“Take it easy, men,” Skip Wiley said, unfurling from the beach chair. “He’s obviously harmless.”
Eight rock-hard hands clamped onto Brian Keyes.
“I guess this means you and Jenna aren’t inviting me up for conch chowder.”
“Fraid not, Brian.” Wiley yawned, stretching his ropy brown arms. “Have a safe trip home.”
“When am I gonna see you again, Skip?”
“Soon,” Wiley said. “On national TV. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for my windsurfing lesson.”
17
“Kara Lynn.”
“Yes, Mr. Mayor.”
“What do you think about famine?”
Kara Lynn Shivers considered the question carefully. “Which famine, Mr. Mayor?”
“World famine,” the mayor said, “in general.”
“Well, in general,” Kara Lynn said, “I think famine is a truly terrible thing.”
“If you were selected our Orange Bowl queen,” the mayor went on, “would you work to end world famine?”
“Tirelessly, Mr. Mayor.”
The other judges nodded approvingly. They liked Kara Lynn Shivers better than the other semifinalists, and they’d already made up their minds. If only the mayor would hurry up with the last interview.
“How would you do it?” the mayor asked.
“Do what?” Kara Lynn said.
“Stop famine.”
“I didn’t say I could stop it,” Kara Lynn said with a trace of sarcasm. In the third row she spotted her father, grimly making a slashing motion across his throat.
“But I’d certainly try,” she said, softening. “As you know, I’m majoring in public relations, Mr. Mayor, and I could use those special skills to bring the world’s attention to the plight of its starving children. I would consider that my first priority as Orange Bowl queen.”
The mayor beamed. Kara Lynn’s father let out a sigh of relief.
“Thank you, Kara Lynn,” the mayor said. “We’ll adjourn until tonight.”
“Thank you, Mr. Mayor,” Kara Lynn said. Then, nodding sweetly toward the other judges, “Thank all of you.”
And now, she thought, you can all go back to the Hyatt and whack off.
Kara Lynn Shivers, nineteen years old, blond, hazel-eyed, five-foot-eight, one hundred twenty pounds (Viceroy Wilson was on the money), had become a cynical young woman. She despised beauty pageants and all the fraudulent insouciance they required. Though she had won many titles—Little Miss Mass Transit, Miss Anglo Miami and, of course, Stone Crab Queen—each new tiara only added to Kara Lynn’s deepening misery. Offstage she had no smiles, no charms, no patience. She was all used up.
It was her father’s fault. He was the one who’d made her learn “Eleanor Rigby” on the French horn. “The judges’ll love it,” he’d said, and they always did.
It was her father who made her, at age six, change her name from Karen Noreen because “Noreen belongs in the 4-H, not Atlantic City.”
It was her father who dragged her to Geneva, at age nine, to be ministered by “the greatest ambidextrous orthodontist in all Europe.”
Kara Lynn Shivers suspected there was something seriously hinky with her father—not for wanting his little princess to be a star (a harmless fantasy), but for suggesting that no price was too high.
It was her father who’d mailed off a stack of bikini Polaroids to Playboy magazine, then to Penthouse, then Oui, and after countless rejections announced that Kara Lynn needed bigger breasts. Kara Lynn didn’t want bigger breasts. Her little breasts were just fine; round, perky, very cute. No one ever complained about her breasts except her father, who hadn’t seen them naked since she was a kid anyway.
One afternoon, a few months before the Orange Bowl pageant, Kara Lynn’s father secretly invited a renowned plastic surgeon to the house. Kara Lynn had just returned from exercise class in a pink body stocking. She was in the kitchen, fixing a pitcher of iced tea, when the two men slipped up behind her.
“Well, what do you think?” her father had asked.
“No sweat,” the surgeon had said. “B-cup, or C?”
“Stay away from my tits!” Kara Lynn had cried, reaching for a steak knife.
“But, buttercup, I’m only trying to help.”
“They’re my tits, Dad. You stay away!”
“Forty million people watch that parade on New Year’s Eve. Don’t you want to make a good impression?”
Kara Lynn’s mother was no help.