Amanda Filipacchi - The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty

I stare at my cuckoo clock as eight o’clock nears. I ask Lily to call him again. She does, again on speaker. He says he’s two blocks away, that maybe he’ll get out of the cab and walk the rest of the way because there’s traffic.

“No!” I exclaim. If he’s out on the street alone when eight o’clock strikes, who knows what could happen, what the killer might have planned. “No,” I repeat, more calmly, and whisper: “Tell him not to worry, to stay in the taxi until it reaches my building.”

She tells him this. He says he’s now one block away. It’s three minutes before eight. He says he’ll see us soon. He says he can’t wait. Lily hangs up.

I stare at my intercom, waiting for the doorman to buzz me. Finally, he does. It’s Adam, and he softly says to me, “You clownish fool, someone is here to see you, don’t ask me why. His name is Strad. I don’t envy him. He’s in for quite—”

“Send him up,” I say, having no time for his disorder right now.

“Jee -zuss!”

“Real fast, please,” I add.

“Fine, cunt,” he says, and hangs up.

I look at the clock. We’ve got two minutes left before the danger starts.

Ten seconds left. He’s still not here.

“CUCKOO!” shrieks the bird eight times at eight o’clock.

I hear a grim voice in my head saying, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, let the games begin.”

Ten minutes go by, and still no Strad. Perhaps he got lost in the building. This is a common problem in my building, which is huge and consists of four towers, requiring visitors to take two elevators, which are separated by a long hallway and some turns.

I tell Lily this, to reassure her. She nods, chewing her lip.

Strad finally arrives at 8:11 p.m. and sheepishly confesses to me in the entrance hall that he got lost in the building.

“Yes, it’s very complicated,” Georgia calls out from the living room, her sarcasm unfair because it is.

Strad is carrying a shoulder bag, a violin case, a bunch of mixed flowers, and a bottle of red wine. He hands me the flowers and wine. “Thank you so much for inviting me,” he says, following me into the living room. “You can’t imagine how…” He stops mid-sentence as he steps across the threshold. He gazes around the living room at the masked and costumed furry mannequins. “Wow. Amazing. Wow.”

“Aw, we love eloquent guests,” Georgia says.

“Your decor is spectacular,” Strad says to me.

“Thank you,” I say.

He puts down his bag and violin case. He notices that none of us is wearing shoes, so he takes his off and puts them by the door.

Then he goes straight for Georgia. “Man, what an honor it is to finally meet you!” He takes her hand in both of his.

“Thank you,” she says.

“No, thank you. For all your books. Spending this evening with you will be such a blast.”

“A blast, possibly.” She turns to the rest of us and asks, “Did we cover that possibility? That it might be a blast?”

“Many times,” Jack says.

“And? What did we decide?”

“That it can’t be a blast as long as he’s with us.”

It’s true, we did cover the possibility of a small bomb and quickly realized that the killer would never use a method that had any risk of hurting the rest of us. As long as Strad is with us, no explosive would be used on him.

So I’m outraged at Jack and Georgia’s unnecessary exchange and offensive double meanings aimed at insulting Strad. Have I not just told them to act normal? Do they not care how their weird behavior will reflect on Lily? I guess they don’t, come to think of it.

Trying to hide my annoyance, I say, “I thought we decided not to be eccentric tonight?” I put a little water and Strad’s flowers into a small plastic vase. “If I detect even a whiff of eccentricity this evening, you will not hear the end of it.”

I take Strad’s belongings (except for his violin case, which he’ll need) and put them in my bedroom, because the killer might have cleverly hidden a weapon in Strad’s bag or coat earlier.

I then pour the wine into a lidded plastic jug and I lock the empty wine bottle in my bedroom with all the other glass items.

Strad strolls around my living room, looking at the costumed mannequins. He stops in front of my ballet bar and asks me, “Why do you have a ballet bar if you don’t use it?”

“What makes you think I don’t use it?”

He looks me up and down. “Wild guess.”

I feel slapped in the face on behalf of overweight people who do use a ballet bar. “The previous owner installed it,” I explain. “She was a ballet dancer. And I do use it for my costume design work with actors.”

“Fun piano,” Strad says, standing in front of the mirror piano. “The sound must suffer a bit in that kind of casing, but it’s great-looking. Am I right, Lily, that the sound suffers?”

“Yes, it suffers,” Lily says.

The thought of suffering reminds me that we’re due for some, right about now. “Speaking of music, weren’t you going to play a little something for us?” I ask him.

“Oh, yes, why don’t you bless us with some of your music,” Georgia says, with an impressive lack of sarcasm.

“Sure!” Strad goes to his violin case.

I follow him. He opens it.

“Can I see this case? It’s so beautiful,” I say.

“Sure.”

I hold the case, caress the lining, examine it thoroughly inside and out and when I’m relatively certain that it’s safe, I say, “And can I see your violin too?”

He hands it to me. I’m not sure what could be hidden in a violin, but why not be thorough? As for the rest of him, I didn’t use the metal detector on him because I didn’t want to freak him out. Plus, no one is supposed to touch him. If anyone stashed a weapon on him in advance and tries to pickpocket him during the evening, we’ll put a stop to it before anything can happen.

I give him back his violin and he positions himself in front of the couch area, where we all take a seat.

Georgia raises her hand. “Oh, I’ve got an idea. Maybe Lily should accompany Strad on the piano. That would be so nice.” Her motive is all too clear to me: she’s hoping Lily’s music will mask Strad’s. But the pretext she gives is, “This way, Strad, you’ll be able to hear for yourself if the piano suffers from its casing.”

“Sure,” Strad says. “If you want to join me toward the end, Lily. I’ll signal you when I’m ready.”

Lily nods and sits at the piano. He plays for ten minutes, which is mildly unpleasant, before he gives Lily the nod.

She starts improvising, and I don’t know if my perception of her playing is influenced by my knowledge of her feelings for him, but her notes seem to coat his in silk. Her playing wraps itself around his in a manner that does not take us long to sense is rather erotic. Her sounds are caressing, clinging to his sounds, dripping from them, climaxing with them. Her notes are practically raping his notes, though the one thing they’re not really able to do is to beautify them. Lily’s power is not quite strong enough to counteract the mediocrity of his art.

When they’re done, Strad plops into an armchair. “That was exhilarating! I don’t think the sound from the piano suffered much.”

“Oh, I think it suffered,” Georgia says.

Jack starts talking to Strad about his acting ambitions.

Georgia walks by the low side table next to Strad’s armchair without noticing that the bottom of her long cardigan is getting caught on the bouquet of flowers Strad brought me. Jack is the only one besides me who notices what’s about to happen and lunges at the vase to steady it before it topples over and spills.

The only thing the three women notice is Jack lunging in Strad’s proximity. Misinterpreting his abrupt movement as an attempt on Strad’s life, they hurl themselves at him and he falls under their weight. On his way down, his lip and nose get smashed against one of my ottoman cubes. He is now face down on my thin rug, the women on top of him holding his arms and sitting on him like hens.