The shatter of some real lead crystal comes through the door from downstairs.
"Hurry!" Parker shouts. "He's breaking things!"
Brandy licks her lips. "After you have his mouth pried open, Parker, reach in and grab his tongue. If you don't, he'll choke, and then you'll be sitting on a dead body."
Silence.
"Do you hear me?" Brandy says.
"Grab his tongue?"
Something else real and expensive and far away shatters.
"Mr. Parker, honey, I hope you're bonded," the Princess Alexander says, her face all bloated red with choking back laughter. "Yes," she says, "grab Ellis's tongue. Pin him to the floor, keep his mouth open, and pull his tongue out as far as you can until I come down to help you."
The doorknob turns.
My veils are all on the vanity counter out of my reach.
The door opens far enough to hit the high-heeled foot of Brandy, sprawled giggling and half full of Valiums, there half- naked in drugs on the floor. This is far enough for me to see Parker's face with its one grown-together eyebrow, and far enough for the face to see me sitting on the toilet.
Brandy screams, "I am attending to Miss Arden Scotia!"
Given the choice between grabbing a strange tongue and watching a monster poop into a giant snail shell, the face retreats and slams the door behind it.
Football scholarship footsteps charge off down the hallway.
Then pound down the stairs.
The big tooth that Parker is, his footsteps pound across the foyer to the living room.
Ellis's scream, real and sudden and far away, comes through the floor from downstairs. And, suddenly, stops.
"Now," says Brandy, "where were we?"
She lies back down with her head between my feet.
"Have you thought any more about plastic surgery?" Brandy says. Then she says, "Hit me.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When you go out with a drunk, you'll notice how a drunk fills your glass so he can empty his own. As long as you're drinking, drinking is okay. Two's company. Drinking is fun. If there's a bottle, even if your glass isn't empty, a drunk, he'll pour a little in your glass before he fills his own.
This only looks like generosity.
That Brandy Alexander, she's always on me about plastic surgery. Why don't I, you know, just look at what's out there. With her chest siliconed, her hips lipo-sucked, the 46-16-26 Katty Kathy hourglass thing she is, the fairy godmother makeover, my fair lady, Pygmalion thing she is, my brother back from the dead, Brandy Alexander is very invested in plastic surgery.
And visa versa.
Bathroom talk.
Brandy's still laid out on the cold tile floor, high atop Capitol Hill in Seattle. Mr. Parker has come and gone. Just Brandy and me all afternoon. I'm still sitting on the open end of a huge ceramic snail shell bolted to the wall. Trying to kill her in my half-assed way. Brandy's auburn head of hair is between my feet. Lipsticks and Demerols, blushes and Percocet-5, Aubergine Dreams and Nembutal Sodium capsules are spread out all over the aquamarine countertops around the vanity sink.
My hand, I've been holding a handful of Valiums so long my palm has gone Tiffany's light blue. Just Brandy and me all afternoon with the sun coming in at lower and lowers angles through the big brass porthole windows.
"My waist," Brandy says. The Plumbago mouth looks a little too blue, Tiffany's light blue if you ask me. Overdose baby blue. "Sofonda said I had to have a sixteen -inch waist," Brandy says. "I said, 'Miss Sofonda, I am big-boned. I am six feet tall. No way am I getting down to a sixteen-inch waistline."
Sitting on the snail shell, I'm only half listening.
"Sofonda," Brandy says, "Sofonda says, there's a way, but I have to trust her. When I wake up in the recovery room, I'll have a sixteen-inch waist."
It's not like I haven't heard this story in a dozen other bathrooms. Another bottle off the countertop, Bilax capsules, I look it up in the Phyicians'Desk Reference book.
Bilax capsules. A bowel evacuant.
Maybe I should drop a few of these into that nonstop mouth between my feet.
Jump to Manus watching me do that infomercial. We were so beautiful. Me with a face. Him not so full of conjugated estrogens.
I thought we were a real love relationship. I did. I was very invested in love, but it was just this long, long sex thing that could end at any moment because, after all, it's just about getting off. Manus would close his power blue eyes and twist his head just so, side to side, and swallow.
And, Yes, I'd tell Manus. I came right when he did.
Pillow talk.
Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them.
This only looks like love.
Jump to Brandy on the bathroom floor, saying, "Sofonda and Vivienne and Kitty were all with me at the hospital." Her hands curl up off the tile, and she runs them up and down the sides of her blouse. "All three of them wore those baggy green scrub suits, wearing hairnets over their wigs and with those Duchess of Windsor costume jewelry brooches pinned on their scrub suits," Brandy says. "They were flying around behind the surgeon and the lights, and Sofonda was telling me to count backwardsfrom one hundred. You know ... 99... 98... 97..."
The Aubergine Dreams eyes close. Brandy, pulling long, even breaths, says, "The doctors, they took out the bottom rib on each side of my chest." Her hands rub where, and she says, "I couldn't sit up in bed for two months, but I had a sixteen-inch waist. I still have a six-teen-inch waist."
One of Brandy's hands opens to full flower and slides over the flat land where her blouse tucks into the belt of her skirt. "They cut out two of my ribs, and I never saw them again," Brandy says. "There's something in the Bible about taking out your ribs."
The creation of Eve.
Brandy says, "I don't know why I let them do that to me."
And Brandy, she's asleep.
Jump back to the night Brandy and I started this road trip, the night we left the Congress Hotel with Brandy driving the way you can only drive at two-thirty AM in an open sports car with a loaded rifle and an overdosed hostage. Brandy hides her eyes behind Ray- Bans so she can drive in a little privacy. Instant glamour from another planet in the 1950s, Brandy pulls an Hermes scarf over her auburn hair and ties it under her chin.
All I can see is myself reflected in Brandy's Ray-Bans, tiny and horrible. Still strung out and pulled apart by the cold night air around the windshield. Bathrobe still dragging shut in the car door. My face, you touch my blasted, scar-tissue face and you'd swear you were touching chunks of orange peel and leather.
Driving east, I'm not sure what we're running from. Evie or the police or Mr. Baxter or the Rhea sisters. Or nobody. Or the future. Fate. Growing up, getting old. Picking up the pieces. As if by running we won't have to get on with our lives. I'm with Brandy right now because I can't imagine getting away with this without Brandy's help. Because, right now, I need her.
Not that I really love her. Him. Shane.
Already the word love is sounding pretty thin.
Hermes scarf on her head, Ray-Bans on her head, makeup on her face, I look at the queen supreme in the pulse- pulse, then pulse-pulse, then pulse-pulse of oncoming headlights. What I see when I look at Brandy, this is what Manus saw when he took me sailing.
Right now, looking at flashes of Brandy beside me in Manus's car, I know what it is I loved about her. What I love is myself. Brandy Alexander just looks exactly the way I looked before the accident. Why wouldn't she? She's my brother, Shane. Shane and I were almost the same height, born one year apart. The same coloring. The same features. The same hair, only Brandy's hair is in better shape.
Add to this her lipo, her silicone, her trachea shave, her brow shave, her scalp advance, her forehead realignment, her rhino contouring to smooth her nose, her maxomil-liary operations to shape her jaw. Add to all that years of electrolysis and a handful of hormones and antiandrogens every day, and it's no wonder I didn't recognize her.