Some are old-style vaginas where you had to stretch and dilate them every day with a plastic mold. All these brochures are souvenirs of Brandy's near future.
After we saw Mr. Parker sitting on Ellis, I helped the drug- induced dead body Brandy might as well be back upstairs and took her out of her clothes again. She coughed them back up when I tried to slip any more Darvons down her throat, so I settled her back on the bathroom floor, and when I folded her suit jacket over my arm there was something cardboard tucked in the inside pocket. The Miss Rona book. Tucked in the book is a souvenir of my own future.
Kicked back on the big ceramic snail shell, I read: Hove Seth Thomas so much I have to destroy him. I over-compensate by worshiping the queen supreme. Seth will never love me. No one will ever love me ever again.
How embarrassing.
Give me needy emotional whining bullshit.
Flash.
Give me self-absorbed egocentric twaddle.
Christ.
Fuck me. I'm so tired of being me. Me beautiful. Me ugly. Blonde. Brunette. A million fucking fashion makeovers that only leave me trapped being me.
Who I was before the accident is just a story now. Everything before now, before now, before now, is just a story I carry around. I guess that would apply to anybody in the world. What I need is a new story about who I am.
What I need to do is fuck up so bad I can't save myself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
So this is life in the Brandy Alexander Witness Reincarnation Project.
In Santa Barbara, Manus who was Denver taught us how to get drugs. The three of us were squeezed into that Fiat Spider from Portland to Santa Barbara, and Brandy just wanted to die. All the time, holding both hands pressed on her lower back, Brandy kept saying, "Stop the car. I got to stretch. I am spaz-am-ing. We have to stop."
It took us two days to drive from Oregon to California, and the two states are right next door to each other. Manus being all the time looking at Brandy, listening to her, in love with her so obvious I only wanted to kill them in worse and more painful ways.
In Santa Barbara, we're just into town when Brandy wants to get out arid walk a little. Trouble is, this is a really good neighborhood in California. Right up in the hills over Santa Barbara. You walk around up here, the police or some private security patrol cruises you and wants to know who you are and see some I.D., please.
Still, Brandy, she's spasming again, and the hysterical princess has one leg over the door, half climbed out of the Spider before Denver Omelet will even stop. What Brandy wants are the Tylox capsules she left in Suite 15-G at the Congress Hotel.
"You can't be beautiful," Brandy says about a thousand times, "until you feel beautiful."
Up here in the hills, we pull up curbside to an OPEN HOUSE sign. The house looking down on us is a big hacienda, Spanish enough to make you want to dance the flamenco on a table, swing on a wrought-iron chandelier, wear a sombrero and a bandoleer.
"Here," Denver says to her. "Get yourselves pretty, and I'll show you how we can scam some prescription painkillers."
Jump back to the three days we hid out in Denver's apartment until we could get some cash together. Brandy, she's cooked up some new plan. Before she goes under the knife she's decided to find her sister.
The me who wants to dance on her grave.
"A vaginoplasty is pretty much forever," she says. "It can wait while I figure some things out."
She's decided to find her sister and tell her everything, about the gonorrhea, about why Shane's not dead, what happened, everything. Make a clean break of it. Probably she'd be surprised how much her sister already knows.
I just want to be out of town in case a felony arson arrest warrant is in the pipeline, so I threaten Denver, if he won't come with us, I'll run to the police and accuse him. Of arson, of kidnapping, of attempted murder. To Evie, I mail a letter.
To Brandy, I write:
let's drive around some, see what happens, chill.
This seems a little labor intensive, but we've all got something to run from. And when I say we, I mean everybody in the world. So Brandy thinks we're on tour to find her sister, and Denver's come along by blackmail. My letter to Evie's sitting in her mailbox at the end of her driveway leading up to her burned-up ruins of a house. Evie's in Cancun, maybe.
The letter to Evie says:
To Miss Evelyn Cottrell,
Manus says he shot me and you helped him 'cuz of your filthy relationship. In order for you to stay out of PRISON, please seek an insurance settlement for the damage to your home and personal property as soon as possible. Convert this entire settlement into United
States funds, tens and twenties, and mail them to me care of General Delivery in Seattle, Washington. I am the person you are responsible for being without a fiance, your former best friend, no matter what lies you tell yourself. Send the money and I will consider the matter dealt with and will not go to the police and have you arrested and sent to PRISON, where you will have to fight day and night for your dignity and life but no doubt lose them both. Yes, and I've had major reconstructive surgery, so I look even better than myself, and I have Manus Kelley with me and he still loves me and says he hates you and will testify against you in court that you're a bitch. Signed, Me
Jump to above the edge of the Pacific Ocean, parked curb-side at the Spanish hacienda OPEN HOUSE. Denver tells Brandy and me how to go upstairs while he keeps the realtor busy. The master bedroom will have the best view, that's how to find it. The master bathroom will have the best drugs.
Sure, Manus used to be a police vice detective, if you consider wagging your butt around the bushes in Washington Park wearing a Speedo bikini a size too small and hoping some lonely sex hound will whip his dick out, if that's detective work, then, sure, Manus was a detective.
Because beauty is power the way money is power the way a loaded gun is power. And Manus with his square-jawed, cheekboned good looks could be a Nazi recruiting poster.
While Manus was still fighting crime, I found him cutting the crust off a slice of bread one morning. Bread without crust made me remember being little. This was so sweet, but I thought he was making me toast. Then Manus goes to in front of a mirror in the apartment we used to share, wearing his white Speedo, and he asks, if I were a gay guy would I want to bang him up the butt? Then he changed to a red Speedo and asked again. You know, he says, really stuff his poop chute? Plow the cowboy? It's not a morning I would want on video.
"What I need," Manus said, "is for my basket to look big, but my ass to look adolescent." He takes the slice of bread and stuffs it inside between himself and the crotch of the Speedo. "Don't worry, this is how underwear models get a better look," he says. "You get a smooth unoffen-sive bulge this way." He stands sideways to the mirror and says, "You think I need another slice?"
His being a detective meant he crunched around in good weather, in his sandals and his lucky red Speedo, while two plainclothes men nearby in a parked car waited for somebody to take the bait. This happened more than you'd imagine. Manus was a one-man campaign to clean up Washington Park. He'd never been this successful as a regular policeman and this way nobody ever shot at him.
It all felt very Bond, James Bond. Very cloak and dagger. Very spy versus spy. Plus he was getting a great tan. Plus he got to tax deduct his gym membership and his buying new Speedos.