O Beautiful

by Jung Yun

  “So you’ll come back tomorrow, right?” Tyler is looking up at her, squinting with one eye shut because of the sun’s glare. “For the dime bag?”

  She doesn’t feel stoned yet. She’s not sure if she will. She tells him she’ll swing by because it seems like he wants her to, and promises to herself aside, maybe she wants to as well.

  “You know, my friend can get other stuff. Harder stuff, if you want.”

  “Harder like what?”

  He shrugs. “Meth. Oxy. Smack, if you’re into that.”

  “Are you into that?”

  He shrugs again, too young to know what the right answer is.

  7

  Elinor continues down Main Street, still searching for a place to eat. The farther she drives, the more the businesses begin to thin and spread out. Instead of circling back, she pulls into a Bernie’s drive-through with a line of cars nine deep. It’s been years, maybe even a decade, since she last had fast food, but she harbors a special fondness for Bernie’s, a small Midwestern chain that she assumed had long gone out of business. Whenever she cut class in high school, she’d treat herself to a trip through their drive-through, eating with the windows open so her father wouldn’t notice the smell in his car.

  By now, she’s ravenous—the weed was much stronger than she thought—so she orders a supersize bacon double cheeseburger meal, grateful for her birdlike metabolism. When the food finally arrives, she takes huge bites of the burger, dropping bits of tomato and melted cheese and watery ketchup onto her makeshift plate, which she fashioned out of napkins. She gobbles fries by the dozen, pinching and folding them into her mouth, and sucks so much ice-cold soda through her straw, she almost forgets to breathe. It took twenty minutes to receive her food, and less than five minutes to finish it, scraping the wax paper wrapper clean with her fingers. So many women she worked with used to binge like this. Then they’d slip away to the nearest bathroom and return a short while later, sucking on sugar-free mints. It was one of the few bad habits of the business that Elinor didn’t pick up.

  From the parking lot of Bernie’s, she watches a line gathered in front of a faded brick building on the corner. There’s no sign, no address number, nothing that tells her—or them—what kind of business goes on inside. Still, the line stretches halfway down the block, growing faster than it moves. The people waiting are men of all ages, all colors, all physical conditions. She sees more prosthetic limbs than she ever has in one place. Veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan, most likely. The oil companies supposedly love hiring vets. She begins to count how many people are in line and reaches thirty-eight before she sees her first female, a short, middle-aged woman who looks like someone’s mother. Behind her are at least a dozen more men.

  Elinor wants to know what they’re waiting for, what the woman is waiting for, so she examines herself in the rearview mirror, wiping a smear of ketchup from her cheek. Her eyes are a bit droopy, but not the obvious, heavy-lidded kind of droop that she associates with stoners like Tyler.

  As soon she gets out of her car, the line registers her presence. The murmur is quiet at first, but quickly, it builds.

  “Hey, beautiful.”

  “Would you look at her.”

  “Damn, girl.”

  “Ni hao ma.”

  “What’s up, baby?”

  She lowers her eyes to the ground, trying not to look up. She hates the way she does this, defaulting to a posture that she associates with shame. How differently she reacts to male attention now.

  The first time someone catcalled her, she was a sophomore in high school. The new English teacher had arranged a field trip for his honors students to see a play in Minneapolis. On their way to the theater, they walked past a construction site, and the workers started whistling and making comments at the girls, something most of them had never experienced before. Her female classmates tittered nervously. Some even waved at the men, a motley-looking group dressed in faded denim and orange vests, their skin the color of hide. Elinor had grown faster and taller than most of the boys and all of the girls in her class. At five foot ten, she was more accustomed to being called names than being called pretty, so it took her a while to realize that many of the comments were being directed at her, the “exotic one,” the “China doll with the long legs.”

