Beauty Read online

  “Of course not,” I say, smiling. The fluorescent light from his apartment reveals the dark stain zig zagging over the suede. My stomach shrivels.

  “Come in.” Rick drags Shadow back by the collar. He’s 29, a transplant from Tennessee. Like most of us, he’s a wannabee. A playwright. Five years ago, he won a “New Voices” contest, and since then, he’s been trying to finish the play. To earn a living, he manages at the restaurant, and for fun, he plays drums in a band. At work he wears a yuppy button-up, khakis, and a tie. I’m relieved to see in real life he’s about a grey T, camouflage gym pants, soccer shoes.

  I step into Rick’s ground floor tenement. It’s like a long, narrow bowling alley. There’s a dim fluorescent light on the ceiling. To the left side of the room is a wood loft. To the right, a desk and a small armoire missing a handle. Against the far wall a sink, a mini fridge, and a hot plate. He’s lit a cranberry-smelling candle, probably to mask the mix of dampness, urine, and dog.

  “Here.” He hands me a paper towel, then unravels a bunch around his hand. He drops the bundle to the tiled floor to soak up the piddle. With his shoe, he follows the trail to the doorway. I brush the dampness from my knee. But my boots …. Should I pat them dry and risk ruining the suede? Or should I leave them for the cobbler tomorrow and chance a permanent stain?

  “You seem stressed,” Rick says. When things ramp up at work, he can always tell which waitresses are off their game. Shadow nuzzles Rick’s knee until he pats her head.

  “It’s just a long night,” I say. “It was crazy busy.”

  “Tonight?” His brows shoot up with surprise.

  “I know,” I say. It’s Tuesday. In the restaurant industry, Mondays and Tuesdays are typically slow nights. “And get this—a woman on the way to her table? She knocked right into some grandpa. Guacamole went flying everywhere. Got all over his arm candy wife.”

  “Oooh. That couldn’t ‘a gone over well. You comp them?”

  “Round of drinks and dessert.” I rub my sore eyes.

  “How late were you at your studio?” He knows I went straight from work last night.

  “Pulled an all-nighter.” My latest dress designs were due today for Fashion Design Workshop; I’m getting my masters at FIT. Next week my mood boards get critiqued. They include my illustrations, a juxtaposition of voile and velvety fabrics, a mind map with all my initial ideas, and a collage of Pinterest photos of doors and archways.

  “I’m wiped,” I say.

  “I figured you’d be,” Rick says. “I took her for a good long run at the basketball courts. Got out some energy. Now, I’m all yours.”

  It’s the way he looks at me. Heat rushes to my face.

  Shadow whines.

  “What’s the matter?” Rick coos, kneeling and patting her neck. She licks his face, jumps up and nearly knocks him over.

  “Oh, yes, I forgot your treat, didn’t I?”

  Shadow whines.

  “Shhh! We don’t want the neighbors complaining again.” From a medicine bottle beside the kitchen sink, he pours two pills onto his palm. Rick told me Shadow’s on Prozac, and now I’m wondering if we’re on the same dosage.

  He opens his fridge and I see that it’s empty except for a couple bottles of beer, a Ziplock of cheese from the supermarket deli counter, and a white Styrofoam take-home container from the restaurant. Rick molds American cheese around the pills.

  Shadow lopes happily around his legs, then rises on her hind legs.

  “Down,” he orders.

  For a moment, she obeys. Then she jumps and jumps again.

  “No,” he yells. “Down.”

  “R-r-reh-r,” she replies.

  “I said quiet,” he says, shoving her with his leg. “Here.”

  Shadow swallows the cheese in a satisfied gulp. Rick licks his fingers clean. He trains his pale blue eyes on me. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat.

  “I like your loft,” I say, feeling myself flush again. “You make it yourself?”

  “It’s technically the second time around,” he says. Shadow nuzzles against his leg. “I rebuilt it from scratch.”

  “What happened to the first?” I ask.

  “Shadow ate it.”

  “She ate it?”

  “Yeah, the Friday before last, I get home after work and the legs are gnawed through.”

  “Wow,” I say.

  Shadow barks. He pets her. “Quiet,” he says.

