Part 7 (1/2)
”I'm a Leo.”
”Fire,” she responded, followed by a pause of quiet triumph.
Every evening Robin would disappear from the party for about a half hour sometime around midnight. While he was gone, we would look around and try to determine which girl was also missing. That night, Leanne's chair sat empty directly across from me. I drained my champagne gla.s.s faster than usual. I might have wound up truly plastered-ugly plastered-had Robin not left early with Fiona on his arm and cut the night short.
I chided myself for the stab I felt. When I went to the bathroom to retouch my lipstick, I recognized the tight smile on my face as the same one I had seen on Serena and Leanne. The girls at the other tables, the Asian girls, didn't seem to care too much where Robin was or whom he was with. Of course, Leanne and Fiona were Asian, too, but they had escaped exile to the lower-ranked seating areas based on celebrity status and the ability to speak perfect English.
If Robin was still absent when the disco started, we top-rung-ers often sat in snits with our arms crossed over our chests while the rest of the tables got up and danced anyway. The lucky ones slow-danced at the end of the night like it was a prom, resting their heads on their boyfriends' shoulders. We Western girls weren't required to have boyfriends in the Prince's entourage. Instead, we competed with each other for the Prince.
Another night pa.s.sed the same way. I didn't bother to pretend to smile while I watched the heels of his sneakers as he climbed the long staircase to the exit.
One morning, Serena woke us early and told us she had received special permission (from whom was a mystery) for us to go to the Yaohan. She had fistfuls of Bruneian money to hand out. It was the first time I'd seen any money since we'd entered the country. I had been living for nearly two weeks free of commerce. Well, sort of.
I looked at the money she doled out like a Monopoly dealer, and there he was again: the Sultan, bearded and looking dignified, floating on the orange, green, and blue notes.
”What's the exchange rate?”
”I don't know. Who cares? We have plenty. Cover your hair. You're not blond so it's not as big a deal, but cover it anyway.”
We piled into a waiting Mercedes and Serena sat up front chatting with the driver. She had penetrated this world and I hadn't. In three days I would go home and would have seen little, understood even less, and been sampled and pa.s.sed over like the orange cream in a box of a.s.sorted chocolates. What was it about me? Why did I always come so close to getting what I wanted, only to get shut out at the last minute? Usually I took it upon myself to quit before I got rejected, but this time I didn't really have the option.
When faced with such despair, a girl can always shop. We hit the Yaohan with travel goggles on, the kind that make every little thing look irresistible because it's exotic and the money makes no sense and you feel like you're in a video game with tinny Asian pop songs and smiling wide-faced shop girls who speak to you in rhymes and giggle at your strangeness. In this video game you gain strength by acquiring snacks and T-s.h.i.+rts and little stuffed animals and sweet-smelling soaps and brightly colored lip gloss.
The women in Brunei, I noticed, did not generally cover their hair, as was the custom in some other Muslim countries, though they did dress modestly. They were miles away from the striking, stylish women I had spied during my brief stay in Singapore.
Leanne and I paired off, all rivalries from the night before discarded as she led me to the Shu Uemura makeup counter. The counter girls pantomimed lessons and suggestions for us. Leanne sat me down on a stool and charitably showed me how to do my eye makeup so I didn't constantly look like I was auditioning for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
”Beautiful skin,” Leanne said, blending some blush into the apples of my cheeks. ”Like Snow White. Where are you from?”
”New Jersey.”
”No, I mean, what are you?”
That question always seemed weird to me. What are you? Are you a good witch or a bad witch? I'm just Dorothy Gail from Kansas.
”Russian. Polish.”
”I thought something else.”
”I was adopted,” I said.
She paused in her ministrations and looked at me with something like interest mixed with something like sympathy.
”Do you know your real parents?”
”My adoptive parents are my real parents.”
It's the kind of question you're trained to answer as an adoptee, a question you hear a million times. You hear it so often you don't even hear it anymore.
”Still,” she said.
