Beautiful You (3 page)

Penny started to explain the situation, but caught herself. The world’s richest man had asked her to dinner tonight. He’d suggested eight o’clock at Chez Romaine, the most exclusive eatery in the city. Perhaps in the world. People reserved tables years in advance. Years! He’d even agreed to meet her there. No way did Penny want him to see the sixth-floor-walk-up, one-bedroom she shared with her two roommates. Of course, she was busting, absolutely dying to tell someone. Good news didn’t seem real until you’d told at least a dozen friends. But this suspicious stranger in the dress department of Bonwit Teller would never believe her. Such an incredible story would only serve to confirm the impression that Penny was a homeless nut job, here to waste the associate’s valuable time.

A fly landed on the tip of her nose, and Penny shooed it off. She willed herself to calm down. She wasn’t a lunatic. And she wasn’t going to run away. Smoothing the fear from her voice, she said, “I’d like to see this season’s Dolce and Gabbana wrap gown, the one with the shirred waist.”

As if testing her, the associate narrowed her eyes and asked, “In crepe chiffon?”

“In satin,” Penny countered quickly. “With the asymmetrical hemline.” All those long waits in the grocery checkout line had paid off yet again. The dress she had in mind was the one Jennifer Lopez had worn on the red carpet at last year’s Oscars.

The woman scrutinized her body and asked, “Size fourteen?”

“Size ten,” Penny shot back. She knew houseflies were landing in her hair, but she wore them like they were Tahitian black pearls.

The associate disappeared in search of the dress. Penny almost prayed she wouldn’t come back. This was crazy. She’d never spent more than fifty dollars on a dress, and the one she’d asked to see couldn’t cost less than five thousand bucks. A few keystrokes on her phone showed she had that much available on her credit limit. If she charged the dress, wore it for two hours during dinner, and returned it in the morning, she’d have a story she could tell for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t allow herself to imagine anything beyond tonight. Tonight was a gamble. A longshot. Cornelius Maxwell was renowned for his gallant gestures. That was the only way to explain this. He’d seen her humiliated on the carpet in front of her furious boss, and he was trying to salvage her pride. It was chivalrous, really.

From what Penny had read in the tabloids, Cornelius Maxwell was famous for his chivalry.

Their backgrounds weren’t all that different. He’d been born in Seattle to a single mother who’d worked as a nurse. His dream had always been to someday support her in high style, but his mom had been killed in the crash of a bus. When it happened Cornelius had been a graduate student at the University of Washington. A year later, he’d founded DataMicroCom in his dorm room. A year after that he’d be among the wealthiest entrepreneurs in the world.

Among the glamorous women first linked with him had been Clarissa Hind, an unlikely candidate for the New York state senate. With his financial backing and political connections, she’d won. Before her first term was complete, she’d set her sights on becoming the youngest senator the state had ever elected to Washington, D.C. It didn’t hurt that the media idolized
the couple: the statuesque junior senator and the maverick high-tech billionaire. Between his money and her determination, she won by a landslide. Fast-forward to three years ago, when Clarissa Hind had fulfilled not just her own dreams but the dreams of millions of American women. She’d been elected the first female president of the United States.

Throughout it all Corny Maxwell had stumped tirelessly on her behalf, always praising her, always supporting her in public and private. But the two had never married. A miscarriage was rumored. There was even gossip that she’d asked him to be her running mate, but once the election was over, they’d issued a joint press release to announce that they were dissolving their relationship. Sharing the podium at a press conference, the madam president-elect and her dashing consort had affirmed their continued affection and respect for each other, but their romance was complete.

Penny knew that such success involved hard work and sacrifice, but the paparazzi photos made it look seamless and effortless. President Hind had been her inspiration for becoming a lawyer. Dared she dream? What if Corny Maxwell was looking for a new protégée? It wasn’t impossible that he saw some innate potential in her. Tonight might be an audition, and if she passed it then Penny Harrigan might find herself being groomed to take a major role on the world stage. She was about to enter the world’s most exclusive sorority.

Her reverie was interrupted by a large housefly buzzing into her mouth. There, daydreaming in the dress department of Bonwit Teller, Penny began to cough and hack.

