Beauty (7 page)

The doors hissed open and Dina found herself in a dazzling palace of glass walls and sweeping views. Behind the sound-proofed window, the city went about its business. Dina walked up to the kidney-shaped desk of Mr Markos’s secretary, an elegant fifty-something wearing what was unmistakably a Chanel suit.

I want to be like that
, Dina thought,
only sitting in the inner office.
Working for a big company. Chief Executive
. Visions of success danced in her head.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Dina Kane for Mr Markos.’

‘He’s expecting you. You can go right in.’

Dina walked up to the main door. The sound of her footfalls was muffled by carpet an inch thick, but the sound of her heartbeat crashed again and again in her ears.

She pulled the door open and walked in, trying to look more confident than she felt.

Markos was looking at a computer screen, his oak desk a small island in the vast room. Behind and below him, she saw the New York traffic crawling through the city’s concrete canyons, flashes of sunlight glittering on the windscreens. This was money; this was power. Dina Kane felt it as a sexual thrill.

‘Have a seat.’

There was a large chair right in front of him. Obediently, Dina sat, smoothing her dress on her lap.
Steady. Don’t look nervous
.

‘Thank you.’

‘You impressed me yesterday. I asked my aunt about you. She told me some of the things you’ve done at that restaurant. How old are you?’

‘Eighteen,’ Dina lied.

‘Why aren’t you at college?’

She winced. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘I see a lot of young people work tables. I make it my business to notice quality. It’s pretty rare.’

‘Thank you, Mr Markos.’

‘What are your goals for yourself, Dina?’

‘To make the rent next month. And then to go to college, when I have enough money.’

‘And then?’

She grinned. ‘I like your office, Mr Markos.’

He laughed. ‘This job is taken. Found your own goddamned company. I have an opening for a junior manager in my new restaurant uptown. It pays thirty-five thousand a year, with a Christmas bonus.’

Dina quickly did the sums. That was almost three thousand a month. But, of course, there were taxes. She would need the bonus.

‘Do I get to keep the tips?’

He raised a brow. ‘The words you’re looking for are “thank you”.’

‘Thank you. Sir.’

Markos waited till she’d shut the door behind her. Maybe this was a mistake. They’d never hired a manager that young. Oh, and there was the question of her looks. Eighteen and all kinds of sexy, with a face that could stop traffic. As a waitress, she was an attraction. As a manager? Would they take her seriously?

He almost felt a stirring. Ludicrous. She was practically jail-bait. And he’d taken a fatherly interest because the kid reminded him of himself.

Guiltily, he tilted the black-framed picture of his wife, Athena, towards himself on the desk. She was the love of his life. He’d lost all interest in women when she died. All interest in everything, except the game of business: the thing that kept him sane.

His wife’s forty-year-old face – so lovely, so classic – stared back at him, frozen in time, in that blessed year before she got sick.

Gently, he calmed himself. He would never take advantage of Dina Kane, teen beauty alone in the big city.

Other guys will do that,
said the voice in his head.

‘Susan –’ he punched his intercom – ‘get me the manager of the store at a hundred and twelfth. He’s got a new colleague.’

Edward Johnson was a golden boy.

He was in his second year at Columbia – Ivy League – studying pre-med. His plan was to become a plastic surgeon, one of the most upmarket in the city. He wanted offices on Park Avenue and a string of starlets and news anchors begging him to perfect their faces and tits.

Not that he needed money. Edward, smoothly handsome with his dark hair and even features, was an only child. He was close to his mother, Penelope, and stood to inherit everything from his daddy one day – Shelby Johnson was president of the hugely successful Coldharbor Bank. They had a townhouse on Eighty-First Street and Amsterdam, close to Central Park, Zabar’s and the best delis in town. Edward had already succeeded to a portion of his trust fund. There would be more when he turned twenty-one.

Edward Johnson liked pretty women. He was clever – the Columbia place proved it – but he was easily bored, too. Finding cute girls to fuck was his hobby. When everybody you knew was rich, how else could a fellow keep score?

Edward’s family voted Democrat, like all middle-class New Yorkers, but he was strongly conservative. He believed in social strata. Edward Johnson had been to the right prep school. He worshipped on Sundays at a smart, Presbyterian church. He relished his parents’ social acceptability and their place in the world.

