Gorgeous

by Rudnick, Paul

Something buzzed inside my backpack and when I dug around, I found my mom’s phone, although I hadn’t heard her ringtone, which made sense, because nothing romantic or magical was ever going to happen to me again. I opened the phone but no one was calling. I checked my mom’s address book but there were only a few names, including my grandparents, a woman my mom had worked with behind the counter at a fast-food place, Princess Alicia and Tom Kelly. Everyone on the list, except Tom, was dead.

  Rocher was staring at me.

  “What?”

  “It’s just, I don’t know,” she said, still staring. “I was just about getting used to you being Rebecca. And when we’d talk, it almost seemed normal, like, of course I’m friends with Rebecca Randle. But now …”

  “Now what? Now that I’m just me again, it sucks?”

  “No, no, it’s not that, it’s just — okay, when you were around Jate or the prince or the Queen, you got that jolt, didn’t you? That sort of buzz that people get when they’re standing next to a famous person, or even more, when the famous person is talking to them? It’s like a contact high, right? It’s like, when I was around Rebecca, I felt like — anything was possible.”

  I couldn’t get angry at Rocher because I knew just what she meant. If standing next to Rebecca had been a thrill then standing inside her had been pure adrenaline. Being Rebecca had been its own extreme sport, so how could I blame Rocher for missing the rush?

  “It’s just weird,” she said, like someone who’d woken up to an empty house on Christmas morning.

  Things were getting desperate. Rocher and I couldn’t find work, and Aimee and Suzanne were impatient about the rent and the utility bill. “I mean, there are a lot of people who would kill for this apartment,” Aimee sniffed and I wanted to ask her how many people had been killed in the apartment, but I knew that Rocher and I had to come up with some money fast, because I didn’t want to find out what the next lower rung might be below Aimee and Suzanne’s sleeper sofa.

  I’d try anything, so when I came across a job listing for an assistant concierge position at the Royal Criterion Hotel, I called the personnel director and said that I was Claire Ridgefield of Ridgefield Employment Options and that I was sending over a Becky Randle, who’d be perfect for the job. I name-dropped Rebecca’s favorite European hotels as references and insisted, sort-of truthfully, that Becky had only just returned to the States and was entertaining multiple offers. In order to appear as grown-up and professional as possible I sweet-talked Aimee into lending me the tailored gray gabardine suit she wore to any audition for the role of an Ivy League lawyer, a Wall Street honcho or the still-warm corpse of an Ivy League lawyer or a Wall Street honcho, partially hidden in a culvert. Aimee said that she usually wore the jacket without a blouse because “I want to look super-educated but still totally hot.”

  To save the subway fare, I hiked the thirty blocks to the Royal Criterion in Rocher’s look-of-leather navy pumps, inhaling bus exhaust, getting a puddle of filthy, day-old rainwater splashed in my face by a passing cab and attracting the following comment from a homeless woman: “Oh, honey, did somebody steal your real clothes?”

  The Royal Criterion was the city’s most glamorously staid hotel. It dated from the early 1900s, but it had been sumptuously refurbished by its current Saudi owners at a price tag of over a billion dollars, which had ensured cutting-edge WiFi access, fail-safe security precautions and a five-star French-Baltic fusion restaurant. I stood across the street from the hotel, admiring the thirty stories of Italian marble, heavy silk window treatments and the array of international flags billowing over the grand main entrance. Would Rebecca have stayed here, I wondered, or would she have opted for something equally pricey, but more trendy and architecturally of-the-moment, somewhere downtown? I almost could’ve asked her, because Rebecca’s face was taunting me from a nearby newsstand, a movie ad shrink-wrapped over an entire crosstown bus and a dramatic black-and-white photo in the window of one of the hotel’s street-level shops where Rebecca’s long neck was draped with enough freshwater pearls to buy Rocher and me a house in the suburbs with five bedrooms, all with walk-in closets, a four-car garage and a great room with a river-rock fireplace.

  Rebecca was beginning to seem less like a memory and more entirely fictional — had she really existed? All I knew for sure was that Rebecca’s feet hadn’t ached because she’d never had to squeeze them into borrowed shoes, and she’d never had to worry about whether she’d combed all of the petrifying pigeon crap out of her hair, and whether applying toothpaste to a seriously recurring chin-zit ever really helps. But I was Becky, so I straightened Aimee’s skirt, with its safety-pinned waistband and Scotch-taped hem, and I ordered myself to suck it up. Then I crossed the street and smiled at the uniformed doorman as if we were already devoted colleagues, while he ignored me completely.

