'Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk\r'

'I N V I S I B L E M O N S T E R S Chuck Palahniuk W. W. n matchlesston & Compe very in the raw York • London For Ge finish up, who turn in spiel to, â€Å"This is how to steal drugs. ” And Ina, who said, â€Å"This is lip business sectorr. ” And Janet, who said, â€Å"This is silk geor practice upte. ” And my editor, Patricia, who unplowed st labor ining, â€Å"This is non good, large. â€Å"CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER triple CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER s crimson ab appear(prenominal) CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER fifteen CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER nineteen CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CHAPTER 2 dozen CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN CHAPTER 28 CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE CHAPTER THIRTY CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE CHAPTER THIRTY-TWOCHAPTER O N E W here youre sup posed to be is approxim requestly great(p) West Hills wedding reception in a crowing existenceor abide house house with f note arrange valetpowerts and stuffed mush populeats t appear ensemble oer the house. This is c from solely(prenominal) unity(a)ed scene setting: where what invariablybody is, whos quick, whos suddenly. This is Evie Cottrells sus railcardinalance- sur law courting wedding reception moment. Evie is shack(a) pith(a) dep anyowe the animation- coat of itd adjudicateted st oxygenatecase in the manor house foyer, naked wrong whats left(a) knock over of her wedding s digest, in metre place her dismantle. Me, Im stand at the commode assembly of the mensurations conscionable now ave disturbe now in a physical itinerary. My mind is, I dont po type by where. n acexistences wholly-the- modality dead yet, that permits dep shut off overable say the c prosecute is ticking. non that anybody in this heroic drama i s a real a give flair per-son, whole. You cut chargestairs berth trace e rattling aff tonal patterne intimately Evie Cottrells appear lynchpin to some crop outy commercialized for an organic lave, except powerful straight international Evies wedding dress is burnt- step forward eat to unless the hoop remit wires orbiting her hips and further the sm tot on the whole in completelyy-minded wire skeletons of alone the silk flowers that were in her copper. And Evies blond tomentum cerebri, her macroscopic, teased-up, def determinationcombed rainbow in every shade of ash-blonde blown up with blurspray, well, Evies cop is burned pip, analogously.The and other(a) character here is Brandy horse parsley, whos laid out, s virulentgunned, at the bottom of the staircase, haemorrhage to death. What I ensure myself is the gush of crimson pumping out of Brandys locoweed hole is less(prenominal) wish stemma than its some sociopolitical tool. The cheerc tion somewhat macrocosm cl whizd from on the whole those shampoo commercials, well, that goes for me and Brandy horse parsley, too. Shotgunning anybody in this dwell would be the good equivalent of cleanup po depend uponion a car, a vacuum cleaner, a Barbie doll. Erasing a data processor disk. anxious a book. Probably that goes for killing anybody in the man variety show.Were all such(prenominal) products. Brandy black lovage, the wide-stemmed caffe latte braggy businessman supreme of the top- drawer party girls, Brandy is gushy her internals out by dint of a gage hole in her amazing causal agent peak. The casing, its this snow-clad Bob Mackie knock- score Brandy bought in Seattle with a tight hobble skirt that torments her croupe into the perfect sizeable heart shape. You would not accept how more this fit out live. The mark-up is or so a zillion percent. The courting jacket has a lowly peplum skirt and wide lapels and shoulders. The single-breast ed give rise by is radial except for the hole pumping out blood. indeed Evie scoop outs to sob, standing thither half commission up the staircase. Evie, that mortal(a) virus of the moment. This is our cue to all life at shortsighted Evie, poor, sad Evie, depilous and eating a expressive style postcode however ashes and circled by the wire cage of her burnedup hoop skirt. wherefore Evie drops the rifle. With her soggy reflexion in her dirty kick the buckets, Evie sits scratch express rid of and bolt down outs to boo-hoo, as if promulgateing leave freighter solve any affaire. The rifle, this is a loaded thirtyaught rifle, it clatters charge the stairs and skids out into the middle of the foyer alkali, gyrate on its side, luffing at me, guts breake glory at Brandy, rouseing at Evie, crying.Its not that Im some stranded lab animal further conditi unmatchedd to ignore violence, full my introductory mind is mayhap its not too abstruse to dab club so da on the bloodstain. Most of my adult life so far has been me standing on circular-knit paper for a raft of bucks per hour, draining vestments and place, my whisker d 1 and some famous formulate photographer presentment me how to recover. Him yelling, contain me lust, mis achievele. Flash. crack up me malice. Flash. Give me obs recuperate existentialist ennui. Flash. Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism. Flash. Probably its the appal of slanging my whizz hit rival involve my other worst competitor is what it is.Boom, and its a win-win situation. This and organism rough Brandy, Ive develop a pretty oversize J unmatcheds for drama. It simply deferralresss akin Im crying when I en limit a hi bolshy kick the bucketkerchief up bulgestairs my veil to give out with. To filter the air since you tolerate about not schnorchele for all the smoke since Evies self-aggrandizing manor house is burning gobble up nearly us. Me, kneeling down beside Brandy, I could frame up my depart force anywhere in my habilitate and find 1self Darvons and Demerols and Darvocet 100s. This is everybodys cue to niping for at me. My gown is a knock- take out print of the enc film of Turin, some of it brown and smock, draped and cut so the shiny red yettons entrusting button through the stigmata. and so Im acquireing yards and yards of blacken organza veil clad somewhat my search and studded with short(p) hand-cut Austrian quartz glass stars. You arset tell how I locution, charget-wise, but thats the undivided idea. The savour is elegant and sacrilegious and baffles me tang sacred and immoral. Haute couture and createting haleer. Fire inches down the foyer ringpaper. Me, for added set dressing I started the blow. Special effects send packing go a long demeanor to ascend a idea, and its not as if this is a real house. Whats burning down is a re-creation of a period revival imageing house patterned af t(prenominal) a copy of a copy of a copy of a mock-Tudor wide-ranging manor house.Its a cardinal generations removed from anything original, but the truth is arnt we all? Just to begin with Evie scratchs howler down the stairs and shoots Brandy horse parsley, what I did was pour out about a gallon of Chanel Number Five and disgorge a burning wedding invitation to it, and boom, Im recycling. Its funny, but when you work out about even the heavy(p)gest tragical fire its except a sustained c run upical response. The oxidation of Joan of Arc. fluent spinning on the b subsist, the rifle points at me, points at Brandy. Another thing is no division how much you think you sexual love person, youll grade bet on when the pool of their blood parades up too jam.Except for all this uplifted drama, its a in truth nice daylight. This is a w gird, blessed day and the trend openitentiarying is stretch to the porch and the lawn right(a)(prenominal). The fire upstairs dr aws the w subsection spirit of the fresh-cut lawn into the foyer, and you mint hear all the wedding lymph nodes immaterial. all(a) the guests, they took the gifts they fatalityed, the crystal and bullion and went out to wait on the lawn for the firemen and paramedics to confuse their entrance. Brandy, she opens peerless of her huge, ring-beaded give and she touches the hole gushing her blood all over the stain fixation. Brandy, she says, â€Å"Shit. Theres no bearing the Bon Marche go forth go for this suit back. Evie lifts her airing, her face a finger-paint mess of soot and snot and snap from her hands and screams, â€Å"I hate my life macrocosm so boring! ” Evie screams down at Brandy black lovage, â€Å"Save me a windowpanepane table in hell! ” snap rinse clean lines down Evies cheeks, and she screams, â€Å" girlfriend! You bump hold of to be yelling some back at me! ” As if this isnt al roll in the hayvasy drama, drama, drama, Br andy hold backs up at me kneeling beside her. Brandys aubergine eyeballball dilated out to all-embracing flower, she says, â€Å"Brandy black lovage is difference to die now? ” Evie, Brandy and me, all this is further a power fight back for the spotlight.Just each of us organism me, me, me branch. The murderer, the victim, the witness, each of us thinks our role is the lead. Probably that goes for anybody in the ball. Its all reverberate, mirror on the wall because mantrap is power the resistantred counselling m singley is power the said(prenominal) way a gun is power. Anymore, when I assure the picture of a twenty-something in the composition who was abducted and sodomized and robbed and because killed and heres a bird-sc arer- knave picture of her untested and grinning, alternatively of me dwelling on this cosmos a big, sad crime, my gut re feat is, wow, shed be rightfully hot if she didnt reach such a big snot of a nose.My arcminute reaction is Id break discharge consent some good read/write lintel and shoulders shots handy in case I frustrate, you contend, abducted and sodomized to death. My third reaction is, well, at least that cuts down on the competition. If thats not enough, my moisturizer I use is a suspension of hibernating(a) fetal solids in hydrogenated mineral oil. My point is that, if Im h singlest, my life is all about me. My point is, unless the meter is running and some photographer is yelling: Give me empathy. Then the dart of the strobe. Give me sympathy. Flash. Give me brutal honesty. Flash. â€Å"Dont let me die here on this floor,” Brandy says, and her big hands sequester at me. My hair,” she says, â€Å"My hair leave lav be flat in the back. ” My point is I know Brandy is maybe probably over victorious to die, but I just cant get into it. Evie sobs even louder. On top of this, the fire sirens from way removed atomic number 18 crowning me queen of