The bottle of Dabsitaf I’d stolen from Verena was sitting on the coffee table. I reached for it and shook it, listening to the pills rattle like dead bugs in the amber plastic. If I decided against surgery, I could use the $20,000 to fly to Paris several times and stock up on the drug. Verena said there could be deadly side effects, but the same was true of the surgery. And besides, even crossing the street carried risks.
I considered taking one of the pills, but I didn’t have an appetite so there was no point. No matter where my thoughts wandered, they kept returning to the man on the subway platform. Would he have hit Alicia? Maybe he would have flirted with her and she would have been flattered. The thought of it made me hate Alicia, and I didn’t want to hate her.
There was a knock at the door, and through the peephole I saw that it was a deliveryman with a brown parcel. I told him to set it outside the door, and when he was gone I took it inside, knowing what it was before I opened it—one of Alicia’s new dresses, a pool of silky emerald fabric. Alicia didn’t deserve such a nice dress, not after her flirtation with the nasty man on the subway platform, but then, Alicia didn’t know he was nasty. Only Plum could see that side of him.
The telephone rang again but I didn’t answer it. When I listened to the message, I expected to hear the voice of my mother or Verena, but it was a man named Preston, reminding me of our date.
The blind dates. Somehow I had forgotten it was time for the first one. Dates with four men awaited me, for which I had Verena’s dentist, Gina, to thank.
“Well, hello there,” Preston said when I called him back to cancel. I rested on the sofa, holding Alicia’s new emerald dress. Preston told me that he had made a reservation at a restaurant called Christo’s and asked if that was okay.
“About that, I don’t think—”
“If you don’t like Greek food, we can go somewhere else.”
He chattered on. Gina via Verena had sent me notes about each man. Preston was a financial analyst and Gina’s cousin. I finally managed to say that I wasn’t sure if the date was a good idea.
“I don’t like blind dates either,” he said, trying to sound casual, trying to win me over. “But let’s just do it. No pressure. At the very least we’ll have a nice dinner, right?” He was almost pleading, and I wanted to laugh. He thought he was speaking to a normal woman. He had no reason to assume otherwise; my voice sounded normal.
I had already fulfilled the first three tasks and there was no sense quitting now with only two tasks left, so I agreed to the date. I wanted to see the look on his face when he saw me. Plum would be humiliated, which is what she deserved.
There were several hours till the date, but I began to get ready, knowing it would take a while. My waxed body had begun to sprout hairs, so I lightly shaved my legs and underarms. The sink and the tile floor were littered with short black pieces of hair and drops of blood. I wiped up the blood with a piece of toilet tissue. I didn’t shave often and realized I should have done this in the tub. In the mirror I saw that my vulva was still mostly hairless and sleek. I didn’t like looking at it. Even the place from where I pissed and bled had needed beautification and improvement.
I bathed and washed my hair, then put on my underpants and Thinz and control-top tights and my push-up bra. The white and purple dress that Rubí had made for me was black at the knees from the subway platform, so I wore one of my usual black dresses. I was like a horse all saddled up. Sitting down at dinner would be difficult, never mind eating, but girls didn’t eat on dates. At least I didn’t think they did. I’d never really been on a date, so I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I tried to remember what characters in movies did. Deception was part of it. Pretending to be prettier, slimmer, and less hungry. Being a woman means being a faker. That’s what Marlowe had said.
I fixed my hair in the bathroom mirror, straightening and smoothing the black bob. Next I applied the makeup as the makeover expert had shown me: primer, foundation, concealer. This erased much of my natural face. Then I began to paint with my brushes, applying the blusher and bronzer first, but then wiping them off because I looked burned from the sun, not sun kissed; I was aiming for sun kissed. Next, my eyes. I curled my lashes, what there were of them; I lined my eyes and then daubed a light shadow over my lids and applied mascara. Then I penciled in my brows, saving my lips for last. After looking through my collection of liners and lipsticks, I settled on a pink shade called Statutory.
I stood back to observe. According to Marlowe, the makeup was meant to enhance my fuck-me look, but the face in the mirror didn’t say fuck me, it said punch me, as it had said to the man on the subway platform. The bruise had faded, but I didn’t want it to fade. I wanted everyone to see it. I turned away from the mirror and tried to resist what I felt like doing, but I couldn’t. I balled my right hand into a fist and then punched myself on the lip, on the spot with the faded bruise. I hit myself once and then again so it would hurt more. Hurt is what I wanted. It hurts, but it feels good too.
Preston