She loves big silver cowboy buckles and chewy red Swedish fish, three-inch Gucci stiletto heels and Lamborghini trucks.  She hates being alone.  She doesn’t kiss on the first date.  She feels high highs and low lows, often in rapid succession.  Sometimes she’ll push you away because she wants you to try again. She's been offered $30,000 for one night.
   Once in Tucson a guy was so busy staring at her that he walked into a pole and knocked himself out. Once, crossing a street in Beverly Hills, she caused a four-car accident. She's exactly the kind of woman who makes men restless in their relationships.
   Her toes are long, like fingers. One of them sports a silver ring. She has a tiny tattoo of a cottontail bunny on the nape of her neck, a souvenir of a drunken night on the town with her two best friends, former Playboy centerfolds. She loves backgammon, bowling, clive bars, sunbathing in the nude, gambling in Las Vegas: blackjack, baccarat, pai gow. She loves French lingerie, always in matching sets, and scented candles, oodles of them, all over the room. She loves the word love--and the words romance, ambience, intimacy, and hot. She's been kidnapped by a bodybuilder, stalked by a Persian nightclub owner, electronically surveilled by an Israeli mobster, relieved of her worldly possessions by a family of wealthy Egyptians, sued by a downstairs neighbor who claimed that her vocal lovemaking destabilized his energy.
   She has dark eyes and dimples, bright teeth and full lips, a beauty mark on her right cheek, the beginnings of fine lines in the various localities across her heart-shaped face that register emotion. She is the girl next door grown up, feet planted firmly on the summit of her prime, looking expectantly, tentatively, hopefully toward the future. Her speech is punctuated with musical exclamations - Oh my God! Holy shit! Rad! That's the bomb! - and though she hardly moves her lips when she talks (she can, in fact, carry on a conversation while a makeup artist applies lipstick with a brush), her tonal range is preternatural, from alto to coloratura, church mouse to screaming meemy. She invents adjectives: froggy, foofy, fugly. Her take on language is like her take on life: She makes it fun, she makes it fit her needs. She doesn't always care if others understand.
   Her primary goals in life are marriage and motherhood. She's been engaged four times. She thinks it's probably better to marry someone who loves you more than you love him. No man she's ever been with has truly known how much she cared. She is ardent and enthusiastic, nurturing and sincere, spontaneous and insatiable. When she was young--a coltish, bucktoothed tomboy who gave up cheerleading to play football--she collected Matchbox cars, which she still keeps in their original carrying case, stashed inside a large antique hope chest, along with her old photo albums. Her first car was a cream-colored Porsche convertible. Her first night in Los Angeles was spent locked in a laundry room in a house in the Hollywood Hills, seeking refuge from an erstwhile acting teacher. She listens to Kool & the Gang, Mariah Carey, Kenny G, Shania Twain, Isaac Hayes. She likes tank tops and shorty shirts, cashmere and soft leather, baby-doll nightgowns and black garters, handbags by Chanel. She believes that men and women can be friends. Friends have given her clothes, diamonds, plane tickets, a Jaguar and a Jeep, three months in her own suite at the Ritz-Carlton. She's still friends with the Israeli mobster. He took his ring back with a shotgun. He is currently in prison. They correspond.
   She owns her own condo in Santa Monica. She can watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean from a hammock on her private rooftop deck, which doubles as a doggy latrine and could use a good cleanup. She can maneuver her black Lexus SUV through freeway traffic, talk on her cell phone, look up numbers on her palm computer using her fingernail as a stylus, and still manage to flip off an errant driver. She's never tried to flirt her way out of a speeding ticket. She's never found the guts to say, "No, honey, please don't go. Let's work this out." She thinks it would be nice, for once, to figure herself out, to understand herself better, to be more sure, to integrate more fully the things she knows with the things she feels.
