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Authors: Cathy Lamb

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BOOK: Such a Pretty Face
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“I think the dolls are…” He waited eagerly for my opinion. “I think…they seem real. As if they’re smart and they would have interests and hobbies and that they…that they would want, uh, desire to be…uhhh…fondled.”

Lance beamed. “That’s right. You got it! Now I want you two to be investors in my business.” He stood tall, huge chest out, chin up. “It’ll be a family business. A
family
business! Great salaries for the employees, great benefits. I’m thinking health insurance, dental, ortho, eye, time off for the ladies poppin’ out babies, time off for the new fathers, time off when Grandma gets sick. You know. The best of the best companies to work at. You two are gettin’ in on the ground floor. You can be vice presidents, if you want!”

“I want to be an investor,” Polly squeaked, “about as much as I’d want to wake up in the morning with a blow-up plastic woman in my bed playing with my hair.”

“Come on, I want us to do this together!” Lance pleaded. “It’s a great venture! It’s a business! You’ll make a fortune. I’ll
give you
part ownership. Four dollars each and you’re a part owner of Lance’s Lucky Ladies.”

I gagged. Blow-up naked girls? For yucky men? No. Not me.

I elbowed one of the naked dolls. She was kind of pretty in a plasticky way.

“Thank you, Lance,” I told him, squeezing his hand under the mound of girls. “I appreciate the opportunity, the thought. That you even asked me, it makes me feel…” I struggled for the right word.

“Warm inside?” he asked, eyes hopeful. “Cared for? Loved? Flattered? That’s how I would feel.” He squeezed back. “You girls and I…” He paused to gather himself. “I feel so close to both of you. You’re my kin. My sister and my cousin.” He pounded his heart. “But you’re the sister of my soul, Stevie.” Pound pound. “The sister of my soul.”

I started feeling emotional again.

“I want to do something with you both where we can see each other every day. Where we can communicate as only family members can, with confidence and love and trust and love and laughter and love….”

I sniffled. I didn’t want to work for Lance in any of his companies. It would be taking advantage of him, and I don’t want to mix our family relationship with business. It would feel wrong in my bones to do so, but Lance was so sweet.

“Oh, no, Stevie!” Lance’s face twisted. “You’re not going to cry, are you?”

“No, I’m not.” But my voice was already ragged. “I’m not going to cry.” I sniffed again. I tried to hold it in, I did, but there was no fooling Lance.

He burst into tears, holding his big head in his hands. “Oh, Stevie, Stevie!” he cried. “Stevie!”

I wiped my face. I was a mess.

Lance reached across the blow-up girls and held me close. We squished Tarzan Sister between the two of us.

“Come on, Polly! Everybody together!” Lance said, voice breaking.

Polly was having trouble with her breathing—stress does that to her—but she came over anyhow and hugged us and Tarzan Sister.

“Tarzan Sister does feel awfully sexy, Lance,” I said, choking back my tears. “I’ll admit that.”

“Yes, squishy in all the right places,” Polly said, trying to be reassuring. “Sexy. Cuddly.”

Lance smiled. “She’s a warm, giving woman, Tarzan Sister is.” He wiped his tears. “She’ll be very popular.”

 

I am almost broke.

Cherie pays me well, and my house payment is a little high but manageable, but I have medical debt. Huge medical debt.

After my deductible, my insurance paid for most of my bariatric surgery to strangle up my stomach so I would feel full ultra-quick, lose weight, and not die of another heart attack. They did not, however, pay for my second operation, which was needed to cut off the massive, hanging folds of skin that were no longer propped up by 170 pounds of fat. They said it was “cosmetic.” All that skin was causing heat rashes, irritation, and pains in my back, shoulders, and stomach.

In addition, I was frightening naked. It looked like my entire body had been stretched and pulled by invisible hands until I resembled a white, mushy Gumby doll.

I didn’t even try to fight the insurance company. I had my boobs lifted and enhanced and my extra skin whacked off. The doctor, who had actually been through the surgery himself, agreed I could pay him monthly.

I double up my payments because I hate debt, and therefore I am almost broke.

Was it worth it to get this second operation?

You bet.

I don’t regret it for a second. Sometimes I sneak a peek at my boobs and I giggle. They’re upright and they’re full, but they’re not the mammoth jugs I used to have that killed my spine and thunked around on their own like bouncing bowling balls. My stomach is actually flat. I am not wearing wings under my arms and fat globules on my legs. My butt is not drooping to my knees.

