that climbed over the half-price ticket booth in Times Square. This Plexiglas stairway to nowhere was illuminated from within, so it glowed a throbbing red beneath our legs. There were thousands of tourists clogging the sidewalks, with families stooped from their layered shopping bags, like pack mules from Düsseldorf and Umbria and Boise, and there were hundreds of people seated on the steps around us, taking a breather or deciphering a subway map or scarfing their sushi from plastic trays as their overexcited children scampered up and down the pulsating steps.

  As Rocher and I tried to cope with everything that had happened to us and with how far we’d fallen, I saw the largest sign in the whole area, hanging directly across from where we were sitting, only it was mounted on the umpteenth floor of a skyscraper many blocks away. The sign was so huge that every inch of it was blazingly visible and because it was one of those LED video screens, the projected images were concocted from zillions of tiny flashing lights, so it was like sitting in my mom’s trailer watching TV along with a few hundred thousand guests. Rebecca’s smiling, impossibly gorgeous face appeared on the screen in a photo from the Vogue shoot. And even though the shoot had occurred only a little over a year earlier all I could think was, look at her, she’s so young. Then, beginning as a microdot and hurtling and blossoming forward, like a comet bursting through the earth’s at mo sphere, until it covered Rebecca’s face and filled the entire mammoth screen, there was a vibrating red question mark.