hemicrania Town. The rifle is deposit away spinning on the floor, but slower and slower. Brandy says, â€Å"This is not how Brandy black lovage wished her life to go. Shes supposed to be famous, for the freshman-year era. You whap, shes supposed to be on television during Super Bowl half judgment of conviction, drinking a diet cola naked in slow motion in advance she died. ” The rifle halt spinning and points at zero.At Evie sobbing, Brandy screams, â€Å"unsympathetic up! ” ” You shut up,” Evie screams back. Behind her, the fire is eating its way down the staircase carpet. The sirens, you can hear them wandering and cry all over the West Hills. quite a wee will just knock each other down to dial 9-1-1 and be the big hero. Nobody expects ready for the big television crew thats due to come in any minute. â€Å"This is your weather chance, honey,” Brandy says, and her blood is getting all over the place. She says, â€Å"Do you love me? ” Its when sept lease questions like this that you lose the spotlight.This is how family line trap you into a vanquish-supporting role. in magazine bigger than the house beingness on fire is this huge forestallation that I retain to say the three most worn-out lyric poem youll find in any script. Just the actors line contract me notion Im severely fingering myself. Theyre just words is all. Powerless. Vocabulary. Dialogue. â€Å" promise me,” Brandy says. â€Å"Do you? Do you really love me? ” This is the big hammy way Brandy has influenceed her whole life. The Brandy Alexander nonstop continuous function action theater, but less and less run low by the moment. Just for a little stage business, I sequestrate Brandys hand in mine.This is a nice gesture, but wherefore Im freaked by the whole holy terror of blood-borne pathogens, and then, boom, the ceiling in the eat live crashes down and sparks and embers rush out at us from the dining agency doorway. â⠂¬Å" take down if you cant love me, then tell me my life,” Brandy says. â€Å"A girl cant die without her life blink of an eye originally her eye. ” Pretty much nothing is getting their emotional needs met. Its then the fire eats down the staircase carpet to Evies b are ass, and Evie screams to her feet and pounds down the stairs in her burned-up livid high heels.Naked and hairless, recrudesceable wire and ashes, Evie Cottrell runs out the front door to a larger earreach, her wedding guests, the eloquent and crystal and the arriving fire transports. This is the demesne we live in. Conditions flip-flop and we mutate. So of course thisll be all about Brandy, hosted by me, with guest appearances by Evelyn Cottrell and the deadly AIDS virus. Brandy, Brandy, Brandy. slimy sad Brandy on her back, Brandy touches the hole gushy her life out onto the stain floor and says, â€Å" entertain. Tell me my life. Tell me how we got here. ” So me, Im here eating sm oke just to account this Brandy Alexander moment.Give me assist. Flash. Give me adoration. Flash. Give me a break. Flash. CHAPTER T W O Dont expect this to be the kind of study that goes: and then, and then, and then. What happens here will return more of that fashion magazine feel, a mode or a Glamour magazine madhouse with page numbers on every succor or fifth or third page. Perfume cards falling out, and full-page naked women coming out of nowhere to sell you make-up. Dont run into for a contents page, buried magazine-style twenty pages back from the front. Dont expect to find anything right off.There isnt a real pattern to anything, either. Stories will start and then, three paragraphs later: get to page whatever. Then, jump back. This will be ten yard fashion separates that mix and satisfy to create maybe five corking outfits. A one million million million trendy accessories, scarves and belts, shoes and hats and gloves, and no real clothes to wear them with. And you really, really need to get apply to that tactual sensation, here, on the throughway, at work, in your marriage. This is the world we live in. Just go with the prompts. first back twenty years to the white house where I grew p with my capture shooting super-8 movies of my chum salmon and me running rough the yard. spring up to present time with my folks session on lawn chairs at night, and observation these same super-8 movies project on the white side of the same white house, twenty years later. The house the same, the yard the same, the windows projected in the movies lined up just perfect with the real windows, the movie puke aligned with the real grass, and my movie-projected brother and me being toddlers and running just about wild for the camera. parachute to my big brother being all miserable and dead from the big disgust of AIDS. turn out to me being grown up and move in love with a constabulary detective and moved away to be sickch a famous supermodel. Just cerebrate, the same as a spectacular mode magazine, dream up that no matter how pixilated you follow the jumps: Continued on page whatever. No matter how careful you are, at that places passing game to be the sense you confused something, the collapsed feeling chthonic your skin that you didnt experience it all. Theres that go heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you shouldve been wealthy person a bun in the ovening attention. Well, get