Beautiful Disaster (11 page)

Vanity tilted her head. “That’s funny. When I was little, my father took me to see the Rockettes, too. It’s one of my favorite times with him.” Suddenly, a mischievous smile brightened her face. “Can you actually do one of their kicks?”

“Please.” Pippa sniffed haughtily, as if she were being asked to count to three. She stood up and unleashed an impressive eye-level kick.

Vanity screamed. “If I tried to do that, I would totally fall on my ass and probably pull my hamstring, too!”

Pippa giggled. “At peak season, those girls do five shows a day. That means fifteen hundred of those kicks in a single day.”

“Do another one,” Vanity said.

Pippa smiled and let it rip, delivering another perfect high-flyer.

Vanity clapped with delight. “You know, I never told you how amazing you were in
Sweet Charity
.”

“Thanks,” Pippa said quietly. “God, that seems like so long ago.”

“For me, too.” Vanity gave her an earnest look. “You could star on Broadway. You’re that good.”

“Oh, I know.” Pippa grinned. “And I’d like to do that one day. But first I want to disappear, in a sense. I don’t want to be in the spotlight. That’s why the idea of being a Rockette is so appealing. I’d just be one of the girls wearing the same red lipstick, the same false eyelashes, and the same sexy costume.” She rolled her eyes. “And the best part? No fat, ugly wankers would have a chance to pinch my ass! Even if they paid top dollar for an orchestra seat!”

Vanity began to laugh, though it faded as she looked searchingly into Pippa’s eyes.

It was impossible to ignore the elephant in the room any longer, especially since it was wearing a thong and dancing to that ghastly Europe single from the wretched eighties, “The Final Countdown.”

Pippa struggled to close the lid on the first trunk that was full to bursting, then sat down on top of it, suddenly quiet and moody. She glanced up at Vanity. “So sorry to leave like this and steal your scandal-queen thunder.”

Vanity sank onto the floor and leaned against the bed, a wry grin on her beautiful face. “Please. You’re an amateur.”

Pippa took in a deep breath. What a soddy mess her life had become.

Vanity saw her opening and went for it. “How did everything get to this point?”

Pippa braced herself for the confessional. Instinctively, she knew that it would be emotionally cleansing. “One night last summer, Max took me to Mynt. I got trashed and danced on the bar and some guy slipped me a hundred-dollar bill.” She shrugged. “I was hooked. I mean, after that, the idea of stocking cheap denim at Old Navy for minimum wage hardly seemed like an option. I needed…I
wanted
to make a lot of money. So I showed up at Cheetah with one of Max’s brilliant fake IDs, and I got hired right away.”

Vanity listened intently, not even a hint of judgment in her eyes. “It was that simple?”

Pippa nodded. “Getting the job was. My first time on the stage was awful, but somehow my body just sputtered to life and started moving to the music. And after the song ended, guys threw cash at me. Most of them were pathetic and vile, but when you’re counting up your take at the end of the night, a pig’s twenty-dollar bill is the same as a hot stockbroker’s. So it’s, like, whatever.”

Vanity sighed, shaking her head, as if in awe. “How did you do it? I can’t imagine. I’ve struggled with the objectification of certain modeling assignments. But to take off your clothes in front of…”

“It’s all about money,” Pippa said matter-of-factly. “Not having it can push you through all sorts of humiliations on your way to getting it. I remember first moving here. You had the most amazing clothes, and I felt like some street urchin by comparison. I had, like, one or two nice things that I wore to tatters. Max would take me to all these amazing clubs, and I couldn’t afford to buy one bloody drink. It was awful. I wanted to be the glamour girl again, and I didn’t care what I had to do to make that happen. So off went the clothes.”

Vanity was silent.

