Free Sleeping Beauties by Susanna Moore Page B

me! Fuck!” She rubbed her jaw.
    “I’m sorry,” Clio said, staring at her.
    Mimi leaned forward to look at her closely. “You could probably start doing some of these stretches yourself. It’s never too soon, girl.”
    Clio nodded. She had expected disdain, not advice. She was absolutely ready to begin chin exercises. She ran her hand over her throat.
    “Mimi is very hedonistic,” Judy said with a sigh.
    “Like you even know what the word means,” Mimi said, smiling at Clio for the first time.
    “You spend all your money on body treatments and clothes. How can you spend your money on seaweed body facials? on clothes? You know what a dress is worth two minutes after you leave the store?” Clio was surprised to see Judy so indignant.
    “I think that buying clothes is the very definition of luxury.” Mimi lay back on a rubber mat. “All that money on something so beautiful and so worthless.” She closed her green eyes and shuddered with delight. “It wouldn’t mean as much otherwise.”
    “It’s like drinking expensive wine,” Judy said, looking up for the first time. “It’s just gone when you’re finished. You might as well eat a hundred-dollar bill.”
    Mimi licked her lips. “But a hundred-dollar bill has no taste,” she said. “Or has it?”
    Judy shook her head in disapproval.
    Clio laughed. She had never thought of luxury in quite that way.
    “Clio understands,” Mimi said, opening one eye to look at her. “Don’t you, baby?”
    “I think I do,” Clio said as she basked in the ease, the swiftness, of her corruption.
    •   •   •
    On the days that Mimi and Clio did not sit in the shallow end of the pool listening to Doug Sahm records and drinking margaritas, Mimi drove Clio into Beverly Hills. Clio was not allowed to use the beautiful Bentley that Tommy had given to her in Honolulu because Tommy, who had worked in parking lots when he first arrived in Los Angeles, disapproved of the way that attendants handled the cars. She was happy to have Mimi drive her. She admired Mimi’s expediency, and her even, generous temper. She liked that Mimi did not envy her.
    Mimi introduced Clio to her manicurist and to the maître d’hôtel at La Dora and to the salesgirls at Carole Lee. She took Clio to her electrolysis technician. Mimi had had every hair on her legs and arms removed—a process that had taken twelve years. She was having her pubic hair plucked into the shape of a heart.
    She took Clio to luncheons at her girlfriends’ big, clean houses. The women were full of gaiety and affection. Even though the lunch party might be in celebration of a new husband or a new part in a movie, the women often brought presents for each other, very expensive presents—pink leather jackets and Georgian silver place settings. They drank champagne, and then, suffused with confidence, spread out through the little streets between Wilshire Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard to spend money. The women bought things for their children, their maids, their mothers and husbands and sisters, perhaps because there was little more, no matter how tirelessly and imaginatively they tried, to buy for themselves.
    Like Tommy, Mimi lived in the present, at least as far as hangovers and due bills were concerned. Her credit card statements were divided, not always evenly, and mailed to the business managers of several of her boyfriends. Bad headaches at five in the afternoon were averted by drinking straight through the day. “It is only if you stop,” she saidto Clio, “that you feel bad.” It was a theory, Clio thought, that could be applied to most things.
    One chilly afternoon, Mimi took Clio to a baby shower at the house of her friend Deirdre Michael. Clio wore flannel trousers and a sweater, not knowing better, but the women, taking advantage of the cool weather, wore kid gloves and tight suits with peplums, and suede boots to the thigh. They sat on their knees on a thin Aubusson carpet, their skirts hiked