Waking Beauty (9 page)

It wasn’t merely because of the staggering beauty I saw reflected in the mirror. It was more than that. Ever since I was a child, I had sensed something powerful and mysterious swirling behind the flat screen of reality. As I grew older and more rational, I convinced myself that the source of that feeling was psychological, a juvenile projection born out of the need for love-all-encompassing, unconditional God/Mommy/Daddy love. Clearly, nothing of the sort existed. There was no God. The evidence was everywhere and easy to interpret. Think Hitler. Think Stalin. Just consider the number of innocents starved or slaughtered in the last century alone. Only a fool could believe that there was a benevolent deity keeping a grand eyeball on the human race.

Yes, that’s what I told myself as I grew older and more rational. And I wanted to believe it. But in truth, I continued to sense that unknowable force, to feel a special connection to the mysterious miasma that seemed to lurk behind everything. Occasionally, I would feel, in the pit of my stomach,
that I had caught a glimpse of that strange energy—in the frenetic movement of butterfly wings, in the similar movement of pinpoints of sunlight sparkling crazy on lake water. I thought I saw the shadow of it in a birch tree once—the way the wind and the light played on the leaves, the crown seemed to be shimmering and buzzing an electric otherworldly message. I thought I recognized it in art, in the splatter energy of Pollock patterns. And in music, in the architecture of certain compositions, and the way in which certain musicians performed. Like Glenn Gould at the piano, playing as if he were, in fact, the instrument, as if the unknowable thing was flowing through him. Not performing so much as
channeling
.

And so at that moment, as I gazed upon my miraculous transformation, my childish suspicion was finally, undeniably confirmed. There was something out there. I was not alone. God or some equivalent power existed in the universe. And I, Allison Penny, had been blessed!

A sharp rattling of the bathroom doorknob interrupted my religious reverie.

“You in there?” said Virginie.

Sort of
is what leaped to mind. Hesitant to answer in the alien voice, I flushed the toilet in response. I heard Virginie groan and move off. I sat down to quickly empty my bladder. It was an odd sensation, a familiar pose, but an entirely new bearing. My thighs no longer met in the middle or bulged over the sides of the seat. My stomach was now totally flat, and for the first time in memory I could watch myself urinate. I’m not ashamed to say that it was a lovely sight. My vagina was a tight little cleft fringed with soft curls. I dried it tenderly and donned my robe. Then I pinched Virginie’s antique hand mirror and was making a quick dash through the kitchen to my room, when I heard a voice behind me: “Hello?”

I had been spotted, but I didn’t stop. I ducked into my room and closed the door, hoping that Virginie would just proceed to the damned bathroom and leave me the hell
alone. But no, a second later she was tapping at my door with her fingernails.
Tap tap tap
.

“Just a minute…” I hid her mirror under the blanket, gathered my wits, and opened up. I stood in the doorway so she wouldn’t come in. “Hi,” I said, going on the offensive. “You must be Virginie.”

“Who are you?” she said.

“Me? I’m a friend of Allison’s.”

She looked confused. Could Allison have a friend? Perhaps. But such a beautiful friend? Doubtful. “Where is Allison?” she asked, peering past me into the bedroom.

“Um, she’s not here,” I said, trying not to smirk. It felt strange to be talking about myself in the third person. “She had to go away for a few days. She said I could stay here while she’s gone.”

“Oh, really?”

“Is that a problem?”

“I don’t know. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“Well, she had to leave kind of suddenly. Early this morning. Her father’s been having some medical trouble. Heart trouble. She had to fly to Los Angeles.”

“Her father lives in Los Angeles?”

“Didn’t you know that?” The stupid cow never listened to a word I said. Fine. It would be easier to fake her out.

“I can’t remember. So you got here when?”

“Middle of the night, actually. My plane was delayed for six hours. What a nightmare. And then as soon as I get here, I find out that Allison has to leave. Oh, well, I guess I’ll see her when she gets back. She’s great, isn’t she?” I couldn’t resist tossing that one in there.

“Yeah. Um, how do you know her again?”

“We were best friends growing up. She must have mentioned that I was coming.” It felt odd to be looking down on Virginie. She seemed stubby all of a sudden.

“I dunno. Maybe she did. I haven’t had coffee yet.” She rubbed her eyes and forehead. It was all too much for her.

