I walked down the hallway like a zombie. I didn’t feel dirty. I didn’t feel guilty. I just felt terribly confused. Just like the Madame said, it wasn’t sex per se, but clearly there was some kind of sexual undertone to this whole thing.
“Are you okay, Miss B?” Alberto asked.
A part of me was deeply embarrassed about what had happened upstairs, but the other part of me was dying to talk about it. I leaned over the partition of the limo and laid it all out.
“Alberto…do you know this guy I was with?”
“Who? Lord Arnfield?”
“Yes.”
“Oh…!” Alberto said with a smile. “Yes, I’ve heard about him.”
“Okay, what the hell was that?” I asked, still baffled.
“Miss B, I’m sorry, but Madame doesn’t like me to talk about the customers.”
“I’m just…I…I don’t understand this foot thing. Could you believe that he wants to buy my old sneakers? Oh, by the way, could you bring them back to him? I’ll give you twenty dollars, and I’m sure he’ll tip you well too.”
“Don’t worry, it’s my job. I’ll bring them to him, and then I’ll bring you the money,” Alberto replied.
“No, I’m not taking any money! I’m just gonna give them to him. I’m not going to charge him for a pair of sneakers that are falling apart—that’s crazy!” I said.
Alberto gave me a good look through the rearview mirror and wholeheartedly said, “You must have a good heart, Miss B, because you are the first girl that doesn’t walk out of that apartment wondering how to squeeze more money out of that old guy.”
“The guy just paid me a roll of pounds to give me a foot massage. It’s the least I can do. Isn’t it ironic? This guy is a rich British aristocrat, but he would be much happier working in a shoe store.”
I could tell that Alberto was dying to talk, in spite of Madame’s instructions. He thought about it for a second, and finally shrugged: “Some people have so much money they don’t know what to do with it. In Santo Domingo you don’t see these things. If you want to have a good time you go dancing, you have a few drinks, you hang out with your friends. I had never met anyone in Santo Domingo who likes to chew on dirty sneakers. But I have to respect that, you know? I don’t like to trash people, because I don’t like it when people trash me. This guy doesn’t hurt anybody, he pays well—to each his own.”
“You are right. To each his own,” I repeated after him.
When we finally got to my apartment, Alberto parked the car and followed me upstairs to pick up my sneakers. After he left, I decided to take a full bath—this time with my feet in the tub. I scrubbed them and cleaned them with an affection that I had never felt for any part of my body before. I contemplated my toes for a long time, wondering what it was that this British noble found so fascinating about them. Minutes later, lying in the tub, I must confess that I touched myself. But here’s the interesting part: for the first time in my life, my fantasy wasn’t a man. This time I just thought of myself. I was my own thrill. I know, it sounds crazy, but my turn-on was to know how much of a turn-on I was for Lord Arnfield. I was glad to have given him my sneakers for free. He had given me a greater gift.
That night I slept like a baby. I didn’t realize until the next morning—when I went to the bank to deposit the money—that Lord Arnfield had paid me close to twenty-five hundred dollars, just for the privilege of giving me the best foot massage of my life.
Pretty crazy, huh?
CHAPTER 12
The following morning flew by. I don’t remember much of what I did at work, but I remember that at lunchtime I got a pedicure and I spent the rest of the afternoon staring at my feet. Bonnie called me about eight times, asking for eight different things that were already sitting on her desk. I think she expected me to get up and find them for her, but in every instance I simply told her where I’d left it and went back to my feet. Christine walked by my cubicle and was surprised by my level of introspection. Maybe the fat workhorse was slowing down. I’m not the kind of person who likes to take advantage of a staff job to spend the day looking at my toes, but all I had to do was conjure up the memory of Bonnie making fun of me in the bathroom to justify a few hours of leisure in the workplace. Screw her.
Madame called me a little later than expected with new instructions and a new customer. “Alberto will pick you up at nine p.m. to bring you to Mr. Akhtar’s warehouse. Don’t eat anything two hours before the appointment, and don’t wear any makeup.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
“What is he into?” I asked with a guilty fear that was starting to become as addictive as heroin.
