Beauty Bites Read online

  “That may be true of food, but medicine isn’t about pleasure.” I stood again, determined not to let him seduce me into staying. “It’s about helping people.”

  “Is this about your cousin? Please know that I’d help her if there wasn’t more to the matter. There are aspects I can’t share with you, but please be assured, I’m not helping Camille either.”

  “Who are you helping then?” Letting anger hide my pain, I leaned knuckles on the table. “That surgeon got away with his butchery because of someone like you, Holiday. An ad campaign—billboards, magazine ads, even robocalls—pushing ‘Dr. Bearsylls Cares’. But a slogan doesn’t make it true.” I turned away.

  Spun back. He wasn’t smiling now, in any of his variations. I said, “I think the reason you won’t help us is that you’re afraid. I think that once you blow away all Ric Holiday’s razzle-dazzle, there’s nothing underneath.”

  I left.

  He didn’t try to stop me again.

  Chapter Five

  Driving east, I breathed through the tightness in my chest. At the first clear stretch of traffic I fumbled in my purse and pulled out my freshman picture, staring at it without seeing it.

  I’d thought Ric had seen past my pretty image, had understood the real me.

  My heart felt like it was shrinking.

  No. I slapped the picture on the dashboard, stinging my fingers, pain which distracted from my hurt inside. This was my reality. I’d been ugly, which hadn’t been fair. Now I was beautiful, which wasn’t fair either.

  Life wasn’t fair for a lot of people. My job—my crusade—was to fix that for others, one reason “The Beauty and the Beast” resonated so strongly for me. I’d read the old French tale to Teddy in the hospital right before driving to Minneapolis.

  The story started with a prince being a jackass to a wicked fairy, or in some versions a witch. Now, even the veriest noob knows never to screw with a fairy and especially not a wicked fairy, so in my humble opinion, the prince deserved what he got—which was the fairy turning him as ugly on the outside as he was on the inside.

  Too bad real people weren’t like that. If only you could see what you were getting and didn’t have to guess.

  Anyway, Beauty saw past the Beast’s appearance and redeemed him with her true love. There are different morals to the story—true love saves all, be kind to strangers. My favorite? “Don’t judge people by their looks.”

  And yeah, the parallels between the Beast and Ric Holiday were only too obvious. The prince of advertising, who, like the Beast, was really just a jerk.

  Until love made the Beast live up to his royalty.

  Damn it. Not thinking about love or princes or Ric damned Holiday. I put my reality-check picture away. Tonight I’d stay over at Twyla’s cabin and try to avoid her guilting. Tomorrow I’d head back to my apartment and get on with my life, my future. Whatever that was. But it wouldn’t include Ric Holiday.

  I squeezed itchy eyes and drove on.

  When Twyla said “cabin”, I thought of the raw, cold bunkhouses I’d suffered at various summer camps as a girl, the kind with ten narrow beds, no heating and no plumbing.

  So when I saw “Chipmunk Lake Supplies” over a split-log exterior shop by the side of the road with the lights still on, I stopped. A sign midwall said, “Fireworks Here!! Open Till Midnight July 4&5”. There were two doors and no other signs, so, picking the right door at random, I went in.

  A jumble of trinkets and knickknacks confronted me, a souvenir shop stocked by a tornado. Instead of regular shelves, wooden crates were turned on their sides and stacked in squares and pyramids to form random cubical farms.

  A beefy man with long nose, red lips and a head like a basketball covered in curly blond hair—crown to chin—was setting shot glasses in a pyramid. He turned to me. “Kinaye ‘elpya?”

  I stopped. “I’m sorry?”

  He pointed to his nametag, which read “I’m Roy Your Friendly Shop Owner”. “Kenaye ‘elpya?”

  Can I help you? my brain finally translated. “Oh. Yes. I’m looking for blankets.”

  “Een back, dontchaknow.”

  I made my way into the store. Sure enough, along the back wall was a set of crates holding everything from snowshoes to blaze orange trapper hats. The blankets were in the middle. I picked two and brought them to the front where Roy the Friendly was waiting behind a counter. “Do you take credit cards?”

  “Shur.” He pointed at a surprisingly modern self-swipe. “D’ya went wirms wih dat?”

