The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty (8 page)

Ignoring him, I repeat, “Deliver what?”

“A piano.”

A piano is not as good as Lily herself, but it’s the next best thing. “Thanks, Adam. Send them up.”

We’re surprised that the upright piano the deliverymen carry into my apartment is made of mirror. We admire it, while they place it in the spot I indicate by the window.

Forty-five minutes later, Lily strolls into my apartment.

When she sees her new instrument, she says, “Ah. Good. It’s here.”

“We were worried to death!” I scream at her.

“I’m sorry. I was busy.”

“With what?”

“Same project. But I’ll be practicing on myself now instead of on Jack.” She sits at the piano and starts hitting single keys, listening to the sound quality. “I bought this piano thinking it might inspire me. My project is so insanely difficult. Impossible, probably. But I’ll work on it until I croak, if that’s what it takes.”

“Why don’t you just give up?” Penelope says.

“Because then life might not seem worth living.”

“See,
that’s
the project you should be working on—making life worth living for reasons other than Strad,” Jack says.

“I can’t. I need love.” Lily starts playing scales very rapidly, testing the piano. She stops, says, “Sounds good.”

We’re all standing around the musical instrument, our scowling expressions reflected back at us.

BEFORE BED, I
call Lily at home to get a better sense of how she’s doing and ask if she’s had any more trouble with things like her hands becoming reflective.

“Yes. Yesterday I was in the pits of depression and then the hand thing happened again a couple of times while I was playing the piano. I stopped it each time from spreading, but I was so tempted not to.”

“It spreads?”

“Yes. Up my wrists and arms.”

“How do you stop it?”

“I will it to stop. I refuse to let it overtake me—out of fear, I guess. Even though it feels good. I mean, it feels good because it feels like nothing, which is good compared to how I feel, which is terrible. Death is the ultimate painkiller. When I will it to stop, it recedes, and the pain comes flooding back.”

“I’m glad,” I say quietly. “That you make it stop. And since yesterday, it hasn’t happened again?”

“No. So far it’s only happened when I hit bottom. But today I’m okay. Buying the mirrored piano cheered me up a bit.”

On Friday is the meeting of the Excess Weight Disorders Support Group, which I promised my mother I’d attend and have been dreading.

When I arrive I see there are about twenty people in the group, all overweight or obese, mostly women. And there is a leader, fitting the same description.

The meeting begins. A woman shares her story. A few people make comments. Another woman shares. More comments. I wait for an opening to tell them the truth about myself. I’m nervous.

For a long time, I see no opportunity until finally a woman says, “Ever since my first child was born I’ve been struggling with my weight. I gained a lot and then lost some and then gained back more than I lost, and then lost some again, but whenever I lose any weight, I gain back all of it and more.”

Another woman jumps in with: “I’m a total yo-yo dieter, too! I take the weight off in the summer and fill my closet with skinny clothes, and then I put all the weight back on in the winter.”

Heart pounding, I say, “Same here. I take the weight off at night and hang it in my closet and put it back on in the morning.”

No one seems to hear me.

Someone else says, “I guess I have a really slow metabolism. I gain weight so easily. And it gets worse as I get older. Anything I eat goes directly from my lips to my hips.”

“I totally know what you mean,” I say. “For me it’s even more direct. It bypasses the lips altogether.”

A couple of chuckles and puzzled looks, but the group doesn’t pause, keeps on talking. I’m not sure my mom would be satisfied with my efforts.

I finally see my opportunity when a woman says, “I mean, I know I’m thin on the inside.”

“Me too! See?” I spring up and flash the assembly. Everyone stares inside my fat jacket, gaping at my thin torso and shoulders.

“What are you doing? Why did you come here?” the leader asks, not looking happy.

“My therapist says I have a serious weight issue, like the rest of you, and that just because my way of getting fat is unusual doesn’t mean the source of the problem isn’t very typical.”

“You don’t belong here,” another woman says.

“But I’m fat.”

“Yours is removable.”

“So is yours. It just takes longer.”

“You’re a thin person.”

“So are you, on the inside. Like me.”

“I assume you don’t even have an eating disorder, right?”

