Beautiful You: A Novel

  All of the research and erotic training Maxwell had done with swamis and witch doctors and courtesans—all the sex secrets of the ancient world—he was about to market them to the modern woman. Every gal from Omaha to Oslo would soon be savoring the pounding cut-loose orgasms Penny had only recently discovered. It was stunning to imagine how this might change the world. As Maxwell’s former loves had demonstrated, given the right sexual satisfaction women could flower, lose weight, kick drugs. Every woman’s personal fulfillment was only weeks away.

  Just in the past few days, sequestered in Maxwell’s Parisian penthouse, Penny had dropped eight pounds. She slept like a baby. She’d never felt more relaxed and at ease.

  In secret, she was a little proud that she’d made her own contribution to the project. Max was still tweaking some recipes. Polishing off any rough edges. In the near future, girls just like her, average girls without stellar bodies and luscious faces, they would have access to the kind of bone-melting pleasure that only movie stars currently enjoyed.

  As she scrolled through photos of prototype sex toys, lubricants, and nightgowns, Penny asked, “Why ‘Beautiful You’?”

  Maxwell shrugged. “The publicity wonks said it tested the best. Plus, it translates into any language.”

  Young or old. Fat or short. Billions of women would learn to love the bodies in which they were alive. Beautiful You would be a blessing to all womankind. Penny knew that if the mass-marketed products worked half as well as the prototypes he’d been demonstrating on her, C. Linus Maxwell would quickly double his fortune. Kidding him, she asked, “Don’t you have enough money?”

  There it was again. That sad smile flitted across his lips. “It’s not about the profits,” he told her. “Not at the price point I have in mind.”

  It was about his mother, Penny guessed. Wasn’t it every boy’s dream to fete his long-suffering mom? Maxwell’s had slaved away to give her boy a head start in the world, and then she’d died before he could show his gratitude. It was a little creepy: the idea that he was honoring his mother by showering women with great sex … but his motives were noble and touching.

  A thought struck her. It was none of her business, but she asked, “Do you still miss her? Your mom?”

  He didn’t answer. He went back to silently reading his press release.

  Impulsively, she leaned over and pecked him on the cheek.

  “What’s that for?” he asked.

  “For being such a loving son.”

  And there it was again. The wan, furtive smile of a lonely little orphan.

  “It’s not like Spanish fly. There’s no comparison,” he insisted.

  The two of them were making a rare public appearance. They were dining in a chic restaurant in the St.-Germain neighborhood of the sixth arrondissement. As usual their candlelit table was the center of attention. Even the aloof Parisians were shamelessly eyeballing them.

  The fabled aphrodisiac known as Spanish fly, Maxwell explained, was the emerald-green blister beetle, Lytta vesicatoria. When the dead insects were dried and ground to a fine powder, they could be mixed into a beverage. The tainted drink would cause severe urinary tract inflammation. That was the legendary effect that supposedly prompted women to beg for intercourse. In actuality, the effect was about as exciting as an internal case of poison oak.

  “This,” Maxwell said, rolling a pink capsule between his fingers, “this is different.”

  He’d removed the new invention from his pocket only a moment earlier. Like all his other toys, the pink pill was a product from the new Beautiful You line. About the size of a robin’s egg, it looked like a piece of candy. Like something that should be nestled in an Easter basket. It was the color of bubble gum.

  Penny took it from his hand. “So I’m supposed to swallow this?”

  Maxwell laughed at her innocence. He shook his head, saying, “No, my dear, it’s a vaginal suppository perfectly formulated to heighten female desire.”

  He observed Penny rolling the pink bead between her fingers. “Note the slight stickiness of the outer coating.” He said, “It’s a layer of silicone impregnated with a mild herbal stimulant. If a penis were to enter the vaginal cavity and encounter the bead, both partners would share the pleasure of the effect.”

  Penny squeezed it between her fingers. It felt soft. In the palm of her hand it was surprisingly heavy. She smiled slyly, lifted the napkin from her lap, and daubed daintily at the corners of her mouth. She asked a passing waiter, “Excusez moi, where is your toilette?”