   She is a Virgo. She was born in 1972. She was born in 1971. She was born in 1970. Her grandfather was a Portuguese sailor. Her father split when she was two. Her mom worked three jobs. Her stepdad parked his car in front of the side door so she couldn't sneak out of the house at night. She used the window. She was an ugly baby, eggplant-colored and hairy, sick all the time. She still coughs like a croupy infant, with a hack like a hound from hell, though somehow it works for her, as does the dog-bite scar on her cheek—a cocker spaniel named Lucky--endearing little flaws that take her down a few pegs from perfect, make her seem more real. She giggles freely, laughs conspiratorially, grazes your arm lightly with her fingernails, leans her forehead into the space near yours. She rarely cries. Her most arresting feature is her eyes: deep, glittering orbs in almond-shaped settings. She says thank you to every compliment, no matter how small, no matter how tangential. She pays scant attention to things that don't involve her. She doesn't watch the news or read the paper; she doesn't remember names. When she's eating and wants to say something, which is often, she holds her left hand delicately in front of her mouth while she speaks. She hates her name: Brooke Burke. The way it looks: the busty double B's, the cutesy double e's. The way it sounds--like chicken talk: Buk Buk.
   Brooke won her first beauty pageant at fourteen. She had her first boob job at nineteen. At twenty-two, she had a pocket of fat removed from just below the cheekbone on either side of her face. Once, in a mall in Tucson, where she grew up, a guy was so busy staring at her that he walked into a pole and knocked himself out. Once, crossing a street in Beverly Hills, she caused a four-car accident. Her likeness has smiled down upon Sunset Boulevard from a billboard. She's appeared on Star Search and Jenny Jones, in Sport magazine's swimsuit issue. She does a lot of catalogs for swimwear and lingerie and a television commercial now and then, most notably the stylish spots for Bally Total Fitness. An inventory of her catalog shots can be found on two unofficial Web sites posted by fans. She makes a minimum of $1,500 a day for print work. She will not bare her nipples or her kitty for any price; she is not that kind of girl. She has no interest in becoming an actress; she is not that kind of girl, either.
She is cute as a button, pretty as a picture, eminently fuckable, totally unavailable. Barring one regrettable incident, she is a confirmed serial monogamist, a one-man woman. Since the eighth grade, when the first love of her life deliberately flunked in order to stay behind in the same school with her, she has never gone more than a month without a boyfriend. Her current boyfriend drives a Mercedes V-12 convertible, a $120,000 car. She recently misplaced it in a shopping-mall parking lot. His name, Garth, is tattooed on her instep. He's forty, a plastic surgeon, one of the best in Beverly Hills, a blue-eyed graduate of Ole Miss known for his sweetness and good looks, for his pioneering techniques in scalp flaps and breast augmentations. On their fifth date, they went to Hawaii. They've been together every night since--nine months so far. The tattoo, in blue cursive letters, was a birthday gift. She knows it was risky, but it felt like the right thing to do. She calls it her public confession. Garth was flattered and pleased. One thing he loves about Brooke is her capacity for giving. The other day, for no particular reason, she bought him an alligator watchband from Cartier. His last girlfriend required a monthly stipend. Her price for cohabitation was a diamond ring. She never gave him anything but a hard time.
   Brooke and Garth have talked about taking the next step-or at least about taking the step after the next step, because the next step will be moving into the house he is building, a $2.5 million, seventy-five-hundred-square-foot "estate home" with a three-story atrium entryway and a fireplace in the master bath.  Just yesterday, in fact, four days before Christmas, while she was visiting his office, stopping by for a few moments to drop off a picture of herself in a red satin Santa suit, a little holiday surprise for his desk, Garth's great good friend and business manager came right up and gave her a big hug. It was no ordinary hug, this one. It was a huge, strong, lingering hug - you might even say a pregnant hug - followed by a chaste little kiss on the cheek, followed by an arm's-length biceps squeeze and a knowing look. That had never happened before. Never, ever. Never! Holy shit! Come to think of it, everyone in the office was acting weird. The receptionist, the nurses, even the techs. Looking at her funny. Smiling oddly. Strange. Really strange. And then the business manager just walked right up and wrapped her in this bear hug and then kissed her and wished her well and then looked at her like, like –
Oh my God!
Oh my GOD!
Oh. My. God.
