A Tale of Beauty

by Patrick Balzamo

  After some thought, I take down the silky black blouse with lace cuffs and charcoal jeans that Belle christened my “black widow” outfit.

  “Oh, Sue, you absolutely have to buy this,” she said. “It’s perfect.”

  “I don’t know. Where would I wear it? It’s too slutty for work and too dressy for anything else.”

  She came over and put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s just perfect for your second job, though, isn’t it?” she said.

  Of course, she was right, and I ended up buying it. I even brought it back to her place and let her do one of her weird witchcraft things on it, with all kinds of incense and chanting and other stuff. When she was done, I asked her what was supposed to happen, but she just said: “You wouldn’t understand. Just promise me that you’ll only wear these clothes when you go in for the kill. That’s what they’re consecrated for.”

  I don’t believe in all her consecration junk, but it was easy enough to do what she said, and I can’t argue with the results. Just putting on these clothes always makes me feel stronger and more confident.

  “Let the games begin,” I drawl. For some reason, it doesn’t charge me up like it usually does, but I shrug it off.

  If there’s one thing I won’t miss about Nick, it’s his apartment. I mean, I don’t live in a palace or anything, but the front door of his building doesn’t lock properly, the trash can in the lobby is always overflowing, and the elevator’s almost never working.

  I don’t bother knocking — he always leaves it unlocked. He’s sprawled on the couch watching TV.

  “Wow, look at you. New outfit?”

  “Nah. Just dug it out of the closet today.” I walk over to the couch, perch on the armrest, and lean down to kiss him on the cheek. “How’re you doing?”

  “What the hell is that?” He seizes a handful of my blouse and drags me down for a much deeper kiss. I count four seconds from the time that his tongue slides past my lips; then, I place my hand over his and pull back.

  “Down, boy,” I say.

  “Hey, what do you expect when you come in here lookin’ like that?” He moves over on the couch to give me room. “On top of that, I haven’t seen you for what, two weeks now?”

  “Yeah. But we talk every night.”

  “Yeah. I guess.” He shifts closer to me, close enough for me to smell his cologne. It’s the expensive stuff, not the cheap junk he usually wears, and I take a moment to enjoy it. If he’s going that far on a random date, he’s more busted than I thought. “You should come over after work sometimes. Leave a couple of things here, sleep over once in a while, y’know?” He tries to pull me closer, but I don’t let him. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

  “I want to talk to you about something.” I lift my chin slowly and look into his eyes.

  “Sure, what’s up?” He looks around. “Oh, wait a second. You want me to order dinner first, or —”

  “No. Just listen.” I take a breath. “This is going to be hard enough to say.”

  “Okay ...”

  I lick my lips and close my eyes for a second. Usually, this is just part of the routine, but this time I feel something beyond the thrill of having a man in my power and the anticipation of using that power to crush him. It’s almost like I’m nervous too, but that’s stupid. What do I have to be nervous about? I’ve done this a million times.

  “Sue?”

  “It’s not working out.” The words come out in a rush, nowhere near the whip-strike tone I usually use, and I bite my tongue. Damn it, Sue. Focus.

  He stares at me blankly. “What’s not working out?” he says, but the shock slowly spreading across his face tells me that he knows exactly what I’m talking about.

  “This. You, me, everything.”

  “You’re joking.”

  I shake my head. “Nope. Sorry.”

  He blinks three times, quickly. “You’re gonna have to give me a bit more than that. Where’s this coming from?”

  It takes me a second to remember my usual answer. “I don’t think there’s any one thing. It’s just a feeling I have, that we’re not ... I don’t know. I just feel we’re going in different directions.”

  “Different directions? What does that even mean?”

  “I’m not sure. I just —”

  “You weren’t thinkin’ like that last time we talked. You said you loved me.”

  “I didn’t say that.” I’ll never say it to a man again. “I said that I felt something for you.”

  “And what the fuck was I supposed to get from that?”

