She Walks in Beauty Read online

  She was as shocked as Hoke had been when she had implied the same thing as a joke.

  “There’s no rule against breast augmentation—”

  Were we talking boob jobs too?

  “—of any sort in the Miss America Pageant. Now, Miss Universe is different, but it’s a different pageant.” Sally added that last, looking down her nose.

  “What about noses?” Sam stared up at Miss Texas. She was a gorgeous willowy redhead with a nose as straight as Sam’s had been before Skeeter Bosarge had whacked her. The jury was still out on whether or not Sam’s was going to need rehauling when all the swelling finally subsided, and she’d found herself paying special attention to schnozzes lately. She gave Miss Texas a 10.

  “Many of them do have rhinoplasty. But many people you know do, too,” said Sally.

  That might be true. But they didn’t do it to win beauty contests.

  “Why, then? To win husbands?” Sally was on her high horse again.

  Well, but—

  “Most of them don’t have any surgery,” said Sally. “But what they all do is work out like crazy to get bodies like that. The swimsuits can be custom made so the girl looks as good as possible with what she’s got, but the swimsuit’s not going to do anything about what’s hanging out of it, about muscle tone. That’s why they eat right and train like the dickens.”

  “Body by Weisbeck,” said the Inquirer.

  A swimsuit designer?

  “A body designer,” said USA Today. “Chuck Weisbeck and Artie Richards have trained Miss America 1989, Miss USA 1989, and lots of state winners at the Butcher Shop, their Texas health club.”

  “Their slogan’s ‘We trim the fat,’” Sally added. “And they do. When they take a girl on, they do a total program. They teach her how to eat. If she can’t stick to it, she’ll have to move in with Artie.” Sam was taking notes like crazy.

  “And then there’s tape,” said the Inquirer.

  “You had to tell her that, didn’t you,” Sally sighed.

  To prevent their swimsuits’ riding up?

  “Nope,” said the Inquirer. “For that they use Firm Grip, a spray you can buy in any sporting goods store. But to get cleavage like that”—she pointed at the nearest girl—“you bend forward and use duct tape beneath your breasts, pulling them together. See, the swimsuits are backless, so you wrap back and forth.”

  “You can cinch in waists and hips with tape too,” said Sally. If the Inquirer was going to give Sam all the secrets, she might as well get them right. “That makes breasts look higher, fuller, and rounder by contrast.”

  Sam stared up at the last girl down the runway, Miss Louisiana, Lavert’s cousin. She was a 10 in her swimsuit, for sure, but what was she out of it?

  “Interview slips?” It was one of Barbara Stein’s assistants moving behind them in the dark. They filled out requests for the girls they wanted to interview in the pressroom after the show.

  Talent was next. “This is very tough,” said Gary Collins, who seemed to Sam to be growing paler as the show went on. He had a pinched look around his mouth, as if his stomach hurt. He explained that one of the things that made judging talent so difficult was that a singer might follow a dancer who followed a pianist, and they all had to be judged on their own merits.

  Yeah, yeah. And this was the part of the competition where the folks at home, come Saturday night, would be rolling in the aisles.

  “The reason for dividing them into Alpha, Mu, and Sigma groups by talent,” Sally said, “is so we don’t get twelve piano players in one night.”

  Or six ventriloquists, thought Sam, remembering acts she’d seen on TV in her youth. Or three girls riding their palominos, though all animal acts had been verboten since the birds got away and the horse almost landed in the orchestra pit.

  That was really a shame. Part of the fun of the pageant in the old days were acts like the girl who showed America how to pack a suitcase. Or the girl who sang and smiled like crazy while simultaneously wailing on the accordion and the snare drum. The tap dancer who did her routine standing on her head in a specially constructed box. The hand wringers doing Joan of Arc. The singers who knew only that one song—and forgot the words to it. The Miss A whose talent, for Pete’s sake, had been sewing her own wardrobe. The fire baton twirlers—though fire had gone the way of the palominos, alas, along with the ice skaters.

  “Also, the top girls are seeded throughout the three groups so they don’t kill each other off in early competition,” the Inquirer said in Sam’s ear. She was proving to be such a fund of information. Was she looking for a job in Atlanta?