Something's up, she is sure.

   She accelerates, lengthening her stride imperceptibly, pretending not to hear. It is three days before Christmas and she has presents to buy, much on her mind. There are curtains a~ colors and fireplace fittings to be chosen for the new house; she needs to find someone to sublet her condo. She has a go-see at two, her test shots for her new comp card are ready for pickup at the photographer's studio, her reservations for New Eve at the doggy hotel have yet to be confirmed. She's still undecided about her outfit for Garth's office party tomorrow night. Will the backless be too much? Maybe the black lace would be better. Or the leather pants. Something's up; she wants to look smashing. To top it off, her best friend, Neriah, one of the tatooed triumvirate, is due home this afternoon from Las Vegas. She's been gone for a while visiting her man. She called this morning, said she was flying in, said she had big news. Last time, the big news was a brand-new Mercedes convertible. Oh my God! What could it be!
   "Excuse me," calls the quarterback, throttling up a notch, hailing her like a coast-guard vessel on the high seas, trying to come alongside and cast a line. "Pardon me! Please!"
   She adjusts the strap of her handbag over her shoulder, loops a stray hair behind her ear with a manicured nail, stays a brisk but nonchalant course down the sidewalk. In a town teeming with beautiful women, Brooke is still a magnet, a prime example of what she likes to call the BBD--the Bigger Better Deal, the kind of woman who makes men restless and noncommittal in their relationships, the kind of dream date they like to think is waiting just around the corner, anxious to enter their lives. Once or twice a day, someone stops dead in his tracks and stares at her, or someone says something, tries to meet her, to get her number. They call to her from car windows across two lanes of traffic, make small talk about ibuprofen at the drugstore cash register. Maybe because Brooke is not particularly tall. Maybe because she's not particularly famous, or because she's brunette instead of bombshell blond, and men tend to want to date blonds but marry brunettes. Maybe because when she smiles, she lights up a rather large area around her. Whatever the reason, there is something about Brooke that seems approachable, that draws people in. Men see her and think for just a moment that it might be possible to have a pinup girl of their very own, the perfect woman with whom to share all their toys.
   When she first came to Los Angeles from Arizona, if someone looked her way, she'd gaze into his eyes and smile her best smile, not to invite conversation or approach, just to be friendly, to be the best person she could be. She rarely does that anymore. There have been too many invitations to parties that turned out to be intimate dinners, too many business meetings with Joe Blow and his cousin Sam the writer, too many psychos and too many restraining orders, too many long nights of giggling at stupid jokes, acting as if she wanted to be somewhere she didn't want to be, acting as if this sweaty dodo with his smelly cigar might really have a chance with her when the night was through. Over the years, she's become more discreet, more careful, not nearly so nice. It pains her to say this--being the kind of person she's always been, a woman who finds her deepest solace in the company of a man, a man's woman--bur a girl like Brooke needs to protect herself. A girl like Brooke needs a house alarm, a dog, a gun, and caller-ID blocking.
   The quarterback closes the gap, reaches out and taps Brooke on the shoulder. "Excuse me," he says again. She wheels around. They almost collide.
   "Can I help you?" Her tone is businesslike, cool but not cold, short but not indignant, a little wary.
   "Um, uh--hi!" he stammers.
   The pit bull growls. "Sit, girl," she tells the dog, a thick-bodied, brown-black bitch on medication for a thyroid problem.
   "So," he says, searching for an opener. "What do you do?"
   "That's kind of personal, isn't it?"
   "I guess," he says. He shuffles his feet. He beams. It is clear that his looks are his usual route in, but the door isn't opening. He's at a loss.
   "So what do you want?" she asks.
   "I, uh--well, uh--"
   "Yes?"
   "Do you think it would be possible for us to dine together?"
   "Dine together," she deadpans. She smiles a fake smile, a kind of grimace. She shakes her head. "I don't think so. I'm engaged."
   "Engaged?" he asks. "Really." He lifts a skeptical eyebrow, points with his cell phone at her left hand. A chunky gold bracelet slides down his wrist. "Where's your ring?"
