Beautiful You (18 page)

In the background, a matronly woman’s voice asked, “Honey? Who’s calling so late?”

“It’s no one,” he shouted away from the receiver. “Just work. I might have to run into the office for a few hours.”

After she gave her address in a breathless purr, Penny hung up and ran to her wardrobe. She ransacked the enormous closets, looking for the most scandalous negligee. On a shopping spree in Paris she’d collected dozens of lurid teddies and nighties, hoping one would spur lust in Maxwell. None had. But this evening she selected a narrow strip of marabou feathers which had been artfully dyed dark purple. The way it was worn, it trailed down her otherwise nude torso, leaving her breasts exposed and only partially obscuring her vulva.

With moments remaining before Brillstein arrived, she turned on the chandelier in the town house foyer and took a position that would allow its light to throw her shadow against the inside of the frosted-glass front door. Waiting there, she undulated her hips in a way that would make her shadow look enticing from the street.

She stood undulating in ludicrously high heels—another purchase she’d hoped would pique Max’s lust. Her trap was set. The doorbell rang:
ding-dong
.

“It’s open,” Penny called in as sultry a voice as she could muster.

Brillstein shouldered his way inside, panting as if he’d run every step of the way. Catching sight of her in her marabou splendor, he smacked his wrinkled lips with great gusto and said, “Well, just as I suspected … It is a spicy little whore, after all.”

Penny sidestepped his lunge. Luring him through the spacious rooms, she allowed her hands to roam up and down the silken curves of her body. “Oh, Mr. Brillstein, oh!” She giggled and dodged another grab. “How long I’ve wanted this to happen!”

The foolish lecher was already discarding his overcoat, his
shirt, his pants. He trailed her around sofas and tables, always a step too late to snatch at her young, supple skin.

Baiting him, Penny asked coyly, “Are you working on behalf of Maxwell?” She giggled and flitted away.

Brillstein smirked. He wiped drool from his lips with the back of one discolored hand. A cat ready to munch on a very sexy canary.

Sulking, pretending to be offended, Penny evaded yet another grab and asked, “How did you know so many details about Max’s notes?”

His Brooks Brothers boxer shorts were tented in her direction, and his porcine, hairy hips were already bucking in helpless anticipation. His withered buttocks clenched, thrusting his engorged groin. Frustrated little growls rose from his throat. “Let me catch you,” he promised, “and I’ll tell you everything.”

She led him upstairs to her bedroom. There she feigned arousal, mewing and wriggling in the same counterfeit way that had enraged Maxwell. Brillstein didn’t seem to notice that her heart rate remained flat. Neither did she sweat. He climbed atop her on the bed and bullied her legs apart. Shucking his undershorts, he made no pretense of giving her pleasure. A trickle of clear slime dripped from his erection as he stroked it against her. Smearing this discharge against her hairless skin, he crooned, “So smooth! So
smooth
!”

He merely spit on his hand and applied this sickening gob of saliva to her. He was having some difficulty hitting a moving target, so Penny stilled her loins a moment as he entered.

Giving a single shove, he drove his full length into her. She gripped handfuls of his wasted flesh and tightened her hold in preparation for the worst. All this time, she was praying that her theory was correct.

It was. Before he could withdraw for his second thrust, Brillstein
began to bellow like a knife-stuck Nebraskan hog. He thrashed to escape, but her strong fingers held his flesh firmly between her legs. Whatever it was, something within her was hurting him, and Brillstein begged to be released. His spotted hands pushed and slapped at her, but Penny held tight.

“Tell me!” she demanded, driving her hips upward to keep him well inside her vaginal torture chamber. “Tell me what Maxwell is doing!”

Brillstein howled. Whatever Max had planted within her, it was doing its guard-dog duty.

“Did he have anything to do with Alouette’s death?” she demanded. “Did he kill her because of the palimony suit?”

“Yes,” Brillstein screamed. “You’re hurting me!”

Shouting directly into his red, straining face, Penny demanded, “Does this have anything to do with Beautiful You?”

“I don’t know!” He sobbed, twitching as if swarms of hornets were stinging his buried manhood.

If he was bleeding inside of her, Penny didn’t care. Her best friend and her precious mother were in danger. Millions of women were threatened. Continuing her inquisition, grilling him the way he’d grilled her at the deposition, she demanded, “What is Maxwell’s evil plan?”

