Pretty Girls

by Mimi Strong

  Going home wasn't appealing, because she wasn't finished with him.

  She tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Mmm, what's up, sugarlips?” he said groggily.

  “Bobby, I need to tell you something. I lost my right foot in an accident years ago. I wear a prosthetic. I'm going to remove it right now and put it under the bed. I'll keep myself covered so you won't have to see anything.”

  “Okay,” he said, pecking her on the cheek before rolling over.

  “Okay?”

  “I know about your foot. It's on your bio page, for the radio station.”

  “No, it isn't.”

  He sat up. “Oh. I guess I must have googled it. I had a crush on you from the phone and I wanted to see what you looked like.”

  “You googled me?” Of course, that made sense. While the accident wasn't something well-known at the radio station, there had been newspaper stories over the years. Young people overcoming their disabilities, and other uplifting tales.

  He said, “Yeah. I kept trying to get you out for a date, but you weren't picking up on my subtle hints over the phone. I had to do a little digging to make sure you weren't married, or eighty.”

  “What if I were eighty?”

  He shrugged. “I'd still shag you. Shag. I haven't said that word in ages. Do you like it when I talk all English to you?” He tickled her stomach. “Shag, shag, shag. Do you know what we call umbrellas? Brollies.”

  She sighed. “You are a strange and wonderful man.” She removed the prosthetic and the thin stocking she wore over her residual limb. Normally, she'd clean the interior with a damp sponge, but this once she'd tuck it under the bed and forget it. Bobby didn't look down. “You can look,” she said.

  He scanned slowly down her body and back up again. “You are a goddess,” he said, grabbing for her hair again. “This hair! I still want to eat it. Don't ever straighten this hair, promise.”

  “What if I… had a little work done on my nose?” She covered her nose with her hand. “I wouldn't change much, just a bit of refinement.”

  He pulled her hand down. “Sure, if it makes you happy. I think you're a sexy little beast. Hey, do you like spanking?”

  “What?”

  “Just kidding, me neither. Unless you do.” He rolled over onto his stomach, showing his bare bottom. “Smack it.”

  “Uh.” She tapped his ass cheek timidly.

  “Like you mean it. I'm a very bad boy.”

  “Okay,” Nora said, and she slapped him a little harder. She didn't like this type of play, but she didn't hate it.

  To Nora, spanking or goofing around like this was funny, like two kids playing doctor or daring each other to do strange things. It didn't feel sexy, like slow dancing at the club or kissing in the elevator had.

  She spanked Bobby and they had sex again, though this time she felt sad afterward.

  Somewhere in the world was a man she could fall in love with forever, but it wasn't Bobby. Snuggled in his arms, she felt more alone than ever.

  When she slept, she dreamed about flying, or falling, or both. First she was naked, in the sky. Then she was in a plane that was about to crash, and everything on board floated up into the air as they dropped from the sky. Paper cups and sunglasses floated by as the plane plummeted, like loose objects on a space station.

  On Saturday morning, the bitter truth came out: Bobby had no coffee in the place, just five types of tea that would be equally useless against Nora's caffeine withdrawal. “We'll go out,” Bobby offered.

  They were still in bed, and she pushed the blankets off. “I'll just get a cab home, don't worry about it.”

  “At least let me buy you a coffee at the little place downstairs, it's the least I can do for last night.” He kissed her on the hip and grinned. “I'll get you a fresh towel so you can wash up.”

  Nora considered Bobby's bathroom, which contained only a stand-up shower. Although generous in size, it had not been adapted for her use like the one at her home. Usually in situations like this, she'd opt for a bath, but there was no tub. As much as people with a disability insist their lives are exactly like everyone else's… well, sometimes there were differences. She lied about having no time, and said she'd skip the shower.

  Bobby pulled on a sleeveless shirt and shorts and left the bedroom.

  She did agree to get a quick coffee with him, and in the elevator on the way down to the cafe, Bobby leaned in and gave her a kiss, on the lips, lingering.