“Anyway, I’m glad we didn’t wake you with all our nocturnal arriving and departing.”

“Mmm. Did she leave a number where she’s going to be?”

“No. But she said she’d call as soon as she got settled.” I had no idea how I was going to get around that one, but I just wanted her out of my face. It worked.

“I have to use the bathroom,” she said, slinking off through the kitchen.

I closed the door.

For the next half hour, I used Virginie’s hand mirror to familiarize myself with my astonishing features. If only I could show, rather than tell, you what I looked like. Mere language doesn’t seem suited to the task. Beauty, true beauty, is difficult to convey accurately with words. If I say that a woman has brown hair, large eyes under heavy brows, pale skin, high cheekbones, and a sweet full-lipped smile, do you get the real picture? If I tell you that her neck is long and graceful and that she exudes charm, do you necessarily see the unique loveliness that is Audrey Hepburn? No. Thousands of women possess similar features and would match that description, and while all of those women may be pleasing to the eye, only one might emanate a true, transcendental beauty. It isn’t the individual features; it’s the magical way in which they all fit, or don’t quite fit, together, true beauty being slightly unconventional. And so, while it is impossible to do it justice with words, I will attempt to describe what I saw that morning.

My height was approximately five-nine. My body was long, lithe, and graceful. There was an unmistakable refinement to my posture, owing in part to my slender neck, which had seemingly doubled in length overnight. It gave me a certain Paltrow-like poise, but at the same time I was quite voluptuous. Although my figure was slim, my breasts were large, perfectly symmetrical, and absurdly gravity defying. My ass was plump, round, and just slightly too prominent. The legs were well-shaped and long, as were the arms. The feet were
narrow and high arched. The hands, soft with pleasingly tapered fingers. All of my flesh was delightfully firm and springy to the touch. The skin was blemish-free and had a healthy-looking tone—the kind that turns golden in the sun. My face was truly lovely. Heart-shaped with extraordinarily large eyes of a deep blue color, emphasized by a black ring encircling each iris, which gave them a catlike intensity. The nose was straight and fine, with haughty nostrils. The mouth was unusual, both broad and full. A Cupid’s bow on the upper lip gave it a perpetual pout, but when I smiled, the corners stretched wide and curled up mischievously—like the Joker on the old
Batman
TV series, only attractive. The teeth were white and evenly spaced, the upper two front ones being just the tiniest bit buck. The tongue was pink and smooth. My hair, Nordic blond, hung heavy and straight and reached halfway down the back. I tucked it behind my tiny, perfect ears and tried a smile in the mirror.

God, I was beautiful!
But how long would it last?
With a jolt, it occurred to me that this might be some kind of Cinderella story, that I might turn back into pumpkin Allison at the stroke of midnight. I couldn’t waste the gift hiding in my room. I had to get out there and enjoy it.

Through my closed door I heard Virginie and Fraser puttering in the kitchen. I could smell cigarette smoke, but no coffee. If they hadn’t made coffee yet, it meant they were heading out soon. Good.

I pulled open my underwear drawer and fished through the grim garments—a limp pile of dead elastic and threadbare cotton in various shades of washed-to-oblivion black. I pulled on a pair of my so-called Jockey briefs. They were laughably large and plunged comically to the floor the instant I let go of them. Inspired, I decided to root through my blue-jean archives.

In the back of my closet, in a dusty cardboard box, there lived close to a decade’s worth of favorite jeans that I had grown too big for. When I turned twenty, I had abandoned
the sad practice, but beginning at the age of eleven and all through my teens, when a pair of pants became too gut-sucking for my steadily increasing girth, I would purchase a pair of “fat jeans” to wear temporarily while I dieted my way back into the “thin” pair. Of course, the new “fat jeans” inevitably became the old “thin” pair, and the stupidly hopeful blue-jean archive was born. I wrestled the box out of the closet and popped the top. The too-tight Lees and Levi’s were folded and stacked in order of waist size, largest on top, smallest at the bottom. It was an interesting archaeology, the waistbands like tree rings charting my slow growth. At the very depths of the box, I found a musty pair of acid-washed straight-legs that I had last worn when I was around twelve years old. Size eight. They looked tiny to my eye, but when I tried them on, they were delightfully huge and hilariously short. The weird thing is, they actually looked good on me. If I’d owned a belt, I could have gone for the cutesy skinny-girl-in-the-ill-fitting-jeans look.