  Her teacher, Mr. Bender, was a young man still in his twenties. He had a kind face framed by dirty blond curls, and she and several of her classmates had been nursing crushes on him that semester. When he realized what was happening, he rushed toward Elinor and put a protective hand on the small of her back as he led her away. It was electric, all of it. His desire to protect her, the jealous glances from the girls, the bewildered stares from the boys as they tried to figure out what they had missed about her. She walked the rest of the way with Mr. Bender, who advised her to simply ignore men when they did that, as if he knew something similar was likely to happen again. Anyone who observed the bright red flush of Elinor’s cheeks when they arrived at the theater probably assumed that she was embarrassed by the incident. But secretly, she was elated. It was the first time she’d ever felt noticed for being pretty instead of being different.

  She feels none of that elation now as she crosses the street, trying to pretend that she doesn’t notice what’s going on around her. But her usual tactics don’t work here. The volume, the frequency, the crudeness of the comments being directed at her are greater than anything she’s ever experienced before. There are just too many men to ignore, and once the hive begins to buzz, it grows louder and louder.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Smile, baby.”

  “What’s the matter? You deaf?”

  “Hey, gorgeous. Gorgeous!”

  “Your car broke, honey? Oh, I’ll give you a ride.”

  These are the sentences she can make out, the actual words shouted at her as she passes. But there are noises too. Slick, wet, sloppy, dirty noises. Laughter. The shuffle of feet as men high-five and slap each other on the shoulder, congratulating their friends for getting something into the mix. Elinor’s pulse quickens and her skin flushes from cheeks to chest. Everything in her stomach feels like it’s about to come back up. She wonders if the weed she smoked is making her paranoid. Then again, if she wasn’t stoned, she would have doubled back to her car already and driven away. She reminds herself that she has a job to do in spite of these men, who are everywhere in Avery. She has to be able to walk among them.

  Just before she reaches the opposite side of the street, she scans the faces in front of her, trying to decide whom to approach. All she sees are no-good grins and a few menacing stares that wouldn’t look out of place in a mug shot. She veers toward the only person she can, the woman.

  “Hello,” Elinor says.

  The woman visibly stiffens. She doesn’t turn to face her, but all the men in line do, forming a loose half circle around them.

  “I’m writing an article about the oil boom for the Standard.” Elinor says the name of the publication too loudly, wielding it like a talisman. “Would you mind telling me what you’re waiting in line for?”

  “Hey, you can interview me,” someone yells.

  The woman continues staring straight ahead. Up close, she looks like she’s in her mid-sixties. She has fine silver hair that hangs in her face, and she’s wearing an all-gray outfit. Pants, sneakers, a tight polyester shirt that accentuates the doughiness of her body. Her wire-rim glasses catch the afternoon light, drawing attention to the milky white cataracts forming in her eyes.

  “Excuse me. May I ask what you’re in line for?” Elinor repeats.

  The woman glances at her, but only for a moment. “Halliburton’s hiring.” Her mouth is drawn so tight, it looks like she just spoke without moving her lips.

  “For what kind of job?”

  “All kinds.”

  “And what kind of job are you hoping to get?”

  “You want to interview me to be your boyfriend?” someone else shouts.

  “Whate
ver they’ll hire me for,” the woman says.

  In the corner of her eye, Elinor sees the man who offered to be her boyfriend tug at his crotch and take a step toward her. “You want to be my girl, ba—” He stops, quieted by his friend, who’s telling him to calm the fuck down.

  The entire time she’s speaking to the woman, men continue to jockey for her attention, rattling off one terrible line after another and then acting hurt or offended when she pretends not to notice. As a young model, she would have been disappointed to walk into a bar or a club and not generate a reaction like this. Attention was a valuable form of currency. The more she earned, the more she was worth. Now all she wants to do is to blend in, something that’s proving impossible here.

  “Have you been waiting long?” she asks, trying to keep the conversation going.

  “A couple of—”

  The woman is interrupted by someone shouting, “Give me a massage!”

