PARGITA
(AVEC LINDA HAMILTON/T2-LIKE RESOLVE)
Let’s just do it, Phylliss. It’ll be so fucking hot. It’s time.
KATHERINE
(MYSTICAL/HEARTFELT)
She’s right, Phyll, you know she is. We have to.
PARGITA
Why aren’t we in post on that, instead of this? Why didn’t it happen?
KATHERINE
Hey, did they ever find out who killed the Gisela guy?
I flashed a wan smile at the Sisters Quim, hating myself for that. Said “Yeah, we’ll kick it” or some such rah-rah hip-hop horseshit. Holly Hunter was there and looked fabulous — Christ to Hell, I wish I was Southern::::::::::Dating again and it’s flat-out weird. Does something to me hormonally; I go on these absurd little fantasy-jags. Like I’ll be cleaning out my closet and suddenly start thinking, “Gee. Hmmm. I wonder where women store their bras while nursing?”::::::::::Pregnant again by fall, or bust! But who shall I turn to, when nobody seeds me — a butcher, a baker, a Jewish dealmaker? I do know she’ll be a girl-child, willful and green-eyed and gorgeous. And I’ll tell you something else, E. If she wants to join the circus, I will say yes, yes, a thousand times Yes. She will be the epic child of sky and of strada, my child and no one else’s::::::::::My Gelsomina.
Katherine Grosseck
TO: SNOWITE@MSN.COM (PARGITA SNOW)
FROM: KGB@AOL.COM (KATHERINE GROSSECK)
Lovely Pargita Meter Maid (AKA Her Snow Whiteness)…What the fuck am I doing here? I mean, besides going to dailies and jacking the director’s ego. Well, that’s what I get for exec-producing. Hate Toronto, always have. The only thing good about it is Leonard Cohen, and he’s from Montreal, n’est-ce pas? Though I have to say the movie’s looking good. Laura Dern is some kinda wonderful. (Did you ever see Smooth Talk, the thing she did with Treat?) Anyhow, Laura saw Janie Wong and flipped when I told her we were an, ahem, item. It’s kicky being on the street with her — she’s mobbed by kids because of Jurassic. Laura is really smart and apparently heard all about you from Jodie, which had me freaking for like maybe a second. (Did you and JF ever make out? Oh, never mind.)
TO: SNOWITE@MSN.COM (PARGITA SNOW)
FROM: KGB@AOL.COM (KATHERINE GROSSECK)
Writing you is almost good as sex — in my head, I call it “flesh crocheting”—must be Cronenberg’s influence. (We had dinner with him and he’s sweetly super-normal. Long live the New Flesh!) I like how you never write back ‘cause you’re the Big Nonverbal Image-whore. Did you know that I’m wearing your plug? Well, I am. My very own Snowmobile — Her Snow Whiteness’s Eighth Dwarf…
TO: SNOWITE@MSN.COM (PARGITA SNOW)
FROM: KGB@AOL.COM (KATHERINE GROSSECK)
So unfair you’re in Rome and I’m still here. When what I really want to be is…stuck in the middle with you. I wanna buy a castle for us in Ireland — in Cunnymara, by the sea. Do that whole resident tax thing and live there six months each year like the big bohemian lezbo artists we are, would you like that, Geet? I wonder if Cheryl sold their place when he died, did you know the Michael O’Donoghues? They had a castle in Connemara. Galway, I think…I could finally read Finnegans Wake and we’d paint and make movies and go on cliff-walks and get sandblasted by scary Celtic winds. Oh my Pargita—Oh my Pa-pa…I ride your clit on the cardiac rapids — me, sure-footed, obedient pack-mule of your canyons. The Snowmobile is deep within: I wear it for ATM and groceries and teeth-cleaning — all the sweet mundane Muzaky chores of everyday life. There I stand at the twenty-four-hour Ralph’s, on line at the cashier, a stab and a shiver while the pimply Latina says Have a good one. Do you know how I fall to sleep at night? I imagine myself flying to Italy, snuggled in First Class booties, slipping into ROMA/AMOR like a burglar, spy in the house of Love. Racing up Spanish Steps, heart in mouth…then your heart in mouth, copper arms again, splayed under mine, those fingers I dream of gripping the iron headstand, all your smells an altar. I turn onto my stomach. Your hand with those fingers, those rings I gave you, moves up thigh to cork — Eighth Dwarf out, yanked from dreamy sleep, then out I come and nod away in the arms of Manchild — sure beats the shit out of counting sheep.
You won’t believe this. Laura and I had dinner with Dana Delany and we were talking about how we want to write this book on all the kinky massages we’ve ever had. I tell them about the time that girl Gina walked in on us — do you remember? Gina Tolk? With the Sheryl Crow mouth and the white trash New Age vibe? How she used to pull out this big frog paperweight and sit it between my tits like some crystal succuba? So Laura brings up the thing about me being impersonated (she heard about it from Jennifer Jason — they both see Calliope Krohn-Markowitz, the shrink who was attacked) and suddenly Laura goes Oh my God! She says Calliope has a glass menagerie of paperweights she keeps in the office and Laura’s favorite one — the frog—was stolen by the girl who assaulted her! We screamed. (It seems a few weeks after the attack, Laura asked where the paperweight was and Calliope told her what had happened.) So Dana says we have to call, like, now. We leave a message for Calliope and she phones us back in twenty minutes. I describe the masseuse physically and the shrink says it sounds like her so we actually call the police, on a conference! Me and Dana and Laura and Calliope and the LAPD! Isn’t this fantastic? Make a great script: The Women meets The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. You know, if they arrest her, she just might slander us on Court TV. “And what did you see when you entered the room, Ms. Tolk?” “Why, the screenwriter — Ms. Grosseck — eating the shaved holes of the director — Ms. Pargita Snow…” “And where were they positioned, Ms. Tolk?” “The holes?” “The ladies.” “Why, on the bloodstained futon, counselor.” “Objection!” “And what was the condition of the futon, Ms. Tolk?” “Objection, Your Honor! The futon has been described!” “Overruled! Answer the question, Ms. Tolk…” “Could you please repeat—” “What was the condition of the futon?” “Objection!” “The futon!” “Why, it was—” “Suh-STAINED!”
Gina Tolk
In these moments, I think ruefully of my sister, Wanda, and how she suffered at the hands of the man who was (and had never shirked from claiming to be) our Father. Wanda and I played out our roles: the casually heartbreaking children of Charles Laughton’s masterful Night of the Hunter—spectral yet corporal. But that is another movie entire and another magical saga too, riven with tears and with blood. For in *** The THIEF of ENERGY