Beautiful You (8 page)

Retrieving his recorder from the bedside table, she rewound the memory. Hitting Play, she heard, “… don’t be a prudish fool.” Penny felt like a hypocrite, but she never wanted another
human being to hear the insane gibberish that had spilled from her mouth. Again, she hit Play. This time she heard a scream.

With the shower running full-blast, she hoped Maxwell hadn’t heard it in the bathroom.

Someone was screaming in French. Not that Penny could understand French, but she could guess based on her own experience. It was Alouette under the influence of pink champagne and secret ingredients. She fast-forwarded and hit Play. “Stay with me, Penny,” the recording said.

Even as she listened, spellbound, the device in her hands issued a shrill ringtone. It wasn’t only a recorder; it was a telephone! Penny was so startled she almost dropped it; instead she tossed the phone back onto the table, where it continued to ring and ring. When she checked the caller ID it said, “Private.”

Penny leaped from the bed. She knocked at the bathroom door. “Max, it’s your phone!” She tried the knob, but it was locked. She could hear the shower, his voice singing a song she couldn’t identify. After a couple more rings, curiosity got the better of her. She put the phone to her ear and said, “Hello?”

Silence.

The bathroom door opened and Maxwell stepped out with a towel wrapped around his waist. Water dripped from his hair. At the sight of her answering his phone, his eyebrows drew together in fury, and he snapped his fingers, gesturing for her to hang up.

“Hello? Corny?” asked a voice. It was a familiar voice. A woman. “Max,” she said. “This isn’t my fault.” She pleaded, “Please don’t hurt me.”

Penny handed the phone to Maxwell. She could still hear the voice on the line talking excitedly, loudly. Begging. He put it to his ear and listened. Gradually his eyes wandered to the floor. The longer the caller talked, the more his angry expression changed to one of brooding concern.

“That shouldn’t be an issue,” he said. “The active ingredients don’t fall within any of the federal schedules for controlled or hazardous substances.” He listened, shaking his head. “Well, then appoint a new chairman to the FDA. Give that job to someone who
will
fast-track the products.”

The caller was someone Penny had seen on television. It was a voice that brought to mind a sensible, shoulder-length haircut. A blue suit. A pearl necklace. A woman speaking behind a forest of microphones.

Talking into the phone, but eyeing Penny, Maxwell said, “I’m in the final testing phase right now. We’re timing mass production for a summer rollout. By next month we’ll be in a half million retail outlets.” He turned his back to Penny and stepped through the bathroom door. “You know what’s at stake here. Don’t make me take any actions you’ll regret.” The door shut. Possibly to mask the conversation, the shower came back on at full blast.

Unless Penny missed her guess, the voice, the woman calling, she was the president of the United States. President Clarissa Hind.

Penny wondered what brilliant new invention they were almost done testing.

This constant sexual cavorting, this would be the pattern of their days and nights. Max always had some toy, some potion, some glorious lubricant he wanted to introduce her to.

He’d drive her to climax until her back ached and her legs wouldn’t work, and he’d gently bully her, saying, “We’re almost done. Just one more adjustment.” Saying, “We’ve got to stay on a schedule here.…”

He’d probe with one hand buried inside her. “I’m searching for your pudendal plexus. It should be right
here
.”

On other occasions, totally stymied, he’d use his free hand to shake open a folded anatomical chart, like a road map, on the bed beside her. He was a southpaw and kept those fingers planted in her vagina as if marking his place in a book.
You Are Here
. One hand inside her, he’d use the other to smooth the creased paper and trace one finger along some route while muttering to himself, “The
nervi pelvici splanchnici
branches
here
near your
nervi erigentes
.…” Discovering his destination, he’d wiggle something deep within her, exclaiming triumphantly, “Penny? Did you know your coccygeal plexus is displaced two centimeters to the anterior?” Feeling along blindly, he’d add, “Don’t worry. It seems to be within normal variable parameters.”

Every so often he’d withdraw whatever pleasure instrument he was testing. He’d lay its length against a corner of the night table and bend the metal or plastic slightly. Or he might use a pair of pliers or vise grips he kept in the bedside drawer. Worse was when he’d just swing the instrument a mighty whack against the table, whack after whack, marring the elegant furniture until he’d achieved the desired curve.

