Pretty Ugly: A Novel

by Kirker Butler

  At the end of the hall opposite the vending machines, Miranda spotted a young man squatting over an open duffel bag and obsessively cleaning the lens of an expensive-looking camera. He was alone, removed from the chaos. She couldn’t see his face, but his long hair and wardrobe—jeans, hiking boots, and a back brace over a Panavision T-shirt—screamed “Hollywood hippie.” And hippies smoked pot and pot cost money and she had sixty-seven dollars.

  “What’s going on here?” she asked, casually leaning against the wall.

  “Making a TV show,” he responded without looking up.

  “Oh, about the pageant?” she asked, trying to sound surprised. “Neat!”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “You know, now that you mention it, I think I remember hearing something about a TV show being made here this weekend. That’s very exciting.”

  He continued cleaning his lens. Her heart beat a little faster.

  “You know, my daughter’s competing today.”

  “Cool.”

  “Yes. Her name is Bailey Miller. She’s the reigning Little Miss and she’ll be competing in the Princess category as well.”

  “Cool.”

  His lack of interest was irritating. Obviously, he didn’t understand what was happening here, or perhaps he had become so jaded from years of Hollywood cocaine parties that aloofness was his default setting.

  Miranda looked around again—her heart pounding against Brixton’s tiny head—and opened her hand. The wad of cash fell into the bag as if the cameraman was a street musician and Miranda was his biggest fan.

  “What’s this?” He stopped cleaning his lens.

  She forced a casual shrug and said, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s yours.”

  “It’s not mine.”

  “Maybe it could be. Would you like that?”

  The man looked up, and their eyes met for the first time. She wasn’t expecting his beard. His voice sounded too soft for facial hair, especially so much of it. Miranda shifted nervously as her red, puffy eyes scanned the hall, for what exactly she wasn’t sure—the police, perhaps, maybe her dignity. He picked up the money and counted it.

  “Sixty-six dollars?”

  “Sixty-seven.”

  “Sixty-seven dollars. Okay. For what exactly?”

  “Well,” she said, clearing her throat, “maybe when you see Bailey Miller onstage or walking around the halls, you could shoot some extra footage of her and make sure she ends up on the show. Would that be worth sixty-seven dollars to you?”

  He tilted his head, genuinely confused. “Are you bribing me?”

  Miranda feigned shock, but her delicate façade was cracking quickly. “Bribing? That’s … that’s not a word I would use.”

  “Look, I don’t have anything to do with what makes it onto the show. I just shoot what they tell me to shoot. You’d need to talk to the producer. She’d probably take your money.” He held the crumpled bills out to her. “Here. Sorry.”

  Miranda’s entire body started to perspire at once. Her mouth was a desert. Her hands shook. She felt dizzy. And then she remembered she still had hemorrhoid cream on her face. She literally felt like an asshole.

  “Can I just have the twenty back, please?” she managed to squeak out.

  “You can have it all back—”

  “No! Just the twenty. Please.”

  The cameraman shrugged and pulled a twenty-dollar bill from the wad of cash. “Here you go.”

  Looking at the bill, she felt her eyes start to burn. “I’m sorry,” she said, forcing words around the sour lump expanding in her throat, “but … can I have the one that’s folded up? It belongs to my daughter. She’s competing here this weekend. Bailey Miller. I said that already I’m sure she’d like to have it back.”

  The man put down his camera and stood up. Miranda took a step back. He was at least a foot taller than she’d expected, and the tattoo on his arm—a half-naked hula girl riding on the back of the devil’s motorcycle—had, until this moment, gone completely unnoticed. Had she seen him upright, she would never have spoken to him. In fact, she probably would have turned around, run back to her room, and called security. He took her hand, sending a tense shiver through her body. Is this how she would die? Should she scream for help? How would Ray be told of her murder? How would he tell the kids?

  Dear God, please don’t let anyone think I was having an affair with this man! she thought.

  Then, pressing all sixty-seven dollars into her palm, the cameraman closed her fist around the money.

  “Are you okay?” His dark green eyes projected genuine concern.

