Beauty and the Janitor

Tawni curled her legs beneath her and wiggled her bare toes into the thick carpet; she leaned up against the couch and rested her head on her hand. Across the room her husband Erwin sat behind his work desk, eyes squinting and tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth as he put the final touches of blue paint onto the boxcar in his hand.

Tawni sighed with contentment as she studied Erwin’s face. His eyes were set too close together and a little too deep into his skull; this kept them in dark shadow on all but the brightest days. His nose evinced a small bump and was pushed slightly off to the side, the remnants of an accident he had suffered as a child when he and his bike had parted ways. Old acne scars patterned his skin, skin which tended toward pale and blotchy. Finally, a heavy jaw rendered his looks Neanderthal-like. By day he was a janitor at the local library, by night an engineer and conductor in their basement model train station.

In contrast, Tawni’s skin was flawless, her nose perky, her thick hair framing larger-than-normal vivid blue eyes; in short, she was a stunning beauty. She had been wooed and recruited by a model agency in her freshman year of college. A career in modelling soon followed; it included modelling on all the major runways throughout the world in her teens, then gracing hundreds of glossy magazines by her early twenties. A success by any standard. But it wasn’t enough for her. She had spent the last four years working even harder and now she was enjoying a prosperous acting career. Today every household in the western world knew who Tawni Redfern was. Every woman wanted to be her; every man wanted to be with her.

In turn, she only wanted her new husband Erwin. Erwin whose greatest ambition was to be the person who cleaned the third floor of the library; it was the floor where they kept the small locomotive museum, he explained. Erwin whose face had been described by the girls in his high school as “the face that had sunk a thousand ships.”

Over the years Tawni had dated several well-known movie stars, one of whom had been voted the sexiest man alive. She had dated rock stars, business tycoons, and even the occasional politician. The actors and musicians always competed for the mirror in the morning; the politicians and businessmen spent most of their time trying to train her how to act the part of doting girlfriend and fiancée.

She finally swore off men when her fiancé had sent her a script for a gala he was throwing for a visiting dignitary. “I can’t have you saying just anything that comes into that pretty little head of yours,” he had told her when she confronted him with the draft.

She was sick of the narcissism of celebrities, their insecurities, and their misogyny. At the age of thirty-two she had given up the dating derby. Until the accident, that is. On her way to the studio the taxi she was in had been sideswiped. Tawni lay on the operating table for five hours while the surgeons worked to save her leg. The movie shoot had to be halted until she could get back on her feet, so the studio had checked her into the most famous physio clinic in the country. Tawni was able to turn her great determination and focus onto her recovery. Every day she struggled through pain and tears. Every day Erwin was there. At first, he was just one of the myriad background workers, then a one-man cheerleader, eventually a shy friend and confidante, ultimately an unwitting suitor.

Her parents had been appalled when Tawni introduced them to the love of her life. They had railed at her against him. How could she marry someone so mediocre? So pitiable? Tawni knew that what they really meant was someone who was so unattractive. They had even gone so far as to hire a private investigator, certain that Erwin had somehow extorted from her or coerced her. But try as he might, the P.I. could find nothing to implicate Erwin, so even though they denounced him and gnashed their teeth, her parents could do nothing to change her mind.

The wedding was small and discreet. The few guests were baffled. The groom was overwhelmed and dazed, while the bride was radiant and dazzling. She would have all the mirrors to herself, and a man who adored her and loved her no matter what. He would have a beautiful, successful wife, a new, bigger train station, the third floor library job, and the bewildered envy of every man on Earth.

Image from ClipArt

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