   "My ring?"
   "Yeah. Your engagement ring."
   "Who says you need a ring to be engaged?"
   "Most people, I guess."
   "Well, I'm not most people."
   "So what do you think?"
   "About what?"
   "About dinner."
   She sighs again. "Listen, I'll tell you what. See that coffee shop over there?"
   Shielding his eyes with the cell phone, he squints across the street. "You mean that one?" "I'll meet you there in an hour, okay?"
   "Great! Excellent! Okay!" His face breaks into a big smile. He shifts his weight from foot to foot. "One hour from right now." He taps his watch. "Say, one-twenty?"
   "Perfect. One-twenty will be perfect."
   "Okay?”
   "Okay.”
   "Okay! Well! I guess I'll see you then!" He waves goodbye, begins backing away.
   "Let's go, Cali," she says to the dog.
   "Wait a minute. What's your name?"
   She calls over her shoulder, headed south: "I'll tell you when I see you.”
   "I'll be waiting," he croons.

Late afternoon in Brooke's condo, a dramatic one-bedroom with a vaulted ceiling and two-story windows. The sun has set, the Cabernet is poured, the scented candles are lit, oodles of them, all over the room. Brooke and Neriah sit facing each other on either end of an overstuffed sofa, legs crossed Indian-style, each of them nuzzling a cat. A little more than a year ago, between men, feeling sad and mighty froggy, they roomed together here for a while.

   Brooke had lust broken off her engagement with a German model named Stefan, a strapping piece of manhood with shoulder-length hair and deep brown eyes--Oh my God! Their relationship was pure adrenaline: extremely volatile, very chemical, very unhealthy. The thought of him still makes her roll her eyes and pretend to swoon. Neriah had just fled a long relationship with a youth pastor from her tiny hometown in northern California. One night he just went off, calling her the devil, trashing their log cabin, vowing they'd never marry, because she'd appeared naked in three million magazines. It was a dark time for both women, and every evening, schedules permitting, they'd rendezvous at sunset, break out the wine and one of Brooke's ornate weed pipes, and take their respective seats on the deep, velvety sofa. They called it the Therapy Couch.
   Neriah has just returned from Las Vegas with a five-carat diamond ring on her finger. When the initial wave of shrieks and hugs and Oh my Gods subsided, they immediately called Nikki, the third of their triumvirate. Now Nikki is here with them in voice and spirit, via speakerphone. She recently married Ian Ziering, an actor on Beverly Hills, 90210. The rule among these women is that your man comes first; it's been quite a while since they've all been together in the same room. The decibel level is deafening. "Neriah! You're getting married! Oh my God!" shrieks Nikki. "Isn't this the best!" squeals Brooke.
   "I know. I know. I know!" cheers Neriah, throwing a fist in the air.
   "So what are you gonna do, man, live in Vegas?" asks Nikki. A former dental hygienist from Orange County, Nikki was Miss September 1997, pictured in her centerfold in front of a fun-house mirror. She is a blond of the bombshell variety, known in her circle of friends for her devilish laugh, her quick tongue, her ability to recite the fifty states in alphabetical order in less than a minute.
   "I'll probably keep my place here," says Neriah, another beautiful blond, buxom yet athletic, another petite girl made larger than life through surgery. In her Playboy layout (March 1994), she was pictured as a hippie chick, outdoors in the desert. She is famous among the kind of men who read Playboy as the Playmate Who Split the Scene. Shortly after her pictorial ran, she found God (and the youth pastor) and refused to participate in any promotions. Her disappearing act served unwittingly to create a cult following. Recently, the license plate from the scooter pictured in her centerfold sold for more than a thousand dollars to an anonymous collector. You can find her on her own Web site, in catalogs, in guest spots on TV.
   "You could always stay with us when you work," offers Brooke. "You know you'll always have a room wherever I live, bunny."
   "Ahhhh!" groans Neriah, anguished. "I don't know. I don't know! Bunnies! I'm starting to get sad now, guys. I am not moving away!"
   "Don't get sad," soothes Brooke. "You're not moving away."