  On her return from the bathroom, Penny saw her nemesis: Alouette. She was seated at a discreet corner banquette, tucked away where she’d draw no public notice. Alouette’s face looked gaunt, her cheeks more hollowed than Penny recalled. The actress’s eyes looked sunken.

  Somehow the week’s bedroom ordeals had calmed Penny and filled her with a quiet confidence. She strode brazenly to her rival’s table. The pink bead was inside her, working whatever magic Maxwell had designed into it. Penny regarded the haggard woman and said, “Alouette, you’re looking well.”

  “No, I’m not,” the actress shot back. “I look like shit, and it’s all Max’s fault.”

  Penny narrowed her eyes. “Are you following me?”

  Alouette sighed. She drew the fingers of one hand through her long, rich hair.

  Penny couldn’t help but notice that strands came off between those fingers. Already, a scattering of fallen hair dusted the table and the booth’s upholstery.

  “My impulse had been to save you, little mouse,” Alouette began. “But now I see that you’ve let him reduce you to a stupid slut.”

  Penny winced at the harsh word.

  “Despite my warning, you’ve allowed Maxwell to bewitch you.” Alouette’s eyes filled with pity. She spoke without rancor in her voice. “You were someone, before. How quickly you’ve thrown your dreams away and become just your hungry conass.”

  Penny turned to leave, but Alouette asked, “Tell me. Has he given you the black bead yet?”

  “What black bead?” Penny asked warily.

  But the actress merely smiled. “This should be amusing,” she sneered.

  Back at her own table Maxwell didn’t rise to seat her. Instead he gestured for her to come to him and hold out her hand. He took it and held it warmly for a moment. He kissed the back, placing something in her palm, and when Penny opened her fingers, there it was: a black bead. It looked identical in size and shape to the first bead. Only the color was different.

  “Pink for the vagina,” Max announced. “Black for your lovely anus. It’s best to keep things simple; the entire Beautiful You line of products will use that same color-coding system.”

  Dutifully, Penny made a second trip to the toilets.

  Before she’d returned to the table the beads were already having their effect. Maxwell seated her, and then returned to his chair opposite. They perused their menus.

  The sensation began like a sweet burning within her groin. Then a delicious cramping. This increased until it felt as if something ravenous, with wonderfully soft teeth, were gnawing on her insides, devouring her from within.

  She gasped with a sound that caught people’s attention. Coiffed heads turned to stare. To save face she put her napkin to her mouth and faked a cough. It was better that people think she had tuberculosis than know she was enduring a string of multiple orgasms.

  “Don’t worry,” Maxwell said, “there will be no permanent damage. The silicone coating is very soft.”

  Something twisted and wrestled, embedded far beneath her skin.

  “Both of the beads are earth magnets,” Max explained. “I could not give them to you at the same time because the attraction between them is so strong.” He lifted his pen and made ready to jot notes. “The ancient Peruvian tribe the Chichlachies called them ‘married stones,’ because once they find each other they’re almost impossible to separate.”

  As he described it, the black bead was planted against the anterior wall
of her rectum. The pink one was lodged against the posterior wall of her vagina. The stones, even coated in silicone and inserted in her two very different orifices, the stones had found each other. Even now, the thin muscular wall between her two cavities, with all its rich network of nerve endings, it was being crushed and kneaded by the two strong magnets. They ground that most sensitive spot between them.

  Savoring her reaction, the gloating genius waved to flag a waiter. “Only your sensitive perineal sponge separates them. You are helpless. Your entire erogenous nervous system is under assault.”

  To keep from crying out, Penny bit down on her meticulously manicured finger. Her nipples grew so erect that her breasts seemed ready to levitate from the cups of her push-up bra.

  “You are still a young girl,” Maxwell said. He studied her reaction intently. “If you can’t cope with the full potential of a woman’s body, I understand.” He was mocking her, daring her to endure this trial in public. As elegant twosomes dined and chatted near them, orgasmic waves of sexual energy swept over Penny.

