Extract from Miss Globe X

Translated from the Romanian

The Gradual Gathering of Lust

Toni Davidson

'THOUGH I CEASE to be Miss Globe, I have not ceased to be Sera Lanic and from time to time you will hear of me and you will see me. I know that I give up this crown with all of your support for my personal future.'

~~~

I unzipped the smile and paused for photos. Three days in total, I have estimated, three days in total for pausing moments which turn out to be lengthy trials of being stuck to a spot by some photo-hack dribbling on to my silk sleeve with enthusiasm, constantly being called 'hot' by some schmuck telling me to brighten up their readers' lives. Imagining lies. In the three lost days, I have paused in Pennsylvania and waited in Wai Kung; in that still life I was foreground to beautiful settings, added colour to tint product. I adopted a posture to sell the brand. In the three lost days, my legs would bulge with tiredness, my arms could barely be straightened after a day of hugs and hand tugs and my lips would be cracked and dried from air con air. Oh God, in those three days what I could have done that has now been lost . . .

'Congratulations.' Miss Estonia mirrored my smile, she reflected previous dreams. I could have whispered something into her ear as I lifted the crown on to her head. There was every opportunity. By the time the organisation's heavies would have realised what was going on, I could have easily sullied some innocence, wrecked with pain and jade the hope of someone so young and giving. Just as I placed the crown at a prearranged angle on her hair and head, I could have rushed into her ears, invaded her head and said, 'Get out while you can. If you run right now they might let you go, might find a way to spin a different win. You could be a loose cannon, an untied thread that came unravelled under the extraordinary pressure and responsibility. They would still be able to find a way out to save face and you could get out of the race just in the nick of time. Go now and live something imperfect.'

So, I didn't. Obviously. Another year, another dollar, another beauty. I'm not a revolutionary. I'm a gender capitalist. I'm not femininista, I'm anachronista. Ex-friends couldn't believe that I was about to go public in a thong, while they rushed to Business MAs and to drink lattes in the city's new style bars. My business was children. For Miss Globes it's always the children. Always the future generalised by the hope for worldwide waifs surviving somehow against all odds.

Sometimes I'm so sickened by everybody else's suffering. Missed Globe, too damn right.

2

They've told me I can stay as long as I like. They told me that they are honoured to have an ex-Miss Globe staying with them, especially one who was born in Brasov; a bumpy, dusty journey from this suite luxury. Here was I, a local heroine come home to roost. Yeah, a real plus for some new economic boost. Everything is incidental I am told, there is no charge for what I need. I am the rider. I know. I have already been paid, in full, tipped over the edge, a most generous provider. It's there not just in black and white but in my head, drip-fed into my soul.

'We must learn to give more and take less.' They applauded politely at my crowning glory, they rubbed their hands when they told my story. I was expected to say something gently unexpected, like the faintest of hiccups in a breathless world. I was asked to think of something that would reflect who I was, where I came from and who I wanted to be. I told them, of course I did, I told them in some brash naïveté exactly what I thought the answers to the questions were. I wrote it down. It came from the heart.

'I am from Brasov. My father is a painter whose work was confiscated by the dictator two decades ago and now hangs in the national art gallery. He made a living commercially, illustrating brochures, but his paintings until a few years ago were either ignored or destroyed. He has lived and continues to live in the social housing the government built. Even when they were new, he found it, we all found it, difficult to live in. In winter we could see our breath when the heating failed or never even ignited and our coughs would get worse as the months wore on. Everyone's health suffered but my father could have endured that apartment – the cold, the lack of fresh or even reasonable food – he could have put up with all of that if it hadn't got so damp. When his paintings began to curl off their mounts and mildew grew across his landscapes he would weep and we would join him. United. Pitiful.'

It was moving stuff, even MJ, the head of the organisation, said so but perhaps, she smiled, it needs a more uplifting ending. 'We want our stories to inspire not expire.' MJ was the founder, the brains behind the beauty and a woman in touch with everyone apart from herself. She had been a beauty herself, I was told, in her day, in her prime. You could see it in the fading light. Tall, elegant in a furred kind of way with high cheekbones, expensive hair design, expensive layer design – everything arranged as neatly and as perfectly as it could be. Nothing was to be out of place, everything was to be on message.

'Perhaps if you just added this . . .'

I didn't write this. It didn't come from the heart.

'He was so proud of me when I decided to enter the competition for Miss Romania and when I won against really tough competition he was over the moon. The whole family, my father, my sister, my grandparents were so delighted for me and it seemed the whole of Brasov was cheering me that night. I swear I could hear the cheers from thousands of miles away in Honduras when I won. It was of course a dream come true and my father wept down the phone and despite the hardships he had endured under communism he said he would take up his brush again, so inspired was he by both my win and the Miss Globe competition.'

MJ had a way with words and her tight grip could wring every drop of truth out of them.

There was nobody in the crowd I knew. Just new friends.

Anyway, the circus is no longer in town and I've run away. There are still the post-reign contractual obligations, the calls, the messages, letters and flowers that arrive on a daily basis to my junior suite at the top of the hotel. The same, sweet bellboy delivers them and he knows enough now just to pile them up on the long, smoked-glass coffee table while putting the flowers on whatever surface is left.

There's not much room now. The bouquets from admirers, sponsors, corporate flunkies have piled high. But I won't have them removed. 'Drain the water, but leave the flowers.' And so the dianthus, asters and chrysanthemums slowly rot in their vases. Their decay has been sequenced over the four years I have been in the hotel. The maids know better than to comment although I can feel their sideways glances, their smirks at my state, their shaking heads as they struggle through stalks and stems that have intertwined creating a natural barrier after so many artificial ones. They whisper their gossip as they sweep up fallen, rotten petals but their twisting, ugly mouths shouldn't bother to hide their words. I already know what they are saying. I have been left to my fate. Soon they will be dusting me down.

Cut flowers can never be beautiful.

Extract from The Gradual Gatherhing Of Lust and Other Tales by kind permission of Canongate Books, Edinburgh, 2007.