  The first girl out of the chute was Miss Mississippi, a brunette in a gorgeous long red gown who sang a tune from Phantom of the Opera. She wasn’t bad.

  Next came a ventriloquist with a dummy who looked like Big Bird. Now, this was more like old times. Miss Montana did a tap routine. Miss Michigan was a hand wringer: her monologue (she wrote it herself) was about a little girl waiting for her daddy, who was never coming home.

  Barbara Stein’s assistant was back whispering, “Texas, Miss Texas.”

  What?

  “Texas took swimsuit,” the Inquirer explained. The press got the news first. Swimsuit and talent winners were announced at the end of the evening. Evening gown remained a secret.

  Miss Texas was the tall redhead with the great nose. Sam had scored her 10. She wasn’t doing badly.

  Pianist, torch singer, pianist, ballerina, pianist, and then it was Rae Ann’s turn. Sam found herself rooting for the born-again Georgia peach.

  She wondered if Rae Ann had the rabbit’s foot Hoke said he’d given her tucked somewhere under that beautiful blue gown. Two steps out, she looked fragile as a china doll. Yet Rae Ann strode right out like a pro and took that stage.

  This girl had weighed two hundred fifty pounds? This girl had had nothing bigger in her life than paint-by-the-numbers and TV soap operas? This girl with the angelic voice, the graceful hands, had been a victim? This girl with the dreamy look—you could see the tear in her eye through Sally’s binoculars! This beauty had been a one-girl disaster area?

  *

  Kurt Roberts knew that was one of the formulas for success, finding a girl convinced she was really rotten. Find yourself one of those, you’ve got a girl you can mold.

  On the other hand, a girl who comes from a supportive family that’s given her love, what does she need you for? She’s already sporting a strong self-concept, and those girls are trouble.

  He wanted a girl who’s been abandoned, pushed into a corner, a Ping-Pong ball between one parent who dishes it out and the other who laps it up.

  There’s a girl who, once you get her attention, and give her just enough of a taste of what might be, will do anything you tell her to. She’ll be more than happy to pay the price. Sacrifice is her middle name.

  She’ll starve herself. She’ll do those reps till her nose bleeds. Tell her to smile, she’ll glow. Give her a plan, she’ll follow it to a T. She’ll start to see the angles herself. Girls around her are wearing their hair up, hers will go down. They’re wearing black, she’ll show up in white. She’ll do anything to please, to make you proud, to stay out of that hellhole she used to call her life.

  Just like Rae Ann.

  He could smell a Rae Ann a mile off.

  He’d given her a 10 in interview because he knew she was a survivor.

  What Kurt didn’t know was if he was, now, himself.

  *

  It was the best version of “Don’t Cry Out Loud” Sam had ever heard. She didn’t know how Cheryl Prewitt, Rae Ann’s idol, had delivered it when she won in 1980, but in Sam’s opinion, Patsy Cline couldn’t have done it better, and that was her ultimate compliment.

  “She’ll take it,” said Sally. “No question.”

  Really? Way to go, Rae Ann!

  “You better watch that stuff,” said the ever-vigiliant Inquirer. “Pulling for a girl is the first sign of involvement.”

 
“I’m covering her,” Sam protested. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Onstage presence in evening gown was next, after another forgettable number by Nickie Brasco and the dancers. “They do different production numbers each night?” Sam hoped.

  Her new friends hooted. “No, honey,” said Sally. “This is dress rehearsal for Saturday. Not only are you going to see the same songs, but you’ll hear the same patter from Phyllis and Gary. Tomorrow, come half an hour later and skip the opener.”

  Then the Inquirer shushed them. Miss Florida, a petite blonde, was first in a shimmering dress of crystalline pink. Bugle beads, wrote Sam in her notes.

  The drill went like this: each girl floated through the set, down some stairs, and took her place beside Phyllis George, who didn’t look bad herself in black sequins. Phyllis and Gary had already explained that each contestant had written a one-page “issue-oriented essay for women of the nineties” and that her impromptu question would be taken from that.