Pippa continued. “It’s strange. Sometimes I would feel this powerful rush, you know? Like I was a huntress at the top of my game. I could pick out a guy.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that. The vulnerable ones were easy to spot. They were so desperate to hang out with a naked girl. But you know, it was still objectification, no matter how much I thought I was in control. I could be listening to them drone on about their boring jobs and their fat wives, but even in the losers’ eyes, I was nothing more than tits and ass. And some of the others would just look right through me and say the most disgusting shit. It changed me. It hardened me. I became this cold cash-making machine. And I couldn’t stop. I needed to strip for the money to buy expensive things. But then I needed the high from the shopping fix to help me deal with the fact that I was stripping.”

“A vicious circle,” Vanity remarked.

“Yeah,
exactly
,” Pippa said. “Vicious as hell. Getting arrested was probably a good thing. But it was a bullshit charge. Some drunk frat boy ripped off my thong during the raid. When I told the police that I was attacked, they just laughed. Then they turned around and let the creep go. So much for American justice. As long as you’re rich, white, and swinging a few balls, you can get away with anything.” She covered her face in her hands, overcome with emotion, but the moment passed. She breathed deeply, running her fingers through her hair.

“I saw the interview with that dancer from the club,” Vanity began, probing gingerly. “Those things she said about you and Max’s father…”

“He’s a sick bastard!” Pippa shouted. “I’d love nothing more than to see him trapped in the North Pole with his pants down! That way he’d get severe frostbite on his dick, and they’d have to amputate!”

Vanity’s eyes widened in alarm.

Pippa thundered on. “He requested me for the private room several times. In the beginning, he was sweet and tender. All he wanted to do was suck my toes.”

Vanity’s mouth dropped open.

Pippa pulled a face. “At least he was good at it. Anyway, I fell for him in a major way. I’ll admit that. I’m just a girl with a lousy father. He’s an older, handsome movie star. What else do you expect? But then he got me on his private plane. That’s when he turned into a crazy monster. He called me a whore and tried to rape me.”

“Oh my God!” Vanity exclaimed.

Pippa stood up and peeled off her cashmere hoodie, leaving her in a white cotton tank. The bruises on her wrists and arms were still clearly visible.

Vanity gasped.

“You should’ve seen them a week ago.”

“Pippa, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well,
he’s
more sorry. The only reason he stopped is because I convinced him I was seventeen and threatened to go straight to the media. Then I blackmailed the motherfucker for a million. No regrets, either. I deserve it.”

Vanity shook her head in disbelief. “Are you going to tell Max any of this?”

“Why?” Pippa asked. “So he can laugh about it in his next comedy act?”

“Max wouldn’t do that,” Vanity maintained. She spoke passionately. “He cares about you, Pippa. But have you actually given him a chance to prove it? You’ve lied to him about everything. You’ve avoided him for months. He should know the truth, though.”

Pippa shook her head. “I can’t face him again. Not after the things we said to each other at the comedy club. And certainly not after this. I look at him, Vanity, and I want to see
my
Max, but all I can see is his goddamn father. That disgusting pig of a man! I’ve loused up everything! I just want to leave. You know? I just want to leave this place and forget that I ever came here!”

And then Pippa raced into the bathroom and shut the door, sobbing uncontrollably.

Vanity just stood there, heartbroken and helpless, desperate to provide Pippa comfort, but not sure how. Nervously, she rapped softly on the door. “Pippa, I’m not leaving you like this. I’ll stay right here until you come out, okay? We’ll talk more. I’ll help you pack. Anything that you want.”

But Pippa’s crying only intensified.

Vanity closed her eyes, both hands pressed against the door, wishing she could find the perfect words to make it better. Finally, she gave voice to a few simple ones. “I’m here, Pippa. You’re not alone.”

And then she thought about Max. He was a victim in all of this, as well. Where was he? And how was he dealing with it?

From: Max

Revenge sex. Sanctuary. 10 sharp.

8:19 pm 4/24/06

M
ax was back at Sanctuary, sexing it up again, already down a few Red Bulls and Levels, feeling no pain, feeling
much
pain.