  A waiter stepped up to their table and asked, “Would you care to order, madam?”

  Her pelvis felt as if planets were colliding, milling together inside of her. Great seas were heaving, eroding her sanity. She crossed her legs tightly, in a vain attempt to clamp down the rising gusher.

  A bemused tone in his voice, Maxwell told the waiter, “Tonight the lady would love to indulge in a thick steak.” Addressing her, he added, “Or would a helping of juicy tongue be more to your liking?”

  Even with shuddering full-body spasms of ecstasy coursing through her, Penny felt the toe of Maxwell’s shoe slide up the inside of her leg. From her ankle to her knee, its smooth hardness traveled until it was prodding her crotch. It reminded her of the moment they’d first met: her sprawled on the carpet, seeing her own disheveled face reflected in the polished toe of his handmade footwear. She couldn’t speak. With shaking hands she touched the skirt of her gown and found it soaked. The napkin in her lap was likewise drenched. Mindless of the waiter, she shoved Max’s foot away and struggled to stand. Clutching the backs of chairs, disturbing their moneyed occupants, she stumbled back toward the toilets. Her legs shook, weakened by spasms of pleasure. When she was almost to the door, Penny’s knees buckled, and she fell. She was so exhausted. Her hair hanging in her face, she crawled the final steps and took refuge in the tiled sanctuary. Safely hidden in a cubicle, she hiked up her damp skirt and plunged two fingers into herself. She could feel the pink bead but couldn’t capture it. The silicone was too slick.

  Arching her back, Penny slid two fingers into her anus and tried in vain to find the black bead.

  A voice behind her said, “You cannot extract them by yourself.” It was Alouette. The cinema star had followed her into the toilet cubicle. She stood, coolly assessing Penny’s erotic dilemma. “Last year,” Alouette confessed, “I was caught in this very same toilet. It was a busboy who saved my sanity. That brave teenage boy. As if it were a snake’s venom, he sucked the black bead from my derriere.”

  Thrusting her exposed pubis forward, Penny begged, “Please,” her voice nothing more than a whimper.

  Alouette appraised the bared vulva and whistled softly. “So this is Maxwell’s attraction to you, little mouse. Your pussy is the most beautiful I’ve ever laid eyes on.” She wet her lips. “Glorious.”

  Penny’s secretions dripped to the floor, where they’d begun to pool.

  “Let yourself go,” Alouette advised. “Only the intense flow of your feminine juices can flush the love stone from its seat!” Alouette knelt on the tiled floor and gripped Penny’s hips in her hands. Planting her movie star mouth tightly over the younger woman’s dripping vagina, she began to suck. Penny bore down, riding that lovely face as if it were a saddle. She could feel Alouette’s fingers exploring inside her rectum.

  Gradually the flood of stimulation receded. Alouette lifted her mouth from Penny’s groin and spit the pink bead into the toilet bowl. Deprived of its partner, the black bead slipped out easily, pinched between the actress’s fingers, and she held it for Penny’s inspection before letting it plunk into the water. The two magnets clicked together with a frightening force, and Alouette flushed them away. Appraising the damage done to Penny’s masque, she said, “Do not thank me, little mouse. One day you will wish I had let you die from the pleasure.” As she went to a mirror and began to repair her own smeared lipstick, she said, “It is already too late for you. Soon you will be like the rest of us, his slave.”

  When they weren’t banqueting on delectable food among illustrious people, they were being chauffeured back and forth between Maxwell’s penthouse in Paris and his château in the Loire Valley. There she wandered the echoing salons, examining the priceless antiquities that had belonged to so many celebrities before Max. There was something so isolating about being famous. She wandered the château’s formal parterre gardens while security patrols armed with machine guns watched her from the roof, and closed-circuit cameras documented her every step.

