Power & Beauty

by Ritz, David

  “Pretty good,” I said. “My mom was a bookkeeper and into them early on. She had me and my sister fooling with computers since we were real small. I’m comfortable with all the basic programs.”

  “Great. Then you’ll be a quick learner. I’ll show you how we inventory the models, the magazines, the art directors, the casting directors for videos—the whole gamut of buyers.”

  “Great.”

  “But I must warn you—the women can be a problem.”

  “I can imagine,” I said.

  “Here’s our first problem coming through the door right now.”

  It was Mi. She came on a day that Sugar was away in New York. She was dressed in another one of those pleated pantsuits, this one with a pattern of purple sunbursts that matched the purple tint of her hair. She was stunning. With the exception of Beauty, she was the most fashionable woman I had ever seen. Her vibe seemed sad. I felt something was wrong. Her friend Yuko hurried into the office a few seconds later. She was holding two Starbucks coffees, one for herself and one for Mi. The two women faced Mrs. Vine and myself. There was a wall of windows behind us. Outside the sky was cloudy and across the street the Atlantic Ocean looked gray and angry. The waves were rough.

  “I think that Mi . . .” said Yuko in faltering English. “I think she wants home.”

  “You mean she wants to go home?” asked Mrs. Vine.

  “She not happy here,” said Yuko.

  Mi caught me staring at her. She smiled and looked away.

  “We have a photo shoot set for her tomorrow,” Mrs. Vine explained. “It’s a cover shoot for Luxury Living. It’s an important magazine.”

  “Yes, we know,” said Yuko as Mi gazed out the window. She seemed to be studying the mysterious sea. “But this is not her . . . not her comfortable.”

  “You mean she’s not comfortable in Miami Beach?” asked Mrs. Vine.

  “Not comfortable here, no. She wants home,” Yuko repeated.

  “But we paid her fare from Tokyo. The fare wasn’t cheap. And we have a contract.”

  “Contract no good in Japan,” Yuko explained. “America no good for Mi.”

  “She’s only been here a few days,” said Mrs. Vine. “She needs to give it a chance. We have a considerable investment in her. And Luxury Living’s art director has already chosen her. Besides that, we have three other shoots set up. She can’t go home.”

  Yuko quickly translated Mrs. Vine’s words for Mi, who sat there and said nothing. For an uncomfortably long time we all sat there in silence. Then tears started streaming down Mi’s face. Mrs. Vine handed her a tissue. I surprised myself by speaking up.

  “Maybe we should give her a little time,” I said to Yuko. “I know she’s scared. Miami Beach is kind of a scary place. But maybe today isn’t a good day for making a decision. Maybe tomorrow will be better.”

  Yuko translated my words while Mi looked at me with curiosity. Why was I saying those things? Why should I care? Then she said something to Yuko, who in turn said to me, “She is thanking you for your niceness. She is saying that she likes the ocean. The ocean is comfortable.”

  “Does she want to take a walk along the ocean?” I asked.

  Yuko asked Mi, who nodded yes.

  “Make yourself useful,” said Mrs. Vine to me. “Take her for a walk and convince her to meet her obligations.”

  “I have appointment too soon,” said Yuko. “I cannot go for walk.”

  “Let these two go for a walk,” Mrs. Vine said. “Let this gentleman from Georgia introduce her to the healing properties of the Atlantic Ocean.”

  Mi and I left together. We walked out in silence and remained in silence. It was strange. I’d never been with a woman who didn’t know my language. At first it was awkward and then it became something else. I’m not sure what to call it, but we were speaking without words, communicating without sound. It made me wonder—what the hell were we doing? I found myself remembering the connection between two characters in one of my favorite Sister Souljah books. When I had read the scene, I thought, This is bullshit; no two people could bond so tight without a common language. Yet that very thing was happening with me and this woman.