  Since no one was rushing to help me, I shouldered my way through the heavy bronze revolving door. It was like entering the most stately, hushed bank, where, instead of storing the rich people’s fortunes, they stored the rich people themselves.

  As I crossed the geometrically inlaid marble floor, I saw that there was some sort of bottleneck at the reception desk, which was a long marble-topped counter set within a gilded archway. There were five outraged, impatiently snorting guests, some toting hand luggage and others draped in fur, all standing in line and not liking it one bit. For rich people, even a half-second’s waiting period, especially in public, was an arrow to the heart and a possible socialist plot. Some of these people were already barking into their phones and jabbing at their BlackBerries, berating distant underlings and spouses for booking them into such an incompetent, bush league, nickel-and-dime establishment. The head concierge was standing behind the counter, overseeing three assistants, each more flummoxed and near tears than the next.

  “I’m so sorry!” wailed one of the concierge’s assistants, a twenty-something man wiping his sweating palms across the pockets of his maroon Royal Criterion blazer. He kept poking frantically at his keyboard, as if the system could be prodded, or, if necessary, sucker-punched into behaving itself. “It’s totally frozen, it’s dead, I’ve never seen anything like this! I can’t verify anything, I don’t know who anyone is, it’s a nightmare!”

  “Stop whimpering, Kevin,” said a female assistant, a much tougher number in her own pressed and lint-free blazer, with her hair yanked into a rigid blond ponytail. “Don’t be such a girl.”

  Watching the now openly cursing and threatening guests, I also noticed the door that might get me behind the counter and I made my move swiftly and unobtrusively. I elbowed aside another assistant until I was standing beside, according to his polished brass nameplate, ELDIN TALDECOTT, CONCIERGE. He was a narrow, unruffled man who, I imagined, had never permitted himself to leave his nearby rent-stabilized, frighteningly uncluttered one-bedroom apartment without making sure he was scrubbed, shaved, combed and deodorized, and dressed in something that had spent most of its life traveling to or from a plastic dry-cleaning bag. He was a born concierge, someone who received a quietly yet richly orgasmic satisfaction from neatness, order and level-headed problem solving, particularly in the face of rampant hysteria.

  “Good morning, Mr. Taldecott,” I began in a low, respectful and helpful tone. “I see that our first guests are Lord and Lady Netton-Bashmere of East Chittenden, in town for the Winter Antiques Show.” I’d met this elderly, tottering couple on several occasions: at a palace tea, a cocktail party and my rehearsal dinner, as they were cousins of Prince Gregory, and Lady Veronica had briefed me on their eccentricities, their medications and their world-class horde of Victorian trivets and toleware trays.

  “Welcome to the Royal Criterion, your Lord and Ladyships,” I continued. “Your suite will be ready momentarily and the hotel would be so grateful if you would enjoy a complimentary cocktail in our lounge. That will be a scotch-and-water, no rocks, for his Lordship, and a spearmint, not peppermint, schnapps for her Ladyship, I believe. And while you’re
relaxing and enjoying a complimentary assortment of scones, tarts and toast points, you might also inspect our supply of catalogues from both the Winter Show at the Armory as well as similar upcoming events in St. Petersburg, Madrid and Basel. We can also provide the monograph to the Cooper-Hewitt Museum’s current exhibition of late-Regency-period trivets and cache-pots in brass, painted tin and papier-mâché.”

  “You know I can’t resist papier-mâché,” said Lady Netton-Bashmere, quivering at the thought of a decorative flowerpot decoupaged with butterflies and marigolds. I knew about the Armory show because I’d seen a poster for it on my trek uptown; I’d also passed the Cooper-Hewitt Museum where there had been banners silk-screened with the title “A Proper Parlor” and pen-and-ink sketches of teapots, flatware and fingerbowls.

  “And while it is far too early for even a decent whiskey,” said Lord Netton-Bashmere, “I believe that, under such trying circumstances, I shall make an exception.” I knew that the keys to Lord Netton-Bashmere’s cooperation were his alcoholism and the word “complimentary.” As Rebecca, I’d learned that rich people crave freebies more than anyone. I’d seen billionaires shove their children aside to grab two additional goody bags at a film premiere, each bag rattling with just a few perfume samples, a promotional coaster and a soundtrack CD.