  It was all too much. Miranda expelled a burst of raw emotion, launching a perfect stream of snot to the tip of her chin. Without judgment, the cameraman reached into his pocket and handed her a clean handkerchief, which she used to wipe off the snot and then the hemorrhoid medication. Surprising them both, Miranda then threw her arms around the man’s neck and forced from him a small, involuntary, “ah!”

  Through a series of heaving sobs, Miranda whispered, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  Not sure what to do, the cameraman awkwardly laced his fingers behind his head and held his breath until, mercifully, he heard a tinny voice squawking through his walkie-talkie.

  “Hey, Freddy, you fall down a well? We need that camera. ASAP.”

  Freddy the cameraman grabbed the handset clipped to his collar, “Flying in.” He then said to Miranda, still clinging to his neck, “Um, lady…? I gotta go to work.”

  Miranda let out a huge sigh and attempted to regain her composure. “Thank you, Freddy.” Forcing a smile, she released his neck and handed him the handkerchief.

  “Keep it,” he said. “I’m betting you’ll probably need it again.”

  She smiled. After everything they’d been through, Miranda felt like she owed him an explanation. Forcing a chuckle, she shrugged and said, “Pageants, you know?” hoping he would understand.

  “I reckon,” he said, then picked up his camera and walked away.

  When she was sure he’d reached the elevators, Miranda ran back to her room as fast as her gravid body would allow.

  * * *

  Backstage at the 29th Annual Little Most Beautiful Princess Pageant was a dollhouse of grown women playing with smaller versions of their ideal selves. Fifty scantily clad prepubescent girls scampered about like the main attraction in a Bangkok coffee shop: sexy children marketed as wholesome family entertainment. The room reeked of anxiety, self-tanner, and schadenfreude.

  This year’s pageant had gotten off to a controversial start, to say the least. Three days earlier, the ballroom had served as the venue for an amateur MMA fight. The hotel’s cleaning crew had not been able to find welterweight challenger Duane “Triple Threat” Triplett’s tooth. But Tiffany-Chanel Teich found it.

  “That’s why she messed up her choreography!” Tabitha Teich screamed at the judges. “I mean, come on! Finding a man’s tooth would distract anyone!” She teemed with genuine outrage. “It’s only fair that Tiffany-Chanel be given extra points to compensate. Or at least the other girls should have to hold the tooth.”

  Aerosol cans of hair spray hissed and rattled throughout the room, making it sound like the snake pit it was. When the EPA forced hair spray manufacturers to replace chlorofluorocarbons with a more ecofriendly propellant, many pageant mothers were outraged. The new stuff, while arguably good for the planet, just didn’t have sufficient hold.

  “I know the environment is important and all, but how is Bonjosie supposed to win a crown with limp hair?” complained one mother, desperate to blame her daughter’s lack of winning on something.

  “That global-warming stuff is all just liberal BS, anyway,” said another, puffing away on a Marlboro Ultra Light as she applied fake eyelashes to her squirming five-year-old. “I’m so sure BreeDonna’s hair spray is destroying the planet. I mean, how dumb do they think we are?”

  Some mothers flatly refused to give it up. Tina Stinnet had her Marine Corp
s brother ship her a case of Final Net from the Philippines, where it could still be purchased. This infuriated the mothers whose military connections were limited to the Middle East. During a trip to Tijuana to get her ten-year-old daughter McKaty, a bottle of Cal-Ban diet pills (also banned in the United States), Marcie Krawinkel found a beauty supply shop that sold CFC-propelled hair spray for next to nothing. She returned with thirty cases, which she sold to desperate moms for upward of fifteen dollars a can.

  Adding to the thick clouds of mist and envy was the steady increase of personal airbrushing systems. Resentment was growing among the mothers who could not afford such systems—especially since those who had the systems refused to share them. Each burst of air was a mocking whisper: Psssst. Psssst. Psssst. “I have an airbrushing system and you don’t.” Psssst. The systemless mothers grumbled among themselves that the machines were elitist at best and cheating at worst, essentially allowing rich families to buy their children smoother-looking skin. But despite their complaints, everyone was saving up for her own system, and when she got one she wasn’t going to share it, either.