   "You're not moving away, but you are getting married," advises Nikki, somewhat stern, the voice of experience. When Nikki came home at 4:00 A.M. after that fateful night out with the girls, tattooed and wasted, her husband was none too pleased. They'd been married barely a month. She'd converted to Judaism for him, and Jews, he informed her as the sun began to rise, don't believe in tattoos. Two days later, she had a laser treatment; she was scheduled for three more but didn't keep the appointments. Her cottontail bunny still shows, albeit faintly.
   "You mean I don't get to keep my own apartment!" asks Neriah, playfully baffled, putting on a breathy Marilyn Monroe voice.
   "You mean she has to actually live with him!" asks Brooke, playfully incredulous, putting on a cute-little-girl voice.
   "Yes, bunny!" says Nikki in her Betty Boop voice.
   They met several years ago at a Frederick's of Hollywood catalog shoot. There was Brooke and Neriah and Nikki, a few others, including the Tenison twins, Rosie and Renee, the latter well known as the 1990 Playmate of the Year, the first black woman ever selected. The chemistry worked so perfectly that the Frederick's people signed them all for a lengthy campaign, and with the regular gigs came familiarity and then friendships quite rare in their business--phone calls and lunches, solidarity and hand holding, uproarious nights of dancing, karaoke, bowling, expeditions to Playboy Mansion West. Brooke stands out from the rest in the Frederick's catalog by virtue of the fact that she doesn't stand out quite so much, a sort of princess among sex kittens, a beauty among the bombshells--smaller, subtler in proportion, tending to beam into the camera rather than smolder, tending to shy away from the more outrageous and revealing outfits.
   While their exact ages remain a bit murky, it is clear that Brooke functions as a kind of den mother or elder sister to the group, a counselor and adviser, a trail master who gathers the wagons for a night out, an authority on diamond grades and auto leases, dinner parties and foreign cuisines, hairdressers and clothing stores, style and business and relationship tactics. She believes that shoes make the woman, that nails should never be fake, that candles and good smells make a home intimate and inviting. She preaches that sweetness is the utmost virtue, that the way you carry yourself dictates the way you're treated, that you shouldn't accept as a gift something you couldn't afford to buy yourself, unless you're sure there are no strings attached, or at least no strings you can't handle.
   It was Brooke who first came up with the whole bunny thing. Whenever one of the girls was sad, Brooke would look at her and say, "Don't be a sad bunny," and then she'd place her hands at the top of her head like ears and let them droop. Over time, the bunny thing has taken on a life of its own. If someone is curious, one bunny ear goes up. If someone is blown away, both bunny ears go back. Sometimes the ears become horns.
   Now, sitting in her spot on the Therapy Couch, celebrating Neriah's good news, eyeballing that diamond ring, that rock, that huge symbol of lifelong care and commitment glinting there on the third finger of her left hand, Brooke is beginning to feel a little like the odd bunny out. Nikki is happily married. Neriah is next. Something is up with Garth, she is sure. She is excited--Oh my God! - is she ever. She is ready and willing. She can hardly stand it. But she has also been around way too long to count her chickens. She's been proposed to nine times. She ducked out of one wedding less than a month before the date. Que sera, sera, as her mother used to say. Brooke loves her career, takes it very seriously. But she will tell you in a minute that modeling to her is just a nice way to make a living, a fun game of dress-up, a glamorous means of killing time. She knows you can't model forever. A few more years and she'll be through with this phase of her life, and that will be perfectly fine. She has never regarded herself as the prettiest girl in the room. Look at her friends--Holy shit!--they're all tens. She got into modeling to see how far she could go. She's gone pretty far. Now she's just about ready for something new. When she gets out of modeling, she wants it to be a happy time. She wants it to seem as if she's making a positive change, growing into another life, moving up to another level. Her dreams and values and ambitions have always been focused upon being a wife and a mother. She was born to these tasks, she believes, was put on the earth for these things. Looking at her, you can hardly disagree. She raises her glass, takes a deep draft of wine. "When are you gonna have a baby, Nikki?" she asks, her voice winsome and faraway.