  “Who are you?” Mr. Taldecott whispered to me as Kevin and Trish, the severely ponytailed sorority nazi, led the royals off to the lounge.

  “Becky Randle,” I replied with a professional directness, and then, more brightly, “And here is Ms. Helen Flain, of the Danx-Talman Investment Group. Welcome to the Royal Criterion, Ms. Flain. In just a few moments we will have access to all global markets in our Financial and Media Center on the third floor. And meanwhile there are branches of both Cartier and Van Cleef in our lower lobby promenade, and once your suite is ready, you’ll find the minibar stocked with a selection of cranberry and peach yogurts along with family-sized bags of plain, peanut and almond M&M’S.”

  “Thank you,” said Ms. Flain, “and I shouldn’t mention this, but …”

  “You will find the Girl Scout Thin Mints on the night table beside your bed along with three fresh boxes of doughnut holes in honey-glazed, coconut and maple stripe.”

  Ms. Flain was the vice president of her firm, which Prince Gregory had been leaning on to donate the financing for malaria nets in Zimbabwe. Two months ago she’d discovered that her husband, who was the CEO of Danx-Talman, had sent over three hundred pleading, sexually explicit, unreturned texts to Rebecca, which had emphasized increasingly lucrative offers for her preferably used panties. Ms. Flain was considering either a divorce or some major reconciliatory jewelry and she was also a binge eater, with a weakness for airport crap. When Prince Gregory and I had lunched with the Flains, Helen had only picked at her salad but there had been an almost empty package of soft-baked chocolate-chunk cookies tucked into her Hermès shoulder bag beside three cream-filled crullers.

  As Ms. Flain wandered off to check on the current value of her husband’s portfolio to guide her in choosing a diamond tennis bracelet and maybe a matching eternity ring, Mr. Taldecott asked me, “How did you know all of that and what are you doing here?”

  “I’m a smart girl, I’m applying for a job as one of your assistants, and you’d better send Kevin over to Dunkin’ Donuts right away.”

  “Roche, I just went for it,” I said later that night when we were under the sleeper sofa’s torn and hemorrhaging polyester quilt. “Here’s why I got the job: It’s like the whole time Rebecca was being a movie star and falling in love and almost becoming a princess, I was watching everything. It’s like I was filing everything away, like I was Rebecca’s secretary. And it all just came pouring out, everything I’d been learning about rich people and royalty and hotels. I’ve become an expert in everything I’ll never be able to afford.”

  “It’s like, you went to the University of Rebecca, instead of that two-week manicure school in Jamesburg.”

  “Exactly!”

  “Excush me!” shouted Suzanne from her bedroom, although her words were slurred because her corrective dental headgear was in place. “I’m trying to get shum shleep, I have a callback tomorrow, for a commershul! I’m thish girl with cold shores who pullsh her turtleneck over her fash! So could you pleash shut the hell up!”

  Even without references or a resume, I quickly became Mr. Taldecott’s most valuable resource at the Royal Criterion. Thanks to my mother’s decades of scrapbooking and my time as Rebecca, I was like one of those idiot savants who, if you mention any date in history, can automatically supply the day of the week, except that I had an infallible memory for the lives of royalty and anyone from the fashion or movie industries, along with a working knowledge of the dermabrasions, hushed-up abortions and beverage preferences of the mega-rich. I was constantly astonishing Mr. Taldecott by hovering at his side and murmuring, “She’ll need extra pillows, because she just had three ribs removed so she could wear a bikini,” “He likes Asian prostitutes who’ll spit in his face” and “The parents are cokeheads and their older child likes to chew on electrical wiring until he passes out, but they’re all really nice.”

  “Becky,” said Mr. Taldecott, who’d called me into his small private office after I’d been working at the hotel for five months. The office was a cross between a pharaoh’s crypt and a universal lost and found; the walls were lined from floor to ceiling with plywood shelving, holding every possible item — no matter how obscure — a guest might request, including newspapers from countries that had only existed for a few days, hand towels so hypoallergenic that they were delivered in freeze-dried pouches, condoms in every variety from cinnamon-scented sheepskin to triple-extra-wide with a reservoir tip, along with hearing-aid batteries, folding canes, temporary teeth, eyelash curlers, travel irons, mini-sizes of every known shampoo and a basket of what I at first thought were tennis balls and pepper mills, but which turned out to be sex toys.

