Terror of Beauty

Monday brought the first miracle, as Edelman boarded the elevator, bound for the lobby. The doors opened and there she was, leaning againts the rear wall. He almost fainted, seeing her in person fot the first time. He thought for a moment she might be one of the terribly real flights of fantaay, his curse for so many years before therapy subdued them. She wore cutoffs and modest halter top, feet in ragged sneakers, chestnut hair spilling in wild disarray from a bright orange headband. No makeup, but Edelman recognized her immediately. He'd first seen that face on Cosmopolitan and Vogue covers nearly three years ago. One wall of his three-room apartment was a shrine to those dark eyes, pouting lips. His Fantasies -spsecially his darker fantasies- were filling with her. "Morning!" she said as Edelman stepped into the elevator. Her mouth was not so pouty without lipstick. Her teeth were bright, her smile genuine. "Good morning!" Edelman said, managing to keep his breakfast down. His heart thundered so hard he expected her to hear it in the confirmed space of the elevator. They rode down to the lobby without any further words. Edelman stepped back to let her out, then she smile again, said "see y'round" strode away with a purposeful, almost manly gait. Edelman wandered after her, his knees weak, his heart still pounding. Rachel McNichol! in his building! At this hour, in those clothes, it seems unlikely she was only visiting. it was barely eight o'clock, shadows still long on 75th street, when Edelman stepped out into the August Heat. Rachel McNichol! He remembered the first time he'd learned her name. He'd seen her in catalogs piled up by the mailboxes in the lobby anteroom; fashion catalogs diisplaying beautiful, anonymous women. Long, firm bodies; proud, haughty faces. The kinds of faces Edelman always had that terrible love/hate thing about. Faces, bodies he craved, that were always beyond his reach, lofty and aloof. Mocking him, he sometimes thought, with their perfect beauty, their unattainability. In their midst one dark-eyed, dark-haired goddess who stood out from the rest, seizing his heart and mind in a way he'd not experienced since the days of sneaking Playboy magazines into his mother's house, dreaming after airbrushed gatefold fantasies. Imagining the things he might do to them, given the opportunity. They had names, though,; the catalogs' models were never identified. Then, one day, passing the news vendor's kiosk in 28th Street station-long gone with the renovations- he waw her face on the cover of Vogue. Heavily made up after the fashion of the magazine that year, but he recognized the chin, the pout. He bought the magazine, found inside two dozen pages with her face. On the contents page he also found her name: Rachel McNichol. Three issues later she was featured on the cover again, again four month after that. The next month, thought she was not on the cover, Edelman bought the issue anyway, in the hope there might be interior pages -particularly lingerie ads- featuring her perfect face and lithe, athletic form. He was rewarded with short article of her -a single page feature on fast rising star modeling firmament. He learned she was from Texas-the accent in the few words he'd heard from her therefore came as no surprise-twenty years old, single. She lived alone, he read, even eschewing the usual bevy of cats with which the young women of Edelman's acquaintance seemed so obsessed. Edelman was allergic to cats and dogs. He was delighted to discover there was, in this, no barrier to his fantasies. He spent the rest of the day in a daze, longing for five o'clock, aching to get back home. Thinking about her made his headache, the way it did before the therapy. That evening he invented excuses to ride the elevator in his building-three trips to the grocery store on Columbus Avenue, each time for a single item; garbage that must be taken out; over to Columbus again for a newspaper--in the hopes of seeing her. He checked the names on the mailboxes three times; the small cards over the door buzzers twice. She was not listed, might be subletting. He knew of at least three residents on the floors above him who took August off, abandoning the inhospitable city for the Islands or the Cape. He did not see her that evening, and although he took theelevator at precisely the same hour for the next four mornings-even lingering in the lobby to the point of arriving late at the office on Thursday--she did not appear. Friday afternoon found him coming home from work, tired, out of sorts, generally pissed off with the world. He worked for De Vere Pharmaceuticals, on Park Avenue South, near 28th. He was good at his work-better than almost anyone else there-knew the mixing of chemicals, had the touch, the art. But there were idiots above him who stood in his way, and his fellow emplovees were never much interested in the things he wanted to talk about. They'd even scoffed, some of them, when he'd let it slip he belonged to a fantasy and role-playing club. "That makes sense, for somebody with your problems," Bill Whittaker said, making Edelman regret ever confiding in him. Adding to Edelman's misery this particular day, he'd made the mistake of asking Carolyn Murray to have dinner with him that evening, an invitation she loudly and mockingly rejected in the middle of the lunchroom. Life sucks, Edelman thought, riding the subway, imagining all the nasty things he could do to Carolyn Murray, hurtful things that had a lot to do with rage and frustration little to do with the s****l forms they took. On top of that, he had not seen Rachel since Monday morning. He was ready to believe he'd imagined the whole thing -not so unlikely as he would have wished, given his history, his problems. There was that time last Christmas ... He shuddered at the clouded memory of his delusion. If the elevator encounter was..... 'There she is!' Coming down 75th from Central Park West. Casual business garb, skirt, blouse, sensible shoes. Hair shaped into a perfect frame for her exquisitely made-up face. Carrying a large stack of library books; seven or eight volumes Edelman guessed. Piled against her right arm, pushing the breast on that side up into the deep V of her open-necked V Blouse. She was distracted. Edelmnan could see. Her eyes on the street before her, on the hose snaking across the sidewalk. Young Sanchez, the summer doorman, was watering the potted plants along the front of the building, talking to a plain-faced girl in khaki cutoffs and a black halter top. The dark green garden hose looped and piled across the sidewalk. Two steps and Rachel would trip, Edelman was sure. He bolted forward, crying "Look out!" just as her right toe hooked under the first loop of hose. She snapped back to the present, the place. Her eyes went wide. The library books arced out of her arms. She pitched forward. Edelman was there. He caught her, smoothly, easily. He was bigger than her by half, a strong man. He caught her as he would a child, she weighed so little. He felt surprise, discovering this; the lingerie ads revealed no shortage of soft, supple flesh. "Oh!" she said. Edelman felt her legs stiffen to regain weight and control. She lifted herself out of his arms, but he held on to the memory of her. Thanks." She smiled the covergirl smile. That could have been...costly." Edelman bent to gather her books -cconomics and real estate- his mind racing. "Costly?"" he asked, as if he did not know how damaging to her daily job would be a skinned knee, a scraped cheek or nose. "I'm a model," she said. She moderated the Texas drawl carefully. He might not even have noticed it, were he not listening for it. "I could have cost myself a few weeks' work. Oh, thanks." She took the pile of books back on her left arm, extended her free hand. "Rachel McNichol."" "Bob Edelman. We...met in the elevator the other morning, didn't we?" Now that he was into the flow of it, fabrication came easily. He could pretend not to know who she was, that it had been her Monday morning. Better than admitting to the wall shrine in his apartment. "Oh, yeah." Her smile broadened. "You live here, Mr.Edelman?" "Yes. Third floor." He pointed up, generally. His apartment faced out onto the park, not 75th. "Then I guess we'll be seeing more of each other, won't we? I'm subletting, the Richardson place.'" She dropped her voice at the last words. Subletting was not allowed in the building, Tenants developed distant cousins, come to housesit in the summer months.