Pretty Is Read online

  I might do any of these things. I like being a rising star.

  Only Brad seems truly happy for me. We spent an inordinate amount of time at the pool hall our first semester, but we haven’t been back since we returned from Christmas break. I have missed our excursions. Brad doesn’t truly know me; I’ve kept many secrets from him. He knows the basic outline of my childhood, but he thinks I’ve put the abduction behind me; he knows about the book but not the movie. He knows me better than anyone else, though, that’s for sure, and he is the only person in my life capable of reflecting back at me a recognizable Lois; or, at least, a Lois I would like to be.

  As I shut down the computer and tidy my desk, I come across Sean’s latest offering. He has been slipping photocopies under my office door: press from my abductee days. The first one sent me reeling. It was from the Hartford Courant: “Local Girl Returned Home, Apparently Unharmed,” reads the front-page headline. There’s a grainy picture of me walking with my parents, face in shadow. My mother looks regal and defiant and warlike; my father looks folded inward, absent. I am blurry; you really couldn’t say anything about me at all, based on this photo. The most recent one is earlier, and it’s from the local Gazette: “Community Rallies in Search for Missing Girl.”

  I’ve seen the clippings before, but it’s been a while. They’re as jarring as ever, referring to a world in which I was central but absent. My parents never spoke much about those weeks. “We were terrified,” they said, but I have never been able to grasp their terror, to imagine Miranda and Stephen Lonsdale stricken by fear and loss. It’s not that I don’t believe it; I simply cannot see it. “We looked everywhere,” they said. Where? I have tried to picture them in sturdy shoes and jeans, sleepless and haggard, searching the woods, circling the pond, roaming the village—while I, miles away, settled all too readily into a new life. I resent Sean for reviving this fruitless speculation, this belated guilt—but the precise nature of his offense is difficult to define: I have not been harmed; he hasn’t even threatened me. Not in so many words.

  Chloe

  They gave me the part. I knew they would. I’m not religious; I don’t think things are meant to be or not meant to be. But lately it feels like things are coming together in a way I’m not completely in control of.

  It’s not that I believe in shit like that, because I don’t.

  So I know it sounds crazy. But I knew the part was mine. I still went and read the hell out of a couple of scenes and did my best to make a good impression; I didn’t go wandering in after a couple of martinis and leave myself in fate’s hands. But I knew. I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing Lois’s detective. If this movie had to get made, I had to be in it. Obviously.

  When the phone rang, just two days after my audition, it was all I could do not to say yes before they made the offer.

  What I don’t know is what to do until then. We shoot this summer in British Columbia. I have months to fill. Martinis to resist, bridges not to burn. And while I’m not broke, things aren’t exactly rosy. My last film flopped. Which was too bad; I actually thought it was a pretty decent movie. A little indie neo-noir-type picture, not the kind of thing I usually get asked to do, but I thought some artsy cred would be a good career move. And maybe it would have been if anybody had seen the goddamned film. I played a woman who finds out that her fiancé killed a girl, among other sordid activities, and covered it up pretty successfully—until suddenly someone’s snooping around, putting the pieces together, blah, blah, blah. But it was good and dark, with no cheeseball happy ending. And it was set in the seventies: great hair and costumes and a general willingness on the part of the cast and crew to get high on a regular basis.

  But it was badly marketed, no one saw it, and I got paid shit. If I have to hang out in LA till the end of June, I really will be broke.

  * * *

  I used to like LA—back when I was new on the scene, and everything seemed to be coming together, and I was half convinced that I was one step away from being the Next Big Thing. I had an outrageously pure faith in my looks and my talent. I felt like the world owed me something, and I thought that what I felt mattered. I’d had a couple of very lucky breaks, and based on those I assumed that the world was planning to make good on its debts. I had a good part in Destiny Wars, a space movie with a modest budget that became a surprise summer blockbuster. I wasn’t one of the leads, but I was one of the small group of astronauts who were at the center of the plot, and I was one of the few characters that got to live all the way through the movie, dressed in one of those tight shiny jumpsuits that filmmakers seem to have unanimously decided are what we will be wearing in the Future. I was invited to the MTV Viewer’s Choice Awards; I did the red carpet thing. I was featured in magazines—no covers, but a few full inside pages—got some modeling jobs, more scripts to look at. One magazine even tagged me as the next It Girl. I thought I had made it. A few years of this, I thought, and I could return to New York in triumph: the stage would be waiting for me.