After all, wouldn’t it be his place too?

Edward dated occasionally – girls with parents like his, girls he treated with respect, took to dinner, to the private dining clubs in town. But he didn’t want to get married yet; marriage was for a few years down the line. So dating was nothing special. And if those girls slept with him, neither of them talked about it. Edward was respected. The future was looking good.

No, when he wanted something, he was careful.

Edward Johnson liked downtown girls – girls he picked up in late-night clubs; girls he could hit on, working checkout at the supermarket; girls from the bridge-and-tunnel crowd; young Jersey chicks with big hair and big tits and too much make-up; girls he could wine, dine and bang once or twice and then drop without a trace.

‘Hell, man, you’re a stud.’

‘Ed, you are such a player.’

‘Jesus! Look at that piece of ass. How does he do it?’

‘Watch and learn, boys,’ Edward crowed. ‘Watch and learn.’

He loved it – the notoriety. They called him a pussy-hound, a babe magnet, a player, the king of clubs.

And if the girls called him, crying, after he dumped them, so what? Edward cut them off. What the fuck? They gave it up; that was their problem.

‘Jesus, honey, give it a rest. I’m not interested.’

‘What are you bothering me for, Camilla? We’re done.’

‘Mercedes, you were a one-nighter. OK?’

‘No, it’s not OK! You bastard! I thought you were different!’

‘I don’t see no ring on your finger,’ he said, with an accent, mocking her. Then he’d laugh and hang up.

Edward felt no guilt. Why should he? The girls were easy – not his problem. They sold themselves for the price of a meal or two in a nice restaurant, some flowers or a bottle of champagne. He was sowing his wild oats, like they used to say, working it out before he got serious. Edward Johnson believed that girls like that – low class, gullible girls – were the natural toys of men like him. They wanted to ride in the fast car with the rich guy, eat at places they could never afford, go to the best clubs in town. And he wanted a lay he could show off to his friends.

‘It’s the four
F
s,’ Edward told the admiring guys who hung around him in the coffee shops as they nursed their hangovers. ‘Find ’em, feel ’em, fuck ’em, forget ’em.’

And they all laughed their heads off.

Dina settled into the new job. It was steady pay, and she waitressed on the side.

‘But you’re a junior manager,’ her boss, Mike, told her. ‘You don’t have to be out front.’

‘I need the tips.’ Dina smiled. ‘And besides, that way I can hear what the customers are saying.’

She did everything she could. Showed up on time, worked hard, smiled, tried to remember the regulars. On the plus side, she was finally making her rent. There were no more night shifts and every couple of weeks, she could afford to take the subway out to Westchester to visit her brother at college. But she was no closer to her dream. With rent and food, she was still tapped out. College seemed a world – galaxies – away.

And Dina was frustrated. Helping run a coffee house like this was about half of a white-collar job. She did some accountancy, double-checked the takings, wrote up careful reports on what pastries did and didn’t sell. But after she’d supervised staff – getting them to show up on time, be polite, follow procedures – there wasn’t too much left to do.

Dimitri and Gil had
listened
to her. She’d made things happen at the Greek diner; she’d been innovative. But Mount Java was already a major company. It was expanding nationwide and Alex Markos didn’t need much from her. There was only room to execute his ideas well – not bring in her own.

Dina knew she wanted more. Was she ungrateful? She hoped not. She was learning, soaking it up like a sponge. The simple importance of quality was what Markos’s store taught her. They imported the best beans, ground them finer than most, used all-natural flavourings and changed the water often. That was the secret – sound expensive; be fresher than the other guy.

But what the customers didn’t seem to get was that they were paying for flavoured water. And water was cheap.

It cost two dollars extra to go from regular to large, and less than a hundredth of a cent to pay for the extra coffee in the cup. The recycled cardboard cost more. But the range of flavours gave their shop an edge . . . Customers wanted to try walnut coffee, or Irish cream, or cinnamon. And through the seasons, Java brought in special-edition flavours: spiced apple in the fall, ginger nut in winter, Easter chocolate in the spring, raspberry in summer. The customers came back to the store, just for the special editions. They loved the idea, the brand.