“No, but I’ve got a weight disorder,” I insist. “I engage in unhealthy, compulsive behavior like everyone here. When you guys go to the store to buy your fatty things, I go to a store and buy a different kind of fatty thing. And then I go home, and instead of eating mine, I put it on my body. My brain and emotions have the same need as yours to be fat, but my body is unable to manufacture that fat for reasons of taste. I hate the taste of fattening foods. I hate overeating. And I hate being inactive. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a very serious weight problem. I can’t stop putting on the weight. When I take it off, I can’t keep it off. Either your way or my way, the fat ends up visible to everyone, and the result is the same in the eyes of the world.”

“Okay,” says the group leader. “Let’s move on . . . Sally? Would you like to share?”

I sit in silence for forty more minutes until the meeting finally ends.

GEORGIA TELLS US
her agent wants to know if our whole group would be willing to appear on TV, on
News with Peter Marrick,
to be interviewed about our Nights of Creation and our creativity in general.

“They want us on Wednesday night at six,” Georgia explains. “They’re doing a segment on creativity. They read about our Nights of Creation in that
Observer
article last year.”

We agree to do it. We’re particularly excited that the great Peter Marrick himself, America’s favorite local news anchor, will be conducting the interview. Even if he weren’t so charismatic and charming on camera, the incident a few years ago when he ran into a burning building and saved three children would make him America’s sweetheart. His cameraman captured the spectacle of Peter running out of the burning house, his hair on fire, carrying a baby in one arm and dragging two small children in his other hand. The only injury he sustained was to his hair follicles. His decision to continue anchoring the news with singed hair and then with a shaved head drew even more viewers. And when his hair grew back nicer and more unusual than before, that didn’t hurt the ratings either. He looked angelic—almost ethereal with his hair floating around his head, light and airy, like a halo.

“You should all go on the show without me,” Georgia says. “I’ve got nothing to say about creativity anymore. When you lose your faith in your work, what have you got left as an artist? Nothing much.”

“Haven’t you done any writing in the last week since you got your laptop back?” Jack asks.

“I tried.”

“And?”

“I’ve become an expert at backing up my laptop. I’ve set up three different backup systems. The first is manual. The second is automatic, hourly, wireless, in the apartment. And the third is automatic, daily, in the cloud, which means that all of America could blow up and I could still retrieve a backup from the Internet in Europe, assuming I wasn’t
in
America when it blew up.”

Chapter Seven

I
discover a new letter from Gabriel waiting for me in my mailbox.

That letter shocks me so deeply that I’m not able to call my friends right away to tell them about it. I do research online for about an hour. Then I think. I spend the entire night thinking. I don’t even try to sleep.

IN THE MORNING,
I call my friends. I tell them to come to my apartment at three. This way, I’ll still have a few hours to think more about the letter.

MY FRIENDS ARRIVE
promptly. We settle ourselves on the couch.

Not beating around the bush, I unfold the letter.

I take a deep breath and begin reading—

Dear Barb, Georgia, Lily, Penelope, and Jack,

This is my final letter to you before October 27
^th
. I didn’t want to upset you sooner than necessary, but now I must tell you the terrible thing one of you did, and I must issue an urgent warning that I hope is no longer necessary, but if it is, you must heed it.

On Lily’s birthday, we were all out at a bar. It was a great evening. We were in high spirits, having a wonderful time, laughing a lot. Lily was turning twenty-three, and we were teasing her about her youth, which we secretly envied but also cherished. She seemed to find it very amusing. Then she and Barb went to the restroom, and just when they had rejoined our table, we heard a guy a few feet away make a despicable and ludicrous comment about them to his buddy. We never talked about it, but we all heard it.

If you do not remember what the man said, I’ve written it down in the small envelope I’ve enclosed in this letter.

I stop reading and hold up, for my friends to see, a tiny, pale blue envelope on which are scribbled the words “Offensive Comment.” (I opened it last night, not because I didn’t remember the comment, but to check if Gabriel’s recollection matched mine. It did.)

My friends look uncomfortable, staring at the blue envelope. I’m waiting to see if any of them want to read it.