  I stopped midswipe. “Wirms?”

  “Yah. Wirm.” He made squiggly motions with his forefinger. “Wirms.” He waved them all.

  “Um, no. Just the blankets. Oh. Do you sell milk?” Twyla would have cereal, but I like skim and she’s a two-percent girl.

  “Nix dur.” He bagged the blankets and the receipt.

  “Nix dur?”

  He jerked his head to the right, then handed me the bag.

  Oh, the other door. “It’s late. Are they open too?”

  He gave me a look like I’d grown a second head. “Ferth o’ July? Yah, nix dur’s opin.”

  “Thanks.” As I turned to leave, clear as a bell, he called, “Have a nice day!”

  Shaking my head, I exited the souvenir shop to go into the grocery “nix dur”. The door opened to a space similar in size to the souvenir shop but crammed with shelves and coolers.

  The sixteen-year-old at the register was a long-nosed scruffy dishwater blond. If he hadn’t been thin as a rail he could have doubled for the souvenir store owner. “Kinaye ‘elpya?”

  Hmm. Must be a local dialect. “Milk?”

  He pointed to a bunker-style cooler just inside the door. I went to it and peered through the glass to see a bunch of half-pint cartons packed like Tetris. I slid open the glass, reached in and snagged a red one. Whole milk. I put it back and tried purple. Two percent. I put it back and was about to pull out a light blue when I saw the round Styrofoam containers stacked next to the milk. Curious, I pulled one out.

  It was labeled “Earth Worms”.

  Revulsion shot through me like an electric shock. I dropped the container.

  Luckily it landed on the bunker’s glass. I don’t know what I would have done if the lid had popped off. I took a deep breath. Using my fingernails, I picked up the Styrofoam container and put it back in place next to the milk cartons. “On second thought, I’ll take powdered milk.”

  He pointed to aisle one. I found a small box of powdered milk and brought it to the register. He rang me up, and as I swiped my card he said, “Dontcha went wirms wih dat?”

  Again? What was with these people? “Why would I want worms?”

  “Fer feeshin’.” He looked at me like I was two neurons shy of a synapse.

  “Um, thanks, but no.” I took my milk and blankets and went back to my car.

  A short time later, a hand-painted sign at the mouth of a long gravel drive announced “Chipmunk Lake Cabins—Fishing, Swimming, Boating”. I turned in, gravel crunching under my tires.

  Twyla’s “cabin” turned out to be part of a summerhouse complex. About a hundred feet in was a big two-story house. There, the drive hooked left, running parallel to a small lake for another three hundred feet or so.

  Six log-faced bungalows dotted a line between the driveway and the lake.

  I crunched gravel past two dark cabins, one lit one, and two more dark before my headlights picked out a quaint one-lane wooden bridge. I slowed to a crawl. I’m a city girl. Concrete and girders is my idea of a bridge. My car weighs one and a half tons. Wood for a bridge? Just wrong. Still, there was no other way to get to the last cabin, so I released the brake and let the car inch over. I admit I was holding my breath. The matchstick bridge creaked like I was killing it.

  But finally I was on the other side and pulling onto sandy soil in back of the final cabin, where I cut the engine.

  The screen door banged open. Twyla ran out, a big smile lighting her face. She’s brai
ny, artistic and can make any organization run like a Ferrari. But what most people notice when they meet her is she’s curvy, well-dressed—and black.

  Well, so am I. A quarter compared to her half, but it’s another example that appearances can be deceiving. Twyla’s parents are an African diplomat and a famous surgeon. Our grandmothers were sisters. Twyla’s married a Ngozi while mine married a Brandt, though in the Corners, everyone is half-German, whatever your color, creed or actual genetics. I’d always thought people reacting to my looks was about me, something I could change. It wasn’t until Twyla and I double dated for senior prom and we went for ice cream outside the Corners, and Twyla got snubbed for being black while I didn’t that I understood that it was them not me, and that people who judge on looks alone are idiots.

  “Synnove! You made it.” Twyla greeted me with a hug. Her sig-o Nikos silently filtered out behind her, silently pulled my bag out of the back seat and silently toted it into the cabin. Nikos does everything silently, putting the tacet in taciturn. But when he does talk, people listen. He’s big, moves like a cat and was something significant in the military. Twyla calls him her Spartan general and that nails him so well I sometimes wonder if it isn’t the truth.