I let the conversation drop. I wasn't about to get into it with her. In order to get beyond my stance of defending my family, I needed to be talking to someone who could digest a little more complexity. But the truth was, she was right. The truth was, I wondered. My family was my family, but still. Still I wondered if somewhere in my DNA I would find an explanation for my restlessness, if somewhere in my biology lay the arrow pointing me in the direction I was meant to go.
Leanne turned me toward the mirror, and my makeup was subtle and lovely. I bought it all. It was the first makeup I had ever owned that hadn't come from a Rite Aid and the first grooming tips I had received that hadn't come from a drag queen or a stripper. Leanne and I each walked away with a hefty bag full of paints and potions. I was coming up in the world-quite a lady, with my eyeshadow palette and my mystery money. I also bought some diet tea and a new pair of sweatpants and promised myself that I'd work out the next morning. I planned yet again in my life to force myself into a thinner and more desirable body. f.u.c.k biology. I could construct myself in whatever image I wanted. That was the freedom of not knowing the origin of your eye color. Audrey Hepburn, move over. Even if this Prince Charming had tossed me aside, there would be another and the next one wouldn't. I would make sure of it.
I ate only salad and a bit of chicken for dinner. I needed nothing, I reminded myself. Almost nothing. There were monks who lived on a grain of rice a day. Need was an illusion. There was only wanting, and the strong could live with wanting and not having. No one else was volunteering for the job, so I'd have to be my own cheerleader. Be strong. Go team.
I felt renewed, resolved, until I sat down to use my new makeup and looked in the mirror to find myself facing the truth. My cheerleader role peeled off as quickly as had that Victim One costume with the Velcro closures. My stomach gave a hollow growl. In spite of my pep talks, I knew I'd never starve myself into being beautiful. And I could read every book in the library and still not walk out brilliant. That was the truth.
Not cute enough, not smart enough, not popular enough, not talented enough, not special enough. I was just an average hustler who could sometimes talk my way into getting what I wanted. New eyeshadow or not, I loathed myself in the mirror exactly as much as before. Sighing, I picked up a makeup brush and went to work.
That night, Eddie, bug-eyed, nervous, and lecherous as always, sat on an ottoman between Serena and me. The men generally sat on these wide ottomans rather than the low armchairs, probably because they usually didn't stay in one place for long. The girls, on the other hand, sat parked in the same chairs all night, gradually sinking, turning into discarded marionettes, until the Prince entered and everybody sat straight up as if someone had just pulled the string rising from the center of their heads.
Eddie turned to Serena first.
”You will sing tonight?”
Of course she would sing. She had been right in her initial a.s.sessment of me. I was no threat to her icy, sa.s.sy blondeness. One thing you can be sure of, the soprano will get the guy.
Then he turned to my chair, where I felt myself receding further into obscurity every minute.
”And you will sing?”
Or maybe not. Serena crackled with annoyance.
”You will sing now.”
I trembled slightly with the adrenaline that was injected into my bloodstream as I crossed to the microphone. I was unprepared. It had been three nights since I had miraculously pulled off ”Kasih” and I was sure the G.o.ds would not weigh in on my side a second time. But I was wrong about a lot of things. I sang ”Kasih” again just fine and drew approving smiles all around, including from the Prince.
When Serena got up and sang ”Someone to Watch Over Me” she was cringe-worthily flat. I listened with genuine pleasure. She wasn't the Sandy she thought she was. During the first chorus, Fiona caught my attention and called me over to where she sat next to Robin. When I reached their hub of power, the three chairs against the wall, Robin turned toward me.
”Sit here,” he said, patting the chair to his left. Fiona always sat to his right.
This was the coveted chair of the second-favorite girlfriend. I sat there the rest of the night, minding my manners, pressing my knees together, and speaking when spoken to. Sitting next to Robin kept me tense and alert. Robin mostly talked to Fiona, but occasionally turned and asked me disjointed questions.
”Do you like horses?”
”I love horses. I hear you play polo.” I don't really love horses. I like horses just fine, but I'm more of a doggy/kitty kind of girl. I prefer animals that can watch TV with you on the couch. And I had never even seen a game of polo.