“I don’t know!” he wailed piteously.

At this, she released her deathlike grip on his sweat-soaked butt, and the weeping senior partner threw himself from her embrace. Bleeding copiously, through gritted teeth he said, “Maybe your IUD or something’s slipped.”

Stepping to the bathroom for rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs, Penny couldn’t help but feel vindicated. Brillstein’s small confession had confirmed her worst suspicions. There actually was a conspiracy. When she doused his damaged privates with the harsh antiseptic, her boss screamed and screamed. His blood still streaming down the insides of her thighs, she
yanked a suitcase from her walk-in closet and began packing it with Vera Wang. At the same time she ordered her phone, “Siri, lease me a jet from JFK to Nepal, with one connection through Omaha, Nebraska. For when? For tonight!”

Before fleeing her town house, Penny had shoved her boss out the front door naked and bleeding, his clothes bundled in his arms. She’d also gone to Monique’s locked door and knocked, saying, “Mo? Can you hear me?” She began sliding blueberry Pop-Tarts through the crack at the bottom. “Eat something,” she urged. “Try to stay hydrated. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

Her only answer was the familiar muted buzzing that had resonated from the bedroom for days.

As she raced through the concourse at JFK she noted, distractedly, that she saw no other women. From the ticket agents to the travelers, everyone was male. By all appearances women had ceased to exist in the public sphere.

To avoid drawing the focus of hostile men—New York City was turning into a sexual powder keg!—she’d prudently dressed in a vintage Yves Saint Laurent pantsuit. The look was a touch mannish, especially when paired with a ribbed white turtleneck that minimized the appearance of her stunning bustline. She’d coiled her abundant hair beneath a knitted watch cap, and wore no more than a smudge of sparkling lip gloss. Walking, she rolled her shoulders and affected a brusque swagger. If she caught the eye of a passing stranger she’d look like nothing more than a hip young sailor on shore leave.

Whoever it was at BB&B who had leaked word of the pending lawsuit to President Hind, that same source had apparently slipped the news to the tabloid media. At airport newsstands, the headlines blared: “Cinderella Penny Harrigan Invents Sex
Toys!” Front-page stories detailed her claims that her erogenous zones had perfected the Beautiful You carnal gadgetry. To accompany the story, each newspaper ran a photo of Penny’s head sunk into a white satin pillow. Her crossed eyes and the slack tongue hanging out of her mouth confirmed that these photos were screen captures from the video Max had shot in Paris. The images were astoundingly sexy, but they hardly made her look like the ergonomic genius the tabloids claimed her to be.

Seated safely in the plush cabin of a chartered jet, Penny propped open her laptop and began to surf. It took only a few headlines to buttress her worst fears. For the first time in its history the National Organization of Women was canceling its annual conference due to lack of participants. Six weeks ago the roster had been almost filled, but in the days since Beautiful You had launched, all of the delegates had canceled their plans to attend. Some cited more personal interests they wanted to pursue. The rest claimed to be exploring alternative avenues to self-fulfillment. Whatever the case, with no active members and no conference, NOW teetered on the brink of nonexistence. Likewise, when Penny phoned the national office for the League of Women Voters, a recorded message told her that the organization was experiencing a temporary staff shortage and would be closed for an indefinite period of time. The female members of the Senate and House of Representatives had missed roll call for almost a week.

Fear bloomed in Penny’s heart, but she kept on surfing.

In a seemingly unrelated story, all of the female members of the U.S. Olympic team had resigned. Every great female athlete—from field hockey players to gymnasts to figure skaters—was choosing to stay home and eschew a chance of winning the gold. Another news feature described how all of
the altos and sopranos were AWOL from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Almost 100 percent absentee rates were being reported among women in all the helping professions.

Meanwhile, according to the Web sites that reported business, the stock of DataMicroCom was sky-high. All of its subsidiaries, Beautiful You in particular, were reporting record sales.

In Omaha, a plain white van waited on the arrivals level of the airport to collect her.

“Penny,” a voice called from the driver’s seat. It was her father. His expression was puzzled as he asked, “Pen-Pen, why are you dressed like a sailor?”

