The Prettiest Girl in Sight
The waitress cleared her throat as she held out her order pad and pen. Deep in conversation, the young couple hadn't noticed her arrival. The woman glanced at her first, with perhaps a trace of jealousy. That's right, sweetie, the waitress thought, I could take this guy away from you in a heartbeat. The girl's companion looked up and gave the waitress something more than a glance. She was a looker and had found that being dressed a little provocatively really helped her tip count. But this guy's look lasted longer than usual, turning into a rather rude stare before he turned away, shaking his head.
"I've been working too hard," he said. "I'm seeing things. I could have sworn there was a waitress standing here."
"I am standing here," the waitress told him. "Waiting to take your order." He turned back toward her, mouth gaping. "Elaine, did you hear that?"
The waitress was not amused. "Look, if you don't want to order anything right now, that's fine. But quit with the sarcasm."
"I heard it again!" the guy said. "A voice from nowhere. Ellie, can you hear anything?"
The waitress's patience was now gone. She shifted her attention from the guy to her order pad, ready to put it away. Only it wasn't there. She could feel it fine, she still held it in her hand but she couldn't see it at all. Nor could she see the pen poised in her other hand.
She looked and looked but she couldn't even see her hands. Or her arms. Or, looking down, any other part of her. She could see the couple before her at their table, she could see the other people at the other tables in the room, everything was normal except that she couldn't see any trace of herself. It was as though her body had vanished even though she was still here. Her order pad and pen clattered to the floor, heard but not seen.
The invisible waitress moaned.
*************
"I figure you still owe me," Elaine had said earlier that day. Someone watching the two women walking down the park trail might well have taken them for sisters: both tall, slim, with reddish blond hair, both pretty, but neither overwhelmingly so. Up close, differences would be more apparent. If not overwhelmingly pretty, her companion's face was exotic, unnaturally smooth, with eyes a trifle too deep. She had the appearance of a young woman but held an aura of great age. Up close, Elaine might still be called a girl but her companion would never be termed anything but a woman.
"Do you want more wealth?"
"No, no, the card you gave me will do fine." Kim (that being the best effort Elaine could make toward pronouncing even the first syllable of her name) had created a very effective yet inconspicuous way of making her rich. The complication had been that the wealth had to be personal. It would distort everybody in the world's wealth if Elaine just showed up with truckloads of hundred-dollar bills, say. Other possibilities had been used for others: the ability to see veins of precious metals in the ground, or pools of oil. Some attempts at granting wealth had been disastrous: Midas, for instance. Elaine was quite satisfied with the version of wealth they had eventually decided on. She now possessed a piece of plastic-like material with no writing or other marks on it but whenever she put it into an bank teller machine, the machine gave her money. Nobody else could use it if they got hold of it, Kim had told her, or even hold onto it for any length of time. They'd misplace it and forget about it and then she'd find it again. It wouldn't wear out either, except that it would change form as needed as money machines, or whatever replaced them, changed in times to come. Elaine didn't know about that part but the card sure worked now. Since last week, she had gotten all the money she wanted from a dozen different machines, with no problems, limits or questions asked. She didn't even need a password.
"I want you to make me very beautiful." Elaine had thought about it long enough.
The woman halted and turned to look directly at her. "Really. That's not what I thought you'd want."
Elaine halted with her and looked directly back. "What did you think I'd want? And tell me why can't I be beautiful?"
"Oh, you can be beautiful; in fact, you already are. I just thought you'd want some sort of power."
"You mean power like yours?"
"No, no, I don't think anybody would really desire that. I mean power over others, having your orders obeyed, maybe ruling an empire or something."
Elaine shivered. "No, I'm afraid that doesn't interest me. I want to be most beautiful, that's all."
"That's too vague. We need to work out something specific that I can do for you. Then I won't owe you anything more and I can move on."
"So tell me about beauty," Elaine said. "How do I tell you to make me more beautiful?"
"That's the problem. I could make you taller or shorter, if you like, or thinner, or exaggerate your figure. Anything physical that you can describe, I could change. You could have different eyes, different hair, a different face. But that would only be your idea of beauty, at best. More likely it would be your idea of vanity."
