Waking Beauty Read Free

me. If I’d lost sixty pounds, I would have been a hideously ugly thin person. My dead-mouse hair would still have laid limp, my golf ball skin would have continued to ooze boils, my pellet eyes and potato nose would have remained, as would my broad back, hunched shoulders, and flat ass. My teeth would still have sat snaggled and mossy in my thin-lipped mouth, my legs would have remained too short for my torso, and my beige-nipple tits would have gone on dangling, lopsided and slack. That brown birthmark would still have sprawled like an obscene diarrhea stain over my left shin, and those three black hairs would have continued to sprout from the mole above my upper lip. I was one of those rare individuals who possessed nary a good feature. I didn’t have nice eyes or a winning smile or a creamy complexion. There was no single feature in which I could take comfort. I was a physical disaster. I always had been (since the age of two, anyway). No wonder that Elda had allowed me to move in with her—in contrast, she looked like a supermodel. And no wonder that nobody wanted to take her place when she bugged out. At least half a dozen prospective roommates had trooped through the freshly scrubbed, centrally located, and reasonably priced flat, but there were no takers. They had all found my presence too disturbing. Too depressing. I could tell. I have a sixth sense, a radarlike detection device that can pick up the faintest frequency of compassion. Ultimately, only Virginie jumped at the chance to shack up with the ghoul next door (at a slightly reduced rent—she had a sixth sense for weakness and desperation).
    I heard the front door slam. Virginie and Fraser had finally gone for breakfast. I went to the kitchen to see if there was any coffee left. There wasn’t. Not in the pot. There were two barely sipped mugs sitting, cold and greasy, on the kitchen table. I thought about brewing up a fresh batch, but decided to shower and skedaddle before the sweetheartsreturned. I didn’t even blow-dry my hair. I just pinned it into a bun, dressed quickly, and left.
    The day was lovely. Yellow and shiny and warm. Bees were back in the city. Grass, too, all moist and fresh. And everywhere outside, people dizzy with spring and hungry for sun were taking it in: Mrs. Silva planting annuals around her cement shrine to the Virgin Mary, Nuno Benitah lovingly soaping up the spoiler on his red Camaro, Debbie and Sergio Big-Wheeling down the sidewalk, and as usual, as always, my neighbor and coworker Isadora on her front stoop, hosing down her paved front lawn. Twice each day in spring/summer/fall Isadora would carefully unravel a perfectly coiled garden hose and proceed to blast the interlocking patio stones with about a thousand pounds of water pressure—as if it were a rioting crowd that needed to be controlled, as if the Ebola virus had flopped down in her yard and shouted:
Hi, honey, I’m home
. Needless to say, not even the most roguish dandelion seed would be bold or crazy enough to settle upon this pristine surface. Yet there she was, every morning and every afternoon, washing away the phantom dirt. Not only would I cheerfully eat a meal off of the DeSouzas’ front lawn, I would confidently stretch out and undergo major surgery without fear of bacterial infection.
    Isadora waved as I passed by. “Off to your mom’s?” she said, smiling sympathetically.
    “Yup.” I knew better than to stop and chat while she was purifying pavement. “Talk to you later.”
    “Later.”
    I was surprised when I discovered that Isadora was only a few years older than I. She was just twenty-five, but there was something patently middle-aged about her, something low to the ground and matronly. Maybe it was the childbearing that did it—she already had two rug rats. Maybe it was the facial hair—she sported a bit of a Fu Manchu mustache. She was always smiling sympathetically. “How was your weekend?”she’d ask, smiling sympathetically. “My