“Ready?” I heard Virginie call out to Fraser.

“Coming,” he said. Clunky man-steps down the hall, followed by the front door closing hard. Silence. I was alone. Emboldened by my transformation, I decided to go where I had never gone before: into Virginie’s lair to borrow some duds.

Though the window was propped wide open, the room smelled unfresh—a heavy mixture of jasmine oil, settled smoke, and sex. The frameless futon was unmade and there were piles of clothes everywhere. On the floor, millimeters from the twisted duvet cover, sat several pillar candles, a bunch of matchbooks, and a massive butt-filled ashtray that also contained two yellowing condoms full of sperm, one tied closed at the top, the other spilling seed into ash. Also on the floor was a small lamp with a vintage silk scarf draped over it—a dark brown circle on the top of the fabric showed where the lightbulb had scorched it. The place was a freakin’ fire trap. Blobs of colored candle wax had dripped down and stained
the hardwood floor. There were numerous cigarette burns on the sheets and pillowcases. Cripes, I thought, how many times has she nearly torched the joint? Could a roommate get any worse? I shuddered and made my way to her underwear drawer. I had to root through a tangled mound of thongs before I found something that hadn’t been wedged firmly in Virginie’s ass crack. I chose an ordinary pair of white bikini panties that looked clean and passed the sniff test. I was jamming them in my robe pocket when I heard the front door open.
Shit!
In a flash, my brain processed the fact that they would undoubtedly see me if I bolted into the hall, and there was no closet in which to hide. So I went out the window, sliding hands first into the cement laneway between houses. I landed at the feet of Mrs. Silva, who was cranking her garden hose back onto its holder.

“Hi,” I said stupidly, getting up and brushing my palms on my robe. She frowned and made for her backyard, pulling the gate shut behind her.

I moved to the front of the house and peeked around. Fraser was waiting on the porch, staring dumbly at nothing, tugging on his goatee. A moment later, Virginie emerged from the house.

“Got ’em?” he said.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

They’d forgotten something. Cigarettes or sunglasses. I waited until they were halfway down the street, then tried the front door. Locked. I had to hoist myself back through the window to continue scavenging.

As I was rifling through Virginie’s vast collection of bras—everything from frilly push-ups to sporty cotton contraptions, I came across a small stack of photographs. The top one was of Fraser in boxer shorts, stretched out on the futon. He was grinning goofily, and his eyes had been caught in mid-blink. He looked subnormal. The next one was of Virginie in her tartan jumper, sitting cross-legged on a kitchen chair with her panties showing and her head cocked to one
side, trying to be cute. The camera flash had turned her eyes into fiery red dots, which made her look like some kind of demonic Scottish imp. I flipped quickly through a series of shots taken outside at a downtown sculpture garden—Virginie clambering and posing cute all over a herd of Joe Fafard’s bronze cows. I stopped abruptly when I came across a photograph of me. There were two actually, both dark and slightly out of focus, taken without a flash, I suppose. I might not have even recognized myself if it hadn’t been for the familiar clothing/furniture. The first one was a full-length shot of me on the living-room couch. I must have fallen asleep watching TV. I was on my side and my mouth was hanging open. My sweatshirt had ridden up, exposing part of my gut, which drooped down and pooled on the sofa cushion. It was horrible. Humiliating. Obviously, a great source of hilarity for Virginie and Fraser. I felt my face blaze hot with shame and anger as I surveyed the second shot and imagined them trying not to laugh as they tiptoed nearer to snap the fuzzy, close-up view of my belly.

I buried the photos back where I found them and thrust the drawer shut. I didn’t
need
a bra anyway. Fuck it. I rummaged through the remaining drawers, selecting a plain white T-shirt and the smallest, most indistinctive blue jeans I could find—I didn’t want the bitch to recognize the ensemble if I happened to pass her on the street. Finally, I snatched a pair of ancient Converse sneakers. My feet were much narrower than before, but also far longer, and I could see that there was no way in hell any of my shoes would fit me. Even Virginie’s looked on the small side. I figured the worn-out canvas ones would have more give. I ducked into the bathroom and dressed quickly.