  She pulled away and said, “Can we keep this casual for now?” It was better to get it over with now than drag their relationship status out over missed phone calls and vague text messages.

  Bobby straightened up and put his hands in the pockets of his shorts. “Sure.” He nodded.

  The look on his face tore at Nora's heart a little. He was a sweet guy, and he'd treated her well, but she couldn't shake the feeling she had been kissing someone else's future husband. Bobby belonged to someone else—someone who liked kinky sex with spanking, and drank tea.

  “Easy come, easy go,” Bobby said, then he frowned and looked at his running shoes.

  He'll get over it, Nora thought. Those other guys she'd had single nights with had been equally proud the next morning, so pleased with themselves they'd had sex with an actual disabled person. It did wonders for their self-image, those guys. They'd gotten laid, and they'd done a good deed. The reek of their generosity was more than she could handle.

  Bobby had a professional-quality smile back on his face when they entered the coffee shop, where he ordered a London Fog, the sweet tea drink, though at this place it was called something much more complicated. Nora ordered her usual latte and watched as the lithe young woman with the multiple nose piercings and leather bracelets steamed both their drinks. Something passed in the air between Bobby and the barrista girl, and Nora had a strong hunch the girl had been upstairs and spanked the bad boy a time or two. The girl seemed to give her a scathing look that said you?

  Yes, me, Nora said silently to herself. I rocked the Englishman's world, and now my dry spell is over. Things are going to change.

  She burned her mouth on the hot coffee.

  She tried not to think about Bobby and the barrista, but then she forgot about the coffee and burned herself even worse.

  Her tongue was still numb on the tip when she got home.

  Nora spent most of Saturday on the computer, researching rhinoplasty. She looked at a thousand before and after photos. Most of the ones on men were troubling. There was no such thing as too big of a nose on a man, as far as Nora was concerned. Why would a man have his nose reshaped? She caught herself judging the anonymous men in the photos before she corrected her thinking. If she wanted to have the surgery for her own private reasons, it was reasonable to assume the men did as well. Live and let live, judge not lest ye be judged, and all those things.

  She studied all the photos, saving some to her desktop. She looked for girls with similar faces and noses to her own, but there were few. Most of the surgeries depicted were correcting either a hump on the bridge or reducing the size of the tip, but not both. Nora had what was technically called a combination nose. It was the type of nose that had the least predictable surgical results and highest rate of revision.

  Nora opened some recent digital photos of herself and brought them into the graphics editing program that had come with the computer. She spent the rest of the day Saturday giving herself digital nose jobs.

  Saturday night, she slept peacefully in her own bed.

  On Sunday afternoon, Nora went to her regular yoga class—the one Tianne taught. Nora was late and had to take a spot in the far corner, practically touching the crunchy stucco wall. Tianne's class was by far the most popular one at the studio, so while Nora was annoyed by the crowd, she was glad for her friend's success.

  Tianne gave Nora a little wave. Tianne's short, bleached-blond hair appeared to have some streaks of blue. Knowing Tianne's busy family life, the streaks were more likely to h
ave come from felt-tip markers than from a salon.

  Nora sat cross-legged on her mat and breathed deeply in preparation for class. As Tianne asked everyone to scan their body and note any changes, Nora smiled to herself. She'd had sex for the first time in ages, and it seemed to have made all her chakras feel better. Nora felt centered. She didn't even think once about how much harder some of the moves were for someone with a prosthetic foot. Some things in life were easy, and some were difficult. It was that simple.

  As she moved into the first Downward Dog of the class and blood rushed into her head, she wondered how many weeks of yoga she could legitimately get out of, post-rhinoplasty.

  About halfway through class, Nora realized the skinny ass in front of her face belonged to Kylie, her work friend. She dimly remembered Tianne inviting Kylie to the class as they were tossing back mojitos on Friday night.

  Good for Tianne, she's converted yet another one, Nora thought. She felt a note of displeasure and wondered if she might be a bit jealous of her two friends becoming friends. Nora told herself to not be silly; they certainly weren't in high school anymore.