  I hugged her tightly in return. “I had good directions. Nice ‘cabin’.”

  “Wait until you see inside.” She led me into a rustic, pine-paneled interior. A spacious kitchen opened onto a large living room. “There’s a deluxe bath with whirlpool tub.” She pointed to a short hallway off the kitchen. Two doors were open, a big double bed in one room and a narrow twin in the other.

  A third door was closed. Suspicious noises were coming from behind it.

  I raised an eyebrow. “With four empty cabins and a big house, you’ve got roommates?”

  “The owners live in the house,” Twyla said. “And we’re only trying this up north thing, to see if it works. Why spend double the money? It might end up a bust. Want some coffee?”

  “Thanks, but I’m caffeined out. I’ll take some of that, though.” I pointed at a corked bottle on the red Formica counter top. “Burgundy?”

  “Merlot. Nikos, honey, pour us some of that grape nerve tonic, will you?”

  He grunted, which Twyla says is him being eloquent, and proceeded to competently decork the bottle and pour three glasses, ending each with a professional swirl.

  While he was pouring, a particularly loud squeal came from the closed bedroom. I winced. “That’s Elena O’Rourke? She sounds…different.” An understatement. The Elena I knew was tougher than most WWE wrestlers. That little girly squeal would have been anathema to her, although I’d been out of the Meiers Corners’s gossip loop for a few years.

  “Strongwell, now.” Twyla handed me my full glass.

  “Oh yeah. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up.” I sniffed the wine appreciatively. Fruity, with a hint of oak. “I can’t believe Elena married Bo. Isn’t he the Viking who owns the luxe apartment building on the upper east side?”

  “That’s the one.” As Twyla reached for her wine Nikos tapped the back of her hand. “What?”

  He took her fingers, kissed them. “Breathe.”

  “You want her to breathe?” I said.

  “He means we should let the wine breathe.” Twyla was apparently good at translating Gruntese. “After our nerves are calmed, right Synnove?” With a grin at her big dark SO, she clinked glasses with me and knocked back a healthy swallow.

  Nikos only sighed.

  Twyla waved her half-empty glass toward the living room. “Sit. Over there, by the fireplace. Night’s cooled us off enough that Nikos can make us a pretty fire with apple logs and we can get drunk and toast marshmallows and have s’mores, not necessarily in that order. Why are we getting drunk, by the way? And does it have to do with that very expensive Italian suit coat you’re wearing? Hand-tailored, unless I miss my guess. Athletic cut, hubba-hubba.”

  I laughed. “Curious much? Thanks for not starting in on me the moment I arrived.” I tucked myself into a big chair by the fireplace and sipped merlot. It had a bite, like that Turkish coffee…a flash of regret hit me. No. Ric wanted me to use my looks to win patients. “I had a bit of trouble getting to the party. Holiday loaned me his jacket to cover it.”

  “Road accident? Are you okay?”

  “Not an accident, at least not on the road.” I flipped back the coat to show her the torn blouse. “Sorry about this. I’ll buy you a new one.”

  She sucked in an angry breath. “Who did that? I’m gonna kick his ass.”

  I looked down. My breast was bruised, a souvenir of Little’s “proposal”. “Don’t worry, I took care of it. But it did put a damper on my making rational and convincing arguments to Holiday. As I told you, he said no.”

  “Good grief, if you think I care about Holiday after seeing that—”

  “I took care of it, Twyla. And I’d like to put it behind me. Now let me debrief so I can enjoy the treat of upcoming s’mores and pretty fire in peace.”

  “Not the wine?”

  “That’s medicine.”

  “Says the almost-a-doctor.”

  “Emphasis on almost.”

  While the wine warmed my belly, Nikos efficiently stacked kindling and logs in the fireplace, then lit it with one match. If you’ve never built a fire, let me tell you it’s a skill to get it going that fast. I reflected on the luck of some cousins, finding such a catch. Not to mention he was almost eerily in love with her. He said it, not with words, which could lie, but with his actions: his tender yet protective hovering, the softness in his eyes when he looked at her, the only softness about him. Although if anyone deserved such a great guy, Twyla did.

