Scars

May 6, 2020

“What are the chances that we got the wrong person? Wasn’t there another Lucia, way down south, who we thought might be the one?” Tiffany asks.

She cuts into the last of her pork chop, taking another dainty bite.

Claire had some work to attend to, so it came down to me to visit Tiffany at her place and fill her in on what happened this afternoon.

“That was definitely her,” I say, pushing my finished pate aside. “Claire was being a stickler about not sharing the recording with anyone, but if you could hear it… you’d have no doubt its was her too.”

“So we’ve got nothing then,” Tiffany sighs. “No hard evidence that anything happened, no leads to other people that we can follow up on, nothing.”

“We have evidence that she was ****.”

“By who?” she sputters. “Some mysterious guy in a suit? What are we going to do with that?”

“It was worth a shot anyways,” I say, but inside, we both know that this was a failure.

It was always going to be a bit of a long-shot. Tiffany wasn’t in the heat of it at the Playboy Mansion that day, as the guys had all left to some exclusive wing that she wasn’t invited to. She’d only heard snippets from Eric boasting to her after the fact, snippets that, at the time, she had no interest in listening to.

Tiffany clears her plate, and we thank the staff who emerge to take the plates away. Were they listening? Doesn’t matter, this is stuff that can get back to Father. This is the kind of stuff that Father approves of. Did approve of us doing, even.

We regard each in other silence for a moment longer, and then Tiffany gets up.

“You hear that Morgan and Sean split up?” I say, changing the topic to try to lighten the mood. “What do you make of that?”

“I think they were just in it for the sex,” she says, shaking her head. She suddenly looks around nervously, as if somebody might have overheard, but the staff are all gone. “Don’t tell anyone I said that though! They’d think that I judge their relationships and that sex was…”

“Okay, okay, it’s forgotten already,” I say, holding up my hands.

“Let’s watch a movie,” she says quickly, still slightly flushed from her tiny faux pas.

“Have you ever seen Roman Holiday?” Tiffany asks, looking far more herself, elegant and excited.

We’re standing in her film room, tucked near the top of the home theatre, looking through her extensive collection of film reels. The place is filled top to bottom with movies from all genres and time periods; Tiffany said she has a storeroom elsewhere in the mansion where she keeps the spillover.

“Of course I have,” I say.

“Bet you’ve never seen it on film,” she says, pulling open a glass panel and delicately sliding out a reel that looks like it might have come from the 1950s.

Probably is from the 1950s, I amend.

“It’s an original?” I ask.

“And I love it so much,” she says, cradling it between it her arms. “Help me get it onto the projector?”

“You bet,” I say, and together, we lift the reel up.

Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck prance through the streets of Rome, lost in their perfect little world on the silver screen, and there’s an absolutely enchanted expression on Tiffany’s face.

“Tiff, sorry to distract you from the scene, but—”

“Shhh! They’re together on the boat now!”

“I know, but this is… kind of serious,” I say. “Like, has to be discussed while the movie is playing serious.”

“Oh.” Tiffany says.

She tears her eyes away from the screen and turns to look at me.

“There’s something I never told you about Dr. Kee,” I say. “He… wanted more than just money from me to get the operation done. He wanted… he demanded a referral from me.”

“Well that’s not so bad. If you need help, I can think of some people who would be interested in what he has to offer,” she says, glancing at the screen out of the corner of her eye.

“It would be nice if it were that easy,” I say.

I shake my head, sighing, afraid to say what I have to say now.

“He only wants you.”

“Me?” Tiffany says, putting a hand over her heart.

I have her full attention now. I see the expression on her face sink as she internalises what I’ve just said.

“And if he doesn’t get it, he’ll tell the world the truth about me. He knows. He figured it out. So it’s…”

I can’t look straight into her eyes anymore. My gaze flicks to the screen; boy and girl, they’re running from the agents up there on the screen, he’s about to fall in the river, she’s about to jump in and save him…

And here I am, pushing her off into the deep end.

“I don’t know… what does he want from me?” she asks quietly.

She’s staring at the screen now too.

“I think he just wants to be able to call you a client of his. Any operation would be fine. Even erasing your birthmark, but I don’t think you should…”

I fall silent, unable to complete the sentence. Do I really believe that? What do I believe?