People do not gasp, giggle, snicker, or make stabbingly hurtful remarks when I walk by, like, “She is disgusting” and “I can’t even look at her.”

But now I have to pay for it.

I sent out my résumé by mail and Internet, hoping for a weekend job in retail, a café or a local business open on weekends.

There’s a restaurant that needs someone to dress as a chicken and stand on a corner with a sign advertising the company’s meal specials.

I laugh.

I would never dress as a chicken.

That would hit way too close to home.

I searched further.

 

I watched the news Monday night after work. I had had the fifth of my allotted small meals. I could not eat more than fifteen bites without feeling full, so I had to eat five times a day. I wanted to eat more, piles more, which is how I’ve handled my vast emotional issues my whole life, but I couldn’t shove it down, I knew that, or I would get dumping syndrome. Dumping syndrome is what people who have had bariatric surgery can get if they’re not careful. Here’s how I would describe dumping syndrome: Envision someone putting a spear in your stomach and twisting it around. Add panic, breathlessness, profuse sweat, cold chills, diarrhea, and a sense of delusion. Lots of fun.

I avoid it at all cost.

It’s the only thing that prevents me from eating my pain away.

Polly smiled serenely out from the TV, proper yet beautiful in a pink suit and white silk undershirt with the slightest bit of lace. Her curls were pulled back conservatively, only a few artfully escaping, her nails polished. It is amazing what the spray-on, pancake makeup that people on TV wear can cover up.

She receives regular offers of marriage.

I’ve been to the newsroom right before she’s on the air. She is running around, a paper bag clutched in her hand, snapping orders, asking machine gun, rapid-fire questions, and making moaning sounds.

She collapses in her anchor chair minutes before the camera rolls, yanks her papers toward her, hands shaking, yelling directions, and as soon as the producer points at her, camera on, live shot, three, two, one, she settles right down, smiles peacefully, cheekily, and calmly delivers Portland’s best newscast.

The second it’s over, she’s pulling a bag out from under her bottom and breathing into it. Sometimes her co-anchor, Grant Joshi, has to hold it for her, propping her up with one arm. This is not an act. Polly sags after each newscast as if all the air has been sucked out of her with a vacuum.

When Polly can breathe again, she gets up, thanks Grant politely, and heads back to her office where she resumes working at a frantic pace, bellowing orders, but breathing without the aid of a sack. Grant and Polly are close friends. Polly is also close friends with his partner, Kel, but that is hush-hush. The station prefers to egg on rumors that Polly and Grant are “lovers.”

She and Grant delivered the news seamlessly, professionally, yet with warmth. They chattered together now and then. The chatter should have sounded shallow, but somehow it didn’t. The newscast was perfect. Right before the commercial, I saw Polly’s hand reach below the desk. No one else probably would have taken note, but I knew she was reaching for her brown paper bag so she would not hyperventilate.

I felt sick for her.

And I felt this terrible sense of dread.

She had lost control.

Again.

 

“Look what I did,” Zena whispered to me the next week at work, flipping that wedge of hair back. “You’re hot now, Stevie. So, so hot. A woman of the night.”

I kicked my rolling chair toward Zena’s computer.

She grinned and hit a button with an exaggerated flourish on her keyboard.

I felt my heart stop.

My breath seemed to choke on itself as my body ting-ting-tinged.

Oh no, oh no, oh no!

I stared at Zena, stricken. “You didn’t,” I rasped out, holding my throat.

“I did.” She stood up, wriggled her skinny hips, clad in a red wraparound skirt that I believe was a cotton scarf she wore around her neck the day before. She cackled, “Ha! Hooo ha!”

I wanted to disappear. To hide. There was my face, on the computer screen, under the beaming banner, “Make a Super Date!”

I grabbed the edge of Zena’s desk and held on for dear life as my world tilted in a nauseating way.
“You didn’t.”

“I sure did!” Zena chortled. “You’re out there, woman,
you’re out there
. Ready for action. Ready to get laid.”

Zena had put my profile on an
Internet dating service.

Without my permission.

The world tilted and retilted again. “I don’t want to date. I don’t want any action. I don’t want to get laid.” No, all that scared the tar out of me.