  One corner of the dressing room was buzzing significantly louder than the rest. Bright lights and a throng of cameras surrounded Starr Kennedy, a stunning eight-year-old who looked exactly like Catherine Zeta-Jones. Her full lips were tinted with an original color created specifically for her by a former Revlon color engineer to complement her flawlessly airbrushed olive skin. Her eyebrows were immaculately crafted fermatas commanding you to linger on her infinite amber eyes. If a human being could be Photoshopped, she would look like Starr Kennedy. As Starr practiced her talent—a precise reenactment of Britney Spears’s 2001 VMA performance, complete with live albino python—Theresa spoke a little too loudly into a camera, leaning forward to make sure the lights picked up the glitter she’d applied to her sun-battered cleavage.

  “Starr’s just got that something special, that indefinable thing movie producers call ‘it.’ I don’t know where she gets ‘it’ from, but she’s got ‘it’ in spades!”

  Catching herself, she quickly turned to the African American sound engineer. “No offense.”

  Bailey’s dressing area was directly across from this bullshit.

  Starr took a seat in front of her makeup mirror, swaying back and forth to the music blasting through her earbuds. Her every movement, down to the slightest facial tic, was a conscious choice. For a child, Starr was incredibly aware of her surroundings, especially the cameras. She knew where they were, if they were on or off, and if they were trained on her or someone else. When they were off, she was an average eight-year-old girl—playing with her American Girl doll, whining to her mother for a candy bar, even picking her nose. But Starr had the senses of a bat, and whenever a photographer attempted to steal one of those “real” moments, she would effortlessly slip back into glamour mode. It confounded the producers and infuriated the mothers, who were desperate for the world to see Starr for what she truly was: a little phony.

  “Pageants are a great stepping-stone,” Starr said as if she were sitting on Oprah’s couch, “but they’re only one small part of what I’m capable of. God has given me many gifts. And I believe it would be a sin not to explore every single possibility. I mean, not to sound … whatever, but I’m talented. I’m not ashamed of it. If you’re good at something, you should share it with people. And that’s what I want to do.”

  Miranda could see Theresa mouthing along to her daughter’s words, making sure the girl got them exactly right. But she needn’t worry. Starr was a pro. Since the age of four, she had been the Kennedy family’s primary source of income, and Theresa worked tirelessly to expand her empire. The reality show was a godsend. It paid for the next three months of pageants and gave the family enough money to trick the bank into approving a second mortgage. The Kennedys needed their lives to change in a big way, and Starr was going to be the catalyst for that change. Theresa had never been more certain of anything in her life.

  “We’ve also been having real success in print modeling,” Theresa said, raising her voice just enough to make sure everyone could hear, “but Starr’s modeling career might have to go on the back burner because of all the TV work. And not just this show. I’m not supposed to say anything yet, but … last week, Starr booked her first commercial!”

  Theresa smiled broadly, pausing to make sure Miranda heard her.

  Was that a wink? Did she just fucking wink at me?

  Theresa continued, “She’s going to be a beautiful angel for Dillard’s department stores’ Christmas campaign! Can you believe it?” She forced a laugh as fake as her breasts. “We are just so blessed.” A perfectly calibrated sigh was followed by a piercing scream, “Next stop, Hollywood!”

  Miranda wanted to throw up in Theresa’s whore mouth. Instead, she took a deep breath and listened to her gut.

  “You’re right, Brixton,” Miranda said, rubbing her belly. “Mommy is better than that.” She felt a small kick from her baby and smiled. “Everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to show that skank who she’s messing with.”

  chapter nine

  Ray woke up every morning at five thirty, an unfortunate remnant of med school when his body learned to reject anything that gave him comfort. No matter how late he worked, how exhausted he was, or how many pills he took, he was never able to sleep more than three consecutive hours. Over time, Ray had grown to appreciate his quiet mornings alone in his small kitchen. Those dark, wordless hours—standing over the sink overflowing with dishes; drinking his coffee, staring out the window onto his perpetually overgrown backyard, wondering if the rotting tree house built by the previous owners would collapse on its own or if he would have to pay someone to remove it; hoping to catch a glimpse of Cindy Ellis, his big-breasted neighbor who occasionally worked her core in her underwear on her back patio—had become the only time he could truly call his own.