He loved watching the way his stepmonster’s hair swayed back and forth as she balanced herself on the bed and speared him like a carnival freak swallowing a sword.

Max’s heart started to pound. This was their third round of the night, and he was enjoying it more than ever. Admitting that only increased his pleasure.

He had never been the kind of guy to go after MILFs. Max much preferred girls closer to his age. But an opportunity to bed down Faith Biaggi, his father’s second wife, was just too tempting to pass up.

Max could feel his excitement mounting. With a harsh cry, he climaxed, writhing with such abandon that he banged his skull against the headboard, the impact so hard that he thought one or both might have cracked. “Oh, shit!”

Faith laughed.

Max rubbed the back of his head, already feeling the beginnings of a knot. Finally, he laughed, too. “I think I gave myself a concussion.”

“Should I call your father?” Faith asked. “Maybe he’ll rush home to check on his loyal son.”

Max looked at his stepmonster with something close to amazement. She seemed to be enjoying this sweet act of revenge more than he was.

Faith slid off the mattress and sashayed, gloriously naked, over to the stereo. In seconds, the romantic sounds of Michael Bublé came lilting from the speakers. “This is your father’s favorite music to make love to.”

At first, Max thought she was kidding. But Faith was dead serious.

She stopped to light a candle and gave him a bad-girl grin. “You’re bigger than he is where it counts.”

Max raised his brow. “You would know better than anyone.”

“Does that make you happy?”

“Would it make him unhappy?”

“Absolutely,” Faith trilled.

Max sighed. “Then hell yes it makes me happy.”

Faith straddled him, planting her aerobic thighs against Max’s slim hips, the weight and sensation of her body so wildly erotic.

The scent of tuberose wafted in the air.

Her approach this time was more seductive than ever before, an intoxicating orgy of hands and fingers, lips and tongue.

But no matter the sexual distractions, his mind remained on a single track: Max Biaggi and Pippa Keith. It was the ultimate betrayal. The only girl who had ever told him no and his own father. Christ. Max would rather have learned about Pippa being with
anyone
else. Even an entire football team, for that matter.

The revelations had rocked the Star Island mansion. His stepmonster was too weak to leave the son of a bitch, so the twit just drank more. And tonight she had been just loaded enough to take him up on his nasty little offer of sexual justice.

Max guessed the marriage might endure a few more months, end of the year at best. His father would divorce her, enforce the prenuptial agreement, and then Faith would spend the rest of her life hating him.

Shoshanna had weighed in as only she knew how. “Okay,
ewww
! Daddy gets arrested in a strip club, and some skanky woman is on TV saying he’s into underage girls! Why does everything always happen to me?”

Of course, the tabloid man of the moment had chosen to avoid all of them. Fucking coward. Following the arrest, he immediately jetted to Los Angeles to huddle with a public relations crisis team.

Suddenly, Max let out a soft, involuntary moan as the sensation of Faith’s tongue licking his armpit sent shivers down his body. “How many times are we going to do this?” Max asked.

“Give it to me one more time and you break his record. Even when he’s pumped up with Viagra.”

“I like the sound of that,” Max admitted.

“I thought you would,” Faith said.

Max’s mind tripped off into space. Graduation was a month away, and he was still undecided about college, making the rest of his life one big question mark. A change of venue sounded exciting. Maybe Los Angeles. He could check out the local comedy scene, find a new group to hang with, start a whole new routine.

Faith reached down to smooth a hand along Max’s cheek, then left it there. “I can’t get over how much you look like him.” She grinned sadly.

Shit. The last thing he needed was for this woman to turn into some kind of emotional nutcase.

Faith let her hand slide down Max’s neck. It came to rest against the hollow of his throat. “What do you think he would do if he ever found us together like this?”

Max stared back at her for a long, thoughtful second. “I think he would divorce you, disinherit me, and then kill us both.”

“Do you really think it would make him that crazy?” she asked. Her tone implied that a resounding “yes” would be the preferred answer.

“Yeah, I do,” Max told her.

