Beautiful You: A Novel

  Emboldened, Brillstein pressed his point. “For one full hour your heart rate averaged a hundred and eighty beats per minute.” Referring to his notes, he read, “Your respiration was a hundred and ninety-one breaths per minute.” These facts were clearly gleaned from Max’s little notebook. “Doesn’t that seem like sufficient reward for your participation in this so-called experiment?” He smiled a self-satisfied grin, his beady eyes daring her to deny his implication.

  Not waiting for her reply, the senior partner clicked a button that was installed in the conference room tabletop. A projection screen quickly lowered from the ceiling. Another button brought a video projector to life, and screams roared from unseen speakers. Monstrously enlarged, the shape of a nude woman filled the screen. She rolled on her back amid white satin pillows, her fingers clutching white satin bedsheets. The hilt of something bright pink protruded from between her thighs. When her frenzied thrashing threatened to dislodge the pink instrument, the hand of an unseen man entered the shot. It pressed the tool fully into place. One of the fingers wore a ring set with a huge ruby.

  It was Max’s hand. It was Penny on-screen, heaving like a sexed-up Hottentot.

  “Miss Harrigan,” asked Brillstein, sneering at the video, shouting to be heard above the torrent of her recorded grunting, “how do you explain this?”

  Penny looked to Tad for support, but he’d turned away. Resting his elbows on his knees, he was covering his face with his hands, shaking his head in despair.

  It was one thing to discuss the testing process using lofty verbal legalese, but to actually see Penny wallowing, near-insane with wild animalistic release … spitting vulgar obscenities … she didn’t look like a dedicated, hardworking scientist. During that scorching moment of humiliation, with scores of legal minds wondering whether she was a wronged coinventor or just a wanton harlot, Penny heard a familiar racket. A loud thrumming rebounded from the office towers around their building. A helicopter was preparing to set down on the roof two floors above them.

  Penny didn’t need to ask. She knew who was arriving.

  The video stopped. The screen disappeared up into the ceiling.

  “Gentlemen,” Brillstein announced, “should we move on? We’ve got another lengthy deposition to take this afternoon.”

  As the weary attorneys rose from their seats and began to vacate the room, Brillstein offered Penny his hand. “If you don’t mind a little advice, young lady,” he said, “I think you’d be very foolish to pursue this claim.”

  Penny let him steer her toward the door.

  As they parted company in the hallway, he asked whether she’d perform a favor for him.

  Stunned, mute, she nodded.

  “If you’d be so kind,” he asked, his voice dripping with contempt, “please tell your little friend Monique she’s fired!”

  “Please don’t be mad at me, honey.” It was Penny’s mom calling from Omaha.

  Penny had been at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper when the telephone rang. All the day’s news was about the late president. Officially the White House wasn’t offering any explanation, but a fact-finding commission had issued its report. According to the security protocols the commander in chief was seldom searched or directed through metal detectors. It was always assumed that she would be the target. Not the shooter. Hind had been both. The vice president—a man, of course—had been hastily sworn in. Talk radio’s bombastic pundits were blaming the self-assassination on menopause.

  With the gun so close to the microphones, the noise had been deafening. Penny’s ears were still ringing, and she had to concentrate to hear her mother speaking from Omaha.

  Weighing her words carefully, the Nebraska housewife said, “I bought some of those Beautiful You doohickeys.”

  Penny held her breath.

  At that confession, her mother’s voice changed pitch, rising to a girlish squeal. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she exclaimed. “The feeling is incredible! This is why God made me a woman!”

  Penny tried but couldn’t get a word in.

  “Your father had been sulking in his woodshop all week.” More bashfully, she offered, “They’re not made to last, are they?”

  Penny interrupted: “Which one broke?”

  Her mother’s blush was audible. “God only knows how those engineers product-test the durability of those things. I really gave it quite a torture test. Worse than John Cameron Swayze used to give to Timex wristwatches.”

  Vaguely, Penny remembered the watch’s advertising slogan: It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

  “Until it broke”—her mother gasped—“I was having the time of my life!”

  Penny crossed her fingers. “Which appliance was it?”

  Please don’t be the Dragonfly, she prayed.

