My name is Catherine Celia Ono, and I am an adventurer. Twenty years ago my father crossed the world from Hokkaido to Brussels to find his soul. He found his soul mate and they made me, and now it is my turn to find my place in the world.
I know that Miss Sawyer’s is a difficult school. I am a very hard worker. To prove that I have passed advanced fluency in Italian, Dutch, German, French, and of course English and Flemish.
I want to see America. It is a place full of important women like Annie Oakley and Eleanor Roosevelt and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I want to become a part of America, and I know that being a student at Miss Sawyer’s—a school inside the fabric of the country—will show me the way.
In return I offer my dedicated work. I will not waste a moment of time. I am eager to learn from the teachers and from the other students. Please consider my humble application and be assured that I will try harder than any other student you have ever had.
Sincerely
Catherine C Ono
Taki and Anais hadn’t changed a single word. They sent the essay out that afternoon, and Sawyer’s—thrilled to have a full-pay middle schooler who spoke six languages—admitted her just one week after her application materials arrived.
The Onos had been so proud of her as she graduated first from Sawyer’s, then North Adams College, and went straight to the University of Chicago to begin a doctoral program in art history; and so disappointed when she’d given up on her dissertation to work for Hillary at RAGE.
It must be nearly dawn at the farm. Cat could feel their disappointment pulsing from the air, as though her mother’s tears had washed from the river into the North Sea, across the ocean and up through the bedrock, evaporating into the rain that fell outside her windows. They were sad for her: sad that she had made a superficial life and would be judged superficially. They didn’t think she had any real friends.
But Cat did have friends. She had best friends, people who understood her obsessions with objects and appearance not just as the anxieties of a foreigner, of a minority—which certainly, on some level, existed; she would happily admit that—but also as the anxieties of a philosopher, someone who lived in the world and sought to change it using the lingua franca of culture at large. She didn’t live in Rijmenam. She lived in New York. They would change, too, if they lived here.
She didn’t think she could speak to Hutton ever again. How could he have made such a terrible mistake—have let her rot in a detention center for three days? How could he have allowed her to be so humiliated?
These were your own choices, she reminded herself. When she’d listened to his voicemails last night they were so sweetly apologetic that for a moment she had a hard time being mad, until she remembered her mug shot on the cover of the newspaper—and about how manipulated she felt, how abandoned.
Cat had gambled her whole life—her whole self—with only a moment’s hesitation. If she was fired or demoted, in this public way…how could she go on? Where would she live? How could she face herself, her family, her friends? How would she ever recover from losing her job?
Notorious.
What a terrible word.
But I haven’t lost it, she reminded herself. Not yet.
Part II
September
Chapter Twelve
Cat turned to Bess in the adjacent seat of what they’d come to think of as “their” Suburban, a nine-seater Cooper had been letting them use since July, and bared her teeth for inspection. Bess wiped an errant fleck from Cat’s brow bone, then nodded.
“Flawless,” she said.
Cat’s makeup was indeed literally flawless, her face a perfect mask shellacked to require no photoshop. It was flawless every day now; Cooper sent hair and makeup artists any time she would be expected in the office or at an event. Today actual gold leaf lined her eyelids, a fall of blue-black-colored hair had been sewn into the crown of her head, and matching gold leaf tipped her navy fingernails, all of it designed to complement the custom-made Dior cocktail dress she’d been stitched into. The stiffly tiered black crepe structure—paired with pointed suede ankle boots that faded from red to pink—was surprisingly comfortable, despite the rubber shapewear she’d been squeezed into beneath it. Still, she’d been able to sit upright in her seat in the Suburban, an increasingly rare opportunity. Last week Cat and Bess had been sewn into lace columns so tight they’d been lifted on wood planks one by one through the back door of the SUV, then pulled out ankles-first in an alleyway behind the venue.
The vehicle’s perforated calfskin interior was littered with empty coffee cups from Starbucks, cigarette butts stubbed into Luna bar wrappers, Sephora bags full of emergency product, dog-eared novels, and a scattering of king-size pillows with clumps of mascara smeared into their Frette pillowcases. Cat and Bess found themselves spending more time in the SUV than in the office. It seemed pointless to clean up.
Bess pulled back her lips to carefully expose her own blindingly white veneers. “How about me?”
Cat examined her attentively. The double sets of fake mink lashes were still in place, the matte pink lipstick hadn’t migrated onto her teeth, and the tiny ruby studs set on the apple of her left cheekbone—temporary microdermal implants—weren’t smudged with foundation. Her dewy skin was coated with the dust of real South Sea pearls that Raphael, their favorite makeup artist, had ground up in a mortar and pestle the night before. “They were free,” he’d explained, “from some tacky company who wants to sponsor you. Much better as makeup. And you’re still wearing them, anyway.”
Bess was intact: their new standard for achievement.
“You’re a doll,” Cat said reassuringly.
Jim, the hatchet-faced middle-aged driver assigned to them by Cooper, looked back.
“Ready?” he asked, sounding positive though his expression remained stony and emotionless.
“Ready!” they chimed. Cat dug a Klonopin out of the bottom of her purse, broke it in half, and held it under her tongue.
He walked around and opened their door. Bess got out first, leaping gracefully onto the gray carpet with Jim’s arm as a banister. The flashbulbs exploded. Ten thousand frames—professional, amateur, iPhone—clicked off as she made her way over to the first step-and-repeat, her movements now fluid and practiced even in scalloped four-inch silk stilettos.