When that happened the bedroom seemed like those sepia-toned photographs Penny had seen of Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory. Or Henry Ford’s workshop. For her part, Penny felt less like a girlfriend than a lab assistant. Like Dr. Watson or Igor. Or Pavlov’s dog. As Max tinkered away, bringing her to new convulsions and seizures of pleasure, despite her moods, despite her growing detachment and resentment, Penny half expected him to shout, “Eureka!”

Maxwell would hover over his task, as focused as a Swiss watchmaker or brain surgeon. Often he’d request his valet or butler to wheel a tray of sterile instruments up bedside so Max need not look away from the procedure at hand. “Calipers!” he’d bark, extending one hand, and the attendant servant would slap the tool into his open palm. “Blot me!” Max would command,
and the underling would use a fold of paper towel to swab the beads of perspiration from Max’s forehead.

At times Max crouched between her knees, a penlight clenched between his teeth, a jeweler’s loupe squeezed in one eye, tinkering. His face slack with concentration. “I chose you,” Max explained, “because you have never experienced an orgasm. A man can tell. You remain asleep, and no one has yet to awaken you. You are so typical of the women I am trying to help.”

“ ‘For too many years,’ ” Max recited, “ ‘women have been excluded from the full pleasure available to them in their bodies.’ ” He was reading from a printed sheet of paper. A press release. “ ‘I believe, as do many medical professionals, that a large proportion of chronic mental and physical ailments beset women because they accumulate stress that might otherwise be easily and quickly released with the right tools.…’ ”

Even to Penny’s unsophisticated ear, the speech sounded like a string of euphemisms. According to Maxwell, it had to. It was selling sex. Even more controversially, it was selling women the means to better sex than they had ever enjoyed with any man. To some listeners, this announcement would sound like gobbledygook, like an outdated advertisement for a feminine hygiene spray. But to other listeners, namely men who valued only their own greedy sexual needs, this speech would sound like the end of the world.

The two of them were sitting in bed. Lately, they were always in bed. Penny never donned more than a bathrobe, and that was only to accept a gourmet meal brought by the majordomo.

“ ‘That’s the reason,’ ” Maxwell continued, “ ‘we’re proud to introduce the Beautiful You line of personal care products.…’ ”

C. Linus Maxwell was preparing to expand his vast corporation
and enter the field of empty vaginas in a big way. All of the jewel-toned gels and liquids on his bedside table. The magic pink champagne douche. The fluids engineered to modulate the coefficient of friction. He would be bringing them all to the lonely female consumer.

The packaging would be pink, but not obnoxiously. The whole line would be marketed under the umbrella name Beautiful You. Thumbing the buttons on his smart phone, Maxwell showed Penny a prototype of the advertising, the words
Beautiful You
curved in curlicue white letters. A tagline along the bottom of each ad read, “Better Than Love.” The douche, Maxwell explained, would ultimately be sold as a dissolvable powder in a small envelope, which could be mixed with water or champagne. It was only one of several shockingly innovative personal care products. Soon every woman would be able to enjoy mind-bending orgasms at a moderate price.

All of the research and erotic training Maxwell had done with swamis and witch doctors and courtesans—all the sex secrets of the ancient world—he was about to market them to the modern woman. Every gal from Omaha to Oslo would soon be savoring the pounding cut-loose orgasms Penny had only recently discovered. It was stunning to imagine how this might change the world. As Maxwell’s former loves had demonstrated, given the right sexual satisfaction women could flower, lose weight, kick drugs. Every woman’s personal fulfillment was only weeks away.

Just in the past few days, sequestered in Maxwell’s Parisian penthouse, Penny had dropped eight pounds. She slept like a baby. She’d never felt more relaxed and at ease.

In secret, she was a little proud that she’d made her own contribution to the project. Max was still tweaking some recipes. Polishing off any rough edges. In the near future, girls just like her, average girls without stellar bodies and luscious faces, they
would have access to the kind of bone-melting pleasure that only movie stars currently enjoyed.

As she scrolled through photos of prototype sex toys, lubricants, and nightgowns, Penny asked, “Why ‘Beautiful You’?”