   "You guys, I've been craving one myself," croons Neriah.
   "Guys! Listen to this!" says Nikki. "I had this dream last night. I was watching someone's baby. It was a little girl. And she looked up at me in my dream and--I know this sounds, like, really corny, but it broke my heart. She says to me, in this tiny baby voice:'I'm a really good girl.' "
   "Ohhhhh!" swoons Neriah.
   "Ohhhhh!" coos Brooke.
   "And I was like: I love you!" squeals Nikki. "But then the parents came and took her away.
I felt soooooo empty. Bunnies: I want a baby sooooo baaaaaaad!"
   "Just hold off for a little while," says Neriah. "I think we should all be pregnant together."
   "Definitely! " pronounces Brooke, her blues receding at the very thought of it. "Oh my God!"
   "Think about it," says Nikki. "Do any of us want to be fat alone?"
   "No way!" says Brooke.
   "Swollen ankles!" says Nikki.
   "Fat thighs!" shrieks Neriah.
   "We could get a three-for-one group liposuction discount with Garth!" says Nikki.
   "We all know which bunny is going to be next!" sings Neriah, sly and teasing. She reaches over, gives Brooke a playful shove.
   "You think it's gonna be Wendy?" asks Brooke, laughing, deflecting, bringing up the name of one of their friends.    "Is she - still with that producer guy?"
   "I was just talking to her," says Nikki. "She says he's really boring."
   "Then why is she dating him?" asks Brooke.
   "Is he rich?" asks Neriah.
   "He's got a really big dick!" squeals Nikki.
   "Nooooo!" shrieks Neriah.
   "And the biggest balls she's ever seen!"

Bunny's feeling froggy. It is Christmas Eve, and the sky is a glorious canvas of pink and orange and magenta. A cold front has descended over the beach, and there is an almost wintry chill in the air, a strong smell of wood smoke and pine needles and potpourri.Brooke has just returned to her condo, laden with gifts for Garth. There is a pair of royal-blue silk pajamas, special-ordered from Barney’s in New York. A Hugo Boss lambskin coat, a Ralph Lauren alligator business-card holder, a book of poetry called The Language of Love, a Felix the Cat refrigerator magnet, a traveling coffee mug from Starbucks.

   And there is the Big Present: a huge, soft, fluffy, luxurious sheepskin rug. She has plans for that rug. Candles and wine and nakedness are involved. She declines to elaborate further. She sits now at her dining-room table, awash in wrapping paper and bows and ribbons and lace of every color and variety, her head resting in her hands.
   Though shopping usually makes her happy, though Christmas usually makes her very happy, though she's going home to visit her family tomorrow and that usually makes her extremely happy, she’s a little down at the moment, has been so for the last two days. Shortly after she and Neriah had gotten off the phone with Nikki, Garth came home and went straight to the bedroom, didn't even say hello. When Brooke told him about Neriah’s engagement, he barely reacted. When she tried to show him her new photos, he smiled wanly and told her he was tired, would look later. The photos were the culmination of more than a month of frustrating effort. She'd changed agencies a while back, and they thought she should update her comp card, the six-by-eight-inch photomontage that is shown to potential clients. She'd done test shoots with three different photographers at her own expense. The results looked great on the contact sheets. Blown up, however, they were disappointing, to say the least. You could see the beginnings of tiny character lines near her dimples, near her nose, beside her mouth, a bit of puffiness under her eyes, and traces of crow's-feet. For the first rime in her career, she resorted to airbrushing. Those pictures were important to her in a lot of ways; Garth didn't get it. He didn't seem to care one iota. She has a thing about men not taking her seriously. She may not have finished college, but she's done pretty well for herself, making the most of her God-given talents. She's been to Taiwan and South Africa, Ibiza and Tahiti. For much of her work, she acts as her own agent, is known among clients for being professional and easy to work with, for driving a rather hard bargain. She's not just another pretty face. Her man, of all people, should know that. He made her feel really bad.