  In Destiny Wars 2: Ascension, they killed me off in the first five minutes. I barely made it past the opening credits before a treacherous crew member launched me into space in my sleek silver astronaut nightie, a lethal futuristic space particle bullet through my head.

  I wanted to do a romantic comedy, but my destiny, it seemed, was to be an action sidekick. Sub-sidekick, really. Not the ass-kicking, wise-cracking, all-important main sidekick. The expendable sub-sidekick. It turned out that people liked to watch me die. I came across an unauthorized fan site once that had put together a montage of all my deaths.

  In the indie flick, not only did I actually get to act, but I was allowed to wear normal clothes—jeans and turtlenecks—instead of black pleather and stilettos. And I got to live. I was in the first scene and the last scene. I suffered, I learned, I grew.

  No one saw.

  My faith wavered. My faith in Chloe Savage. The only faith I have.

  Still, I haven’t yet sunk to sitting around my Silver Lake bungalow drinking my face off and moping about the past every night. This is LA, after all. Tonight, for instance, I have a date. A good old-fashioned pick-you-up-at-eight kind of date. The guy isn’t even an actor. He’s a writer, which for all I know might be worse, but at least it’ll be different. I’ve sworn off actors. They’re always looking at themselves through your eyes.

  Lois

  It’s late afternoon, and Ivan’s pool hall is crowded. It is also hazy with smoke, despite the statewide smoking ban. Brad and I claim the only open table, with faded felt and old-fashioned leather pockets; we order beers and select our cues. Ivan appears out of nowhere to rack the balls.

  Brad is good. I am not that good, but I’m generally considered “pretty good for a girl,” which is good enough at Ivan’s.

  I actually play better than usual today, though not well enough to win. But winning isn’t the point. The point is that Brad is happy, shooting expertly, giving me occasional pointers. My willingness to play pool is a peace offering, which Brad accepts by attempting more difficult shots than he needs to in order to keep me in the game. Brad is excellent at this kind of communication, and I almost love him for it.

  Brad and I like the pool hall because it seems worlds away from school; we never see other faculty there. The only danger is students. Because it’s a liquor-serving establishment, someone is always stationed at the door to make a show of checking IDs, but some undergrads manage to get in anyway—mostly, I imagine, local kids who have been going there for years. Until now I have never seen a student of mine here. I’m startled, then, when I’m crouching low to make a long tricky shot across the table and I see Sean leaning against the opposite wall, watching me. I swing my hair out of my eyes, adjust my focus, measure the angle with my eyes again, and flub the shot anyway. Brad sinks his last ball then double-banks the eight ball into a corner pocket, and as I lean forward to give him a mock handshake, I say in a low voice, “My student is here. The one I told you about—the ‘Pamela is a slu
t’ one. Don’t look—but behind you, by the wall, torn jeans and Docs and a ratty trench coat.”

  “Sounds original.” By the time Brad turns around, Sean is right in front of him, sticking his hand out.

  “Dr. Drake,” says Sean, practically bowing over Brad’s hand. “Nice to meet you. I haven’t had a chance to take a class with you yet, but everybody says I should. I hope to. I’m extremely interested in the American modernist poets.”

  Brad nods a bit goofily, clearly caught off guard, trying to shift gears to professor mode. I tap my pool cue on the floor.

  “I saw you make some sweet shots, Dr. Drake,” Sean says, eyeing the table. “Not bad for a teacher. You want to shoot a game? My buddy over there, he can play, too. Students against teachers. What do you say?” Sean has a “buddy”? I’m surprised. I have pictured him skulking through the world alone; when I try to imagine him holding an ordinary college-guy conversation, maybe chugging a beer, I fail. And the Sean kissing up to Brad is not the menacing young man who frequents my office. Sean is complicated, apparently.

  There are plenty of graceful ways to decline his proposal; I wait for Brad to think of one. Pointedly, I stand my cue against the paneled wall. “Sorry, but that’s about it for me.”