  Mi led the way across the street to the ocean. She rolled up the bottom of her crinkly pants. I rolled up the bottom of my jeans. We took off our shoes and socks, left them on a bench, and stepped out on the cool sand. It felt great. It felt sexy. I looked down her at toes and saw that her toenails were polished the same purple tint of her hair and pantsuit. She saw me noticing and smiled. I followed her across the sand to the water’s edge. The wash of the waves came up under our feet. She giggled and leaped a little in the air. Her mood was completely different from before; now she seemed actually carefree. She started skipping along the beach like a little girl. I skipped along with her. I felt silly, but I also felt good. She began running and I ran beside her. We ran at a slow, easy pace. We ran at the same rhythm. The cool breeze in my face and the fresh smell of the salty ocean kept my energy high. After the run, we walked far up the beach. We walked for miles, still not saying a word. How could we? She couldn’t understand me and I couldn’t understand her and yet we did understand. We knew what was going on.

  We turned around and walked back as a few small rays of sun were busting through the clouds. The weather was warming. I wanted to reach over and hold her hand, but I didn’t. I figured it’d be better for her to reach over first. She didn’t. She just kept on walking, but every once in a while she looked in my direction with a beautiful smile covering her face. I couldn’t say she was prettier than Beauty—to me Beauty was the perfect combination of black and Asian—but Mi was definitely gorgeous, and while she had me thinking of Beauty, I could see her in her own light.

  When we finally arrived at the point where we’d started this long walk, we went to the bench to get our shoes. They were gone. Someone had stolen them. I was pissed but Mi just laughed and pointed to a shoe shop across the street called Flying Feet. They mainly sold sneakers, but I found a pair of sandals and Mi bought a pair of funky flip-flops in a purplish pink.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked in slowed-down English. I pointed to my stomach.

  “Yes, yes,” she said.

  We went to Prime One Twelve, a hip restaurant on Ocean Drive just down the street from Sugar’s Shack. Sade was playing over the speakers. Mi looked at the menu and shrugged. I ordered a salmon salad for her and a sirloin steak sandwich for me. Sitting there, waiting for the food, I started asking her real simple questions, like “Do you have sisters and brothers?” and “Have you lived in Tokyo your whole life?” but I wasn’t getting across. When she asked me questions in her slowed-down Japanese, I didn’t do any better. We wound up just laughing at each other.

  She liked her salad as well as the mango sherbet I ordered for dessert. I paid the check and she thanked me in English. We got up to leave, but where were we going? She just started walking and I followed. We walked to a park and then over to Washington Avenue, where we saw a bunch of interesting old-time architecture from way back in the day. There was a yellow building called the Jewish Museum of Florida that caught my eye. It had colored windows and fancy doors. For a second I was startled: An old man walking up the stairs looked like Irv Wasserman. I could have sworn it was Irv, but by the time I got closer for a better look he’d gone inside. I thought about going in there to see if it was really him but changed my mind. A lot of old guys in Miami Beach looked like Irv. Besides, why would Irv be in Florida going to some museum? I stuck by Mi’s side. We kept walking; we walked for hours, stopping to look in the windows of the trendy boutiques, going into Starbucks for a coffee—Mi had green tea—pausing at a newsstand, where she bought a Japanese magazine.

  By five o’clock, I was exhausted. Mi had to be tired as well. We’d been on the move for hours. She had canvassed South Beach from top to bottom. We must have walked fifteen miles. Where to now?

  We found ourselves back at Sugar’s Shack.

  “Is this where y
ou are staying?” I asked her, knowing she couldn’t understand me. I presumed she was. Sugar kept rooms for many of the out-of-town models.

  Mi smiled and attempted her first words to me in English. “You . . . you nice man.”

  “You,” I said, “are a beautiful woman. A very beautiful woman.”

  I wanted to go to her room. I wanted her. I’d been wanting her since I first saw her. She was the one woman who could chase Beauty from my mind—or maybe bring Beauty to my mind. It didn’t matter. I just wanted her.

  She pushed the button for the elevator. We waited for it to arrive. It took a while. We got on. She pressed the button for the eighth floor. My room was on the ninth. I didn’t press 9. When the doors opened, she stepped off the elevator, turned to me, and said, “Domo arigato. Thanks to you.”

  By the way she quickly separated herself from me, I got the message. I was about to say, “Can I call you later?” or “Can we have dinner tonight?” But there was no time. The door closed. Mi was gone.