"OK. What if you decide? Make me look like your ideal of beauty."
"Would you look like me, then?"
Elaine considered the prospect. Kim was certainly attractive, perhaps the most striking woman Elaine had ever seen, but she wasn't the most beautiful. Elaine wouldn't want to look like her even if she could. "You're saying there's no absolute standard of beauty, then?"
"No, everybody has their own ideal. No matter your appearance, there will always be people who think somebody else looks better. You can't please them all."
"How about just men? I don't care that much about other women's opinions, as long as the men think I'm beautiful."
"It's the same with men as women. Their ideas of perfect beauty are just as varied. I could make you the perfect beauty of any man you choose, but other men would disagree."
Elaine nodded. "That'll do. Make me the ideal of beauty in Jeff's eyes."
"You're sure he's the one? For all time?"
Elaine thought about it. She liked Jeff, was very fond of Jeff, possibly could grow to love Jeff, but she wasn't at all sure he was her soul mate. He was quite handsome and no doubt a good catch but there were assuredly other fish in the sea. "You're right. Not in Jeff's eyes."
"How about if you make me the most beautiful woman for whatever man I'm with, no, make that whatever man I'm most attracted to at the time," she suggested.
"Your looks might change pretty suddenly if I do that. If you're with one guy, then you see another you like more...."
"Look," Elaine told her, exasperated, "You know what I want. You're the one that knows the ins and outs of this sort of thing and you still owe me. Figure something out."
"All right," Kim agreed after a moment. "I see a way to make it work. You'll be the best looking woman around to whatever man you're most attracted to in any given place."
"You don't mean hypnotizing them or anything, do you? I want them to be honest, to have their free will."
"No, no, nothing like that. Whatever man you find most attractive will see you as the best looking woman around, all by himself. No tampering with his mind. Will that do?"
It would have to, Ellie decided. It didn't sound like there was any way to do better.
*************
Now Elaine understood. No actress, she didn't pretend to look shocked or even surprised at what had happened to the waitress. She just managed to look dumbfounded and it was no act. As far as Jeff was concerned, she was now the best looking female in the room. The waitress had been better looking than her and, in a way, still was. Jeff couldn't see that though, nobody could see that, since nobody could see the waitress.
A shriek came from the air next to their table and they heard the sound of running feet. "Did you see what I did? She was here for a second and then she faded out of sight," Jeff exclaimed. "What happened to her?"
"I don't know," Elaine lied. She looked around to see if any of the other customers had noticed anything but apparently none had, not yet. It sounded like there was a commotion in the kitchen, though, so they could expect activity from that quarter any minute. What would the rest of the staff do? Try and find out what had made their waitress invisible, perhaps? "Maybe we should leave," Elaine suggested. "I don't think we want to be in the middle of whatever is going on." She jumped up, grabbed him by the hand and led him out of there.
By the time they had driven to their turnoff a half mile down the road, three police cars had sped the other way past them, lights flashing, sirens blaring. No doubt the diner was an active place to be right now. Jeff was still demanding an explanation, from the gods maybe, as he piloted the car to her place. Mostly he was babbling, speculating wildly and, Elaine was beginning to think, foolishly. Some other things made sense to her now. The TV weather girl who had popped out of sight when they were watching the evening news, for instance. The hurried announcement had been no lie. There had been technical difficulties with that part of the news broadcast after all.
But, she pondered, everything had been normal on the comedy they had watched after the news and there were some real stunners on that show. The models on some of the ads were good looking too, much better looking than she was. Did Jeff think she was prettier than all of them? No, she realized, he didn't, but they weren't live. It only happened to women in real time. If she was with Jeff, and Jeff saw a woman he thought looked prettier than her, the woman disappeared from view. His view and her view and everybody else's view. Any competition for her in Jeff's eyes went invisible. Permanently? Elaine hoped not, she wouldn't want to be responsible for those women to be unseen forever. It would be interesting to see how long the effect lasted though.