  Shut the hell up, Elinor wants to shout back. But she knows what will happen if she does. The crowd will turn on her in an instant, replacing their idea of compliments with epithets and accusations. Stuck-up bitch. Skinny bitch. Chinese bitch. Things she’s heard before that she doesn’t want to hear again.

  The line advances a few feet and the woman shuffles forward. Elinor shuffles with her. There are so many things she wants to ask. How old are you? What are you qualified to do for a company like Halliburton? What’s it like looking for work in the oil fields at your age? She tries to figure out how to word these questions with more delicacy, in a way that won’t make the woman feel defensive or judged, but it’s hard to think clearly with the volume of activity going on around them, which isn’t letting up. Elinor feels terrible about this. Before she came along, the woman was just standing in line, wearing her gray clothes like a sort of camouflage. Now they’re the center of attention, something she was clearly trying to avoid from the start. Continuing to ask questions will only make the situation worse for both of them.

  “Well, good luck,” Elinor says casually. “I hope you land something today.” She leans toward her and whispers, “I’m sorry I bothered you.” Then she returns to her car without waiting for a response, aware that this is the second time she’s had to apologize for bothering someone in the past hour, simply by trying to do her job.

  Men mock-plead with her to stay and shout comments at her back about the roundness and fineness of her ass. She distinctly hears someone jogging after her, shouting “Hey! Hey!” but the footsteps and jangle of keys soon fall away.

  Even after she starts the car, she can still hear men shouting at her over the sound of the engine and the air conditioner blowing hot, stale air on her face. She pulls out of the parking lot without looking at them, relieved that there’s less traffic on this side of Main. Only when the line of men disappears from her rearview mirror does she notice the way she’s sitting—perfectly erect, both hands squeezing the steering wheel, her knuckles bloodless and white.

  8

  The town manager’s elderly secretary keeps looking at her from across the room. BETTY HILDEBRANDT—the name embossed on her faux-wood desk plaque—clearly means no harm. She’s probably just a worrier, the old-fashioned kind who assumes that her boss’s lateness will reflect badly on her. Every few minutes, Mrs. Hildebrandt—Elinor has a tendency to think of all older women as “Mrs.”—sets down the index cards she’s been organizing and glances at her with a pained expression.

  “I’m so sorry. He’s usually never this late. Are you sure I can’t get you something to drink?”

  “I’m fine, ma’am. Thank you.”

  She hasn’t called anyone “ma’am” in years, but being so close to home resurrects her father’s frequent etiquette lectures. Be sure to refer to your elders as sir or ma’am or they’ll think you’re being disrespectful. Make eye contact when you shake hands or people will never trust you. Don’t forget to say please and thank you or it’ll look like you weren’t raised right. Ed believed that bad manners had consequences, especially among military families that valued order and decorum. Before big events with his colleagues or commanding officers, he always gave Nami the same lectures, as if she were his child instead of his wife.

  “And you definitely don’t want to reschedule?”

  “I don’t mind waiting, really.”

  She understands why Richard set this meeting up. A story about Avery would be incomplete without speaking to the town manager. But it feels so perfunctory. Elinor assumes that most public officials are guarded. She’ll be lucky if she leaves with a decent quote and maybe a new contact or two.

  “Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do for you,” Mrs. Hildebrandt says, picking up her stack of cards again.

  Elinor smiles politely and scans the room for what feels like the hundredth time. The furniture in the waiting area is nice, almost conspicuously so. She imagines New Yorkers offering top dollar for the gently used chairs and sofas, attractive examples of mid-century craftsmanship that wouldn’t be out of place at a high-end antiques shop. The rest of the decor, however, has a haphazard quality to it. Fake floral arrangements on white pillars; an assortment of trophies and plaques; posters in flimsy, scratched metallic frames. The one on the wall directly in front of her is an enlargement of a vintage photograph with the words AVERY FIREMAN PARADE—JULY 16, 1912 etched directly on the negative. The firemen are marching down the street in suits and ties, their faces dark and sullen.

