53
EYEBROW MASTER CLASS
When Mik and Zuzana stepped into the lobby of the St. Regis grand hotel in Rome, several conversations ceased, a bellhop did a double take, and an elegant matron with a silver bob and surgical cheekbones raised a hand to her pearls and scanned the lobby for security.
Backpackers did not stay at the St. Regis.
Ever.
And these backpackers, they looked… well, it wasn’t easy to put into words. Someone extremely insightful might say they looked as though they had been living in caves, and then been through a battle, perhaps even ridden here astride a monster.
In fact, they had flown by private jet from Marrakesh, but one could be excused for not guessing as much; leaving Tamnougalt in such a hurry, they hadn’t had a chance to take advantage of the shower, and they had no clean clothes between them, and it’s likely that neither had ever been quite this unsightly in their entire lives.
It was presumed, by patrons and staff, that they were going to ask to use a restroom—as, every once in a while, this did happen, the underclasses being ill-educated in the rules—and then most likely filth it up by bathing themselves in the sink. Wasn’t that what these people did?
The doorman who had admitted them kept his eyes fixed on the floor, aware that he had committed a cardinal sin in allowing hoi polloi to breach the perimeter. No doubt, in bygone days, guards had been put to death for just this offense. But what could he do? They claimed to be guests.
Behind the reception desk, the clerks exchanged gladiatorial glances. Do you want to take them, or shall I?
A champion stepped forth.
“May I help you?”
The words spoken may have been: May I help you, but the tone was something more along the lines of: It is my unbearable duty to interact with you, and I intend to punish you for it.
Zuzana turned to meet her challenger. She saw before her a young Italian woman, mid-twenties, sleekly attractive and just as sleekly dressed. Unamused. Nay, unamusable. The woman’s eyes did a quick flick up and down, flaring with something like indignation when they arrived at Zuzana’s dust-caked zebra platform sneakers, and her mouth puckered into a little knob of distaste. She looked rather as though she were preparing to remove a live slug from her arugula.
“You know,” observed Zuzana, in English, “you’d probably be a lot prettier if you didn’t make that face.”
The face in question froze in place. A nostril-flare suggested that offense was taken. And then, as though in slow motion, one of the woman’s fine, plucked eyebrows ascended toward her hairline.
Game. On.
Zuzana Nováková was a pretty girl. She’d often been compared to a doll, or to a fairy, not just because of her slight stature but also her fine, small face—a happy blending of angles and arcs set under skin clear as porcelain. Delicate chin, rounded cheeks, wide glossy eyes, and, though she would annihilate anyone for suggesting it, somewhat of a Cupid’s bow mouth. All of this cuteness, it was one of nature’s great bait and switches, because… that wasn’t all there was to Zuzana Nováková. Not even a little bit.
Deciding to take her on was akin to a fish deciding idly to gobble up that pretty light bobbing in the shadows and then—OH GOD THE TEETH THE HORROR!—meeting the anglerfish on the other side.
Zuzana didn’t eat people. She withered them. And there in the sparkling marble, crystal, and gilded lobby of one of Rome’s most exclusive luxury hotels, in just under two seconds, Zuzana’s eyebrow taught a master class. Its rise was something to behold. The sweep of it, the arch. Contempt, amusement, amused contempt, confidence, judgment, mockery, even pity. It was all there, and more. Her eyebrow communicated directly with the Italian woman’s eyebrow, somehow telling it, We have not stumbled in here to bathe in your sink. You have miscalculated. Tread lightly.
And the eyebrow conveyed the message to its owner, whose mouth promptly lost its slug-in-the-arugula pucker, and even before Mik interceded to say, mildly, almost apologetically, “We’re staying in the Royal Suite?” she was tasting the first sour hint of her mortification.
“The… Royal Suite?”
The Royal Suite at the St. Regis had hosted monarchs and rock legends, oil sheiks and opera divas. It cost nearly $20,000 a night during ordinary times, and these were not ordinary times. Rome was currently center of the world’s attention, filled to the rafters with pilgrims, journalists, foreign delegations, curiosity-seekers, and crazies, and there simply were no vacancies. Families were renting out balconies and cellars—even rooftops—at a premium, and the already overtaxed police were having a time breaking up pilgrim camps in the parks.
Zuzana and Mik didn’t know how much this was costing Karou—or her fake grandmother, Esther, or whoever was footing the bill. Ordinarily, such extravagance would have made them feel awkward and small, peasants in the presence of gentry. Indeed, it would make them feel exactly as this woman had intended them to feel. But not today. In light of recent experience, these insulated, rarified people put Zuzana in mind of expensive shoes kept in their box the three hundred and sixty-two days of the year when they weren’t being worn. Wrapped in tissue, safe from harm, and all they knew of life was gala events and the inside of the box. How dull. How dumb. By contrast, the grime of her journey, the outré inappropriateness of the state of her, it felt like armor.
I earned this dirt.
Respect. The dirt.
“That’s right,” she said. “The Royal Suite. You’ll be expecting us.” She shrugged her backpack off and let it fall to the floor, its pores emitting a satisfying puff of dirt on impact. “It would be great if you could take care of that,” she said, yawning. She raised her arms straight up in the air to stretch out her shoulders, less because they needed it than because this would reveal her pit stains in their full glory. There were, she knew, actual concentric circles stained into them from multiple sweatings. They looked like tree rings and were queerly meaningful to her. She had produced them by living through a dark fairy tale that… that others may not have lived through.
This shirt would never be washed.
“Of course,” said the woman, and her voice was the shed hull of a voice now. It was funny, watching her struggle against her overwhelming facial impulses to purse her lips or frown, wrinkle her nose or practice that half-lidded, steely I judge you and find you wanting look that chic Italian women so excel at. She was diminished. Her amateur eyebrow had slunk back to its resting place, where it stayed during the remainder of their transaction, an apostrophe humbled to a comma. In next to no time, Mik and Zuzana were being led to an elevator. Subsequently elevated. Ushered down a preposterously plush hallway. To be reunited with the rest of their party.