  I went to my room feeling frustrated. My room was tiny and the only window overlooked the back alley. I wanted to see the ocean, I wanted to walk along the ocean with Mi. Mi was only a floor below me. I could go down there and knock on the door, but I knew that would make her uncomfortable. If she wanted me in her room, she wouldn’t have stepped off the elevator so suddenly. She liked me—I knew she liked me—but she wasn’t ready. All these other chicks floating around Sugar’s Shack had shown me they were ready. Some of them were ready before I was. But Mi, the one I wanted, wanted to wait. Maybe that’s why I wanted her; maybe it wasn’t just because she reminded me of Beauty, maybe it was because she had this special thing about her. She wasn’t easy. Wasn’t eager. She was soft and mysterious, and oh, man, the thought of what she looked like as she slipped off her clothes, as she stepped out of the shower, as she stretched in bed . . . those thoughts were driving me up the wall when my cell phone blew up. It was Mrs. Vine.

  “Well, you obviously did a wonderful selling job,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yuko just called to say that Mi has decided to stay. You made her comfortable. Or maybe you just made her.”

  “I didn’t. We just walked.”

  “Whatever you did, it worked. I called Sugar and let him know. He’s delighted. His flight from New York lands at eight and he wants you, Mi, and Yuko to meet him for dinner at Tropical Deco at ten. Do you know where it is?”

  “I can find it. Should I pick up the girls and take them with me?”

  “Yuko said that she and Mi had something to do beforehand. They’ll just meet you there.”

  I was buzzed. I was buzzed out of my fuckin’ mind! Mi was staying. I could honestly say that Mi was my client. Since Sugar’s agency was representing her, and I was working for Sugar, Sugar would be crazy not to give me responsibility for her. After all, I was the reason she was staying here. According to Mrs. Vine, she was one of the hottest new-look fashion-forward models out there—and there was loads of work for her in all the best magazines. I was her agent, I was her man; I saw myself accompanying her to all her appointments, all her photo shoots. I’d go with her everywhere.

  By nine thirty I was dressed and ready to go. I put on a shirt of black shiny cotton with the buttons running diagonally down the front. The thin tab collar was white. Because it was made by Comme des Garçons, a Japanese label, I thought Mi would notice it. It felt a little strange on me—I wasn’t used to wearing clothes this edgy—but I figured what the hell. Mi would like it.

  Mi and Yuko were already at the table when I arrived at Tropical Deco. The place was designed to look like Miami Beach in the twenties and thirties. Very old-time, lots of fancy gold-framed paintings of starry nights and sunsets on the walls, cane tables and cane chairs, light fixtures that looked like something your old aunt might have in her house. I guess you could say it was retro trendy. The crowd was super-trendy, no one over thirty-five. The men looked rich, the women looked beautiful, and Mi looked more beautiful than all of them. As I approached her, she broke into a broad smile. I bent down and kissed her on the cheek. I wasn’t sure whether this was done in Japan or not. Maybe I should have bowed, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to kiss her. Just to cover my bases, I kissed Yuko as well. She was a little surprised. Compared to the other women at Tropical Deco, Mi and Yuko were understated. Yuko was dressed in deep black and Mi in pure white.

  “Y’all look like a matching set,” I said to Yuko, who translated my words for Mi. Mi laughed and said something back.

  “She says,” said Yuko, “we are salt and pepper.”

  “And what does that make me?” I asked.

  Through Yuko, Mi’s answer was, “You are sweet as sugar.”

  “There’s only one Sugar,” said the man himself, who arrived in another Akoo outfit, this one a flaming red fleece hoodie and baggy black jeans. “And this Sugar is ready to party.”

  He gave me a hug before kissing both Yuko and Mi on the lips. They were a little taken aback—I knew Sugar was being too forward with them—but Sugar was the boss and the boss was in a good mood. The boss was buying Dom Perignon champagne; the boss was buying steak and lobster; the boss was telling us nonstop stories about all the editors and art directors he’d met in New York, all the new models he’d seen, and how the Renato Ruiz Agency was the talk of the industry.