  “Just one quick game of nine-ball with us, then,” Sean says quickly to Brad, and I know my hopelessly amenable friend won’t be able to refuse. I turn my back on them and retreat. From the safety of my crooked-legged wooden table, on which decades of sticky beer and ashes clog the jagged contours of sad old carved declarations of love and hate, I take stock of the crowd. I am strongly tempted to walk out.

  Just then I see Delia, the director of the rape crisis center, at the far end of the room with a group of women—a rare sight at Ivan’s. She’s wearing jeans and a black leather jacket, and looks effortlessly bad-assed. She folds over the table and breaks; with a satisfying smack, the balls scatter around the table. Two rattle into pockets. I have never mastered the break.

  I had said I would call Delia, and then I didn’t. I completely forgot about it. Seeing her again, though, I feel the same urge to connect, or try to. It’s as if I’m once again a lonely little girl on the playground, friendless. I check on Brad, who is neatly arranging nine balls in a tight diamond; Sean hovers nearby. That settles it. I start toward Delia, leaving my beer behind.

  She demolishes her opponent in no time and then, spotting me among the spectators, separates herself from her cluster of companions. “Not exactly a faculty hangout,” she greets me.

  “That’s what I like about it. I come here with a colleague sometimes.” I nod in Brad’s direction. “At the moment, though, I need to get away from the kid he’s playing with.”

  “I can see how you might,” she says, after a mere glance at Sean. I’m grateful that she’s so quick to pick up on the fact that there’s something off about him, something palpably wrong. I allow myself to feel vindicated. And then her eyes dart back in his direction and linger for a second, narrowing. She’s just remembered him from somewhere, and the association is not a pleasant one. Considering her line of work, this seems like cause for concern.

  “Do you know him?” I demand. “Where do you know him from? Because I have a bad feeling—”

  She cuts me off. “It’s nothing,” she says. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything.” I’m not reassured, not in the least. It seems less likely that she isn’t sure of her memory than that some scruple prevents her from telling me what she knows. A confidentiality agreement? My mind begins to construct scenarios in which Delia could have encountered Sean, producing an impromptu series of brief horror movies. “If you know something, I really wish you’d tell me,” I press, my voice low.

  Delia raises a hand to her friends, waves her index finger to indicate that she just needs a minute. It isn’t rude, exactly, but I feel dismissed. “No,” she says. “Really. It’s nothing.”

  Her friends are eyeing me askance. They look to me like women from the center—volunteers or victims, it’s hard to tell. Definitely not sorority girls. What do I look like in their eyes? Hapless, dowdy movie professors flicker across my mind. Pop culture isn’t kind to academics.

  I take the hint. “Anyway, I just came over to say hi. Listen, do you still want to have coffee sometime?” I hear the note of urgency that has crept into my voice. She knows something about Sean. She is someone in whom I might confide, at least in a limited and strictly unofficial way—someone who might even have useful advice.

  “You have my number, right? Call me, if you’re serious.” She turns away, and I cross the room to rejoin Brad. As a child I used to imagine that there was some sort of force field around me, deflecting people; that feeling returns as I make my way through the crowded room with peculiar ease.

  I reach Brad and slip my elbow through his. “Let’s go,” I say.

  What was Delia thinking when she looked at Sean?

  “But I’m winning.” Brad waves his cue in the direction of the table.

  “Of course you are.” I retrieve my abandoned beer and down the last swallow. “I’ll take you out for pizza.” I let him go make his excuses to Sean and catch the dark look my student sends my way. Brad is still pulling his gloves on and trying to zip his coat as I drag him out the door, steering him to the left, down the snowy street to Nicolletti’s. Outside he stops me, his puffy sleeve bracing itself momentarily against my own. “Lois,” he says. “What is it?”

  I feel as if I am being blamed for something that is not my fault. This is perhaps irrational, since the only reason Brad doesn’t know the whole story is that I have withheld it. Still, I have tried to offer meaningful fragments of the truth, and no one has taken me seriously: not Kate, not Delia, not even Brad, who obviously thinks I’m overreacting. “It’s nothing,” I say. I push his arm away and start walking, leaving him no choice but to follow.