  After the class, the three of them went for Mexican food down the street. Instead of their usual table for two, they took a booth near the window—one that accommodated three women. As they sipped water with lemon slices and waited for their nachos, Tianne shared some of her tales from the trenches.

  Tianne said, “Lucy, she's the five-year-old, typed words on my computer when I wasn't looking. I didn't even know she could read, much less type.”

  “What did she write?” Kylie asked.

  “Mostly gibberish, but it included some whole words, like fish and hat. Isn't that crazy? She said she was writing a story for Mommy.”

  “That kid is a genius,” Nora told Kylie. “Full scholarship, Ivy League. Mark my words. The other one, however, Matthew, uh, let's say he'd fit in well at the radio station.”

  “He has excellent coordination,” Tianne said. “When he gets his hands out of his pants, he's great at soccer.”

  Kylie said, “You mean he's… I thought he was only ten? Does it work already at that age?”

  “Oh, no,” Tianne said. “He just likes to hold onto it. ALL the time. We have a lot of talks about private things. I don't want to be too hard on him, though, I think that's how they get kinks when they're older. It's all the mother's fault, you know.”

  Nora began to laugh uncontrollably.

  “Speaking of kinks,” Kylie said, “when are you planning to tell us what happened Friday night? Are you and Bobby an item? He's adorable.”

  “Oh, Friday. Kinks, yes. An item, no.” Nora gave them the condensed version of the evening's events, right up to the awkward good-bye, when Bobby leaned in for a kiss as she was getting into the cab, and Nora shook his hand.

  “That's cruel,” Kylie said.

  “What? No. We're business friends.”

  “Yeah, and you and I business friends too,” Kylie said.

  “It's not like that,” Nora protested. Why was she being made out to be the villain here?

  The nachos arrived and she stuffed a loaded handful into her mouth.

  Tianne explained to Kylie, “Nora doesn't want to be a member of any club that'll have her.”

  It was strange for Nora to hear her best friend talk about her as though she wasn't even there. It was stranger still to have Tianne talk with authority about whatever went on inside Nora's head.

  “She always does this,” Tianne said. “Some guy falls for Nora and she sleeps with him once, then pushes him away. Her own parents are happily married, so I don't know where the commitment phobia comes from.”

  “I'm the exact opposite,” Kylie said. “I'm one of those girls who always has a boyfriend.” She pulled a nacho from the edge of the plate and dabbed it in the salsa daintily. “Except this past year, I thought I'd take some time to get to know myself. Here's what I found out: I really miss having a boyfriend.”

  “You'll like having a husband,” Tianne said. “All the fun of a boyfriend, but it's much harder for him to get away.” She laughed freely, her head thrown back.

  Nora laughed along with the other women and tried to enjoy the lunch, but two things were bothering her. The shortened calf on her right leg was aching from being overworked at yoga, and she wondered what exactly Tianne meant about her never wanting guys who liked her.

  Tianne wasn't due home yet, so after their lunch, the three women went for a walk in the park. In just three days' time, the trees and plants had sprung to life. Nora looked at the building across the street, where the ad agency was, and felt her stomach roll into a knot.

  A woman with enormous breasts—presumably implants, by her general appearance—jogged by in equally big designer sunglasses.

  “Men are so easily fooled by artifice,” Tianne commented to the other two. “My husband, bless his heart, is completely loyal to me, but his eyeballs would be chasing down the trail after Miss Jiggly Top there.”

  Kylie said, “Why are men like that? I don't stare.”

  Tianne said, “But you do know within a few seconds if you'd sleep with a guy or not, right?”

  “Hmm. True.”

  “Guys aren't like us,” Nora said. “Women rate men as either a yes or no, but guys have a sliding scale. Every woman is a maybe, and all it takes is a bit of makeup or some plastic surgery.”

  “Yeah,” Kylie said quietly.

  Nora took a deep breath. “And since we're on the topic, I should inform you both, as my dear friends, that I'm considering a little plastic surgery myself.”

  “You mean on your, um, leg?” Kylie asked.