  “Are you enjoying your vacation here?” I asked. “Since New Year’s was a bust?”

  “Yeah.” Her eyes sought out Nikos and softened, confirming if I needed it how she felt about him. “I’m sorry everything toileted at the party. It was supposed to have been some fun for you.”

  “It wasn’t a total epic fail.” I held my glass up to the firelight; it gave the wine a warm, ruby glow. “Holiday said no, but he said no to Camille too. And he gave me a clue as to why his answer was no. He won’t come to Meiers Corners. He travels all over the world, so it must be something to do with us particularly.”

  “Or something near us,” Nikos said.

  Twyla beamed at him. “Honey! Four words. You’re improving every day.”

  He stared at her, deadly black eyes that made me blanch, but she just laughed. Jumping up, she hugged him then goosed him. “You know I’m teasing. I love you, however you talk.”

  “But only for now.”

  “For a whole bunch of nows, lover. In fact—why don’t you go get the bed warmed up? Synnove and I want a little girl time, but then I’ll be in to show you how much love happy-for-now can bring you.”

  His lips curved, a small reflection of the giant smile that lit his eyes. We watched him glide off, our minds on all ten muscular acres of him warming up Twyla’s bed.

  The door shut behind him.

  I shook my head. “I have to say, Twyla, I don’t understand. You get a hunk like that, money and looks and brains, and loves you besides, and you don’t get a ring on his finger?”

  Her smile disappeared. She sat. “What’s wrong with happily for now?”

  “Nothing, if you’re not sure. But I’ve seen you two together. You click. That’s rare, and I’d think you’d grab onto it for as long as you could. Forever, if possible.”

  She leveled me with a steady brown stare. “That decision is mine to make.”

  I leaned over and touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry, hon. It’s your life. I only want you to be happy.”

  “Thanks.” She set down her glass and smiled briefly. “We were talking about Holiday. You have to go back.”

  “Go back? I can’t.”

  “We need Holiday. He’s the best.”

  “What part of ‘he said no’ are you missing, the nicht or the nein? I’m telling you, it’d b
e an exercise in futility. I might as well try to herd chickens or avoid chocolate over the holidays. Ric’s not the kind of guy who changes his mind.”

  “Ric? You know him that well?” The implications were hot in her voice.

  “No! Well yes, but not how you’re thinking.” I remembered his kiss and flushed. “Well, sort of how you’re thinking.”

  “Progress!” Her delighted smile said she meant more than snaring Holiday for ad campaigns. “Synnove, you’ve got to go back. You owe me.”

  “I owed you. I tried; it didn’t work. Favor done. Besides, what you’re asking is so much bigger than lending me a suit.”

  “Problem is, Camille’s entered the picture. Shit got real. I need your help, and I need it all, everything you have to give. If you haven’t used every weapon in your arsenal, you haven’t tried hard enough.”

  “All my weapons? What is this, an advertising jihad?” It echoed Holiday’s “you’ve got more arrows in your quiver,” which made me a little sharp. I winced, contrite. “Hon, I don’t want us to fight.” Though we were solid; we could fight passionately and still be okay after. Fighting with Ric Holiday would be like that, passionately hot but okay after—and passionately hot after too… Crap. “I learned to sum up people quickly to get an accurate medical history. My doctor sense tells me Holiday’s made up his mind. We’ll find another advertising firm—”

  “No. It’s got to be Holiday.”

  So much for the olive branch. Exasperated, I said, “Why?”

  Her cheekbones darkened. “He’s the best.”

  The blush and the broken record. She did the same thing around Nikos’s aversion to sunlight, or his amazing strength. My psych rotation said she was resisting something. My intuition said it had to do with Holiday and Nikos being of the vin rouge persuasion. “I see. And that’s the only reason?”

  She stared at the fire for a long while. A big snap, sparking red, broke her trance. As the logs resettled she sat forward. “I’d better be honest with you.”

  At last. She was going to come clean about v-guys.

  “If this gets out it might cause a panic, but you need to know—the Meiers Corners bank is under a consent decree.”