  “How many weeks did you say you’ve had her?” I ask. “Three?”

  “Too long,” he jokes. He commands her to lie down in her bed directly beneath the loft. Shadow obeys and curls up, her nose angled down submissively.

  “May I use your bathroom?” I ask.

  He tugs open a door adjacent to the kitchen sink, revealing a small porcelain sink, a toilet, and a bath. He switches the light on. I move past, but a magnetic charge between us draws me back to him. He smirks, his eyes catching the light like a night animal. “You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you?” I say.

  “All night. Just kissing, of course.”

  “Just kissing?” My weight shifts to my toes. I lean toward him.

  Shadow leaps from the dark, hurtling toward us.

  I duck and shut myself inside the bathroom. Her nails nick and scrape the door.

  “No, Shadow!” Rick pulls her away. “Bed. Now. Go!”

  I sit at the rim of the tub. Dogs can’t be jealous, can they?

  Rick taps the door. “Amy? You okay in there?”

  “Yes.” If this were any other guy, I’d be making a B-line for Houston and hailing a cab home. Then again, if this were any other guy, I wouldn’t have had three orgasms in a row back at my place the other night. I’m 24; until I met Rick, I thought multiple orgasms were a myth.

  “She’s calm now, I promise,” he says through the door. “She gets overwhelmed when I have visitors, that’s all.”

  “Great.” In this too-bright fluorescent light, it’s clear that my boots may be unsalvageable. The urine has soaked into the suede. Patting isn’t going to work. Rinsing water over it won’t help, either. Seltzer water, on the other hand, might work. I know it gets stains out of fabric. But does it work for suede also? I smooth my fingers over the supple leather, its even stitching, and pencil-thin shape of the heel. There’s the smooth red underbelly; the Louboutin signature sole that made him famous. No, this one is out of my league. I could call Ma. She knows of a place in Port Chester. Then again, when she sold the house and moved into the city with Georgie, she also sold the car, so I wouldn’t have any way of getting there.

  Rick taps at the door again. This time I open it to his gorgeous smile. It’s enough for me to almost forget, almost forgive anything. Rick embraces me. Glancing at himself in the mirror over the sink, he combs his fingers through his tussled hair. We stare at our reflection. This is what we would look like if we were a couple. Me, with my Asian features, dark brown eyes and black hair. Him, with his tar beach tan, pale blue eyes, and head full of highlights. He’s muscular, thick and squat in all the right places; I’m small and thin, some say too thin.

  Shadow barges into the bathroom, bulldozing into the backs of Rick’s knees, nearly toppling us into the tub.

  “Woah, out, girl, let’s go.” Rick pushes Shadow with one hand and leads me out with the other. He tells Shadow to lie down in her bed, and this time, he adds, “Stay.”

  He kicks off his shoes.

  “I’ll keep mine on for now,” I say, afraid they’ll get trampled or chewed.

  “Now that’s an idea worth pursuing.”

  Climbing loft steps in three-inch heels turns out to be pretty difficult, but Rick supports me from behind. At the second rung, his hands slide beneath my skirt, up and to the front of my thighs. My legs automatically clamp shut, his fingers like a wedge between them. He presses me again
st the ladder, and his heat moves right through me.

  Shadow grumbles.

  “It’s okay, girl,” Rick says, tempering his voice. He shifts away. “It’s okay.”

  I ascend another rung, using strength from my arms to haul myself up. Rick runs his thumbs down the back zippers. I’m not sure if I make a sound or he does; maybe neither of us do. Shadow sniffs. Maybe she smells the invisible pheromones. She lunges at me from the other side of the ladder. I scream, jump a rung and dive onto the mattress. My right foot catches and my knee scrapes the wood edge. “Shit!”

  “Down, Shadow,” Rick commands, catching hold of me. “Bad girl! Down! Bad girl.”

  Shadow bares her teeth.

  “Back!” Rick orders. “Get back.”

  Shadow reluctantly retreats. Her paws click against the tile as she circles beneath me.

  “Down,” he insists. “I said, down!”

  She pants. The clicking stops. My heart bangs inside my chest.