Dina made sure her store was meticulously clean, that there were no scuffs on the burgundy leather seats. People bought luxury and, even if you couldn’t afford a cashmere sweater or an Aston Martin, you could afford a warm cup of Java Mountain coffee, brewed fresh with Madagascar vanilla, served in a chic, recycled, green cup with the red mountain logo.

Dina learned. But she was stuck.

She applied to join the higher-management programme. Maybe the way to get on here was in the central company. But her application came back, struck through.

Employee employed for only four months. More experience required.

She didn’t hear again from Alexander Markos. And, after three months of pouring and smiling and serving little pastries, Dina was starting to feel trapped.

One thing made it worse. Much worse.

At Mount Java, Dina served a good cross-section of New York: alpha males in their business suits, who stopped by at seven for a latte to take in the cab; mothers, who congregated after drop-off and before pick-up; lunchtime dieters, who didn’t do lunch but stimulated their system with caffeine, not calories. But the crowd that hurt her feelings came in after the others had left, or in the dead hours – eleven o’clock in the morning, half-ten. Breakfast, for them.

College kids, either nursing hangovers, or recovering from pulling an all-nighter.

They liked the drinks large and sweet, full of punch. Dina would bring the cups to the table, smiling and chatting, and all the time dying inside. Those privileged girls were her age and just a little older. They had long glossy hair and Columbia scarves and sweatshirts. Carrying piles of books, dark folders and yellow legal pads, they laughed and talked to each other, placing their orders without eye contact, as if Dina was invisible.

Dina
felt
invisible, because they were going somewhere and she was not. They were on their way to the courthouse, the surgery theatre, the museum, the investment bank.

And she was serving them coffee.

Every day it beat up in her head an endless rhythm of shame and failure.

I’ve got to get on
, Dina thought.
Got to get out
.

The college boys didn’t see her as invisible. Goddamn, they were obnoxious.

‘Hey baby. Get that cute ass over here.’

‘What time do you get off, sweetie? I can get
you
off.’

‘Honey, you want to earn the biggest tip of your life? Give me your phone number . . .’

Sometimes she had to swallow back tears. It was so hard, but she needed the job. Needed to make rent. Had no place else to go.

Dina didn’t think about love. Not yet. Maybe one day she would meet somebody, settle down, get married. But the boys and men that catcalled and whistled didn’t want a date. They wanted a lay.

The memory of her mom burned fiercely in Dina’s heart: the cars, the laughter, the aging playgirl, drunk and drugged – available for rich, powerful men.

That wasn’t going to be her. Dina hoped that one day a man would come, a guy who would blow her away, reduce her to rubble.

Trouble was, she didn’t find men that impressive. Nobody had stepped up in her mother’s life. Her darling brother was a flake. And the boys at school had been scared of being unpopular.

At seventeen, Dina Kane had learned the hard way.

Only rely on yourself.

‘You want to hang out with me, sweetcakes?’

His name was George Linden, and he was one of the most persistent college boys. With a daddy in the oil business in Texas, bright blond hair and a footballer’s physique, he could pick up almost any girl he wanted.

‘Your coffee’s coming right up,’ Dina said, brightly. She hated him and his group of hangers-on, the boys that would crowd around the golden god and cackle at everything he said. She pivoted on one heel, back to the kitchen.

‘Goddamn, that’s a beautiful view,’ Linden said loudly. ‘I could watch that ass all day.’

‘Mike –’ Dina spat it out to the manager as he handed her the pitcher and the stoneware mugs – ‘aren’t you going to throw them out?’

‘Come on, Dina. College is a big part of the store.’ Mike shrugged; he hadn’t liked having a teenage junior manager forced on him. As far as he was concerned, she wanted tips, so she was still just a glorified waitress.
He
didn’t serve up coffees. ‘You don’t have to wait tables, you know. It’s a choice.’

A choice she needed for rent. ‘Sure. Right.’ Dina gritted her teeth. She moved back to the table with the coffee, set it down, careful not to bend over too much at the waist. The dark pencil skirt of her uniform set her ass off nicely, and she hated the way the frat boys ogled and stared.