Maxwell shrugged. “The publicity wonks said it tested the best. Plus, it translates into any language.”

Young or old. Fat or short. Billions of women would learn to love the bodies in which they were alive. Beautiful You would be a blessing to all womankind. Penny knew that if the mass-marketed products worked half as well as the prototypes he’d been demonstrating on her, C. Linus Maxwell would quickly double his fortune. Kidding him, she asked, “Don’t you have enough money?”

There it was again. That sad smile flitted across his lips. “It’s not about the profits,” he told her. “Not at the price point I have in mind.”

It was about his mother, Penny guessed. Wasn’t it every boy’s dream to fete his long-suffering mom? Maxwell’s had slaved away to give her boy a head start in the world, and then she’d died before he could show his gratitude. It was a little creepy: the idea that he was honoring his mother by showering women with great sex … but his motives were noble and touching.

A thought struck her. It was none of her business, but she asked, “Do you still miss her? Your mom?”

He didn’t answer. He went back to silently reading his press release.

Impulsively, she leaned over and pecked him on the cheek.

“What’s that for?” he asked.

“For being such a loving son.”

And there it was again. The wan, furtive smile of a lonely little orphan.

“It’s not like Spanish fly. There’s no comparison,” he insisted.

The two of them were making a rare public appearance. They were dining in a chic restaurant in the St.-Germain neighborhood of the sixth arrondissement. As usual their candlelit table was the center of attention. Even the aloof Parisians were shamelessly eyeballing them.

The fabled aphrodisiac known as Spanish fly, Maxwell explained, was the emerald-green blister beetle,
Lytta vesicatoria
. When the dead insects were dried and ground to a fine powder, they could be mixed into a beverage. The tainted drink would cause severe urinary tract inflammation. That was the legendary effect that supposedly prompted women to beg for intercourse. In actuality, the effect was about as exciting as an internal case of poison oak.

“This,” Maxwell said, rolling a pink capsule between his fingers, “this is different.”

He’d removed the new invention from his pocket only a moment earlier. Like all his other toys, the pink pill was a product from the new Beautiful You line. About the size of a robin’s egg, it looked like a piece of candy. Like something that should be nestled in an Easter basket. It was the color of bubble gum.

Penny took it from his hand. “So I’m supposed to swallow this?”

Maxwell laughed at her innocence. He shook his head, saying, “No, my dear, it’s a vaginal suppository perfectly formulated to heighten female desire.”

He observed Penny rolling the pink bead between her fingers. “Note the slight stickiness of the outer coating.” He said, “It’s a layer of silicone impregnated with a mild herbal stimulant. If a penis were to enter the vaginal cavity and encounter the bead, both partners would share the pleasure of the effect.”

Penny squeezed it between her fingers. It felt soft. In the
palm of her hand it was surprisingly heavy. She smiled slyly, lifted the napkin from her lap, and daubed daintily at the corners of her mouth. She asked a passing waiter, “
Excusez moi
, where is your
toilette
?”

On her return from the bathroom, Penny saw her nemesis: Alouette. She was seated at a discreet corner banquette, tucked away where she’d draw no public notice. Alouette’s face looked gaunt, her cheeks more hollowed than Penny recalled. The actress’s eyes looked sunken.

Somehow the week’s bedroom ordeals had calmed Penny and filled her with a quiet confidence. She strode brazenly to her rival’s table. The pink bead was inside her, working whatever magic Maxwell had designed into it. Penny regarded the haggard woman and said, “Alouette, you’re looking well.”

“No, I’m not,” the actress shot back. “I look like shit, and it’s all Max’s fault.”

Penny narrowed her eyes. “Are you following me?”

Alouette sighed. She drew the fingers of one hand through her long, rich hair.

Penny couldn’t help but notice that strands came off between those fingers. Already, a scattering of fallen hair dusted the table and the booth’s upholstery.

“My impulse had been to save you, little mouse,” Alouette began. “But now I see that you’ve let him reduce you to a stupid slut.”

Penny winced at the harsh word.

“Despite my warning, you’ve allowed Maxwell to bewitch you.” Alouette’s eyes filled with pity. She spoke without rancor in her voice. “You were someone, before. How quickly you’ve thrown your dreams away and become just your hungry
conass
.”