The door on the side of the van slid open. A stranger crouching within shouted, “Get in, quick.” He motioned for her to hand over her suitcase, saying, “We need to go rescue your mother!”

The stranger’s name was Milo, and he was the leader of the local chapter of Promise Keepers, the chapter her dad attended. The van was Milo’s, and the back was mostly empty except for a first-aid kit, some folded blankets, and an ominous coil of nylon rope. As her father drove them through the silent late-night streets of Omaha, Milo and Penny scanned the sidewalks and alleys for the missing woman. Milo plunged the needle of a syringe through the rubber cap on a bottle and drew it full of some clear liquid. In a seedy neighborhood, they spied someone wearing a bathrobe and pushing a rattling chrome shopping cart. Her hair hung in her face. Her runny eyes were swollen. The woman’s bare legs were streaked with dirt. In the basket of the cart jiggled an assortment of soiled, dulled pink Beautiful
You products. A cardboard sign was taped to the side of the cart. Hand-lettered in black felt-tipped pen, it read: “Will Work 4 Batteries.”

“Pull up here,” Milo whispered. “Don’t spook her.”

He rolled open the side door before they’d come to a complete stop. The woman standing near the shopping cart hardly had time to register their arrival before Milo was charging toward her with a blanket spread open between his hands. He threw the blanket around her and the pair fell to the ground. The woman was screaming now, fighting Milo as he held her wrapped. He shouted, “The rope! Bring me the roll of duct tape!”

Penny cowered in the van, but her father leaped from behind the steering wheel and grabbed the coil of rope. Together, the two men trussed up the woman in the bathrobe and carried her quickly back to their vehicle. Through all of this, she was screaming, “Not without my playthings! Let me have my toys!”

Milo slid the heavy door shut and Penny’s father hit the gas, peeling rubber. Behind them the abandoned shopping cart and its sad cargo receded into the distance.

The entire abduction had taken less than ninety seconds. In the dark back of the van the kidnapped woman continued to shriek until Milo plunged the syringe into her arm.

Still breathing hard, but driving slower, her father said, “I’m sorry you had to see that, sweetheart.”

Only now did Penny recognize the sedated wretch wrapped in rope on the floor.

It was her mother.

“Look at her, the poor woman,” Milo said compassionately, as he sealed her mouth with duct tape. “We need to deprogram her.” They drove through picturesque streets and neighborhoods Penny recalled from childhood.

Her dad described how her mom had quickly spiraled into madness. He and fellow members of their church had staged
an intervention and confronted Penny’s mom about her Beautiful You compulsion, but she denied she had a problem. Tonight they were taking her home, where they could keep her tranquilized while she’d undergo a series of hypnosis and aversion therapies to help manage her self-destructive behavior.

Penny wasn’t surprised that she’d failed to recognize this ranting maniac. Her mother’s face was jaundiced and lined with exhaustion. At the family home they carefully carried the trussed body up the porch steps and through the front door. Once the patient was safely stripped of her clothing, and her wrists and ankles were tied to the bedposts of an attic bed for her own protection, Penny ventured to the basement, where her mother’s collection of
National Enquirer
s filled floor-to-ceiling shelves. Each shelf was labeled with years and months which corresponded with the back issues, but Penny didn’t have to look far. Set aside in a stack were issues that contained the facts pertaining to C. Linus Maxwell. Bless her mother, Penny thought. The beleaguered wretch had gotten this far in her research, winnowing out these precious copies from the thousands she’d hoarded over the past half century.

After fixing herself a well-deserved cup of cocoa, Penny carried the tabloid newspapers to a favorite overstuffed chair near the fireplace in the living room and began to read.

There wasn’t much new information to be gleaned. Maxwell had been born as Cornelius Linus Maxwell, January 24, 19—at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. There was no record of his father. His mother had raised him by herself. She’d had no other children.

He’d attended the University of Washington, but dropped out his junior year when his mother had been killed. It was
rumored that he’d abandoned his studies in order to apprentice to some mystic in the Himalayas. Less savory gossip placed him in far-flung brothels and covert medical facilities, where anything could be bought. Debauched sex … designer drugs … whatever the case, Corny Maxwell had disappeared for six years. Within a few months of his reappearance he’d allied himself with the youthful, ambitious Clarissa Hind.