“Honey, he’ll let you know. All you have to do is reciprocate. Yes?”
“Reciprocate? You said no sex!”
“Oh, stop being paranoid!” she said. Then she claimed that she was busy—that she had a business to run—and left me wondering for the next eight hours. What could this man be into that would make it mandatory to refrain from eating or putting on makeup?
That night, Alberto took me to an industrial area of Brooklyn. These were the kind of streets where you wouldn’t want to wander alone after 5 p.m. There was not a house, a deli, or a gas station in sight—probably not one for several blocks. It was like the classical spot where, halfway into a movie, a mobster gets whacked. I was a little concerned, but Alberto calmed me down. As always, he would wait for me until the job was done.
“So what is this guy into?” I asked Alberto, hiding my fear with a fake tone of worldliness.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him, and the girls never talk about him afterward.”
Involuntarily I let out a huge sigh that probably clued Alberto as to how nervous I was. He tried something to relax me.
“Do you like music?” he asked.
“Of course!”
“What would you like to hear? Do you like bachata?”
If you’re Dominican you’re born to love bachata, a very sweet and romantic type of tropical ballad. My friend Zulay calls it “Dominican deli music,” because every time you walk into a Dominican grocery store in New York you can hear the characteristic high-pitched plucking of the strings of the guitarra bachatera.
So, while Alberto hummed along to Monchy y Alexandra, his favorite bachata duo, I closed my eyes in the backseat and tried to relax.
He parked in front of a warehouse and pointed to a small door next to a loading dock. I walked up to it and banged on the door a couple of times before Mr. Akhtar—an Indian man in his mid-fifties, with thick glasses, a big mustache, and a bad comb-over—opened.
“Hi, I’m B.”
“Hello,” he said, looking at the floor, with a barely audible whisper.
That was the first and last word I heard from this guy. Without looking me in the eyes, he made a simple hand gesture to invite me in.
I stepped into a large factory where there were rows and rows of sewing machines, and hundreds of beaded gowns covered in plastic bags and ready to be shipped. The mousy Mr. Akhtar probably ran or owned the sweatshop. My friend Hugo, who works in fashion, explained to me once that designers produce only one dress, a prototype. They send that prototype to places like Mr. Akhtar’s to get it reproduced.
I followed Mr. Akhtar to a corner of the shop, and he removed a dusty drape that I thought was covering a piece of industrial equipment but, surprisingly, revealed a fabulous antique three-way mirror. It was an original Art Nouveau piece with beveled glass and a deliciously complicated frame made of gilded carved wood. While I was admiring the mirror, he left for a minute and came back with a chair and a toolbox. He gestured to invite me to sit down, and he opened the toolbox, which turned out to be a professional makeup kit.
He proceeded to apply makeup to my face with masterful strokes. He knew what he was doing, and I’m sure he had done it before, possibly even professionally. He worked fast, and at some point it felt like more than applying makeup—he was sketching something on my face.
Since he was standing between me and the mirror, I couldn’t really see what he was doing; all I knew was that, based on the way he was working the mascara, he had probably given me a couple of additional inches of eyelashes.
When he was done, he put a fairly elaborate wig of black hair on me, and then he gave me a hand mirror so I could admire the outcome.
The makeup looked a bit theatrical for my taste, but not bad at all. He had applied thick eyeliner, and dark lipstick liberally, and created very sharp contrasts of light and dark shades, giving my face angles that were not really there. I was amazed to see how you can develop a finer nose or higher cheekbones with just a well-applied touch of powder. He turned my eyes into a masterpiece of their own: they looked huge, expressive, and quite dramatic.
