Amanda Filipacchi - The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty

“Stop! Stop!” I cry, hurrying toward them. “Get off him. I saw everything.”

They stare up at me, not convinced, and not getting off him. They’re waiting for me to offer an explanation, which they know I can’t give them in front of Strad.

“I order you to get off of him right now,” I tell Georgia, Penelope, and Lily in a calm but commanding voice.

They finally obey, reluctantly. Not only can I not give them an explanation, but they realize they now have to help me come up with a fake one because Strad is watching us, horrified.

“Why did you just attack him?” he asks them.

Jack struggles to his feet, his nose and lip bleeding. He touches the side of his face, where he’ll undoubtedly have a bruise.

He gazes down at the floor. There lie the flowers and plastic vase on the wet rug.

Strad looks at all of us, waiting for our explanation.

We stare back at him, stumped, having no idea what to say.

In the silence, the cuckoo clock tick-tocks like a metronome.

I try to buy us some time by fetching a paper towel and an ice pack for Jack.

Perhaps I could say the women thought Jack was headed toward the stereo, and he has terrible taste in music.

“Why isn’t anyone speaking?” Strad asks. “Lily? Why did you pounce on Jack?”

Lily doesn’t reply. Instead, she busies herself picking up the flowers and wiping up the spill.

I can’t stand the silence anymore, so I’m about to blurt out my absurd answer, but just before I do, Georgia casually says, “Training.”

I exhale softly, having complete confidence in her powers of fabrication.

“Excuse me?” Strad says.

“It’s training.” She shrugs.

“Training? To be what, Charlie’s Angels?”

“No. We’re training him . He asked us to attack him at unexpected times as part of his ongoing maintenance program. It keeps his reflexes sharp.”

“Is that true?” Strad asks Jack, with a twinge of excitement.

“Yes. It improves my reaction time,” Jack says.

“For what?”

“For my job. I’m a cop, you know.”

“I thought that was over. I thought you worked at a senior center now.”

“Only part time. I’m also an undercover cop.”

“But I thought you couldn’t be a cop because of your limp and your cane and the fact that you can’t run.”

“That’s why it’s a great cover.”

“So you can run?”

“No, that’s why it’s a great cover.”

“What’s a great cover? Not being able to run?”

“Yes. That’s what makes it really good.”

“But how can you be an undercover cop if you can’t run?”

“By doing special training, like you just saw.”

“That makes up for not running?”

“More than makes up for it. You saw how intense it was. The women did an excellent job, I must say. I’d been reproaching them lately for not going at it with enough conviction.” He takes the paper towel and ice pack and presses them to his face. “I just never thought they’d attack me when a guest was here. Which, of course, is why it’s the perfect time to do it.” He chuckles and turns to his aggressors, giving them a thumbs-up. “Nice work, by the way.”

Even though Jack is usually not the one who comes up with the ideas, he’s quite good at riffing off them once they’re out there.

Blood is still running out of his nose. He wipes it again with the now mostly red paper towel.

“I don’t know, this seems weird,” Strad says, shaking his head, looking suddenly skeptical again.

“It’s a form of conditioning, like Pavlov’s dog,” Jack says. “When you get attacked and hurt on a regular basis and at various random times, you start jumping at the slightest abrupt movement because you know pain is coming. That jumping is a desirable state of conditioning.”

“It is?” Strad says. “Like those kids who shield their faces if you make an abrupt gesture near them because they get slapped at home regularly? That never seemed good.”

“But for adults it’s good. Especially for cops. That’s what average people don’t realize when they watch those big Hollywood action movies. In those movies, it takes a lot to faze the heroes. But in real life, it’s the opposite. The toughest, most effective guys, the best fighters, the police heroes, the army heroes — all the best ones — they jump at the slightest abrupt movement.”

I’m struggling not to smile. My friends too. The tension has left their faces. You’d think the threat had left the room.

“Thanks again, guys,” Jack says to his trainers, giving them each a high-five. He spins back to Strad. “Oh, and just so you know, they’ve asked me to put them through the same rigorous training, so we may be attacking each other at various times. Don’t be too startled.”

The three women chuckle uneasily.

I tell everyone it’s time for dinner.

We move to the dining table. I serve them a cold meal of fancy sardines in herb sauce, which I bought already prepared from a nearby gourmet shop. I serve Strad last, and once his food is in front of him, I don’t take my eyes off it. I can’t believe he’s the only person in the room I can absolutely trust.

We scare easy tonight. At one point Georgia sneezes. It practically gives me a heart attack. A few minutes later Penelope drops her plastic fork. We stare at her with terror.

Things get misinterpreted. The slightest sounds. If someone laughs, the rest of us hear it as evil and expect the worst.

“Wow, you guys are like jumpy, high-strung thoroughbred horses,” Strad says. “You’ve really honed that flinching trait.”

A few grunts is the only response.

No one tries to make conversation during dinner except Strad, but he doesn’t get very far. He asks me about my costumes. I give him brief, bland answers. I’m not capable of more. The others don’t seem to be either. So he gives up. The ticking of the clock is noticeable in the silence. There isn’t even the familiar clanking of cutlery — typical of conversationless meals — since everything is plastic and paper. I spend long stretches of time in a sort of trance, staring at Strad and his plate, lost in thought, trying to make sure I haven’t overlooked any killing methods or schemes the murderer might have come up with.

While Strad chews on his food, Lily, too, stares at him. But hers is a very different look from mine. Her look is one of adoration.

Strad gazes at all of us sitting there stiffly, and says, “Do you guys always have this much fun?”

Georgia can’t help laughing.

When the fake bird flies out of the clock at nine, screaming “CUCKOO!!!” we all hit the ceiling except Jack.

“I saw it coming,” Jack explains.

Three more hours to go. Why did I think marking the slow passage of time with this clock would be a good idea?

“Ah!” shouts Strad, slapping the table, which scares me even more than the cuckoo did, “I have been wanting to ask you something for ages, Georgia!”

“I’m all ears,” she says.

“What in the world is the anagram for ‘Whiterose’ at the end of your novel The Liquid Angel? I’ve been racking my brains for months. I simply must know.”

“Otherwise what? You’ll die?” Georgia says.

He chuckles. “Uh, something like that.”

“And we wouldn’t want that, would we?” She pauses. “Which is why I’ve given you the answer.”

“What do you mean you’ve given me the answer? No you haven’t.”

She turns to the rest of us, “Have I?”

We nod.

She turns back to Strad. “You see. I have.”

“When?”

“A few seconds ago.”

After a pause, he says, “You’re not going to give it to me in a way I can understand?”