  Miss South Dakota, a brunette in a hurt-your-teeth-orange gown, must have written something about alcohol and drug abuse among the young. “What I, as a future state superintendent of schools would do, is make sure that each of those students with a negative experience be identified, and those negative experiences traded in for positive ones.”

  “Hey, sounds easy,” Sam whispered to the Inquirer. “I’m all for that.”

  “They’re a little naive,” agreed the Inquirer. “But on the other hand, think about it. In front of thousands of people, and on Saturday night, millions, you’ve got thirty seconds to be intelligent, if not brilliant. And you’re twenty-one years old.”

  Okay. But, on the other hand, they’d asked for this.

  Miss Rhode Island, in a purple and black number, was holding forth on citizen involvement. Patriotism was a favorite issue in these circles, the Jaycees being the prime sponsors at the local level.

  Phyllis thanked her, and Miss Rhode Island glided over toward the judges, stopped, did the same sort of slow, big smile the girls did in swimsuit. Then she hit the runway. “Walk it, girl,” said Sally.

  “Georgia,” Barb’s assistant was whispering again in the dark. “Miss Georgia.”

  Georgia? Georgia! She’d done it! Rae Ann had won talent! Forty percent! Hoo-boy! Sam was bouncing up and down in her orange plastic kitchen chair.

  Then she checked her watch. Deadline was 45 minutes and counting.

  “Back out that way”—the Inquirer pointed to the exit behind the refreshment stand—“are the pay phones. And don’t forget the interviews after the show.”

  *

  Sam missed the rest of the show and the interviews. She didn’t get to see Rae Ann’s victory strut down the runway. Harry said she almost blew right off the end of the ramp past Miss Texas, the swimsuit winner, who was no slowpoke herself.

  Sam had sat on the hallway floor and dashed her story off in twenty minutes. But then, when she tried to modem it over the phone, she got line noise. No carrier No carrier, her screen flashed. The guy in Atlanta couldn’t read it for the distortion. So, in the end, she had to talk it to him.

  Hoke, who’d told Lois he had to work late, got on another line, hurraying and huzzahing.

  “What’d Rae Ann do? What’d she say?”

  Sam didn’t have the slightest. She would have to do the follow-up tomorrow, beg, borrow, or steal Rae Ann away from her schedule.

  “Now I guess you’re off to the Georgia victory party?” asked Hoke. “God, I wish I could be there.”

  “Now,” said Sam, whose day had been fuller and richer and more confusing and exhausting than she’d thought possible, “I’m finding Harry, and he and Harpo and I are hitting the sack, pronto.”

  7

  Wayne leaned back in Action Central in his big leather chair, an exact copy of Mr. F’s. He was feeling very pleased with himself.

  There was nothing in the world like the pride of accomplishment at the end of a long day.

  Not that the days ever seemed that long, working for Mr. F, who made everything easy—and exciting.

  Like one day he might ask you to meet him at the train station, and he’d be dressed up in his conductor suit. Mr. Franken loved trains. He had the biggest collection of toy trains in the whole world.

  Or there was the time he sent Wayne a ticket to the circus, in Chicago. And a train ticket, of course. Wayne had a front-row box seat, was having a great time—he especially liked the lions and tigers—when halfway through the second clown act, the bozo in an orange wig with a purple nose pulled him out into the arena to be part of the show. He whispered in Wayne’s ear just as he stuffed him in a barrel. It was Mr. F.

  Mr. F said he liked kid stuff—games, toys, playacting, dressing up—because he had been raised so poor, he and his sister, by an aunt in West Texas. So when he got to where he could afford it, and he could afford anything now, he was one of the richest men in the country, he played all the games he wanted. He said making money was game-playing too, especially if you had a gift for salesmanship—which Mr. F did. He learned it from his Aunt Gracie who ran the only general store in Crockett County. Wayne loved to hear Mr. F talk about when he was a boy, selling Bibles door-to-door. Mr. F dropped out of high school at 15, bought an old Ford, made himself a small fortune selling vacuum cleaners even to folks who didn’t have electricity. He said not to worry, they would. And they did, eventually.

  Mr. F invested his earnings in real estate, just like in the game Monopoly, buying big pieces of cheap property, like Baltic and Oriental Avenues, building warehouses on them. Then he moved on to houses and hotels and office buildings. He said he’d figured out the way to make real money was not by selling, but by developing and holding on.