  Nicolletti’s is one of this town’s chief charms. It’s a little mom-and-pop Italian joint, the kind that’s practically extinct: good pizza, good spaghetti, cheap wine, dark and candlelit. It almost always improves my mood.

  So it might be the influence of Nicolletti’s, of the familiar candle glowing through dimpled red glass. But as Brad and I settle into our booth, my anger is replaced by a strange and sudden warmth when I read in Brad’s face that he is genuinely concerned. Ordinarily, genuine concern disconcerts me, but I find myself tempted to tell him—not just about Sean, and about Chloe, but about everything; all the parts I have left out. Beneath my resistance to telling—a habit of years—I have an intimation of the dizzying wave of relief that might follow. I have only to release the words, organize the unwieldy fragments. Or not. One more bottle of Chianti, and out they would tumble.

  And then? What would be left of me? How would I anchor myself to the past?

  No. Mine is not a story to be given away or traded for fleeting emotional gratification. What are your plans for the summer? I ask Brad, and that is what we talk about. He doesn’t reach for my hand, as he might have; I don’t have to slide it gently away. My secrets will not be tested today. I won’t thrust them into the light and see what happens to them. Would they take a healthy gulp of sun and air? Or shrivel up like ancient tomb-dwelling vampires?

  I’m sure it’s better that I do not know.

  Chloe

  I think my parents had a good marriage. I think they loved each other. My early memories support this belief, and this was the sense I got when Daddy talked about my mother. I could also see their happiness in the old photographs I found in a shoebox in the back of his closet. But it was her relationship with my father that I grew up with. No wonder I don’t have much faith in romance. I could never figure out exactly what they got from each other, Daddy and Gail, but it sure as hell wasn’t healthy. Maybe Daddy wanted to be punished for my mother’s death, not that it was his fault. Maybe Gail wanted to rule the fucking world, or at least Arrow, starting with my father.

  Maybe that’s why I don’t go out hoping to fall i
n love or find happily-ever-after or even happily-for-a-while. It never even crosses my mind. What I hope for is to have a reasonably enjoyable time, with good food and good drinks and a moderately interesting conversation. As a bonus, at least if I’m in LA or New York, I hope that someone will recognize me and that I will impress them with my dazzling looks or sparkling wit, which could always lead to something, you never know. At best I hope for a spark of attraction that will lead to a little fling. Really, I don’t even waste much time looking for the spark; I’m just glad when it happens.

  So I’m not expecting a hell of a lot from my writer date, William. I like that he’s not a goddamned actor, and I like that I met him at the grocery store in front of the asparagus.

  If my life were a romantic comedy, which it most definitely isn’t, you would now be expecting that William will, in fact, turn out to be my soul mate, after the obligatory rocky start. But my life sure as hell isn’t a rom-com, so it would be a mistake to get your hopes up.

  As for meeting William in the produce section, there’s an explanation, and it has nothing to do with an impromptu, heartwarming debate between strangers over the merits of, I don’t know, ugli fruit or something. What happened was that I was sort of half-consciously exercising my powers—like flexing a muscle, only what I was doing was sweeping my eyelashes upward, casting my eyes sideways at the stranger inspecting the white asparagus while I checked out the green. You can like me less for this if you want. But power is power; we all use what we’ve got. Or if we don’t, we should. I don’t know what beauty is—I mean I don’t know how to define it—but I know that it’s power. I’ve known for as long as I can remember that something about my face can not only get attention but hold it. It can arouse curiosity, desire, half-dead dreams. I actually think my knowledge of this has nothing to do with vanity. It’s just the truth: the thing we call beauty is power. Sometimes it flashes out without warning, but you can also learn to control it. It’s like having a special ability, like telekinesis or something; when you first develop it, you accidentally fling shit all over the place, breaking things and hurting people whenever you’re the slightest bit riled up—and then gradually you learn to manage it, direct it at specific objects. You know what I mean. You see this process in movies from Carrie to Firestarter (thank you, Stephen King) to, I don’t know, X-Men. Or Star Wars, I guess: beauty is like the force. Which also means that, like any halfway decent special power, you can use it for good or for evil. (And when you’re young, of course, it’s hard to know the difference. Hence: collateral damage.)