“A few years ago,” she began, “when I was just starting out as a model, and not very successful, I fell in love with Nathaniel. He told me he found me wonderful, but that there was just one thing preventing him from being outright in love with me. He said there was something about me that turned him off, and that thing was that my nose was slightly too long. One millimeter too long, to be precise. Nobody had ever told me I had a long nose, so I was surprised. I was very sad and asked him if he was sure that meant he couldn’t love me. He said yes. I thought that was the end of that dream. But then he said there was a possible solution: I could get plastic surgery. I agreed to do it. He gave me the name of a good surgeon, offered to pay half the price of the surgery, and gave me precise written instructions to give to the surgeon as to how my nose should look. I had it done and went back to see Nathaniel once it had healed. I was very nervous because I wasn’t sure the result would be exactly what he had wanted. But it was. He said the surgeon had done a very good job and that the length of my nose was exquisite. I assumed this meant he would be able to love me, but I was wrong.”
“What happened?” I asked, suddenly realizing I had been gaping for a while now.
“Well, I sensed a certain reticence on his part, so I asked him about it, and he said there was one other thing that he found problematic and was trying to overcome. It was that my eyes were slightly droopy; the skin above my eyes covered my eyelids a tiny bit. He said that plastic surgery could easily take care of that. He once again gave me carefully written instructions to give to the surgeon. He assured me that after that there would be no more obstacles to his love for me. So I had it done.”
“And?”
“And he loved the result. He said it was beautiful. I asked him if he thought he could love me now. He seemed uneasy. He said, ‘Well, there is one other thing, but I hesitate to ask.’
“ ‘What is it?’ I asked him.
“ ‘If your top lip could be a tiny bit fuller.’ ”
Chriskate’s story was very distressing to me. I couldn’t contain myself any longer: “And didn’t you object, at any point, to this charade?”
“I did. Right then I got a bit angry and said, ‘Why are you toying with me this way? Is this your last request?’
“ ‘Yes,’ he said.
“ ‘And you’ll love me?’
“ ‘Yes.’
“ ‘Okay, I’ll do it, if you assure me that it’s a token of love, and not a whim.’
“ ‘It’s not a whim,’ he said.
“So I had it done, but he still seemed unable to love me.”
“And did he again ask you to alter yourself?” I asked.
“No. He was going to give up trying to love me. I’m the one who finally asked him to feel free to tell me if there was any other alteration I could make that might have the slightest chance of arousing his feelings. After begging him to tell me, he did. It was some other triviality involving my nose. I had it done. Needless to say, it happened again and again. Each time he told me there was only one more alteration before he could love me. In short, I ended up going through fifteen operations that altered my face ever so slightly, but crucially. The alterations were mind-boggling in their subtlety. And each one made me more successful as a model. Please don’t tell anybody about this. It’s not something I’m proud of. It was great for my career, but it never did win me Nathaniel’s love.”
I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone.
“After I became the most highly paid model in the world, I started suspecting that my appearance had nothing to do with whether Nathaniel could love me. I knew there had to be something else, which apparently you have. That’s what I so desperately wanted to find out when I met you.”
I could not imagine what that thing might be.
Needless to say, Chriskate’s story made it extremely easy for me to break up with Nathaniel, which I did that same afternoon, by phone, after expressing my horror to him over what he had done. He tried in vain to apologize and explain his vile act.
“I was unable to love anybody,” he said. “I desperately wanted to love someone, and I was convinced it had to do with their appearance, but now I know I was wrong. I know I was sick to think that way. And anyway, it wasn’t so horrible what I did to her, was it? She got to become very successful and she can now get any man she wants.”
“Except you.”
“That’s true. But please forgive me, I’m not like that anymore. I realize it was terrible to prolong her agony. I’m sorry, but I was in agony too. I had never been in love. That was agony. I thought I was incapable of being in love with anyone. I thought there was something wrong with me.”
“There is.”
“Please don’t break up with me over this. I’m a totally different person now. If you break up with me over this, I don’t know what I’ll do to myself.”
“Don’t worry, I was going to break up with you anyway, but I was holding off out of guilt. I don’t have the guilt now. That’s the only difference.”
“I still want us to be friends, at least.”
“I don’t see how it’s possible now that I know what you did to her.”
“Please.”
“If you need anything from me, any favors, please ask. After all, I perhaps owe you my life.”
“I ask for your friendship.”
“Well, that’s asking a lot.”
“Well, I gave you a lot.”
“That’s true. Okay, I can try to be friends with you sometimes. But you must know I’ll feel differently about you from now on.”
“Okay, I’ll accept that for now. But I hope you’ll change your mind. I hope you’ll see I’m a different person. I’m who you thought I was before she told you all that.”
The filming of my big-budget movie began. Luckily, most of it was to be filmed in New York.
When I came home each day, I’d tell Damon all about the filming, and he seemed to relish every detail. He couldn’t get enough of them, down to the hair color, shoe color, and smallest gestures of anyone on the set, be it the director or the gofer. He also wanted to know my feelings: every nuance of my happiness, all my surges of excitement, little racings of my heart, swellings of pride, or blushings, or whatever. We would talk about these things for hours, until either he or I would bring up the importance of being rested for the next day of filming, and then I would go to bed.
The day came when I had to leave my pet alone for two weeks, to go on location for a small section of the movie. I bought a small fridge, which I placed right outside Damon’s cage, within his reach. I bought him lots of cans of tuna, of spaghetti, of fruits, of vegetables, mini cartons of long-lasting milk, cereal, crackers, olive oil. Unlike him, I didn’t have the heartlessness to leave my victim without chocolate, so I left him nine bars of dark Lindt chocolate, and boxes of cookies, and hard candies.
I wanted to buy him a few clothes, since he only had what he was wearing, but I had no success in finding men’s clothes made of translucent white silk. So instead, I bought him a roll of silk fabric with which he could sew himself some clothes if he needed them. I left him a sewing kit that didn’t have more than one needle, and whose pair of scissors was tiny, very blunt, and round-tipped, to prevent any possibility of escape.
“I don’t know how to make clothes,” he said.
“Neither do I, but it can’t be that complicated. I’m sure you can figure it out if you feel like it.”
Before I left, I set up a video camera hidden from Damon’s sight by the one-way mirror. I programmed the camera to start filming him every day at 1:30, while he watched his soap. By placing another mirror at the other end of the room, I was able to get a shot of both his face and the TV screen at the same time.