  Penny had chewed her knuckles raw to stifle her shrieks of ecstasy. She thought that if she overindulged for a few months, an overdose of pleasure would leave her satisfied for life. She might momentarily reflect on some larger issue, like famine in the Sudan, but then Max would covertly slip some thrilling new product into her and her mind would become a blank. Euphoria erased everything. She had no energy left over to fret about her stalled legal career or the ominous future of her aging parents in Nebraska. Or global climate change. She was grounded entirely in her body, in the present moment of glorious sensation. No past or future existed, and Max could keep her there. Under his touch the world collapsed. Nothing existed beyond Paris, beyond his bed, beyond her own pulsating clitoris.

  She was getting everything she’d ever been taught would make her happy—Gucci clothes, great sex, her name a household word—and every day she felt more miserable. It didn’t help that people expected her to be ecstatic. No one wanted to hear the problems of a disappointed Cinderella; she was supposed to live happily ever after. But this … none of this was the great life’s mission she’d been hoping to find.

  Almost eagerly, she counted down. Only eighty-seven days left.

  At her age Penny knew she ought to be living large, making herself available to people, and having misadventures. She longed to get smashed at one of the noisy blowout parties that her friend Monique was probably throwing at right this very moment. She would even settle for a Sigma Chi mixer with beer kegs and frat boys using their permanent erections to menace coeds.

  In the penthouse or château, when they were alone together, Max never wanted to talk. He only wanted to test his tantric thingamajigs on her. She told herself he was under pressure. With Beautiful You only a month away from rollout, everything had to be perfect. Still, she tried to leaven his mood. She told him jokes. She complimented him on his cars, his hair, his clothes, but he shrugged off the flattery.

  Even the fabled shopping of the French capital wasn’t much fun. Not after she’d been in and out of the elegant boutiques for weeks. Top designers vied for Penny to wear their clothes. No matter what she tried on they told her she looked fantastic. They even offered her kickbacks to wear their labels at high-profile events. It was all so phony. She knew she looked awful, and that they only wanted the publicity. Her neck was too short and thick. Her breasts were too small. Her breasts weren’t even the same size. Her hips were too wide. The mirrors in the ateliers didn’t lie.

  Before she’d gotten famous, people in New York had openly insulted her body, but at least they’d been telling her the truth.

  The only part of her anatomy that was beautiful was her privates. And Penny could hardly ask Christian Lacroix to design a gown that would highlight those.

  Out shopping, she looked for gifts that might amuse Max, but that was a steep order. What did you give the man who had everything? Who’d had everyone? The only thing that seemed to please Maxwell was when a prototype
or a new formula brought her to higher crescendos of pleasure. The greater her excitement, the greater his. Realizing that, Penny resolved to give him a gift in the only way possible.

  One night, when a particular device—a toy like a pinecone engineered to expand inside her, based on some pre-Columbian doohickey—when it failed, Penny didn’t let on. It felt nice, but that was all. Penny worried that she might be getting jaded. Perhaps she was suffering some sort of pleasure-center fatigue. When she sensed Max’s disappointment, she couldn’t help but amp up her performance. She flopped around the bed like a sea lion and flapped her arms. She barked like a dog and crowed like a rooster.

  At the height of her well-intentioned albeit faked orgasm, Maxwell told her, “Stop.”

  He looked at her, his jaw set. He tugged the silken cord that tethered the toy and it slipped from between Penny’s legs. Like a sulking child, he wrapped the cord around the device, saying, “Don’t imagine that you can ever lie to me. A scientist is first and foremost a keen observer. Your heart rate never rose above a hundred and five beats per minute. Your blood pressure hasn’t budged since we started.”

  Clearly disappointed, he set the failed device on the bedside table. “What I treasure most about you is your honest, unfiltered feedback.” He pressed a button to summon the butler. “Let’s forget tonight. Tonight is wasted.”

  Maxwell retrieved the remote control and brought the television to life. The noise of gunfire and squealing tires filled the spacious bedroom. Not taking his eyes off the screen, he said, “You must never, ever again fake it with me.”

  His eyes never leaving the TV screen, he said, “If I wanted fake results I’d still be testing on prostitutes.”