It was just as well. She was getting too carried away with her fantasy, and the future had a way of breaking your heart if you expected too much. Just look at C. Linus Maxwell, who smiled through one failed romance after another. Following Clarissa, he’d been involved with a member of the British royal family. A
princess, no less, and not one of the ugly, inbred ones. She was no slouch. Princess Gwendolyn was beautiful. She was third in the line of succession, only two heartbeats away from becoming the queen. Again, it seemed like an ideal match of European aristocracy and Yankee high-tech know-how. The world waited for them to set a date. When the king had been felled by an anarchist’s bullet, it was Corny who supported the weeping princess at her father’s funeral. And when a freak accident, a plummeting satellite of all things, had killed the heir apparent, Gwendolyn’s brother, her coronation was assured.

By all rights Corny Maxwell should be a prince living the high life in Buckingham Palace, but history repeated itself. The tycoon and the aristocrat had parted amicably.

Twice he’d sidestepped marriage to one of the most powerful women in the world.

If you believed rumors, he felt threatened by women whose status began to rival his own. The tabloids despised him. But Penny suspected, as did most people, that C. Linus Maxwell would forever be an orphan still looking for the lost mother on whom he could shower his adoration and riches.

None of Maxwell’s ex-flames seemed the worse for their love affair with him. Clarissa Hind had vaulted from shy political neophyte to leader of the free world. Gwendolyn had been something of a heifer, pretty but overweight; during their relationship she’d slimmed down, and the royal had been a fashion plate ever since. Even Alouette had struggled with her own demons. The tabloids were full of her drunken, drug-addled misadventures. Maxwell had gotten her clean. His love had accomplished something that a dozen court-ordered addiction treatment programs had not.

There in Bonwit Teller, Penny’s phone began to vibrate. It was Monique. No longer carping about chairs, Monique had texted, “CALL ME!” Everyone at BB&B must’ve heard
the news by now. A part of Penny wished no one had found out. It was going to be embarrassing to be linked in people’s minds with President Hind and Queen Gwendolyn and Alouette D’Ambrosia. Penny surfed her memory for the romances that had occurred in the interim. There had been the Nobel Prize–winning poetess. The heiress to a Japanese steel fortune. The newspaper chain baroness. To date, none of their feet had fit the glass slipper. Penny tried not to think about it, but what she did between this moment and midnight might determine the rest of her life.

Before she could respond to Monique’s text, the sales associate had returned. A swath of red chiffon was draped over her arm. One penciled eyebrow arched skeptically, she crooned, “Here you are … a size ten.” She motioned for Penny to follow her toward the dressing room.

President Penny Harrigan. Mrs. C. Linus Maxwell
. Her mind reeled. In tomorrow’s
Post
her name would be set in boldface among the celebrity names on Page Six. Tomorrow, this snooty woman would know she wasn’t a liar. Everyone in the city would know her name.

Whatever the case, she’d wear this dress very, very carefully.

It was three o’clock. Dinner was at eight. There was still time to have her legs waxed, her hair done, and to telephone her parents. Maybe that would help make the situation seem more real.

Scurrying after the saleslady, Penny asked nervously, “You do offer a full money-back return policy, don’t you?” And she crossed her fingers that the zipper would go all the way up.

Kwan Qxi and Esperanza were the ideal roommates with whom to share a cramped studio apartment in Jackson Heights.
Months earlier, as Penny’s mom had helped her pack for the big cross-country move to New York, the wise older woman had sagely insisted, “Get a Chinese and some kind of Latin to share the lease.”

Penelope’s folks might sound, at times, like backward, race-baiting monsters, but they really had their daughter’s best interests at heart. In a multicultural, racially diverse household, they reasoned, there was less chance of girls poaching one another’s makeup. Cosmetics were expensive, and sharing them could spread deadly staph infections. This was sensible advice. Herpes and bedbugs were everywhere. Theirs were salt-of-the-earth words to live by.

Despite her parents’ corn-fed good intentions, the three young roomies from a trio of widely divergent cultures had had more in common than they’d ever imagined. In no time they’d been sharing their clothes, their secrets, even their contact lenses. Not much was declared off-limits. So far, this casual familiarity hadn’t been a problem.

