From Chapter 2

By the time Dahlman finally shows up at Musso's, I'm halfway done with the porterhouse. It's fantastic. I can't remember the last time I just ate a giant slab of meat like this.

"What the fuck are you doing in the 'new' room?" he shouts loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear.

My excitement over the porterhouse is immediately tempered by the way his stick legs, barrel chest, and thinning gray ponytail amplifies the bloated feeling in my newly stretched stomach. He has the sleazy pan-sexual look of a failed pornographer, and recalling the fact that he's never openly hit on me only makes me more repulsed. A cellphone earpiece still attached to his head, he waddles towards me like a giant ground sloth.

"You're late." I counter.

"My Porsche got pancaked. I parked it in one of those multi-level garages, and the whole thing came down in an aftershock yesterday. They'll need the jaws of life to get it out." Dahlman sits down on the stool next to me and orders a Kahlua on the rocks. "Isabel darling, I'm going to make you more famous than Basquiat." He pulls out a purple check and waves it in front of my eyes just long enough for me to see that it's for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

"Mine?" I reach for it, but he puts it back in his pocket.

"Alex Tzu." He sips his Kahlua with his pinky finger raised like an old lady taking tea. "The dot-com dork. The guy's fucking in love with you. Thinks you're the next Cassius Coolidge. He even wants you to come over to a cocktail party at his house tonight."

Before I can ask him who Cassius Coolidge is, he stabs an enraged finger at me.

"Jesus Christ, Isabel! Would it kill you to smile once in awhile? You look positively lugubrious."

"I'm an artist, I don't have to smile."

"Then how about a tit job? I could triple your sales with a C-cup." He sips again at his Kahlua, then finally removes the cellphone earpiece and pockets it.

"No."

"I get you the cover of the Sunday Calendar section, and this is how you treat me?"

"I got the cover?"

"No, I got the cover… for you."

"That's great!" Excitement temporarily overtakes my repulsion.

"Well think about it, okay? I mean, the tit job." He cups his hands to demonstrate the heft breast implants would give me.

"I'm not getting a tit job."

"Fine, fuck you." Dahlman shakes his head. "But I don't want to hear any shit when it comes to this…"

He pulls a torn magazine ad from his back pocket and smoothes it out on the bar. It features a middle-aged female naval officer standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier. She's wearing dress whites and has a half-smiling look of authority that somehow seems to suggest more of a dominatrix than a commanding officer. In bold letters across the top it says "LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS!" and then below "Have you talked to your doctor about VR?" There's no text at all to explain what it is that's actually being advertised.

"I don't get it." I admit.

"Okay, how about this, then…"

Dahlman pulls a second and far more crumpled magazine ad out of his front pocket and again smoothes it on the bar. This one is even more bizarre, with a line of high school boys in tuxedoes in the process of pinning corsages on their prom dates. The prom dates are also all high school-aged with the exception of one—a giggling woman with gray hair who must be at least sixty. This time the copy reads "YOUTH IS WASTED ON THE YOUNG!" but with the same "Have you talked to your doctor about VR?" printed below. For the life of me, I can't figure out the meaning of either of the two ads.

"I still don't get it," I shake my head. "What the hell does 'VR' stand for?"

"Vaginal Rejuvenation."

"Vaginal what?"

"It's the fucking future of plastic surgery, baby. A little clitoral resurfacing here, an aesthetic snip of the meat flaps there, and you're ready to spread for Playboy. In ten years it'll be bigger than liposuction." His face contorts into the half-sneer/half-grimace that he uses instead of a smile.

I'm actually struck dumb by this as my brain finally deciphers the message the two ads are trying to convey.

"Get this, they're offering a quarter mil for TV, billboard, magazine, internet… the works," Dahlman continues. "That's a quarter of a million dollars for less than a week's work. It's fucking juicy."

"Let me get this straight. You want… you want me to do an ad for vaginal rejuvenation?" I ask, incredulously.

"Not just one ad, a whole fucking series. You see, they're using real people in these ads. It's part of a strategy to mainstream the idea. You know, like those football players they got to hock Viagra. I mean this naval officer…" he points to the ad lying on the bar "…is like a real naval officer fighting in Iraq. And this old grandma woman…" he points to the other ad "…is like a real old grandma. She even—"

"No way." I finally recover enough to cut him off.

"What are you talking about? For Christ's sake, they've even come up with a tag line for you: Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder. Picture yourself painting at the easel while a whole troupe of bowtie-clad Chippendale dancers—"

"Dahlman!" I cut him off again. "I don't care what they're paying. There's nothing wrong with my vagina, and there is no fucking way I'm getting surgery."

"Don't be silly. You don't have to actually have the surgery. You just need to make people think you've had the surgery."

"NO!" I crumple up the ads and throw them at him for emphasis.

Dahlman leaps off the stool so suddenly that for a second I think he's going to hit me, but instead waves at the group of vaguely familiar-looking young actors in the corner booth.

"Isabel, don't make me break your thumbs, because I'll do it."

"If you break my thumbs, I won't be able to paint anymore."

"You can paint with your mouth like a quadriplegic. It'll add a human interest side to your mystique."

"I'm not doing it."

"As I said, we stand to make a quarter million off this ad campaign, so obviously I'm going to win this argument, but since I have another engagement to attend, let's continue this later." He checks his watch. "That said, you goddamn motherfucking better be at this party tonight." He hands me Alex Tzu's address written on the back of a Dahlman Gallery card. "Forbes says the guy's thrown away almost a billion dollars on random shit in the last four years, and he ain't even close to slowing down. Besides, the Times photographer's gonna be there to get the Calendar cover photo. He wants to shoot you cinéma vérité style."

"You know I hate these things."

"Don't fuck me on this, Isabel! Don't you fuck me!" He suddenly screams.

People all over the restaurant are turning around in their booths to look.

"Okay. I'll be there," I try my best to calm him down.

"Good," Dahlman's voice immediately drops back to normal. "Now give me a ride over to Paramount." He hops up and starts heading for the door.

"What about your bill?" I call after him.

"Hey, you're the famous artist, aren't you?" He leaves without looking back.