Beautiful You Read Free

only a few steps away, shouting, “Hold the elevator!”
    Instead, Monique punched the button to shut the doors. She repeatedly stabbed the button with her bejeweled thumb as if she were sending a distress signal in Morse code. Penny had lived in the Big Apple for six months, and she had yet to see anyone press an elevator button fewer than twenty times. The doors thudded together, mere inches in front of the young lawyer’s aquiline nose, leaving him behind.
    His name was Tad, and he’d flirted with Penny every time they’d met. His pet name for her was “Hillbilly,” and Tad represented what Penny’s mother would call “a real catch.” Penny herself suspected otherwise. Secretly, she sensed that he only paid attention to her because he was trying to endear himself to Monique. It was the way any man might curry favor with a pretty girl by fawning over her fat, stinky dog.
    Not that Penny was stinky. Or fat, not really.
    Not that Monique cared, either. With her flashy streetwise attitude she was angling for a hedge fund manager or a newly minted Russian oligarch. Unapologetic, she told everyone that her only aspiration was to live in an Upper East Side town house, munching Pop-Tarts and lounging in bed all day. Breathing a huge, fake sigh of relief, she said, “Omaha girl, you should let that poor boy put his slippery little tadpole inside you!”
    Penny wasn’t flattered by his winks and wolf whistles. She knew she was only the ugly dog. The stepping stone.
    Aboard the elevator Monique appraised Penny’s workaday outfit. Monique cocked her hip and wagged a finger. There wasn’t room left on any of the stylish girl’s fingers for even one more glitzy ring. Monique pursed her lips, sporting three distinct shades of purple lip gloss, and said, “G’friend, I love yourretro figure!” She tossed her beaded braids. “I love how you’re so okay with your big-girl thighs.”
    Penny hesitantly accepted the compliment. Monique was a work friend, and that wasn’t the same as a real friend. Life here was different than in the Midwest. In New York City you had to settle.
    In the city every gesture was calculated to dominate. Every detail of a woman’s appearance demonstrated status. Penny hugged the cardboard box of warm coffees, holding it like a vanilla-scented teddy bear, suddenly self-conscious.
    Monique cut her eyes sideways, recoiling in shock at the sight of something on Penny’s face. To judge from Monique’s grimace, it couldn’t be anything less than a nesting tarantula. “A place in Chinatown …?” Monique began. She took a step away. “They can take care of those crazy werewolf hairs you have sprouting around your mouth.” Adding in a stage whisper, “So cheap even you can afford it.”
    Growing up on her parents’ farm in Shippee, Nebraska, Penny had seen cooped-up hens peck one another to bloody death with more subtlety.
    It was obvious that some women had never gotten the memo about universal sisterhood.
    As they arrived on the sixty-fourth floor the elevator doors opened, and the two young women were greeted by the probing noses of four German shepherds. Bomb-sniffing dogs. A burly uniformed guard stepped forward to wand them with a metal detector.
    “We’re on lockdown above this level,” explained Monique. “Because of you-know-who being in the building, they’ve evacuated everything between sixty-four and the roof.” Sassy as ever, Monique took Penny by the elbow and reiterated, “Chairs, girl. Fetch!”
    It was ludicrous. BB&B was the most high-powered firm in the country, but they never had enough seating to go around. Like a game of musical chairs, if you arrived late to any important meeting you had to stand. At least until some underling like Penny was sent to find you a chair.
    While Monique ran to the meeting to stall for time, Penny tried door after door and found them all locked. The hallways were strangely deserted, and through the window beside each locked door Penny