Blushing painfully, Lily says, “Okay, first of all, guys, this walking on eggshells is not necessary. The man’s comment was something like, ‘Look at that hideous chick and her gorgeous friend. Isn’t it amazing how her ugliness brings out the other’s beauty, and vice versa? It would ruin my evening, having to look at a dog like that, not to mention if I had to be seen with one.’”

Lily waits for our reaction to her recollection. After a moment of stunned silence, we mutter our grim indignation at the man’s comment.

I don’t read the next two sentences of the letter. I recite them, my gaze locked on my friends’ faces so as not to miss the slightest quivering of an eyelash:
“The man who made the comment was murdered that night, in his apartment, by one of you.”

I note a few sharp intakes of breath and a couple of frowns. Penelope’s hand flies to her mouth.

I continue:
“The killer among you (K.A.Y.) confessed it to me two weeks later. Please take a moment now to look at the article I’ve enclosed about the man’s murder.”

My friends look at each other and at me in shock. Lily looks particularly distressed, which I can well understand. Even if she’s not the killer, she might nevertheless feel indirectly responsible for the man’s death.

I hand them the
New York Times
article.

They crowd around it, looking at the man’s photo under the headline “Murder Strikes Home In Tribeca Neighborhood.” They try to read bits of the article over one another’s shoulders, while appearing uneasy about possibly huddling too close to a murderer.

“Read it out loud,” Jack finally instructs Georgia, who’s holding it.

She reads:

Tribeca residents were stunned yesterday to learn that a local resident, 33-year-old Lawrence Finn, has been found murdered in the kitchen of his Vestry Street home. Mr. Finn was discovered yesterday morning in his apartment on the third floor of his elevator building by his housekeeper who alerted authorities. It is believed that Mr. Finn was killed by a single knife wound to the throat, but police are not releasing specific details of the crime. It is not known if a weapon has been recovered.

“This was a senseless and bloody act,” said Detective Vince Monticelli of the First Precinct. “We are appealing to anyone who may have seen anything suspicious in the Vestry Street area between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m. to come forward. The motive for this crime does not appear to have been robbery. It is possible Mr. Finn knew his attacker and allowed him or her entry into the apartment.”

Mr. Finn was an employee of Morrison & Partners, a New York-based hedge fund company. “Larry was a nice guy,” said Anthony Morrison, chief executive officer of Morrison & Partners. “I know of no one who wished him any harm.”

Police are investigating the recent trading activity in which Mr. Finn was engaged for clues to a possible motive. The often secretive trading practices of the unregulated hedge fund industry frequently result in large gains and losses for investors. Companies targeted by hedge fund traders are also known to resent the impact such trading has on their market valuations.

A friend of Mr. Finn’s, Mark Stanley, was the last known person to see him alive. Mr. Stanley and Mr. Finn were together on Tuesday evening at the Saratoga Lounge on East 16
^th
Street. According to Mr. Stanley, he left Mr. Finn at the bar at approximately 11:45 p.m. “I can’t believe this,” said a stunned Mr. Stanley. “Larry always liked to party hard. We were having a great time.” Mr. Stanley was interviewed by the police but is not considered a suspect.

Detectives have questioned employees at the Saratoga Lounge and are trying to ascertain at what time Mr. Finn left the bar, and if he was alone at that time. They are asking anybody who was in the Saratoga Lounge on Tuesday evening after 8 p.m. to come forward with any information they may have.

When Georgia finishes reading the article, she gazes at Lily. We all do.

Slowly and quietly, Lily says, “I’m horrified by what you’ve just read. How do we know this letter is really from Gabriel or if it is, that Gabriel is telling the truth?”

Georgia turns to me. “Barb, have you looked into the case?”

I inform them that I researched it online last night and that the murder has never been solved. The police believe it was an isolated, spontaneous act. It didn’t appear to be related to any other crimes that had taken place in the city.

“As for the authenticity of the letter,” I add, “I can’t imagine what motive anyone could have for forging Gabriel’s handwriting and making all this up. I think our safest bet is to assume the letter’s real and that Gabriel is telling the truth. It would be risky not to take it seriously.”