  “Bigger boobs?” Tianne asked.

  “No, you guys. Don't be dense. Come on, it's pretty obvious.”

  “I'm going to say your nose,” Tianne said carefully. “Not because it is obvious, but because you've mentioned it before.”

  “Don't bother,” Kylie said. “You have such a great body, and you're so smart. You have an amazing personality.”

  Nora felt anger bubble up inside her. Kylie, who clearly had nothing wrong with her face, unless being too feminine was a flaw, had no right to say what procedures another person should or shouldn't have.

  Nora pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, a trick she'd learned on air to keep her from saying what she really thought. It wouldn't hold her back forever, but it bought her a few seconds.

  “Wouldn't it leave a big scar along the side of your nose?” Tianne asked.

  “No, they use a tiny incision here.” Nora hadn't the stomach to look at the procedural photos in detail, but she had studied the diagrams on the rhinoplasty websites. She held her fingernail to the cartilage below her nostrils, her fingertip against the divot above her lips. “They cut along here, in a tiny zigzag to hide the scar. Then they continue the cut along the inside of the nostril, and they pull the skin up to do the work.”

  “Do they break it?” Tianne asked. “The nose bone?”

  “I can't hear about this,” Kylie said, waving a hand. “Surgery talk makes me… ” She pretended to gag.

  “We will talk later about this, my dear,” Tianne said with authority.

  “Whatever,” Nora said. “Maybe I'll surprise you and the next time you see me, I'll have a new nose.”

  “It could change the sound of your voice,” Kylie said. “You'd better not.”

  “I've heard that,” Tianne said. “That's why Barbra Streisand never changed her nose.”

  Nora didn't want to talk about Barbra Streisand, or any of the number of actresses or singers known for their noses. She didn't want to be known by her nose any more than she wanted to be defined by her disability.

  As if on cue, a man with a metal sports prosthetic leg ran by.

  Nora was proud of guys like that—for staying active and for not letting the loss of a limb slow them down. But the thing about a guy like that was, five minutes after he's run past you, it'll be a rare person who could tell you what his face looked
like. All that stays in the mind is the air around the metal, where leg should be.

  The girls changed the topic to clothes, and what length of skirt was most flattering.

  Nora didn't wear skirts, so she remained quiet.

  As they were finishing their walk, Nora's mother called and asked her to go to the grocery store on her way home.

  After she said goodbye to Kylie and Tianne, Nora drove to Trader Joe's and picked up vitamins and fresh bread. Nora didn't pay rent at home, but she did kick in for food. The arrangement had worked out well, freeing up her modest radio station salary for fun things, like clothes, and now, plastic surgery. The rhinoplasty would cost nearly two months' worth of take-home pay, plus she'd need to take time off. Nora leafed through a gossip magazine as she waited in the checkout line, looking at the noses of celebrities and wondering what hers would look like.

  “We meet again, at our favorite store,” said a man behind her.

  Nora turned to find Aaron, the handsome musician she'd met at the station. She quickly analyzed what he'd just said and realized he must have seen her the previous time, when she thought she'd avoided detection.

  “Afternoons with Nora,” she said, extending her hand.

  “Broccoli and… freeze-dried blueberries with Aaron,” he said, pointing to his groceries on the conveyer belt. “You don't remember me.”

  “Of course I do.” She grabbed her receipt from the cashier, picked up her bag of groceries and backed away. Aaron was too good looking to see her up close under the harsh store lighting. She wished she had on Tianne's silver, jangly earrings to draw attention away from her nose until she could get it fixed.

  “I actually do know you,” Aaron said.

  “Everybody feels that way,” she said. “They spend their afternoons with me. The guys fall in love with my voice and the girls all want to be my friend. But it's all one sided, and that girl on the air, that's not the real me.”

  “It's not?” He looked confused, the poor guy.

  “Nice to see you,” she said, backing up right into the recycling bins. “Catch up with you around the studio!” She waved as she turned clumsily. She raced out the door, her pulse pounding in her ears.