  “It was the Dragonfly.”

  “Mom!” Penny protested.

  Oblivious, her mother prattled on. “Have you got a pair of those new shoes everyone is so crazy for?” With the chatty enthusiasm of a teenager she said, “Well, call me crazy, too. Those shoes are so ugly, but the TV commercials give me a little tingle inside. Just seeing those shoes on television, I’m tickled pink.”

  Earlier that day, Penny had knocked on her housemate’s bedroom door. She’d not had the heart to deliver the bad news about Monique being fired for absenteeism. Instead, she’d stood in the hallway and rattled the locked doorknob while repeating, “Open up.” She’d put her ear to the wood and listened to the ominous buzzing sound that emanated from within. “Open up,” she’d demanded. “We need to get you some help.”

  Finally, the door had opened a crack. The stench was appalling. The crack was just wide enough for Penny to see a skull-like face framed in untidy braids. “Girlfriend,” the skull had said in a rasping voice, “you need to go fetch me some batteries.” The door had slammed. The lock had snapped shut. Once more, Penny had heard the muffled sound of humming.

  It was maddening that now her own mother was threatened by the same terrifying obsession. Trying to redirect the older woman’s attention, Penny asked, “Have you checked out those back issues of the National Enquirer like we talked about?”

  Automatically, Penny’s fingers rose to her own neck. Her pulse was 127. Time with Max had made her compulsively aware of her own vital signs.

  Her mother didn’t respond, not right away. It might’ve been Penny’s imagination, but she thought she heard a distant humming over the phone. “Mom?” she asked, “is Dad using the chain saw?”

  “I keep meaning to tell you,” her mother said, “your father might be calling you.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He wants to put me into a straitjacket and trundle me off to a loony bin.” Exasperated, she hissed, “Just because I’m fulfilling myself so much.”

  “The tabloid research, Mom?” Penny persevered. “You were going to find out about Maxwell’s childhood?”

  Her mother changed the subject. “What are you up to tonight?”

  Penny counted 131 beats per minute. “Tonight?” She needed to test something. “I’m inviting a friend over for the evening.”

  “Someone special?” her mother asked.

  “Yes,” Penny replied, without a trace of irony in her tone. “I’m spending the evening with someone very special.”

  Brillstein must’ve seen her name on his caller ID, because he answered on the second ring. His voice hushed, husky with desire, he breathed, “Yes?”

  In the background, a matronly woman’s voice asked, “Honey? Who’s calling so late?”

  “It’s no one,” he shouted away from the receiver. “Just work. I might have to run into the office for a few hours.”

  After she gave her address in a breathless purr, Penny hung up and ran to her wardrobe. She ransacked the enormous closets, looking for the most scandalous negligee. On a shopping spree in Paris she’d collected dozens of lurid teddies and nighties, hoping one would spur lust in Maxwell. None had. But this evening she selected a narrow strip of marabou feathers which had
been artfully dyed dark purple. The way it was worn, it trailed down her otherwise nude torso, leaving her breasts exposed and only partially obscuring her vulva.

  With moments remaining before Brillstein arrived, she turned on the chandelier in the town house foyer and took a position that would allow its light to throw her shadow against the inside of the frosted-glass front door. Waiting there, she undulated her hips in a way that would make her shadow look enticing from the street.

  She stood undulating in ludicrously high heels—another purchase she’d hoped would pique Max’s lust. Her trap was set. The doorbell rang: ding-dong.

  “It’s open,” Penny called in as sultry a voice as she could muster.

  Brillstein shouldered his way inside, panting as if he’d run every step of the way. Catching sight of her in her marabou splendor, he smacked his wrinkled lips with great gusto and said, “Well, just as I suspected … It is a spicy little whore, after all.”

  Penny sidestepped his lunge. Luring him through the spacious rooms, she allowed her hands to roam up and down the silken curves of her body. “Oh, Mr. Brillstein, oh!” She giggled and dodged another grab. “How long I’ve wanted this to happen!”

  The foolish lecher was already discarding his overcoat, his shirt, his pants. He trailed her around sofas and tables, always a step too late to snatch at her young, supple skin.