“Just knowing that will get me through the bad times,” Faith murmured, her hand leaving Max’s neck and skating all the way down to check his state of readiness.

Max smiled. He was all systems go.

“One more time,” Faith breathed.

It was such a sick little twist. Max Biaggi getting his son’s best girl. Max Biaggi Jr. taking his father’s second wife.

If the bastard knew what was happening here, then he would go mad. The words being said. The fantasies being played out. The comparisons being made. It would murder his father’s ego. And the awareness of that propelled Max to finish off the night like a champ.

He pushed Faith down onto the bed and kissed her hungrily, his mouth rough and demanding, his biceps straining to pull her closer.

“Who’s better in bed?” Max asked. He wanted to hear her say it out loud.

“You are,” Faith whispered.

Max’s Sidekick II vibrated.

He started to ignore the call. But then he changed his mind. Reluctantly, he disengaged from Faith and stretched out to check the tiny screen.

It was Keiko.

Christina. Max felt his stomach lurch. He snatched the device and answered with a breathless, “What’s up?”

“I know where she is,” Keiko said.

Christina lay immobile in the dark, hoping, listening, and waiting.

Sometimes she felt like being cut off from everything and everyone was driving her insane. At this point, her mind had become a bad neighborhood that even she should avoid.

One moment she would fantasize about ending her life in the bloodiest of ways—to escape the pain, to end the fight, and to inflict as much guilt as possible on her mother.

And in the very next instant she would build elaborate scenes about breaking out with revolutionary fanfare—to stage protests, to speak out against intolerance, and to cause enough public chaos to derail the campaign of the hopeful Senator Paulina Perez.

According to the first day’s orientation session, over which the esteemed Pastor Chet Hobbs presided, Christina and the others had been dispatched to Salvation Pointe for “a health intervention that would instill emotional, physical, spiritual, and moral cleansings.” Perhaps that made for good copy on the glossy brochure, but in practice, there was no evidence here of anything resembling “health.”

The sadistic irony was that Christina had never been more
un
healthy. She rarely ate. She hardly slept. She lost weight. She developed acne. She stayed up nights sobbing. She questioned whether anyone loved her. She obsessed over meaningless things.

There was some comfort to be found in the interaction with other residents—people like Zack, who had become a certain lifeline—but she still missed her friends desperately. Christina spoke to them in her head all the time, imagining conversations. She longed to see Vanity’s gorgeous face, to hear Max call her “Jap,” to get a warm hug from Dante, and to decode Pippa’s loopy British slang.

The silence at Salvation Pointe at times made her feel crazy, and the harsh restrictions pushed it toward total madness. Christina felt as if the world had stopped altogether. Was life inside this compound all that there was and all that there ever would be? Sometimes she believed the answer was yes.

Here she was, endless days into her course of “treatment,” starving for anything that might loosen the mental straitjacket—a favorite song, a movie, the sound of a voice from the outside, a magazine, a newspaper, even a goddamn sketch pad! The fascists at Salvation Pointe forbade her to draw, dismissing it as a “boy’s hobby” and telling her that a girl should learn how to cook. It was unspeakable.

Christina had to get away from this place. With each passing hour, she could feel herself inching closer and closer to the edge of a psychotic break. The claustrophobia of this tiny world and the monotony of her own thoughts were taking a brutal toll. She needed outlets to get through her worst moments, even if it was just sobering world news to remind her that circumstances could be far more damning elsewhere.

In answer, Christina’s memory recalled a horrific story about the Sudan and the genocide in Darfur. There was a place called Kalma camp, where untold thousands squatted after being driven from burned villages. The women faced daily risk of gang rape, and those who suffered attacks were ostracized for life and forced to build their own huts. So if a Sudanese girl could soldier on in those conditions, then Christina could certainly get through her problems at Salvation Pointe.

Suddenly, there was a high-pitched scream and the sound of breaking glass.

