“You mean you're actually gonna go to that?”
“Well, yeah. It's got my curiosity up.”
“Okay, if you wanna waste your time, go ahead. Bunch of druggy weirdos putting on the ritz for some big scientist who's probably also a druggy weirdo, if the truth be known. It's not my cup of cake.”
“Well, I've decided to go.”
“All right. I'll meet you afterward.”
“It might be late.”
“So what? I'll wait up for you.”
Priscilla shrugged with resignation. It looks like it's just my destiny to turn queer, she thought. Why fight it? To Ricki she said, “Your place or mine?” not caring that two other waitresses were lined up behind her, impatient to place their orders but savoring every word.
“Yours is closer.”
“It's a mess.”
“It's always a mess.”
“I guess it is. How come your place is always so neat? How do you do it? With mirrors?”
Ricki shook her head. “My lunar sign is in Virgo,” she said. “Every month when the moon is full, I'm driven to balance my checkbook and straighten up my apartment. I can't help myself. Instead of a werewolf, I turn into an accountant.”
“Who can only be killed with a silver dildo,” called Priscilla, walking away with her drinks while her fellow employees, now four deep in front of the waitress station, looked on in disgust and bewilderment.
She completed the Saturday shift with no more than the usual mishaps. There was a birthday party at one of her tables, which meant that she had to deliver a complimentary cake with lighted candle and sing “Happy Birthday” to the recipient, a chore that she always despised. She felt better, however, when she overheard another customer, a famous young fashion photographer from Madrid, who was being treated to El Papa Muerta's Uncle Ben paella by some Seattle department store executives, proclaim, “How embarrassing, how gauche! In Europe such vulgarity would never happen. A birthday is a private affair. Only in America would it be a cheap public display.” The last thing she did before she went off duty was to order a birthday cake sent to the photographer at his table.
On the way out, she gave Ricki her spare key so that the bartender could let herself in to wait for her on Sunday night. “See you after the party,” Pris said. “Thanks for the good news.”
“I'm sure you'll find a way to repay me,” said Ricki. She winked.
Priscilla bicycled home, where, relieved by the absence of beet at her door and bolstered by the prospect of financial aid, she allowed herself the rare luxury of going straight to bed. In her dreams, however, she mixed fragrances continuously, awakening the next morning, still in uniform, feeling almost as tired as if she had worked through the night.
Having slept with her tips in her pocket, she found red welts the size of quarters on her thigh when she showered. “Marked by the Beast!” she exclaimed. “Well, there's one thing to be said for money. It can make you rich.”
After a breakfast of half-fresh doughnuts and canned Carnation milk, she attacked the apartment with sponge and cleanser, with mop and broom, with organizational tactics for which she'd previously exhibited little aptitude. She would not settle for less than spick-and-span. “Won't Ricki be surprised,” she said.
In the afternoon, she napped. She dreamed of her father. They were in his palace in Mexico. He was rubbing salve into the welts on her thigh. V'lu Jackson was down on all fours, scrubbing the palace floor. There was a strong odor of ammonia. The odor was still there when Priscilla awoke. For a whole minute, she did not recognize her own apartment.
The least wrinkled garment — and even it had as many folds as the waddles of a Republican president — in her closet was a green knit dress given to her by her ex-husband, the Argentine accordion ace, Effecto Partido. She hung it in the bathroom with the shower on hot and full, until the steam performed the equivalent of one of those partially successful face-lifts administered to aging actresses. The dress looked good on her. It called attention to the violet in her eyes. She applied eye shadow and lipstick and as a finishing touch, forced earring wires through the virtually grown-over holes in her lobes. The earrings were also a gift from Effecto. They were tiny accordions.
With a tingle of excitement, she decided to call for a taxi. The Last Laugh Foundation was only a dozen blocks away, but it was raining, as usual, and she just couldn't ride her bike in her best dress. She turned the latch, checking twice to ascertain that the door was tightly locked, then went downstairs to wait for the cab. “If a beet comes tonight, that carnivore Ricki can deal with it,” she said. She was chuckling softly when she climbed into the Farwest taxi.
The cab streaked through the wet streets with a noise like an asp. Alas, before Priscilla could fully enjoy the blur of neon, the crisp vinyl upholstery, the mystery crackle of the two-way radio, she was at her destination. She showed her invitation to one of a half-dozen security guards — triple the usual number — and was immediately let through the iron gate, while from the excluded crowd that spilled out front, even in the chilly drizzle that was falling there arose loud grumbles and cries of “Who the hell is she?” Her lungs filled momentarily with a sort of golden gas, that righteous helium that inflates the diaphragm of any honest person who finds himself or herself suddenly one of an elite. Slightly giddy with privilege, she stumbled along a gravel path that wound through a rhododendron garden and led to the front steps of the mansion. She was beginning to have visions of Wally Lester's Mexican palace. They ceased when she noticed a squashed slug on the steps.
The brass door-knocker was in the shape of a fairy. Little wings and wand and everything. “Hmm,” said Priscilla. She thought that she would feel silly, putting it to its intended purpose, but it was okay. She was still regarding the knocker when a girl about eight years old opened the door and admitted her. “My daddy believes in fairies,” the child said. “Hmm,” replied Priscilla.
Although the ivy-covered exterior of the Last Laugh Foundation led one to expect brown leather furniture, worn but expensive Oriental carpets, carved wood ceilings, and Flemish tapestries depicting medieval stag hunts or mythological rowdies, the interior proved to be bright and modern: chrome, smoked glass, canvas couches in bold primary hues. The floors were polished hardwood. The walls were pure white. “White as alkaloid crystals,” Wiggs Dannyboy was to say. “White as yeti dung, white as the Sabbath, white as God's own belly. Floral patterns, they're for your doomed. Your immortalist wall is a white one.” Here and there were prints by M. C. Escher, a multiplication of stiff, metamorphic images that assured the viewer that the world is a puzzle and life a loop and that is that. (Escher is sneered at by critics, but he may be one of the few artists who didn't lie to us.) Above the fireplace, in which Pres-to-logs were smoldering, was a display of headhunting equipment, probably relics of the days when Dr. Dannyboy was a working anthropologist. “Would you care for a cocktail?” the little girl asked. You bet.
Standing about the large room were approximately twenty people, none of whom seemed any more at home there than Priscilla. She thought she recognized one of the guests. He was, oddly enough, a fragrance wholesaler, the only one in the Pacific Northwest. She had made modest purchases from him. It was he who would order French jasmine oil for her, if the educated waitresses did, indeed, grant her the funds with which to buy it. She was about to approach him, gulping bourbon and ginger ale all the while, when Dr. Dannyboy fairly burst into the room, introduced himself loudly, and called the gathering to table.
The dining room was formal in character, despite the fact that its long table was made of red plastic, the chairs of chrome tubes and purple canvas. The walls here were white, as well, adorned by another Escher or two, commenting again on the poetic transformations that occur systematically, if mysteriously, in the seemingly endless loop of life. Candles blazed in a plastic candelabrum. The last chrysanthemums of autumn hung their heads apprehensively over the rim of a vase, like voyagers whose crowded boat was steaming into a strange and possibly dangerous port. The chrysanthemums were part of a centerpiece that included some beets.