  But Mr. F’s favorite was his FrankFairs. He’d started buying up tracts of land in West Texas, especially near dead-ass little towns, put up these big stores on ’em, giant versions of his Aunt Gracie’s store. He sold almost everything you could think of. And sold it cheap. He insisted his FrankFairs have big cheap toy departments. They gave each kid a prize for just walking through the door. Mr. F figured soon every kid in America’d be whining for his parents to take him to FrankFair. And he was right.

  One of Mr. F’s favorite things was to play dress-up, wear disguises, show up in FrankFairs unannounced and take a serious look around. Incognito, he called it—one of Wayne’s very favorite words.

  Mr. F’d been on one of those unannounced incognito visits two years ago to a store in Cherry Hill, not too far from Philly, when he’d found Wayne.

  It was on his way to the FrankFair, actually. Mr. F was riding his bike. That’s what he’d do, sometimes. Ride the train till he got to a town, then take his bike out of the baggage car, pedal along incognito, pretending he was just another guy down on his luck, couldn’t afford even a beat-to-crap Plymouth, going to do his shopping—nickels and dimes squirreled away in one of those little red plastic cases that looked like a mouth opening when you squeezed it.

  There was Wayne, up in his tree house in a good stand of oak, watching this dude, pedaling away in his jeans and blue work shirt, watching on the monitor that fed in from the camera he’d planted down at the south end of this little road. He had one at the north end too. Wayne fed the power out of lines, carefully camouflaged, that he’d run from that shed over there where a man named Huckaby played with his woodworking tools when Miz Huckaby got on his nerves. Wayne knew that because he’d bugged their house, just for the practice. There was nothing much interesting going on there. Though their niece had been coming to visit the next week, and he’d thought that might be worth another little camera—in the bathroom. In the meantime, Wayne was just riding high, living off the fat of the land and what he stole from the Grand Union, Radio Shack, and the FrankFair.

  He was happy as a clam to be out of that halfway house. Halfway between what and what, he used to ask. Old Miz Mizery—that’s what he called her, the woman who ran the place, didn’t have the sen
se God gave a duck, just knew how to cash those government checks—she didn’t have any answers.

  Wayne did. Wayne knew the answer to most problems in his world was to walk away. People didn’t want to deal with love, pain, need, dreams—the things that cut too close to the bone. It was easier to scram. Nobody gave a crap, not really, not about another crazy, which is what Wayne, most days, knew he was.

  Of course Miz Mizery did like to keep up the head count, keep those checks rolling. But like his friend Thelma Thirty, that’s what they called her because she had that many fingers and toes, used to say, They care so much about us, how come they cut us loose? Threw us out of the crazy houses that used to at least give us three squares and a cot, keep us out of the rain and snow, Christmas party every year with the do-gooders singing songs, bringing green punch and cookies with red sprinkles?

  Wayne had walked away lots of times. Then he’d let himself get picked up, shipped back to some kind of shelter or halfway house every once in a while, when he was sick or just needed to rest up.

  But this hadn’t been one of those times, this day that he saw what turned out to be Mr. F pedaling down the road. It was early May, the weather getting to be real nice, and Wayne was feeling good. He hadn’t had any flashbacks in quite a while from those bad Mexican drugs that had nearly fried his brain. And the electric shocks, well, there were those blank spots, but you could get used to anything, Wayne had learned. So there Wayne was, having a good time living up in his tree house, practicing what he’d learned about electronics and surveillance courtesy of the United States Army—a class A outfit until you wanted out.

  Then you had to walk away from that too. And if somebody got in your way, somebody had gotten in Wayne’s way, you might have to close them down.

  With that thought Wayne had zeroed in through the telescopic sight of his rifle on the bicycle man pedaling down the road, thinking about zapping him. But why? Why not? Why? Why not?

  The bicycle man was getting closer now; Wayne could see he was blond and round-faced like John Denver. He was wheeling along, whistling something out of tune. Whatever it was it reminded Wayne of when he was a little kid, sharing a crib with brother John. Now, that made him nuts.