But Christina was hardly alarmed. She bolted from the bed, a grateful smile on her face as she dashed to the door, cracking it just a sliver to peer out.

Somebody give Richie the Golden Globe for Best Actress. He
was
every bit as good as Scarlett Johansson.

The night monitors were in a dither, trying to placate Richie during his fake panic attack
and
order the worried residents spilling into the corridor back to their rooms.

Zack’s plan had worked perfectly.

Christina slipped away unnoticed and made a beeline for her secret destination, located on the far end of the building. She moved fast and breathed deeply. It was the closest air to freedom she had known since arriving here.

She darted past the cafeteria, group therapy room, Bible study hall, and activity center, everything blacker than night and tomblike still.

And then Christina saw it…at the end of a darkened hall…a door ajar…a beam of light pouring out…Chet Hobbs’s private office.

She approached slowly, stealthily peeking inside to be sure it was empty. Yes, thank God. With great relief, she crept into the outer room and slipped behind the massive mahogany desk.

Christina’s heart raced. She sat in front of the idle iMac, the screen blank, its power light fading in and out like a distress signal. All it took to wake up the computer was a mere touch of the keyboard’s space bar. But would the back-to-life chime give her away?

Frightful and uncertain, she reached for the telephone, one of those complicated multiline office beasts. Establishing an outside line required several nervous attempts. Finally, Christina got lucky by punching eight and waiting for a dial tone. But her joy crashed soon after. The system would not allow her to make a long-distance call.

All of a sudden, Christina froze, the low murmur of voices stopping her cold.

The sounds were coming from the adjacent room, its door closed, a soft ray of light visible underneath.

Christina listened acutely, picking up the faint sound of crying. The discovery unnerved her. It could only be Zack, here for his private counseling with Chet Hobbs.

She tiptoed over and pressed her ear against the door.

“Your father thinks you’re a queer. That’s why he sent you to Salvation Pointe.” Chet Hobbs was talking.

Christina’s stomach dropped fast.

“Are you a queer?” Hobbs asked.

“I don’t know.” Zack’s tears muffled his answer.

Christina just stood there, mortified.

“It’s okay, Zack. A lot of boys come to Salvation Pointe confused just like you. But it’s important to identify a problem before you try to solve it. I happen to have a very special way of helping boys find out if they’re queer or not. And after we establish that, the healing can begin. Does that sound like a good plan?”

Zack continued to cry.

A sick feeling swamped over Christina. It was intense, all-consuming, and came close to buckling her knees. Refusing to eat. Going without sleep. The extremities of this nightmare were tearing her apart. She fought for strength.

From inside the room, there was the
clink
of a belt being unfastened and then the sound of a zipper going down.

“I want you to suck my dick, Zack. I can always tell if a boy’s queer by the way his mouth takes to a hard dick.”

Christina felt an instant cold sweat slick her body. Was this a crazy mind playing tricks? Had she gone insane? Because how could Salvation Point be this depraved? It was beyond the ken of any reality.

She stumbled back to the outer office, feeling weaker than ever, dizzy even, almost faint. But she had to reach the computer and send out an email. For some reason, she thought of Max first. Maybe because he had the most resources. All she had to do was tell him where she was and what was going on. Max would find a way to help her.

As the room began to spin, Christina lost her balance. She steadied herself against the desk, allowing time for the spell to pass. But the horrible feeling seemed to linger forever. She weaved into the corridor, living on the desperate hope that a splash of water from the fountain would set her right.

“What are you doing all the way down here?”

Startled, Christina turned to see a figure upon her. But before she could implore the night monitor to help Zack, her last bit of strength evaporated. Everything turned to black as she slumped into the woman’s arms.

When Christina woke up the next morning, the moments leading up to her fainting haunted her with crystal clarity. At first, she thought it might be one of those riveting, hallucinogenic nightmares that attack the mind when the body is in severe distress.

But an eerie sensation that something terrible had happened came over her. The air was humid with it. She raced across the hall to Zack’s room.