“Hello,” said Vlad the Impaler.
Lenore looked at the bird. “Pardon me?”
“I have to do what’s right for me as a person,” Vlad the Impaler said, righting himself and looking at Lenore.
“Holy cow.”
“Women need space, too.”
“Candy!” Lenore went and opened Candy Mandible’s door. Candy was stretching, on the floor, doing near-splits, in a silver leotard, with a clove cigarette in her mouth.
“Christ, sweetie, I’ve been waiting, how are you?” Candy got up and moved to turn off her stereo.
“Come here quick, listen to Vlad the Impaler,” Lenore said, pulling Candy by the hand.
“Nice outfit,” said Candy. “What about the unclear emergency? How’s Lenore and Concamadine?”
“You’re sweet, but that kind of talk can lead exactly nowhere,” said Vlad the Impaler, staring dumbly at himself in his cloudy mirror. “My feelings for you are deep. I’ve never claimed they’re not.”
“What the hell is going on with him?” Lenore asked Candy.
“Hey, that’s what I was just saying,” Candy said, looking at Vlad the Impaler.
“Pardon me?” said Vlad the Impaler.
“I was rehearsing what to say to Clint tonight, tonight I’m going to break up with him, I decided. I was in here practicing while I waited for you.”
“Hi, Vlad the Impaler,” said Vlad the Impaler. “Here’s some extra special-wecial food.”
“How can he talk like that all of a sudden?” asked Lenore. “He only used to say ‘Pretty boy,’ and I had to like pour tons of seed down him every time, to get him to.”
“There are lots of pretty girls in the world, Clinty, you’re just so incredibly serious,” Vlad the Impaler said.
“Clinty?” said Lenore.
“Clint Roxbee-Cox, the V.P. at Allied who drives the Mercedes? With the glasses and the sort of English accent?”
“Clint, Clint, Clint,” twittered Vlad the Impaler.
“Shut up,” said Candy Mandible.
“Anger is natural,” said Vlad the Impaler. “Anger is a natural release, let it out.”
“He could never talk like this before,” Lenore said.
The orange light on the shiny wood floor began to have slender black columns in it as the sun started to dip behind downtown Cleveland.
“Weird as hell. I was in here at like six-thirty, and he just hissed and writhed. And I went for a run, and I came back, and I rehearsed what to say to Clint, and then I went to stretch out, and then you came,” Candy said, tapping her cigarette ashes into Vlad the Impaler’s cage.
“Of course you satisfy me, Clinty. Don’t think you don‘t,” said Vlad the Impaler.
“Did you feed him?” Lenore asked Candy.
“No way. I’ve still got that scar on my thumb,” Candy said. “You said you’d do it all the time.”
“Then how come his dish is full, here?”
“Women need space, too.”
“He must not have eaten from it this morning,” said Candy. “Is that a new bra?”
Vlad the Impaler began to peck at his seed; his pink mohawk rose spikily and fell.
“This is just like the bizarrest day of all time,” Lenore said, untying her shoes. “Rick and I had dinner with Mr. Bombardini? Of Bombardini Company and skeleton eye-socket fame?”
“You met Norman Bombardini?” Candy said.
“I just don’t know what you mean by love. Tell me what you mean by that word,” Vlad the Impaler said.
“You’re going to have to buy a very small gag,” said Candy.
“Candy, the guy is trying to eat himself to death because his wife left him. He already weighs about a thousand pounds. He was eating eclairs off the floor.” Lenore took her bathrobe from the bedpost and undid her bra in the sun and headed for the bathroom. Candy followed her down the hall.
“You can’t hold me to promises I didn’t make!” Vlad the Impaler called after them.
/b/
Lenore took her shower while Candy Mandible leaned against the sink and smoked a clove cigarette in the steam.
“I don’t get it,” Candy said. “How can they just let twenty patients walk out and not see them or stop them?”
“Hobble out, is more like it,” Lenore said from the shower.
“Right.”
“I’m just going to assume, I guess, that if my father knows about it, Lenore’s OK. I’m going to assume that he took her to Corfu with him for this summit meeting with the president of this other baby food company. Except Gramma’s always had about zero interest in the Company. Except Dad and Gramma more or less hate each other. Except Gramma really has to have things ninety-eight point six or she gets blue. Except there’s like twenty-five other people gone too. Corfu would have to be pretty crowded. But I’m going to assume Dad took them somewhere. Except God I didn’t even think he knew where the Home was, anymore. Even though he owns it. He always handles it through Rummage and Naw.” The shower hissed on the curtain for a moment. “I don’t know if I should wait till Dad comes back or not. I can’t just fly to Corfu. I don’t have any money. And plus who knows where they are in Corfu.”
“Rick could lend you money. God knows Rick’s got money.”
“I haven’t even told Rick about it yet. He’s hurt.” Lenore turned off the shower and stepped out.
“I think Rick sort of flipped out, a little bit, up there, today.” Candy threw her cigarette in the toilet. It hissed for a second. She began to brush her teeth.
“He seemed OK at dinner. He just wants to know where I am all the time. The one who’s flipped and landed heavily is that Norman Bombardini. He was talking about infinity, and living butter?”
“What?”
“My robe smells like the bottom of a rug,” Lenore said, sniffing at her brown robe. “It’s all mildewy.”
“You could see if Lenore’s maybe staying with anybody else in your family,” said Candy.
“And what the hell is with Vlad the Impaler?”
“You could see if Lenore’s with anybody else in your family.”
“What? Yes. That’s a good idea. Except no way she’s with John, he can’t even be reached, and neither can LaVache, because Dad told me he doesn’t even have a phone. And why would Gramma go all the way to Amherst? Maybe Clarice, I guess. Except if Gramma was still around here, which Clarice obviously is, she’d have called to at least let me know she was OK.”
“Maybe she tried and could only get Steve’s Sub.”
“God, that’s another thing, what a rotten day at work. That Peter guy who looks like a negative never came back, and we sure didn’t hear from any tunnel guy.” Lenore tried to get steam off the mirror. Candy dried Lenore’s back with a towel and took off her silver leotard and stepped into the shower. Lenore stuck her arm in behind the plastic curtain and Candy handed her the soap and Lenore gently soaped Candy’s back, the way Candy liked. “And we get call after call at the board, almost all wrong, and Prietht was laughing.”
“I’m really going to kill her. I’m going to murder her, soon. A negative?”
“And Walinda was just unbelievably mad that I was late. She was really going to fire me. She kept saying, ‘Don’t play.’ ”
“When she says ‘Don’t play,’ you know she’s really mad,” Candy said, stepping out of the shower. The steam in the bathroom was now so thick Lenore could hardly see to open the door. She opened the door. A rush of cool hall air came in and cut the steam. Lenore began to brush her teeth.
“I should shave my legs,” she said. “My legs are making that sound when I rub them.”
“So shave.”
“And then Candy what’s with Vlad the Impaler? I think he must be sick. Rick said the lady in the store said cockatiels didn’t really even talk that much, as a rule. Maybe he’s dying, and this is like the huge burst of fireworks at the end, right before the fireworks are over.”