  “Don’t talk to me like that.” I glare at him. “You think this is easy for me?”

  “You started it.” He moves to the window. “Fuck,” he says, more docilely, and I stand up, though I don’t move closer to him.

  “I really am sorry, Nick.” God help me, I think I mean it.

  “How long you been waiting to drop that bomb?”

  “I didn’t mean —”

  “Just answer.”

  I take a deep breath. This too is part of the game, but I don’t feel like playing anymore. “A while.”

  “And you never opened your mouth?” He turns his head to look at me over his shoulder. “You just let me sit there and go on talking about moving in, and all that shit?”

  “I didn’t know how to say it.”

  “Guess you figured it out.” He snorts and turns back to the window. “Lucky me.”

  We stand there in silence for at least a few minutes. Eventually, I say, very quietly: “I think I should probably go.”

  “Yeah.” He doesn’t turn around, and his voice is thick.

  “Are you okay?” I say, and hate myself even as I say it.

  “Just go.”

  Why do I do this? One of my victims said that it was probably a self-esteem issue. I laughed at him but I can kind of see it. After all, I’m not very attractive on any level: I don’t have Chastity’s innocence or Denise’s brains, my skin is usually blotchy and my hair is just curly enough to be messy. Once, when I still cared about those things, I went to a beauty salon for a complete overhaul, and not only did the beautician curse under her breath, but she actually managed to make me look worse.

  However, I learned very early on that you don’t have to be attractive to have a boyfriend. Or, more precisely, you don’t need to be attractive to get a man to sleep with you.

  I haven’t always wanted a boyfriend that badly, though. Until I was fourteen, I couldn’t have cared less if the boys existed. But then, one of them caught my eye, and being alone wasn’t enough anymore. His name was Jack. He wasn’t the most handsome guy, or the most athletic, but there was something about him that drew me in.

  We met in class, as project buddies. At first, there wasn’t any chemistry between us, and we didn’t even scrape a 60 on our first group project. Still, there was another assignment, then another after that, and soon, working together was a habit. Before I knew it, I was getting dressed for our first date.

  He wasn’t the romantic type. I don’t mean he was a total ape or anything, but he sure wasn’t Prince Charming. Still, I enjoyed his company. He told me his secrets, he listened when I talked, and generally had something helpful to say when I had a problem. He was probably the first person that I ever really respected.

  I’m not sure how I made the jump to sex when we had barely been seeing each other for a month. Maybe I was scared to lose him, and I convinced myself that he would ditch me if I didn’t start putting out. Then again, maybe I read too much into his hints; maybe he wasn’t looking for sex at all until I offered it. Whatever. In the end, our relationship got to be about nothing but sex, and he broke up with me over it.

  Of course, he gave me other reasons, airtight reasons at that: school was too much for him; his grades were sliding; his parents were complaining. I was too high-maintenance for him, and he always seemed to feel as though I didn’t think he was good enough, as though I were never satisfied. All I heard before it became a droning monotone were t
he first three words he said: “It’s not fair.” I could agree with that, at least.

  I couldn’t let him go, though, so I started to chase him. For months, I dialled his number for the privilege of being hung up on; I made life hell for any girl who so much as talked to him. Jack, for his part, tried everything from threats to begging to make me stop, but there was only one thing that I wanted. He could stop this any time he likes, I told myself. All he has to do is be my boyfriend again. In the end, he moved away.

  I ran out the final years of high school as I had begun them: alone, even more so now that everyone thought I was crazy. There was only one girl who was brave enough to speak to me, and that was Belle. She walked straight up to me one day while I was sitting in an unused corner of the soccer field and asked: “So, is any of it true?”

  “Is any of what true?”

  “That guy. Jack. Did you really torture him as badly as everyone says?”

  At the time, I hadn’t known how to answer her. I wanted to say: “Yes, I did torture him, but I didn’t mean to. All I wanted was to keep him with me.” In the end, all I said was: “Yes.”

