ON TV, I hear a line that strikes me as a perfect comeback to most of the insults my doorman throws my way. So I decide to try a new technique: give him a taste of his own medicine.
I seize my opportunity the next day, when I come back from running errands and Adam says, “The aberration of nature has returned.”
I stare at him squarely in the eyes and reply, “Whatever’s eating you must be suffering horribly.”
His face turns red, as though he’s been slapped. “That’s very insulting,” he says.
“You mean compared to all the charming things you say to me?”
“Whatever. Cocksucking bitch.”
“I’m sorry, Adam, I didn’t mean to offend you. Good night.”
“You fucking curse on society,” he says to my back.
Okay, that experiment didn’t work too well.
Now I’m back to my original plan: give him the name of my therapist.
FOR THEIR THIRD date, Lily and Strad go to a bar. They pick a cozy couch to settle themselves on, in front of a fireplace. Strad orders a glogg. Lily orders nothing.
“Because of the mask?” he asks.
She nods.
“But you could lift it slightly to sip a drink, the way you did at the bookstore when you tasted my tart. I wouldn’t see anything except maybe your chin, which I adore.”
Without her special music playing, her chin would be its hideous receding self — the last thing she wants him to see. She sticks to ordering nothing.
“It would be so wonderful to see your face in the light of this fire. Do you think that might be possible at some point before we leave?”
“Oh, no, definitely not.”
He laughs. “What does the removal of your mask depend on?”
She shrugs.
“Okay, let me guess. Does it depend on your mood?”
“No.”
“Does it require a magic word? Like ‘please’?”
“No.”
“Does the moon need to be full or absent, or somewhere in between?”
“No.”
“Does it depend on your menstrual cycle? No offense.”
She laughs. “No.”
“Do I need to give you a gift?” he asks, taking a small lily from a vase on the table and handing it to her.
She takes the flower. “No.”
“Do I need to touch you a certain way?” he asks, stroking the side of her head, just behind the feathers of the mask.
“No,” she says, leaning slightly into his hand.
“Do we need to be somewhere in particular?”
“Yes.”
“Where do we need to be?”
She shrugs.
“Okay, I do think we’re getting warmer. At least now I know I need to take you somewhere,” he says, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I need to take you there.”
“Really? You’re feeling an urgent need to take me there? That’s great. Let’s go!”
She laughs.
“Can we go to the place where the mask comes off?” he asks.
She studies him. “Yes.” She gets up.
Lily leads him to her apartment. Fortunately, she doesn’t have to worry about him remembering it as “Lily’s” apartment, because it’s not the same apartment he visited a couple of years ago when he lay on her floor and told her he’d fall in love with (and marry) any woman who could create music that beautified the world.
Nevertheless, she is worried. She’s afraid that something in her home will give away her true identity. She spent the last few days taking precautions, guarding against this danger. She removed her name from the buzzer. She carefully hid all her mail and documents with her name on them. She moved her piano and musical books to a tiny spare room, and locked the door.
She never in her life had kept any photos of herself on display — not seeing the point of living among reminders of her ugliness — but still, she made doubly sure before Strad came over that she hadn’t left a snapshot lying around. She had discovered, through experimentation, that the music she’d created to beautify herself also beautified photographs of herself — but as the music might not be playing during the entirety of Strad’s visit, the last thing she wanted was for a photo to be changing throughout the evening, depending on whether the music was on or off.
When Strad and Lily enter her apartment, she closes the door behind them. She turns on her soul-stripping music, which is wired to play in all the rooms whenever it’s turned on (except the bathroom, unfortunately), and waits until she’s sure the music has taken its effect before removing her mask. She opens a bottle of wine and they sit together on the couch.
Seeing him reclined there, she becomes sad just looking at him, at how beautiful he is to her, at how often she’s dreamed about him, at how much she loves him. She is painfully aware that his happiness at sitting here with her, his desire to touch her, is not something she was born to experience in the natural world.
She must have looked sad, because he finally asks, “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” she says. “I’m a bit overwhelmed.”
“I’m not attractive enough for you, right? I know I’m not good enough for you.”
“No, you’re wrong. I find your face very moving.”
“Are you mocking me?”
He looks at her and sees tears in her eyes.
“You’re not,” he says, perplexed.
She shakes her head.
He descends upon her. They kiss passionately, each with their own personal desperation. He basks in the sight of her face, running his fingers through her hair, devouring her with his eyes, and then with his mouth, and again with his eyes. Before long, they move to the bedroom. He undresses her quickly. Even though their passion is frantic, every second is slowed in her mind, and she has time to relish the caresses. She hugs the body she craved for years, the body that never wanted her and still wouldn’t if she hadn’t worked beyond sanity to warp reality.
Afterward, he notices blood on the sheets. “Oh. You have your period?”
“No,” she says.
He frowns. “That’s strange,” he mutters. And then he opens his eyes wide and looks at her. “Were you a virgin?”
“Yes.”
“Why me?”
“You’re my type.”
“No one else was your type before me?”
“Not so much.”
“I hope this isn’t some elaborate and cruel prank because I’m not so bad of a person to deserve it.”
Chapter Fourteen
During the next two weeks, Lily and Strad see each other almost every day. He treats her with tender devotion. She never dreamed he could be so gentle and loving.
He’s always touching her, caressing her, which she loves. She’s hardly ever been touched before. In fact, she was so touch-deprived that she used to derive inordinate pleasure from the handling of her hands during a manicure. And now he’s constantly grabbing her around the waist, kissing her, hugging her, cupping her breasts, and then jokingly saying things like, “Oops, I’m sorry, am I molesting you? You’d tell me if it bothered you, right?” They laugh. To her, it’s heaven.
When she’s home with a bad cold, he brings her large containers of wonton soup and urges her to drink a lot of it. He buys her homeopathic medications, takes her temperature and gives her foot rubs.
When they go to parties, they stay in a corner, people-watching and whispering. She finds his take on everyone entertaining and witty. Much whispering is done about them, too, of course, as she’s wearing a mask. They have such a great connection. Why couldn’t this kind of connection have existed if she hadn’t become beautiful? Why is it that a connection that seems to have nothing to do with looks — because it feels so much deeper than that, like a connection of minds and souls — is actually entirely dependent on looks?