But being the kind of woman that she is--a nurturer, a caretaker, a giver, an optimist of the highest sort--she decided to give him a break, to let it pass. A man can have a hard day at the office, she knows very well. He's under pressures she can't even imagine. She swallowed her dismay, set about trying to cheer him up while Neriah waited in the living room. After a little hand holding and TLC, Garth agreed to come out of the bedroom and go to dinner with Neriah to celebrate her good fortune. He spent much of the evening, before the food came, with the collar of his sweatshirt pulled up over his nose. It reminded Brooke of that idiot guy in the bubble-gum comics. She went to bed angry, something she rarely does.
   The next night was the big office party: lobster and filer mignon and dancing in a special room at Trader Vic's. She wore a clingy black tube dress with a slit up the side. She was clearly the most beautiful woman in a room of beautiful women. They ate and they drank and they were merry. Drank quite a bit, in fact-she fell asleep on the living-room floor afterward. But nothing special occurred. Nothing out of the ordinary. If something was up, it didn't happen. She must have been imagining things. She must have read things all wrong--the reactions the other day in the office. Now she's questioning her instincts. She doesn't know what's going on, if anything is going on at all. The truth is, the timing for a proposal is all wrong. A house and a diamond and a wedding all at once? It seems pretty exorbitant. Way too much to expect. Or even to want. It's almost disgusting if you think about it. Holy shit! What is going on?
   Adding to her distress this afternoon, as if she needed something else, is the presence of something new in her life, a big honker of a pimple that has taken up residence between her eyebrows, a virtual third eye. It reared its ugly head before the party. She used some special stuff to kill it, but it burned her skin. Now it looks all brown and crinkly--a giant mass, totally fugly. When it rains, it fuckin' pours.
   Life's little dramas. Every day can't he a holiday--even if this really is a holiday--even for Brooke, who tries her darndest to keep to the sunny side of the street. She raises her head from her hands, regards the array of holiday paraphernalia before her, lets go a large, cleansing, sibilant sigh. She chooses a roll of wrapping paper, lays the book of poems on top, cuts the paper to size, sets about folding and taping and tying an elaborate bow.
Things will get better They always have. They always do. Hell, things aren't so had, anyway. Not if she really thinks about it. "I know what it looks like," she says. "I'm a model. My man is a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. We drive nice cars. We're moving to a big house in Bel Air Crest. It's kind of sick, but you just have to put it in perspective. I never asked for all of this. It all came naturally, and I'm thankful. I'm a happy person. I'm a grounded person. I'm an honest person. I'm living the best life that I could ever be living. And if some of that is because I'm beautiful, I mean, holy shit! I am what I am, you know?" She finishes wrapping the book and the magnet and the pajamas and then gets up from the table, carries the packages across the room, past the Therapy couch, reward the six-foot potted palm in the corner, near the windows. It is strung with tiny white lights, hung with ornaments: their California Christmas tree. Underneath are a bunch of presents. This morning they weren't there.
"Holy shit!" exclaims Brooke, happiness dawning over her face like the sun on a brand-new day. "When did these get here? And look at the tags! They're all for me! Oh my God! I can't believe him. What a sneak! What a sweetheart!"
   She drops the presents she's just wrapped carelessly at her feet, bends over to the sprawling pile of cheerful packages surrounding the tree. At the very top is a small box--a cube, two by two by two.
   "Oh my God! Holy shit! Holy Moly!" she squeals, retrieving the box. "I wonder what this is?" She holds it suspended in the air before her eyes, turns it this way and that, brings it up to her ear, shakes it. "Diamond earrings, I bet you!" she declares, the decibels rising. "It's gotta be diamond earrings. It's not a ring box. I don't think it's a ring box. If it was a ring box, it would have the round velvet hump on the top. Unless! Oh my God! Unless the ring box is inside of a bigger square box! Holy shit! That way, the top would cover the hump! It can't be a ring box. Could it be a ring box' Should I open it! The tare is a little loose tight here. I could probably unwrap it and--"
Oh my God!
Oh my GOD!
Oh. My. God.
Should she open it? What could it be?

 
  Copyright 1999 Esquire Magazine