  “Good,” she said, and smiled before walking away.

  I thought that was the last I’d see of her, but she kept finding me. I couldn’t figure out why she wanted to be around me: it wasn’t as though we had anything in common, really, and I was a total outcast on top of that.

  Belle’s take on the situation with Jack was completely different from anyone else’s. “The way I see it, he took what he wanted from you, and then he cut you loose,” she said one day while we sat in a filthy back stairwell. “He let you fall for him and then he moved on without a care for your feelings. He deserved whatever vengeance you could wreak on him.”

  “I guess. But maybe I went too far.”

  She frowned and crouched on the step beneath me. “He made you suffer, Sue,” she whispered, and I met her eyes as she went on to say: “You can’t have gone far enough to pay him back for that.”

  “But what if it was my fault too?”

  She laughed. “Well, of course it was your fault. But that doesn’t mean he’s not to blame, does it? All you did wrong was leave yourself open to him; he did the rest.” Her eyes glittered as she repeated: “He deserved to be punished.”

  “And what do I deserve?”

  I can still hear her voice, so sweet, as she raised her free hand to my cheek. “You deserve to make sure that this never happens again.”

  So, with Belle as my coach, that’s exactly what I did: I declared war on men. Sex is no longer my weakness, but my weapon; love and intimacy no longer have any place in my romantic relationships. I draw men in, leave them angry, crying, or broken, and I don’t give a damn. In fact, I laugh about it with my Sisters, although Chastity and Diana have never found it particularly entertaining.

  It worked great until I met Nick. And what gets me is that there’s nothing really different about him. I took him through the beginning of the game without any trouble, at least, but somewhere along the line I started to like him. He was sexy, and sweet, and strong, and eventually, I stopped simply noticing these things and started appreciating them.

  Belle noticed it even before I did. “You’ve got to break this one off, Sue,” she said after one of the Sisterhood meetings. “I don’t think that you can be objective about this one.”

  I should have listened to her then, but I let the relationship go on for another few months, mostly just to prove that I could, that no man was too much for me to handle. Maybe that was stupid, but whatever: it’s over now, and in a few weeks, I won’t even remember his name.

  Diana

  EVERY OTHER THURSDAY afternoon, I visit a café near my old neighbourhood. Though it’s some distance from where I live now, David is still close by. I suppose that I could ask him to meet me at a more convenient location, but I detest asking for favours. It gives them an opening to demand repayment later on.

  As usual, I arrive before he does, and take the booth directly across from the entrance. Several minutes pass before a waitress comes over to me. She’s wearing a badge that proclaims her status as a trainee almost as loudly as her uneasy smile, and I don’t even bother to note her name.

  “Hi there. What can I get you?”

  “A Coke, please.”

  She bites her lip and glances down at her pad. “Is Pepsi okay?”

  “No, it is not okay. Do they taste alike to you?”

  The waitress is stunned. Finally, she says: “Well, most people don’t seem to care, either way.”

  “Well,” I say, mimicking her tone, “I do care. Bring me some tea instead.”

  “Okay.” Her face grows slightly redder and she scribbles something on her notepad before walking off quickly. While I wait for her return, I flip through the laminated cards that are meant to pass for a dessert menu. It seems like there are more stupid girls every day; if it weren’t for the Sisterhood, I might be tempted to give up on my gender entirely, and even they aren’t all exactly geniuses.

  David arrives just in time to see the waitress place a cup of water and a tea bag in front of me. Some of the water spills on the table; I frown at her, but say nothing. Once she’s gone, he slides into the booth across from me.

  “Another victim?” he asks.

  “She deserved it.” I place the teabag into the water and watch it steep. “You’re late.”

  “Yeah, I know. Sorry.”

  “There’s no need to apologize. It isn’t as though I expected you to be on time.”

