Waking Beauty (8 page)

We waited. At least twenty minutes. It was degrading, standing barred on the sidelines while the worthy and smug slipped by. I felt an anvil of dread in the belly, wondering if my father might come out to see if I was really at the door. It hardly seemed like the time or place for a family reunion. Would he think I was just using him to get into the party? Would he be pissed off that I was interrupting him on his big
night? Would he emerge, take one look at me in my scuffed Reeboks, and then disappear back into the club? Elda was oblivious to my discomfort. She spent the wait scoping out guys on their way in, remarking upon which ones were “bad” or “hot.” Finally the Incredible Hulk reappeared. Bouncer Guy gave him a questioning look. Hulk simply shrugged. Bouncer Guy flashed us a satisfied smile and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Asshole,” hissed Elda, clicking high-heeled down the street.

I’m fairly certain she was referring to the man at the door.

I wasn’t all that tired when the DeSouzas dropped me off, but since Virginie and Fraser were in the living room watching
Blind Date
, I went straight to my room, got undressed, and crawled into bed. I read the newspaper until I couldn’t take it anymore, then I turned out the light and just lay there.

The newspaper always deepened my depression. Still, I read it daily. I felt I should try to keep abreast of world matters, even if I was unable to take them in and remain impassive. All the tragic tales, all the strife and disaster—it was astonishing how much bad and sad news could be crammed into a fistful of daily pages. I couldn’t help but feel doleful. It occurred to me that perhaps our hearts and minds hadn’t evolved as fast as information technology and globalization, that maybe our Stone Age brains were designed to deal only with local levels of despair, and simply didn’t have the capacity to take in worldwide quantities of gloom. Or possibly I was just too thin-skinned. News from the big hot spots always distressed me—the Congo, Colombia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, the Middle East—especially the Middle East, but even small local reports could plunge me into full-throttle dejection. I remember the story that got to me that night. It was about a pharmacist who had been diluting chemotherapy drugs and merrily dispensing improper dosages. Cancer patients weren’t getting what they needed to make them well,
but this guy’s profit margin was growing faster than a tumor. How cold. How evil. How depressing.

I started to think about those cancer patients and their families, which led me to wonder about all the heartache that didn’t make it into newsprint. I began to think about all the horribly sad things that were happening somewhere in the world at that specific moment in time, at the very moment that I was lying there, safe in my bed, pondering it (a little game that often sprang up in my somber imagination). Somewhere, someone was being mangled in a car wreck, someone was having her third miscarriage, someone was OD’ing on heroin, someone’s lungs were filling with water in the bottom of a drowning river, someone was dying of heart failure, someone was being beaten to death, someone was getting gang-raped, someone was watching his house and young children go up in flames, someone was being bitten by a deadly mosquito. All of those things were definitely happening somewhere in the world at that very moment. No wonder I felt an undercurrent of sad all the time.

I tried not to think about it. I started to think about something else that I generally tried not to think too much about. Nathan. I wondered how obvious it was that I had a crush on him. Probably painfully obvious, even though I did my best to conceal it. Nathan was always very friendly, but also very careful not to lead me on or make me think that we could be more than patio buddies at work. I suspected that if he hadn’t sensed the crush, he would’ve welcomed me into his life as a pal—someone to see a movie with now and again. I figured he was afraid of offering me hope, afraid of intensifying my feelings. He probably wanted to avoid that moment when he’d have to pluck out my heart and Cuisinart it. Ultimately, I believed, he was just being kind.

Nathan wasn’t shallow. I had no doubt that he would date a plain woman, even a plain woman with bad teeth or pimply skin—fat but pretty Elda, for example, would make the grade—but I was pushing the envelope of ugly. I do believe
that a modicum of physical attraction is necessary. It isn’t shallow to require that.

Oddly enough, even though he wasn’t holding out for a Lara Croft look-alike, Nathan had been single since I’d met him, and, apparently, for quite a spell before that. On several occasions he had referred to his ex-girlfriend, Muriel. I once asked him when they had split up. He looked embarrassed as he told me that it had been “about six years ago.”

I was surprised. Nathan was too clever and nice to have been single for six years or any years. There was absolutely no reason for him not to have a girlfriend.

That’s not true. I suppose there was a reason. The reason was that the priorities of most females shifted after they left school. In school, people were concerned mainly with attractiveness levels. Remember how people consistently paired off according to how appealing they were? The gorgeous prom queen and the studly football player, the pretty girl with the braces and the cute guy with the pimples, the nerdy frump girl and the greasy-haired guy in flood pants. It was as if people had an innate ability to measure their own level of good-lookingness and then find someone on precisely the same plane. Someone in his or her own league.

If life were like school, Nathan would have had a moderately attractive girlfriend. But out in the real world, people don’t couple up with their appearance-equals. In the real world, ugly but powerful men can get cute women. If the ugly, powerful men happen to be wealthy, they can easily attract the beauties. (And bully for them. It doesn’t work in reverse. A fat woman with a Porsche is just a fat woman with a Porsche.) And if the powerful, wealthy men are also handsome, they can use up the pretty starlets like Kleenex.

Unfortunately for moderately attractive Nathan, most women would want him only if he came with a snazzy job or a fat bank account—or at least great expectations for bank account girth. They weren’t terribly interested in a thirty-two-year-old video clerk/plant waterer who had no money,
little ambition or future earning potential, who dwelled in an atomic bachelor apartment in a horrible high-rise on the sorry side of town, and who possessed a strangely shaped head.