Esperanza was a fiery high-breasted Latina whose dark eyes sparked with mischief. She often feigned exasperation over the simplest tasks—changing a lightbulb, for instance, or washing a dish—shouting,
“Ay, caramba!”
because such a patently stereotypical outburst never failed to make Penny bray with laughter. Clearly, she wasn’t too uptight to poke fun at herself. The fact that Esperanza could toss a gaily embroidered sombrero onto the living room floor and then stomp a lively hat dance around the brim proved that she’d evolved far into the post–politically correct future of personal identity.

Kwan Qxi, so quiet, so implacable, Kwan Qxi was the counterpoint to the hot-tempered señorita. The Asian moved soundlessly about the crowded apartment, dusting the baseboards … trimming her bonsai … folding the trailing end of the toilet paper roll into origami surprises for the next user, in
general always transforming chaos into order. Her placid face and manner acted as a balm on Penny. Her dense curtain of dark hair was a wonder compared with the frizzy, doo-wop ponytail that Penny wore most days.

In the final hours before the dinner at Chez Romaine, Penny begged both girls to contribute their best skills to perfecting her appearance. From Esperanza, she wanted eyelids painted to glow like Havana sunsets. From Kwan Qxi, she wanted hair that hung like great harvest sheaves of heavy silk. Her roommates pitched in tirelessly, coddling her like flower girls attending to an anxious bride. Together, they primped and dressed her.

Resplendent in the gown, Penny was a vision. To complete her look, Kwan Qxi had unearthed an elegant pendant. It was bright green jade carved into the shape of a dragon, with two pearls for its eyes. A true family heirloom. Esperanza dug out her own favorite earrings, each shaped like a tiny, rhinestone-encrusted piñata. Whether or not her roomies accepted her story about dinner with the world’s richest man, both girls were teary-eyed at the sight of Penny’s stylish transformation.

Someone buzzed from the street door. The taxicab they’d ordered had arrived and was waiting.

At the last moment, Penny held her breath and went to retrieve a small, gray plastic box she’d long ago hidden in the bathroom. The box held her diaphragm.
An ounce of prevention
. She hadn’t needed it since the winter formal, her senior year as an undergraduate. Still searching the bathroom cabinets, she wondered whether such a long period of disuse might’ve damaged the birth control device. Would the latex have dried out and become brittle, like condoms were known to do? Might it have cracked? Or worse, would it have grown furry with mold? She snatched the gray box from the jumble in a drawer and held her breath as she opened it. The box was empty.

Tapping her foot in mock outrage, Penny confronted the
two girls in the kitchen. She held the empty box like an accusation. Printed on its label was her name, Penelope Harrigan, and the name and address of her family practitioner in Omaha. Placing the box on the counter, next to the rusted, cheese-encrusted toaster oven, she announced, “I’m going to shut off the lights and count to ten, okay?” The faces of both girls were unreadable. Neither blushed nor sheepishly evaded her gaze. “No questions asked,” she said. A swipe of the wall switch plunged the room into pitch darkness. She began counting.

A faint, wet sound was followed by a gasp. A giggle.

Penny counted, “… eight, nine, ten.” The lights blazed, revealing the open box, filled with a familiar pink shape. The diaphragm glistened, fresh and dewy, beaded with someone’s healthy vaginal moisture. Clinging to it was a single tightly curled pubic hair. Penny made a mental note to rinse the thing off if she’d need to use it later in the evening.

It never failed. The taxi was late getting to Chez Romaine. Traffic had been backed up in the tunnel, and it was impossible to get a cell phone signal. That was just as well. The cabbie kept glancing in the rearview mirror, saying he was sorry. Saying she looked terrific.

Penny knew he was only being nice. For as much money as she’d spent that afternoon, Penny told herself, she’d darn well better look good. To the saleslady’s chagrin the dress had fit perfectly, hugging her young body. Her new Prada shoes, another last-minute splurge, also looked amazing. But Penny was sensible enough to realize that she’d never be a ravishing beauty.

At least there were no dirty houseflies buzzing around her. That was an improvement. Anything was an improvement over living in the Midwest.

Nebraska had never been a good fit for Penny. As a young woman in Omaha, or even when she was a small girl growing up in Shippee, Penny had always felt like an outsider. For one thing, she’d looked nothing like her sturdy, pear-shaped, splayfooted mom and dad. Where they were densely freckled and ginger-haired members of the Irish Diaspora, Penny had a peaches-and-cream complexion. As pale as birch bark. They’d both thought she was crazy for kiting off to New York City.