  Ray fiddled with his morning erection but quickly lost interest and slipped on a frayed Miami Hilton bathrobe, a present from his father for his twenty-first birthday. He padded down the hall and looked in on Junior and J.J., both asleep in the top bunk of their bunk beds. When they were younger, the boys had shared a much larger queen bed that had once belonged to Joan and Roger. After Roger’s violent death, Joan refused to get anywhere near it, afraid her husband’s ghost would haunt her dreams. It had been Ray and Miranda’s marital bed until Bailey won their current king size Tempur-Pedic at the Cherokee Heritage Pageant and Pow Wow (Cherokee, North Carolina).

  The boys didn’t care about their grandmother’s haunted mattress. They wanted bunk beds, and when Miranda ignored their request, J.J. went over her head and wrote a letter to Santa. A week later he received a response.

  “So last night Santa texted me a list of chores,” Miranda said, handing them her phone as proof. “He said if you really want bunk beds, you have to earn them.”

  The boys scrolled through the extensive list, presumably typed by fat jolly thumbs.

  “And he said he might call every now and then and add to it, if he thinks of something else.” Much to her disbelief, the boys did every chore on the list.

  When they saw their new beds on Christmas morning they laughed and screamed and wailed, then spent the next four days arguing over who should get the top bunk. J.J. said he should get it because he was older, and Junior said he should get it because he was a Jedi. After a threat to text Santa to have him take the beds back, the boys agreed to share the top bunk, giving them each half the space they’d enjoyed in Joan’s old queen. At least once a month, one of them would fall over the side, plummeting five feet onto a pile of toys and dirty clothes.

  They were both still tucked in when Ray tiptoed into their room and placed the new football in the small space between them. Figuring he had at least two hours before they woke up, he closed their door and went to make hotel reservations for his girlfriend’s eighteenth birthday in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

  The last time Ray was in Gatlinburg he was
a junior in high school. The wholesome, family-friendly tourist attractions made it the vacation destination for every church youth group within a four-hundred-mile radius. Ray’s youth group had spent six months selling crates of oranges to raise money for a choir tour that would send them on a spiritual sojourn through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. While the word “tour” implied chartered buses and rock star escapades, the word “choir” promised something else entirely. Eleven teenagers, quivering with earnest Christian entitlement, traveled to sparsely attended churches and dilapidated campgrounds to perform sign language versions of contemporary Christian songs and speak sagely about how empty and sinful their young middle-class lives were without Christ. The only vaguely rock star moment was when a freshman girl let Ray feel her boobs (under the shirt, over the bra) in the back row of the van.

  Ray’s most lasting memory of Gatlinburg was watching endless rows of outlet stores, souvenir stands, ironic Christian T-shirt kiosks, and overpriced novelty yard art carved out of tree trunks with chain saws zip past his window.

  “Gatlinburg is so boring,” Ray told Courtney, trying to talk her out of the trip. “The whole place just needs to get hate-fucked by Las Vegas. Actually, that’s more Branson, Missouri.”

  “That’s rude. What’s hate-fuck?”

  Ray had since amended his opinion: Branson was like Vegas’s born-again younger brother. Gatlinburg was their paste-eating cousin.

  The Miller family’s living room was never what Ray would consider “clean.” However, sometimes the room was what Miranda called “straightened,” meaning that everything was in its corresponding pile: gowns, toys, shoes, trophies, etc. This morning the room was not straightened. It looked like it had been ransacked by government agents searching for hidden microfiche. Ray did his best to not step on anything that looked important or expensive and settled at the small desk in the corner of the room. He turned on the Miller family computer—a primeval Dell that must have weighed fifty pounds, thirty of which Ray assumed was porn. After checking his e-mail, which was empty, he checked the Gmail account Miranda didn’t know about and saw three e-mails from Courtney: two forwards regarding some dancing reality show she kept insisting he watch, and a cringe-worthy poem she’d written about their sex in the chair the night before. He deleted them all, then read his joke of the day (Q: Why don’t orphans play baseball? A: They don’t know where home is.), considered a quick visit to RedTube but decided to give his penis a rest and instead Googled “Gatlinburg Tennessee.”