He left again and came back with a clothing rack on wheels. Very respectfully, he helped me undress. I wasn’t terribly comfortable—as a matter of fact, I was feeling quite anxious and embarrassed—standing next to him in my underwear, but he didn’t even look at me. He was busy preparing the clothes and the shoes I was going to wear. He unveiled a fabulous red taffeta gown with crystal beading. It was the most sumptuous dress I have ever seen—the kind of garment that you need help to put on. But before he tried it on me, he pulled out a magnificent girdle. No, it was much more than a girdle; it was a sculpture. He put it on me, and, pulling the ribbons from behind—thank God I was on an empty stomach—he minimized my waist, and pushed up my boobs to almost illegal heights. The girdle was enough to make me feel like Miss Universe, but when he zipped up the dress, I was speechless: I looked like an overweight Barbie doll. He pulled out accessories, and jewels—even a tiara. I saw myself in the mirror and couldn’t believe what this guy had done for me.
He had turned me into a Cuban bombshell. I looked large, voluptuous, imposing. There was a lot of me, but at the same time, everything that I saw in the mirror seemed right and appropriate. No skinny girl could ever look like this. Yes, maybe a slim girl could be a knockout in a miniskirt and a tank top, but I looked as if I owned the world in that dress. I thought of Madame’s words as I saw myself in the mirror:
The lips are soft, ready to be kissed. Your bosom rests in bloom under your chin, your shoulders are relaxed, so your arms are open and free to embrace the man that madly desires you…
As if going through a checklist, I breathed love and acceptance into each and every one of the body parts that she mentioned: the lips, the bosom, the chin, the shoulders…
And never, never forget that you are beautiful, she had said. And beautiful I felt, then and there.
As I stood in that corner of the warehouse, mesmerized, looking at my own image in the mirror, suddenly I found Mr. Akhtar standing next to me. But he wasn’t looking at the work of art he had put together. He was looking at the floor. I looked at the floor too, to see if there was something he was searching for. Turned out that he was staring at his own feet, maybe because he was wearing the same red stiletto heels that I had on. That’s when Madame’s instructions came to mind: reciprocate.
I sat him down on the chair, and did my best to reproduce the makeup that he had put on me. It was tricky, because I had to keep stopping to check my own face in the mirror to figure out what he had done, and then guess how he did it. What brush did he use for my temples, the “mink blusher” or the “tender smudge”? It was impossible to figure it out, so, instead of freaking out, I decided to go with the flow and improvise.
Truth be told, I didn’t do a great job. And to make matters worse, I had to work around his walrus mustache and his eyeglasses. But he seemed to be enjoying the process. I just relaxed and tried to act professional, though he was starting to look more like a clown than like a beauty queen.
There was a second wig, a second girdle, a second gown, and a second set of everything I had on. So I helped him to undress, and then I pulled the ribbons of his girdle, and helped him into his red taffeta gown. I gave him the same attention he had given me, from the shoes to the crowning tiara.
We stood in front of the mirror for a few minutes, looking like twin queens. His glasses and mustache clashed with the outfit, but I wasn’t going to bring that up. To each his own. Immediately, and in complete silence, he helped me out of the clothes, waited as I put my own things back on, gave me a roll of hundred-dollar bills, and escorted me back to the door. He never said a word, but I could swear that I have never seen anyone so thankful in my life.
When Alberto saw me stepping out of the warehouse, he immediately got out of the car and opened the door for me.
“How was that?”
“Fine,” I said, still confused and exhilarated by the whole experience.
“Here’s some cleansing cream and handy wipes,” he told me as he handed me a cosmetics case from the trunk.
I sat in the back, and Alberto drove slowly and carefully, while I started removing my makeup.
“He’s a quiet one, isn’t he?” he asked me.
“Very quiet,” I said, and though I felt tempted to tell Alberto all the strange details of the visit to Mr. Akhtar’s warehouse, I couldn’t get myself to do it. I felt that someone had trusted me with a deep and painful secret. It’s true, Mr. Akhtar looked funny and a bit ridiculous with his gown, his makeup, and his mustache, but I just couldn’t go out and laugh about it. There was something deep and desperate about him.
“There’s a lot of lonely people out there. It breaks my heart,” Alberto said, voicing my thoughts.