In my “Date Me!” photo I was smiling, my curly black hair tumbling down my back, my blue eyes tilted up, the dimple in my left cheek like a smile. It wasn’t a bad picture of me—I had taken far worse—but all I saw was this: frumpy. Definitely geeky.
Totally exposed.

I remember when Zena took that photo. I was laughing at a story she told me about the night before. She had gone to a costume party dressed up as a volcano that a nerdy, brilliant tech friend of hers built. In the middle of the party, she stepped out of the volcano, dressed only in a black leotard, tights, and a hat with attached paper flames, pushed a button, and the volcano exploded, with smoke, a firework, and ketchup. She had won first place and been rewarded with a bottle of tequila.

Picture snapped.

“You know, Stevie, you have one of the kindest, sweetest faces I have ever seen. You’re a damn freakin’ Pollyanna. I mean, that dimple! And the way your eyes light up when you’re smiling. And you got fat lips. All guys get hard for fat lips. It’s facial porn to them. Facial porn.”

“Please tell me this is a joke,” I finally stuttered, fumbling with the collar of my black work jacket. Blah and boring, identical to my black pants. Bought used and cheap. But I don’t want to call attention to myself anyhow. And I’m broke. Those are my excuses. “Please tell me I am not on the Internet for men to ogle and reject….”

“Yep, you are, freakin’ Pollyanna. I paid you up and everything. Six glorious, glorious months of dating.”

I gasped. “What is that?” I pointed to a column.

“Those are your interests! See? You enjoy hiking on mountains and doing outdoor activities, for example, rafting and kayaking down Oregon’s rivers. You’re an outdoor adventurist! You lust over Class IV rapids and fast cars! You’re always in a quest for speed and danger and living on the edge of reason!”

I squeaked. “I do not!”

“You like to work hard and play hard and you’re interested in—”

She abruptly stopped talking and covered the screen with her hand, then frantically tried to scroll down.

“What did that say?” I pulled her hand off the screen. She put her other hand on it, and I pulled that away, too. I screeched and she screeched back as we wrestled in the law offices of Poitras and Associates. Then I gasped. “You said I’m interested in
erotica?
Erotica!”

She cleared her throat. “Well! You want to seem seductive, Stevie. You know, daring in the bedroom in a sexy way…. A woman who knows herself, embraces a slippery toy or two, maybe a costume…willing to try a chocolate handcuff…no cages.”

“Erotica?” I semishouted that word, then hushed right up. Don’t ever yell “erotica” in a law firm. It distracts the attorneys. They think it’s a legal term. “I don’t even know what that is. I can guess at it, but no, I don’t want to do it. I wouldn’t know how to do it. Oh, my goodness.” I buried my head in my hands, hearing my grandma’s voice. She always said, “Oh, my goodness,” too.

“Moving on!” Zena declared. “See here, Stevie, before you vomit like a sick cow. I wrote that you’re searching for a man between the ages of thirty and forty-five who is ready to commit, who likes to camp and travel to Italy. You also want a man who is romantic and will take you to nice dinners…. You’re not into star signs or witchcraft, at least we got that right. You won’t be casting spells on anyone and boiling their balls.”

I groaned. “I don’t want to do Internet dating. I can find my own dates. I sure don’t want to boil anyone’s balls.”

“Where? Here? You can’t date a lawyer. That’s out of the question. Lawyers are all shits. All of them.
Shits
.”

She did not bother to lower her voice when she announced, “Lawyers are all shits. All of them.
Shits
.”

“Dare to date, Stevie. Don’t be a puss.”

“I’m not ready to date.” Heck, no. The only person I wanted to date was Jake, but he would never ask. I could only dream pathetically. “I’m not a puss.” Was I? Was I a wuss? “I’m not a puss or a wuss.” I said that too loud and cowered down a bit.

“You’re going to get ready,” Zena said. She is half drill sergeant, half brainiac. One time she threw a stapler at the head of a young, snobby male lawyer from another firm who whispered a suggestive, smarmy comment to her outside the firm’s bathroom. “Lock, stock, barrel, and a push-up bra. You’ve got a stupendous rack now, and you need to show those girls off to their best advantage. Pull ’em up, push ’em out.”

“I like my boobs tucked in.” I so did. I was still hiding from my new body. I was not ready for it, didn’t know what to do with it, and did not want attention.

BOOK: Such a Pretty Face
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