  “I don’t know who you are,” Mr. Taldecott continued, “or why you’re so phenomenally informed, but you’ve impressed me beyond measure.”

  “Thank you so much, but I told you, while my mom was pregnant, she read a lot of magazines.”

  “Perhaps. But you also have a gift for service, for anticipating a guest’s needs. And you wrangle even the most offensive requests with modesty and discretion.”

  I’d learned how to do all of this when I’d been Rebecca because I’d picked up on how the world worked. People who were born rich often never appreciated their own good luck and could become helpless because they always assumed that someone would be trailing them to pick up, launder and return their discarded socks, and to remember their PIN numbers and raise their children. Sometimes these heirs and heiresses weren’t being snooty, they just didn’t know any better. And self-made people who’d worked their way up from nothing could be especially generous because they remembered where they came from, or monumentally unpleasant because they were out for revenge. At the Royal Criterion I was professionally nice to everyone but I’d smile more sincerely at the people who looked me in the eye as they said thank you or who remembered my name, or even both my names. I tried to recall if Rebecca had ever carried on like the people whom Mr. Taldecott referred to as Challenges and whom the assistants called, among ourselves, RTAs, for Raging Total Assholes.

  “Becky, at the hotel, as you know, it will ordinarily take an assistant concierge at least five years of unblemished employment, without a single day’s absence, even to be considered for advancement to the position of deputy concierge.”

  There were, at any given time, eight assistant concierges working in shifts and only two deputies. If Mr. Taldecott was either ill or absent, neither of which had ever occurred during his thirty-one years at the hotel, one of the deputies would assume his duties. I suspected that Mr. Taldecott pictured himself dying while behind the front desk, of a silent, tidy stroke, which would permit him to slump graciously out of sight while one of the deputies ste
pped artfully over his body and asked the next guest, “How may I be of assistance?” The deputies were also the only employees, aside from Mr. Taldecott, who were authorized to interact with the most valued and powerful guests.

  “Becky, in all my years of service, I’ve never come across anyone with your natural abilities. And so, if you continue to perform at this remarkable level, by the end of the year I will consider advancing you to the rank of Second Deputy.”

  I was stunned because aside from having worked behind the registers at the Super Shop-A-Lot and the Valu-Brite and having been the Most Beautiful Woman Who Ever Lived, I’d never really held a job let alone done something that anyone thought I was good at. As my days at the hotel continued I found that Rebecca had taught me many useful things, but mostly I drew on her confidence. Because while I no longer owned her staggering physical assets or her wardrobe, I always remembered how she’d walk into a room or onto a soundstage or the deck of a yacht, as if she had every right to be there, and as if she knew what she was doing. So sometimes, when Mr. Taldecott sent me on an impossible errand, like when I had to knock on the door of an eighty-million-dollar-a-year NFL quarterback’s room, after a neighboring guest had reported a horse’s whinny, a wailing baby and gunshots, I’d tell myself, I can handle this, because I am Rebecca Randle, sort of.

  Rocher had also been hired, subbing on street corners all over town, at the portable pegboard walls and rickety card tables that sold five-dollar fake cashmere scarves and imitation designer-label purses, along with knitted hats and printed rayon shawls, all stitched by child laborers in Third World countries. These rolling and folding merchandise marts were almost never licensed and could be assembled or collapsed in seconds to avoid citations and arrests. Most of the men and women who staffed these stands were incredibly hardworking illegal immigrants, who lived eighteen to a room in the outer boroughs, but who sometimes had to abandon their goods to avoid getting deported. This was when Marcus, the guy who controlled over fifty of the stands, would text Rocher, so she could show up, protect the bogus pashminas, and woo Bible study groups from Akron and bridal parties in town for the weekend from Kyoto into purchasing, hopefully in bulk, “glamorous boutique-type items with a real Fifth Avenue look,” either for themselves, “because you never do anything nice just for you,” or for “that special someone back home, who’ll just die for these 100 percent cashmere-style earmuffs.” Marcus loved Rocher because not only was she a born salesperson, she also liked working outdoors, she was fast on her feet and she probably wouldn’t get deported back to Missouri.