I was interested, but it was of no consequence. I remember thinking: If only Nathan were uglier, disfigured in some way—missing a limb or two, maybe afflicted with a harelip or a hideous full-body skin condition. Chronic eczema. Acute psoriasis! Like the Singing Detective (only not in pain and not hospitalized). Some rudely stamped combination that would sink him down into my league—not even the little leagues, more like twenty thousand leagues under the sea.

I reproached myself for mulling it over.
Quit it, idiot. Abandon hope. And for fuck’s sake, stop feeling sorry for yourself. There are worse things than being alone. Are there not worse things than being alone? You have freedom. Food. Shelter. No tanks rumbling down your streets. No burqua. Think of how lucky, tucked safe in your bed as calamity rains down on the world, tragedy, torment, disease, famine, drought, war, terror…
My brain churned with the misery of the masses and mine. Shortly thereafter I drifted into my usual uneasy and fitful sleep.

How funny to reflect back on the thoughts that filled my head that night—typical lying-in-bed thoughts after a typical day in the life of Allison Penny. It was my last night as me, but I didn’t know it.

If only I had known.

1    

Something was amiss. I felt it even before surfacing
into consciousness. Though my eyes remained shut, my body was slowly gaining awareness, like a lens bringing something gradually into focus. As I emerged from the muck of sleep, I sensed a peculiar lightness about myself. I sensed
length
. My hand moved instinctively to my belly, to cradle the warm swell of flab, but my hand found a vast absence instead, a taut flatness. One nanosecond of total incomprehension followed by a powerful blast of fear and adrenaline. I flung back the duvet and gawked at my body.
Not my body!
A new body.
Not mine!
A completely foreign form. I sprang from bed and stood on the alien legs. I clutched at the flesh. It was real.
Not a dream!
This body contained me. My disoriented brain wasn’t able to process the nonsensical information. Catecholamines spewed from my nerves into my throbbing heart. I blacked out.

When I came to, I went through a similar though marginally less horrifying series of shocks, gawks, and realizations. This time I didn’t faint. Instead, I rushed to my bedroom window. It was morning. The sky was blue (not crimson or green, or filled with spaceships). My next-door neighbor, Mrs. Silva, was in her backyard, calmly watering her recently planted vegetable garden. Her daughter, Debbie, was seated at the picnic table, playing with Barbie dolls. Everything seemed normal. Apparently, only I had changed.

My heart was still going like Buddy Rich on a mad timpani, but my breath was beginning to slow and even out a little. Tentatively, I tried the voice. “Hello,” I said softly.
Not my
voice!
A different voice. A powerful shiver fizzed through my body.
Not my body
. I sank down onto the edge of the futon and took several deep breaths—in through the nose, out through the mouth. After several frightening minutes, I regained a scrap of composure.

With slender, alien fingers I picked up and examined a lock of glossy blond hair that hung heavy and cascaded over my breasts. I pulled on the strand and felt a corresponding tug at my scalp.
Bizarre
. I touched my face with my hands. It felt small, smooth, and elegantly contoured, not like my face at all—a most peculiar sensation, a strange braille. I could feel prominent cheekbones sitting high under silky skin.

What I needed at once was a mirror. But there weren’t any mirrors in my bedroom. I tried the window to no avail. The angle of the light outside prevented reflection; all I could get was a ghostly head shape with indiscernible features. I searched the room for reflective objects but couldn’t find anything. Where were all the giant belt buckles, patent-leather shoes, or handbags when you needed them? My purse was canvas, all my non-running shoes were suede. I didn’t own a belt. The face on the alarm clock was dull plastic, scratched to rat shit, and useless for my purpose. The furniture was black Ikea-matte finish, dead melamine.
Did I possess nothing that shined?
Afraid to leave my room, but desperate to get a glimpse of my face, I emptied a yogurt container of Laundromat quarters onto the dresser, pushed the coins together, and hovered over them. No good. The diffused image was hopelessly soft and, of course, broken by the spaces between the quarters. I could barely make out an eye. It seemed that I would have to go to the bathroom. In the bathroom there were plenty of mirrors—a narrow three-quarter-length one on the inside of the door, a big one on the front of the medicine cabinet, and a silver antique hand mirror that Virginie used to check the back of her hairdos.

I would risk it. I had to pee anyway.

I put on my robe—a strange feeling since it was now ridiculously
short and about ten sizes too big for me. I cracked my bedroom door half an inch and listened. I knew that Virginie’s TV show was on hiatus, and I was fairly certain that Fraser was between film gigs. Typically, they were early risers, but occasionally on the weekend they slept late. Had they gone out or were they still in Virginie’s room? There were no signs or sounds to confirm either scenario. It was 9:40 A.M.

I stole to the bathroom and locked the door. With eyes downcast, I stepped back from the three-quarter-length mirror, loosened my robe, and let it slip to the floor. Then I lifted my head and looked.

Oh, my God
.

I will never forget that moment, the moment that I saw me in my entirety for the first time. It was beyond magical. Beyond wondrous. It was the truest, most essential moment of my life. All panic had flown, replaced by a feeling of profound relief. An exquisite joy, a supernatural happiness flooded through my perfect body.