  Baiting him, Penny asked coyly, “Are you working on behalf of Maxwell?” She giggled and flitted away.

  Brillstein smirked. He wiped drool from his lips with the back of one discolored hand. A cat ready to munch on a very sexy canary.

  Sulking, pretending to be offended, Penny evaded yet another grab and asked, “How did you know so many details about Max’s notes?”

  His Brooks Brothers boxer shorts were tented in her direction, and his porcine, hairy hips were already bucking in helpless anticipation. His withered buttocks clenched, thrusting his engorged groin. Frustrated little growls rose from his throat. “Let me catch you,” he promised, “and I’ll tell you everything.”

  She led him upstairs to her bedroom. There she feigned arousal, mewing and wriggling in the same counterfeit way that had enraged Maxwell. Brillstein didn’t seem to notice that her heart rate remained flat. Neither did she sweat. He climbed atop her on the bed and bullied her legs apart. Shucking his undershorts, he made no pretense of giving her pleasure. A trickle of clear slime dripped from his erection as he stroked it against her. Smearing this discharge against her hairless skin, he crooned, “So smooth! So smooth!”

  He merely spit on his hand and applied this sickening gob of saliva to her. He was having some difficulty hitting a moving target, so Penny stilled her loins a moment as he entered.

  Giving a single shove, he drove his full length into her. She gripped handfuls of his wasted flesh and tightened her hold in preparation for the worst. All this time, she was praying that her theory was correct.

  It was. Before he could withdraw for his second thrust, Brillstein began to bellow like a knife-stuck Nebraskan hog. He thrashed to escape, but her strong fingers held his flesh firmly between her legs. Whatever it was, something within her was hurting him, and Brillstein begged to be released. His spotted hands pushed and slapped at her, but Penny held tight.

  “Tell me!” she demanded, driving her hips upward to keep him well inside her vaginal torture chamber. “Tell me what Maxwell is doing!”

  Brillstein howled. Whatever Max had planted within her, it was doing its guard-dog duty.

  “Did he have anything to do with Alouette’s death?” she demanded. “Did he kill her because of the palimony suit?”

  “Yes,” Brillstein screamed. “You’re hurting me!”

  Shouting directly into his red, straining face, Penny demanded, “Does this have anything to do with Beautiful You?”

  “I don’t know!” He sobbed, twitching as if swarms of hornets were stinging his buried manhood.

  If he was bleeding inside of her, Penny didn’t care. Her best friend and her precious mother were in danger. Millions of women were threatened. Continuing her inquisition, grilling him the way he’d grilled her at the deposition, she demanded, “What is Maxwell’s evil plan?”

  “I don’t know!” he wailed piteously.

  At this, she released her deathlike grip on his sweat-soaked butt, and the weeping senior partner threw himself from her embrace. Bleeding copiously, through gritted teeth he said, “Maybe your IUD or something’s slipped.”

  Stepping to the bathroom for rubbing alcohol and cotton swabs, Penny couldn’t help but feel vindicated. Brillstein’s small confession had confirmed her worst suspicions. There actually was a conspiracy. When she doused his damaged privates with the harsh antiseptic, her boss screamed and screamed. His blood still streaming down the insides of her thighs, she yanked a suitcase from her walk-in closet and began packing it with Vera Wang. At the same time she ordered her phone, “Siri, lease me a jet from JFK to Nepal, with one connection through Omaha, Nebraska. For when? For tonight!”

  Before fleeing her town house, Penny had shoved her boss out the front door naked and bleeding, his clothes bundled in his arms. She’d also gone to Monique’s locked door and knocked, saying, “Mo? Can you hear me?” She began sliding blueberry Pop-Tarts through the crack at the bottom. “Eat something,” she urged. “Try to stay hydrated. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

  Her only answer was the familiar muted buzzing that had resonated from the bedroom for days.

  As she raced through the concourse at JFK she noted, distractedly, that she saw no other women. From the ticket agents to the travelers, everyone was male. By all appearances women had ceased to exist in the public sphere.