As we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, and I saw the bright city lights twinkling on the horizon, I thought of Mr. Akhtar with sadness and compassion. I’m always whining: I hate my job, I can’t lose weight, I can’t find a boyfriend. But as big as the obstacles may look to me, I know deep in my soul that somehow I can overcome them. I don’t know how and I don’t know when I’ll jump these hurdles, but I have the hope that I can do it. But Mr. Akhtar is not the same. He may not be able to overcome his obstacles. He makes the most beautiful gowns in the world—but he may never be allowed to wear them. He may never know what is like to walk into a ball-room wearing one of his dresses, and flip a long headful of hair over his shoulder, without hearing laughter and mockery around him. Then I thought of every time I had cursed my pantyhose, or applied lipstick without giving much attention to it, ignoring the sad fate of those who have to hide and live in shame in order to do it.
The fact that someone would appreciate so much what I took for granted—that somebody would pay me two thousand dollars to experience what it is like to be a girl—was incredibly moving.
That night, I again slept like a log, but in the morning I woke up to a small domestic nightmare. I had nothing to wear. Absolutely nothing. It’s not like I forgot to bring my clothes to the Laundromat, it’s just that, after looking at myself dressed up as a Bollywood movie star, I couldn’t make myself wear the bland pantsuits that I’d been wearing to work. I tried to combine and recombine jackets and skirts, but everything felt so “ugh” that I decided to take a detour on my way to work to get a new outfit.
I browsed through racks and racks of clothes, until I finally picked a chiffon blouse, a sunburst skirt, a long cashmere shawl, and a pair of gorgeous sandals with a short and comfy heel. Naturally, I couldn’t wear those clothes with my old frumpy underwear, so I also had to buy new lingerie. From my brassiere to my shoes, I chose sexy, flattering, and revealing clothes, and I walked out of the store feeling like a new woman.
I wanted to wear something feminine, something ethereal, something that would flow like a cloud of silk every time the spring breeze blew around me. That morning, it made sense to let the natural curls of my hair go wild too. Before I left the store, I sat in the ladies’ room and applied my makeup, trying to incorporate the principles and techniques that I’d learned from Mary Pringle and Mr. Akhtar.
As I thoroughly enjoyed the process of putting on my makeup, I thought of Mr. Akhtar again. It’s funny how someone else’s drama made me appreciate the small and wonderful things in my
life. Now, every time I dress up, or put on makeup, I think of Mr. Akhtar and I’m a little kinder to myself, and I find an enjoyment in being a woman that I never had before.
I walked up Fifth Avenue wearing my new clothes, and I was surprised to realize that they had an impact on how I walked, and how I felt about myself. Every time the wind blew through my hair, I felt baptized by nature. I saw myself walking down the street firmly, but allowing my hips to swing comfortably with every step. The tight, short steps that I was used to taking, the compulsive need to crush my elbows and occupy less space as an apology for my large body, completely disappeared. I felt the expansion in my bones and muscles, and I felt that my roundness was blessed. Yep, I’m talking as if I was high on mushrooms, but it wasn’t drugs. This trip was real. I had taken off to an unknown destination.
As I walked into my office building, the same faces that usually looked away and didn’t acknowledged my smiles were suddenly following me as I crossed the floor. Even the toothless security guard responded with a broad smile when he saw me. It’s almost as if he had never noticed me before. A part of me wanted to ignore him the same way he had ignored me so many times in the past, but why do to others what I didn’t like done to me? Why ruin this moment of joy with silly thoughts of revenge and resentment, which always seem to backfire? I smiled at him—politely—and continued walking toward the elevators.
I arrived at my cubicle at noon, but I calmly turned on my computer. I was in no hurry to enslave myself that morning. As I started reviewing my e-mails, Mary Pringle stopped by.
“B?”
I looked up in time to see her eyes jumping out of her sockets.
“B?” she asked again in shock.
“Yes?” I replied.
She walked closer to me and delicately held my face up with her left hand, while analyzing and deconstructing my makeup.
“This is Cafe Au Lait, Violent Violet, and Toasted Hazelnut, right?” she said, referring to my masterful combination of eye shadows.
B as in Beauty Page 11