*************
By the middle of the next week, she knew some additional details, along with everybody else in the world. Dozens of nice-looking women had gone invisible in the past few days. The effect was apparently temporary. The weather girl was still invisible, and having a great time on the talk shows, but most were back in view in a day or two. The newspapers published their times unseen, like racing results or box scores. Some women had only been affected for an hour or so, with no apparent ill effects. In fact, none of them had reported any ill effects.
Elaine couldn't prove it, but she suspected the effect's duration depended how attractive Jeff found the subjects - she didn't think of them as victims. It couldn't be based on her opinions. For instance, a fashion model who Elaine thought was gorgeous had been out of sight for three days, which was reasonable, but the waitress from the diner, who Elaine had to admit had been attractive but certainly no more, was still invisible. It was too bad she was one of the few who didn't take it very well.
An odd thing was the lack of commotion caused by the whole thing. It made the news, sure, but there was no panic in the streets. Nobody seemed to notice that, besides women on certain live TV shows, it only happened locally - only, in fact, in places where Elaine and Jeff happened to be. As far as she could tell, there was no investigation going on to find the cause of the effect; there wasn't even any particular interest in the affected women once they rejoined the visible world. For their part, most of the women accepted their invisibility in good humor, once the novelty wore off. Many of them had taken advantage of their situation to play pranks, quite a number had settled various scores, some had engaged in various forms of larceny, but surprisingly few had been particularly disturbed by the experience. All very odd, Elaine thought.
Her relationship with Jeff had changed. He wasn't stupid, he had noticed that somehow they had witnessed all the vanishings, but he hadn't discussed it with her. After a couple of days, he began to suggest outings to places he hadn't much cared for in the past. Two days after they'd gone to the diner, he'd expressed an urge to go to the beach, for the first time since she'd known him. The effect wasn't yet widely known then, and there had been a chorus of shrieks and exclamations, followed by cries and wails, when a couple of dozen girls went invisible all at once. Afterwards there had been the sight of towels and jackets moving through the air as the affected girls snatched whatever covering they could grab and headed away from there, along with almost everybody else. That night there had been a similar scene in the nightclub they visited, with all those hot dancers disappearing…
Elaine hadn't known how many women in this world looked better to Jeff than she did.
She had become a sort of inadvertent benchmark of beauty, although she was the only one who realized it. Make that a benchmark of Jeff's idea of beauty. Elaine hadn't realized what a "breast man" he was. She herself was on the slender side, she knew that, but she didn't know how strong Jeff’s preference was for other assets. It seemed to her that the man had no taste. Downright homely girls, dowdy middle-aged women, women who had obviously caused overtime shifts at the silicone factory, it didn't matter. If Jeff saw a busty woman, she vanished. Gone invisible, accompanied sometimes by giggles, usually by shrieks.
And Jeff shrugged and chuckled.
By the end of the week, it was over between them. What she had seen in him, she had no idea. So one morning he left her apartment, and when he returned late that afternoon, he found that his key didn't fit the lock any more. Elaine thought that he could take the hint; he was a bright boy. He made a phone call; they agreed on a meeting later in the evening. He picked the place: a singles bar, a meat market. He kept glancing around expectantly while they talked. She offered to drop his things off where he worked. That would be fine, he agreed, eyes darting to pretty girl after pretty girl. He can look all he wants now, Elaine reflected.
Bitterness or sadness? She didn't know, she just knew it was time to leave. Shed known the mood before, and she'd probably know it again. Breaking up really is hard to do.
"See you around," she said as she got up from the table.
"Yeah, maybe we can get together some time. You know, have lunch, something." His eyes kept flickering but maybe now there was a little less expectation in them, maybe a little desperation instead. He could see so many girls, so many really good-looking girls. What was wrong that he could still see them? Finally he looked up at Elaine and let his eyes rest on her. "I'll miss you," he said, honestly. Elaine had no reply to that.
On her way to the door, she couldn't help checking out some of the other guys in the place. That one looks nice, she thought, but, ooh, look over there. Stop that, she told herself, stop that. This is no time to start thinking that way.
There was a chorus of squawks from an empty table near the door. She wasn't sure but she thought there had been three women sitting there when she came in. They must all have been pretty.
—END
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