  The talk went on all during dinner—Sugar’s talk, because no one else could or even wanted to get a word in. Sugar was talking about his plans to make his agency the biggest in the world. He was talking about opening offices in New York and L.A. and then Europe—first Paris, then Milan. Yuko struggled to keep up with his talk as she hurriedly translated for Mi, but I could tell she was always about two sentences behind. Mi tried to look interested, but it was obvious that she wasn’t. A little Latin band was playing music with a Caribbean groove, and, taking a chance, I asked Mi if she’d like to dance. Yuko relayed my request to her friend and Mi said yes.

  I could see that she felt the music. We didn’t dance close. I knew to keep my distance. There was some touching—I touched her hand, I touched her waist, I gently grazed her arm. But mainly we were moving to the groove, reading each other’s rhythms like we did when we were walking. Without talking, without thinking, we were in sync. The groove was beautiful, the groove was easy, the groove was bringing us closer together. Without saying it, without knowing a word of her language, the words were loud and clear. I could read the words in her eyes: “Tonight’s the night.”

  When the band hit a slow jam, we stayed on the floor and I brought her close to me. I held her tight. The song was in Spanish. The song had to be about love. It had to be about desire. My desire was hard. I pressed her into me so she could feel how much I wanted her. She didn’t back off. She moved even closer. Mi was mine, I was hers, it was happening. I closed my eyes as the music had us dancing on a cloud. I thought of Beauty; I thought of Mi; I thought of Beauty; I thought of Mi. It didn’t matter. Beauty was far away, living in a world I knew nothing about. Mi was here. Mi was in my arms.

  We went back to the table, where Yuko and Sugar were sipping champagne and laughing out loud. It was a great night all around. Lots of people came up to greet Sugar, to compliment him about this or that. He seemed to know everyone in South Beach. He had good manners. He never forgot to introduce us to his friends. I didn’t care that he called me his assistant. I was happy to hear him describe Mi as his hottest signing.

  The band was on break, and we’d been sitting around the table for several minutes when a brown-skinned young dude with a pencil-thin mustache and flipped-around Florida Marlins baseball cap came over to say hi. He was wearing baggy jeans and a blood-red silk shirt unbuttoned halfway down to show off his pecs. Given the powerful look of his upper body, I figured he lived in the gym. I guessed he was my age, nineteen or maybe twenty.

  By then Sugar was a little tipsy. He glanced up at this dude, who said something to him in Spanish, and, just like that,
Sugar’s eyes turned from friendly to frantic. Something clicked in Sugar’s brain. As the dude reached into his pocket, Sugar leaped up and violently turned over the table—dishes and ice and forks and knives and bottles flying everywhere—hitting the dude in the hand that was now holding a .45 pointed at Sugar’s head. Next thing I knew, gunshots were ringing past my ear, I’d been thrown on the floor by the overturned table, I was under the table, and so was Yuko, and people were screaming, more shots were fired, someone stepped on my hand, pain shot up my arm, but all I was thinking was, Where’s Mi? Where’s Mi?, when I turned my head to see Sugar on the floor, his arm bleeding, while the dude with the gun was running out the door. Trying to get up from under the table, I was desperately looking around for Mi. I couldn’t see her. I called for her and got no answer, but with people crying and yelling and running in every direction, I couldn’t be sure that she wasn’t up and running too until I myself managed to get up. That’s when I saw her. She was slumped over in the chair where she had been seated between me and Sugar when one of the bullets meant for Sugar had hit her in the chest, had ripped through her heart, her white dress covered in blood, her eyes closed, her body limp, no breath, no life left inside her, nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing . . .

  Get Back Up, Got Your Back

  The songs kept playing in my mind. I heard the songs in all the clubs. One was called “Get Back Up,” the other “Got Your Back.” I kept going to the clubs when Sugar kept saying, “Get back up, I got your back.” I pretended to be okay, but I wasn’t. The last few weeks had been a blur. The last weeks brought back all the pain of losing my mother—and losing Beauty as well. This time I lost someone I had just met, someone I barely knew, and yet the pain was so strong that sometimes I woke up at night unable to breathe. I felt myself choking on pain.