  “So we’re good, then.” He tries to get the waitress’ attention, but she’s pretending to be busy clearing off another table. “Huh. Must not have seen me,” he says as she retreats into the kitchen.

  “Or she’s ignoring you.” I take a sip of the tea and frown. “It’s lukewarm.” I set the cup down and look around. “What do you want?”

  “The usual. Would we call it that if I changed it?” He grins, as though this joke is particularly original, and my frown deepens. The noise of the kitchen door opening tells me that the waitress is back, and I stand up, taking my teacup with me. “Diana? Where’re you going?”

  I don’t answer him. Instead, I march up to the waitress and tap her on the shoulder. “Excuse me.”

  “Yes?” she says, and I can tell that it’s a struggle for her to keep that smile pasted on her face.

  “We’ve been trying to get your attention. My friend would like a strawberry milkshake with whipped cream, and this tea is ice cold.” I drop the cup onto the table that she’s just finished clearing, where it creates a few fresh stains. “Let’s get our act together, shall we?” Without waiting for a response, I begin to head back to our table.

  “What a bitch,” she says when she thinks I’m out of earshot.

  I glance at her over my shoulder. “There goes her tip,” I say to David as I sit down.

  “You’re insane,” he says.

  “I don’t think that I’m being too demanding by asking her to do the work that she’s paid for.” I pick up a sugar packet and turn it over in my hand. “Even the minimum wage has to be earned.”

  “Yeah, but you could have been ... I don’t know, nicer about it.”

  I tuck the sugar packet back into its cheap plastic container. “Probably. But why should I?”

  “Right. I forgot you need a reason.”

  The waitress comes with his milkshake and a fresh cup of tea for me.

  “Will there be anything else?” she asks in a strained voice.

  “Not for the moment,” I say.

  She retreats, and David stirs the whipped cream into his milkshake with one of the straws. “Should we drink this stuff, you think? She might have poisoned it.”

  “She’s not the type.”

  “I don’t know.” David looks past me, and I follow his eyes to the table that our waitress is scrubbing vigorously. “She seems pretty mad.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” I reclaim the sugar packet that I had been toy
ing with a few moments ago, tear it, and pour its contents into my tea. “She isn’t smart enough to think of it on such short notice.”

  David stares at me for a few seconds before he says: “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

  “So you tell me. Frequently.”

  “Yeah.” He leans back in his seat and smiles in a way that I believe he might have meant to look roguish or, worse, charming. It only makes him look silly. “So. How have you been?”

  “Fine.” As usual, I don’t return the polite question.

  “How’re your classes?”

  “Also fine.” Actually, they aren’t, but I don’t intend to tell him that. I have no need for any of the things he could offer me in response: sympathy, advice, pity.

  “Have you spoken to any of your classmates yet?”

  “Of course not. Why would I do that?”

  “Well, you might need their notes one day or something. And what if there’s a group thing later on?”

  “I’ll cope. I always do.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” He takes another gulp of his milkshake. “Hey, did you ever actually take that Intro Sociology class you were talking about a year or two ago?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I need an elective and that’s one of the options.” He grins. “Wouldn’t it be cool to have a class together again? Last time we did that was in high school.”

  “I don’t understand why you find that idea so thrilling. Class isn’t a social event.”

  “Ah, c’mon. At least you’ll have somebody to pair up with if it comes to that. And we can study together, like we used to.”

  “By which you mean, of course, that I’ll teach you what you failed to pick up from the teacher and couldn’t be bothered to learn from the textbook.”

  “Something like that.” He’s still grinning, as though he’s proud of his ignorance. “So? C’mon.”

  I frown. There doesn’t appear to be any way to refuse him without telling him directly that I don’t enjoy the idea of taking a class with him, and that would almost certainly upset him. With anyone else, that wouldn’t stop me, but with David, there are certain lines that I won’t cross. I’d be fine with or without him, of course, but at this point it’s less work to maintain what’s left of the friendship than it would be to end it. “I’ll think about it.”