  Years ago, when Elinor was first starting out in New York, she rented a small room in an apartment owned by her modeling agency. Her roommates were a frequently rotating cast of women—girls, actually. Eighteen- and nineteen-year-old girls discovered by the agency’s scouts, the same way she was. They decorated their shared spaces like the teenagers they were, with clothing and perfume ads torn out of magazines and covers featuring the supermodels they admired or envied most. In the kitchen, an ethereal Texan who dreamed of walking European runways hung up a black-and-white poster of a street scene in Florence, a photograph that looked like it belonged in the pages of Life. To the left of center, there was a tall, elegant brunette with a shawl draped over one shoulder, passing through a gauntlet of Italian men who were all smiling, laughing, staring, and blowing kisses at her. At first, Elinor didn’t mind seeing the poster several times a day. It made sense for it to be there. She and her roommates were aspiring models. They had chosen to be looked at for a living. But the longer she stayed in that apartment, memorizing every detail of the image, the more she understood that something was very wrong.

  Her roommates thought she was crazy when she first brought it up. The men weren’t bothering the woman, they said. They were simply appreciating her beauty, putting her on a pedestal. “It’s cultural!” was their favorite line of protest. But Elinor couldn’t be persuaded. She thought the woman looked frightened. Everything about her expression said so. There was the lack of eye contact, the noticeable absence of a smile. There was also the way she held her arms so close to her body, one hand clutching her bag, the other holding up her shawl, as if to keep herself covered. The men in the picture seemed amused by her discomfort. A curly-haired one on a motor scooter was tilting his head at her, his mouth open mid-laugh. Another man in a dapper suit was leaning toward her, his lips puckered for a kiss and both hands shoved deep into his pockets, a detail that always seemed perverse to her.

  Several hours have passed since her encounter with the men on the street, but Elinor can’t stop thinking about it. If someone had taken a photo of her walking past them, she wonders if it would accurately register her feelings, if there would be any debate about the anger and fear that pulsed through her veins like blood. She keeps seeing the scene unfold as if she’s watching from a place outside her own body. When she replays her part, Elinor isn’t sure what she could have done differently, other than not get out of the car, which hardly seems fair. She should be able to go wherever she wants without being subjected to that kind of abuse. How far she’s come from th
at awkward teenage girl in Minneapolis, the one who finally felt seen and appreciated just because men called her pretty. She doesn’t want that anymore. At least, that’s what she tells herself. She doesn’t want to want that anymore. For her, even this is a step.

  At 4:40, Alan Denny finally emerges from his office, apologizing for the delay as he smooths out his wispy comb-over with one hand and shakes with the other. He’s short and snowman-like, composed mostly of circles. Round head, round belly, round wire-rim glasses that make his eyes look as big as coins. He rattles off explanations for why his conference call ran so long, clearly hating the idea of inconveniencing anyone as much as Mrs. Hildebrandt does. While Elinor didn’t necessarily mind the wait, she dislikes the way he leans toward her when he speaks, so close that she can smell the old coffee on his breath.

  Mr. Denny ushers her into his office, which is decorated much like the waiting room with the same furniture and trophies and posters. Beside his desk, there’s a large window that faces the police station across the street, surrounded by a fleet of newish-looking black-and-white cruisers. She makes a note to mention that all her requests to the police department to schedule a ride-along have gone unanswered. Maybe this is something he can help her with.

  “So, the Standard’s interested in doing a story about our little town, eh?”

  “It’s not so little anymore.” She takes a recorder out of her bag and asks if she can place it on his desk.

  “Be my guest.” He moves a tall stack of folders off to the side with his forearm. Mr. Denny, she notices, is a stacker. Everywhere she looks, there’s a stack of something, like he’s trying to wall himself in behind a fortress of folders and envelopes and boxes.

  “So how can I help?” he asks pleasantly, knitting his fingers together and resting them on his stomach. “What would you like to know?”