  To avoid drawing the focus of hostile men—New York City was turning into a sexual powder keg!—she’d prudently dressed in a vintage Yves Saint Laurent pantsuit. The look was a touch mannish, especially when paired with a ribbed white turtleneck that minimized the appearance of her stunning bustline. She’d coiled her abundant hair beneath a knitted watch cap, and wore no more than a smudge of sparkling lip gloss. Walking, she rolled her shoulders and affected a brusque swagger. If she caught the eye of a passing stranger she’d look like nothing more than a hip young sailor on shore leave.

  Whoever it was at BB&B who had leaked word of the pending lawsuit to President Hind, that same source had apparently slipped the news to the tabloid media. At airport newsstands, the headlines blared: “Cinderella Penny Harrigan Invents Sex Toys!” Front-page stories detailed her claims that her erogenous zones had perfected the Beautiful You carnal gadgetry. To accompany the story, each newspaper ran a photo of Penny’s head sunk into a white satin pillow. Her crossed eyes and the slack tongue hanging out of her mouth confirmed that these photos were screen captures from the video Max had shot in Paris. The images were astoundingly sexy, but they hardly made her look like the ergonomic genius the tabloids claimed her to be.

  Seated safely in the plush cabin of a chartered jet, Penny propped open her laptop and began to surf. It took only a few headlines to buttress her worst fears. For the first time in its history the National Organization of Women was canceling its annual conference due to lack of participants. Six weeks ago the roster had been almost filled, but in the days since Beautiful You had launched, all of the delegates had canceled their plans to attend. Some cited more personal interests they wanted to pursue. The rest claimed to be exploring alternative avenues to self-fulfillment. Whatever the case, with no active members and no conference, NOW teetered on the brink of nonexistence. Likewise, when Penny phoned the national office for the League of Women Voters, a recorded message told her that the organization was experiencing a temporary staff shortage and would be closed for an indefinite period of time. The female members of the Senate and House of Representatives had missed roll call for almost a week.

  Fear bloomed in Penny’s heart, but she kept on surfing.

  In a seemingly unrelated story, all of the female members of the U.S. Olympic team h
ad resigned. Every great female athlete—from field hockey players to gymnasts to figure skaters—was choosing to stay home and eschew a chance of winning the gold. Another news feature described how all of the altos and sopranos were AWOL from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

  Almost 100 percent absentee rates were being reported among women in all the helping professions.

  Meanwhile, according to the Web sites that reported business, the stock of DataMicroCom was sky-high. All of its subsidiaries, Beautiful You in particular, were reporting record sales.

  In Omaha, a plain white van waited on the arrivals level of the airport to collect her.

  “Penny,” a voice called from the driver’s seat. It was her father. His expression was puzzled as he asked, “Pen-Pen, why are you dressed like a sailor?”

  The door on the side of the van slid open. A stranger crouching within shouted, “Get in, quick.” He motioned for her to hand over her suitcase, saying, “We need to go rescue your mother!”

  The stranger’s name was Milo, and he was the leader of the local chapter of Promise Keepers, the chapter her dad attended. The van was Milo’s, and the back was mostly empty except for a first-aid kit, some folded blankets, and an ominous coil of nylon rope. As her father drove them through the silent late-night streets of Omaha, Milo and Penny scanned the sidewalks and alleys for the missing woman. Milo plunged the needle of a syringe through the rubber cap on a bottle and drew it full of some clear liquid. In a seedy neighborhood, they spied someone wearing a bathrobe and pushing a rattling chrome shopping cart. Her hair hung in her face. Her runny eyes were swollen. The woman’s bare legs were streaked with dirt. In the basket of the cart jiggled an assortment of soiled, dulled pink Beautiful You products. A cardboard sign was taped to the side of the cart. Hand-lettered in black felt-tipped pen, it read: “Will Work 4 Batteries.”

  “Pull up here,” Milo whispered. “Don’t spook her.”

  He rolled open the side door before they’d come to a complete stop. The woman standing near the shopping cart hardly had time to register their arrival before Milo was charging toward her with a blanket spread open between his hands. He threw the blanket around her and the pair fell to the ground. The woman was screaming now, fighting Milo as he held her wrapped. He shouted, “The rope! Bring me the roll of duct tape!”