  “That’s right,” Rick says. “Good girl, Shadow.”

  The sheets are silky and cool. I just want to crawl between them. I rub my knee. Rick ascends the ladder in five steady steps.

  “I’ve got you, baby,” Rick whispers, spooning me from behind. “It’s okay.”

  “She’s really like this with everyone?” I ask.

  “No, just women, I guess.”

  Women?

  “Just you,” he says, reading my thoughts. “There’s no other girl right now.”

  “Then go ahead, unzip me,” I say, lifting my foot.

  “Not just yet,” he mutters. “I want them on.”

  “I can’t sleep like this silly.”

  “Who says you’re going to sleep?”

  “It’s not happening,” I laugh. “Not here. No way.”

  “She’ll be asleep in a minute. You’ll see.” Rick switches off the light. I stare at the flame of the purplish-red candle on the stovetop. The cranberry smell is suffocatingly sweet, fake like cheap perfume.

  Pavlos, the cobbler on 86th, I decide. He’s good with suede. That’s where I’ll take them.

  Rick and I keep still until the dog starts snoring. He moves to the foot of the bed. The loft creaks, and he freezes. When he sees that Shadow doesn’t rouse, he unzips my right boot. An inch, two. The teeth part, the leather sides peel away. It’s like my entire body sighs. My legs can breathe again. “More,” I whisper, reaching for the latch.

  “Wait.” He slides the zipper down, kissing the indentions from the zipper, like tracks, over my calves.

  “Oh, my god.” Goosebumps rush over my skin. My body hums. The nape of my neck and shoulders have always been my erogenous zones. But the back of my legs?

  Shadow yelps. Neither of us moves. “She’s having a nightmare,” he whispers.

  “Poor thing,” I say.

  “The vet thinks she might have been abused.”

  “How awful.”

  “She definitely suffered neglect.”

  Dogs are like people, I realize. Fucked up.

  Rick liberates me from the second boot. When the zippers are at my ankles, I turn onto my backside to face him. He cups the heel of one boot, then the other, in his palm and gently tugs them off. He kisses the arch of my foot, ankle, then shin. At my knee, he bunches my skirt to my waist, his mouth caressing my inner thighs. That familiar tingling sensation. It extends to my fingers and toes.

  I tug his pants down. His penis stands at attention like a soldier with a helmet. I take him in my hand. Guide him between my legs. He finds me. Hovers a moment before sinking inside. The fullness leaves me breathless. He rocks and burrows deeper, the pace of his breath quickening. His odor fills my nostrils.

  Shadow whimpers. Rick stiffens.

  “Don’t stop,” I say. It’s like he’s touching me perfectly, just right, like a spark before a fire.

  Shadow howls. It’s so sudden and foreign, it takes me a moment to comprehend what’s happening. Her voice is desperate, heartbroken, full of rage. The sound is piercing and loud, murky and dark, like getting doused by cold pond water. A chill races over my body, my face.

  Rick pulls out. He leans over the side of the loft. “Quiet, Shadow!”

  She scratches and claws at the wood post.

  “This is not the way I planned for things to go,” Rick says, his penis flaccid and shriveling

  “It’s fine.” I feel for his hand and lace my fingers between his.

  Shadow shakes her head, her whole body, as if she’s just come in from the rain.

  She stands on her hind legs, nose sniffing the air. She jumps, trying to get onto the loft with us. She can’t possibly reach, and yet it seems as if her desperation and sheer determination might catapult her onto the mattress. I can feel her breath, the damp heat of it, even though I’m on the inside of the loft. The cumulative stench of frustration between all of us makes me queasy. As aroused as I was a few minutes ago, my body has now petrified.

  “We can go to your place if you want,” Rick offers.

  “Let’s just get some rest, okay?” I locate my panties and pull them back on. “I have class early tomorrow.”

  “Fuck.” He lies on his back, rigid with anger, and glares at the ceiling.

  “Roooohhhr…” Shadow bellows. “Roooohhhr.”

  “Stop, the neighbors,” Rick says, slamming his fist against the beam to get her attention. “You’re gonna wake every last one of them.”

  Shadow laments louder, deeper, and from a place that calls up her wolf ancestry.