“I’ve considered it before. It seems right for me to do,” she says.

Right for her to do.

I suddenly figure out why this makes me so uncomfortable.

There’s a good chance that word will get out if she undergoes the operation and gets rid of her birthmark. Dr. Kee would boast, a client would gossip, word would spread. The tabloids would run it as a headline, first chance they got. Her shame would be on display for the world to know. Stuff like that could end a career. Especially when one has the good girl reputation that Tiffany’s built for herself. That would be bad.

But it’s not about that.

Not really.

It’s about that girl who was so nervous about her body that she never let her past boyfriends see her naked. It’s about that girl that I held in my arms a week ago, who only got her first orgasm from somebody else a week ago, and only then because I was a nobody who had nobody to tell the secret to. It’s about that girl who felt that she had to hide the imperfections in her body, that she wasn’t good enough, that she could never be enough, as she was.

It’s about that girl who hates a part of herself.

And I know that cutting that birthmark out won’t fix her. The problem runs deeper than that.

“I’ve thought a lot about getting rid of it,” Tiffany says quietly. “But I’ve never been brave enough to actually do it. It would be easy, right? Not painful?”

“It probably will be,” I say, “But that’s not the point. I don’t think you should do this to yourself. Look, I don’t know how to say this, but—”

“But I have to! Or you… the truth about you, the world will know, it will all be over…”

“I know. I’ll take care of it,” I say, sounding much more confident than I really am. “I’ve got an idea. It will work.”

She pauses, looking at me doubtfully.

“Okay, maybe you do. But… what if I want to do this anyways?”

Oh God, what have I done.

I need to jump in this river, before it’s too late.

I can’t let her drown herself like this.

“Tiffany, you know that you’re beautiful, right?” I say, grabbing her arm. “All of you.”

Tiffany stares at me.

“Even this?” she says.

She wrenches away from me, pulls her pants down, then her panties, exposing her bare ass to me.

The splotchy purple mass stares back at me.

I take it in for a good ten seconds. See it, see her, see all of her. And my next two words are deadly serious.

“Especially this,” I say, reaching out and caressing her ass lightly.

She almost flinches as my fingers trail along the curves of her beautiful ass.

“I would make it all mine, if I could,” I whisper.

“But it’s so ugly,” Tiffany says, not even daring to look down at it.

“It’s not. Don’t say that. It may be imperfect, but it’s not ugly,” I say. “Look, I know I’m not a real artist, but… you know what my art looks like. It’s crap, it’s junk, it’s waste that nobody wants. Or at least that’s what a person on the street would think, before I’ve picked it up. But I give it care.”

I caress her ass again.

“I own it, for all its flaws.”

A light squeeze.

“I give it love.”

A heavier squeeze.

“And so it becomes beautiful. It becomes art.”

I trace my hand around the edges of her ass again.

“And the rest of the world? They grow to love it too.”

I hug her.

“It’s like that. It’s not perfect, and I know, you must be thinking inside, but I must be perfect, but that’s just Father’s fucked up lessons drilled deep inside of you… that good girl image you have, I mean, yes, you’re a good person, but that image is an ideal, Tiff, nobody can live up to it, not even you, because, goddamnit, nobody’s perfect.”

Those last two words hit her hard.

She shivers, staring at the screen, staring at Audrey Hepburn kissing Gregory Peck, shivers in my arms, and turns to look at me, her eyes moist.

“Why do I feel old?” she whispers in a raspy voice. “Why do I think that you’re right?”

“Because you’re beautiful,” I say, holding her tight, kissing the top of her head. “And smart, and wise, and you know right from wrong.”

She gulps back something, nodding, and slowly places her hand on her ass, as if feeling it for a first time. She breathes out.

It’s a long exhalation, a release of something deep, and her hand moves to place mine over her ass. She holds it in place there, and I’m more than happy to let it rest.

“I want to do it with you,” she says, turning to face me.

That takes me by surprise.

“You… are you sure? You were so hesitant before…”

“I’ve made up my mind,” she says, leaning in, kissing me. She breaks away half a second later. “Just make sure you get Hanna Maria, okay?”

I was planning to, anyways, but her voice is strangely insistent.

“Alright?” I say, confused.

“Do it for me,” she says, and then she kisses me again. “Please.”

Now, how could I deny this girl in my arms?