  “Shadow! I said stop!”

  “Rooooohhhr…”

  “That’s it, you fucking dog,” Rick leaps from the loft into the dark below. I hear the dog tags jangle like maybe he’s wrestling her to the floor. She yelps, her voice sharp and octaves higher.

  I feel a sudden, terrifying dip. “Rick!”

  “She’s fine,” he snaps, his accent thickening. He muzzles her with his fist. “She doesn’t want to be quiet. I’m showing her how to be quiet.”

  Shadow’s voice pinches again. Her paws scratch and scrape desperately over the floor. She finally wriggles free and scurries away, darting for cover beneath the desk. She whimpers. Licks her wounds.

  “That’s right, you better hide,” he says, kicking the desk chair.

  A part of me retreats into myself; another drifts out. I hug my boots. Stroke the fuzzy texture beneath my hands. It’s here; I’m here.

  “Let’s go to your place,” Rick says, pulling a pair of jeans on.

  I hear myself say okay, but it’s like I’m a body, a shell; no one’s home. My fingers search the suede like a blind man decodes braille.

  “Come on,” he orders.

  Shadow wails. Her voice reverberates, deep and guttural, filled with longing and loss. If I didn’t know better, I might have confused it for human. I might have confused it for myself.

  There’s something primal about it. Maybe it’s that thing people call a soul. She’s just a dog, but she’s got something that goes beyond the physical body, something that’s indestructible and eternal.

  Even as I fix my clothes. Even as I step down the ladder, boots in hand, and force my legs back inside. Even as we ride the cab to my apartment and then fuck on my bedroom floor until I come and come and come. I’m still there, trapped in the dungeon of a tenement on Avenue C.

  I know I should walk away. I also know I can’t. It’s too late.

  Why, Amy? Why is it too late?

  Through the rest of the day, or weeks, or maybe lifetime, it’s that soothing, tactile feeling of suede beneath my fingers, the one tenuous thing, that keeps me from drifting away.

  A Kiss

  “D’you hear? Versace’s in town,” Ben says. “He might stop by with his entourage.”

  “I heard Naomi Campbell is going to make a
n appearance,” someone adds.

  “That’s right,” Ben says, fist bumping everyone. “It’s the party of the year and we got invited.” Designer and fashion icon Jeff Jones, also the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Y Magazine, is celebrating the Designer of the Year Award for women’s apparel. It’s being presented to Helena Putterman-Stewart, our workshop instructor at FIT.

  “Helena said Gong Li’s flying here from Cannes before heading back to Asia,” I say.

  “Who’s that?” someone asks. They stare at me blankly.

  “Never mind,” I say. “It was nice of Helena to invite us.”

  “Pinch me,” Ben says. Jeff Jones has appeared in several fashion documentaries. He’s had cameos in dramatic comedies, one time actually playing himself. A reporter once asked for advice for younger designers, and he revealed patience and tenacity were his best attributes. If something didn’t go his way, he’d say to himself: “Not immediately; eventually.”

  “I know exactly what I’m going to wear,” Ben says. “Meet, later?”

  “No, I don’t know.” After today’s critique in Fashion Design Thesis Workshop, I don’t feel up for a party.

  “Oh, darling, you’ve got to shake it off,” Ben says, giving me an awkward hug. He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. He’s older than most of us, in his 40s, and while he loves design, he’s actually interested in fashion writing. He’s confident and one of the most elegant designers in the program. There’s a car wreck inside me, and while some people smell blood and are going in for a kill, he’s here being my friend.

  “Tacky,” I say. “She said ‘lacking originality’.”

  “That’s just Katrina.”

  Katrina’s a star in the program. Each year, Jeff Jones takes two interns from thesis workshop students; this year, Katrina’s one of them.

  “She went to the Dean,” I say. Katrina complained about the caliber of the students. She believed some were in the program simply due to quotas and affirmative action; not because of talent. “Everyone thinks I suck,” I say.

  Ben exaggeratedly clears his throat.

  “You don’t count,” I say.

  “I take offense to that,” he says. “No man has ever said that to me, I don’t see why I should be hearing it from you.”