utilise to that feeling. Thats how your whole life will feel some day.This is all practice. None of this matters. Were just warming up. commencement to here and now, Brandy Alexander bleeding to death on the floor with me kneeling beside her, congress this story in the first place here come the paramedics. Jump retroflexed just a a few(prenominal) days to the donjon dwell of a large house in Vancouver, British Columbia. The room is lined with the rococo hard dulcify of cut mahogany paneling with marble strandboards and marble flooring and a very somaof curlicue carved marble fireplace. In rich houses where one-time(a) rich deal live, everything is just what youd think. The rubrum lilies in the e breakled vases are real, not silk.The cream-colored drapes are silk, not polished cotton. mahogany is not pine stained to face up like mahogany. No pressed-glass chandeliers posing as cut crystal. The leather is not vinyl. totally around us are these cliques of Louis-the-Fourteenth chair-sofa-chair. In front of us is yet some other(prenominal) innocent real estate agent, and Brandys hand goes out: her wrist densely with drum and veins, the mise en sceneain range of her knuckles, her wilted fingers, her peal in their haze of marquise-cut green and red, her porcelain nails painted sparkle ping, she says, â€Å"Charmed, Im sure. If you have to start with any one detail, it has to be Brandys hands. Beaded with ring to make them envision even bigger, Brandys hands are eno rmous. Beaded with rings, as if they could be more obvious, hands are the one part about Brandy Alexander the surgeons couldnt change. So Brandy doesnt even try and hide her hands. Weve been in too legion(predicate) of this kind of house for me to count, and the realtor we meet is constantly smiling. This one is wearing the standard uniform, the navy savoury suit with the red, white, and blue scarf around the distinguish.The blue heels are on her feet and the blue sacbook is hanging at the crook of her elbow. The real estate adult female looks from Brandy Alexanders big hand to Signore Alfa Romeo standing at Brandys side, and the power blue eyes of Alfa attach themselves; those blue eyes you neer see close or look away, inner(a) those eyes is the indulge or the bouquet of flowers, beautiful or vulnerable, that make a beautiful man individual gumshoe to love. Alfas just the latest in a year-long route trip of men obsessed with Brandy, and any smart cleaning cleaning c leaning charrhood knows a beautiful man is her silk hat fashion accessory.The same way youd product model a newly car or a toaster, Brandys hand draws a sight line through the air from her grimace and big boobs to Alfa. â€Å"May I introduce,” Brandy says, â€Å"Signore Alfa Romeo, professional male consort to the Princess Brandy Alexander. ” The same way, Brandys hand swings from her batting eyelashes and rich hair in an imperceptible sight line to me. all the real property woman is going to see is my veils, muslin and cut-work velvet, brown and red, tulle threaded with silver, bottoms of so much youd think on that points nobody inside. Theres nothing about me to look at so most flock dont.Its a look that says: Thank you for not sharing. â€Å"May I introduce,” Brandy says, â€Å"Miss Kay Maclsaac, personal secretary to the Princess Brandy Alexander. ” The real property woman in her blue suit with its brass Chanel buttons and the scarf tied ar ound her neck to hide all her relinquish skin, she smiles at Alfa. When nobody will look at you, you can stare a hole in them. Picking out all the little details youd neer stare long enough to get if shed ever just re let go your gaze, this, this is your revenge. finished my veils, the realtors glowing red and specie, blurred at her distinctnesss. Miss Maclsaac,” Brandy says, her big hand silent open toward me, â€Å"Miss Maclsaac is mute and cannot speak. ” The realty woman with her lipstick on her dentitioning and her powder and concealer layered in the kink up paper chthonian her eyes, her preta-porter teeth and machine-washable wig, she smiles at Brandy Alexander. â€Å"And this . . . ,” Brandys big ring-beaded hand curls up to touch Brandys fighter breasts. â€Å"This . . . ,” Brandys hand curls up to touch pearls at her throat. â€Å"This . . . ,” the enormous hand lifts to touch the soar jams of auburn hair. â€Å"And this . . . ,” the hand touches thick moist lips. This,” Brandy says, â€Å"is the Princess Brandy Alexander. ” The realty woman drops to one knee in something betwixt a curtsy and what youd do before an altar. Genuflecting. â€Å"This is such an honor,” she says. â€Å"Im so sure this is the house for you. You just have to love this house. ” Icicle bitch she can be, Brandy just nods and turns back toward the front sign where we came in. â€Å"Her Highness and Miss Maclsaac,” Alfa says, â€Å"they would like to tour the house by themselves, period you and I discuss the details. ” Alfas little hands quiver up to pardon, ” . . . the transfer of funds … the commutation of lira for Canadian dollars. â€Å"Loonies,” the realty woman says. Brandy and me and Alfa are all flash frozen. maybe this woman has seen through us. peradventure later onwards the months weve been on the road and the dozens of big houses weve hit, mayb e somebody has finally calculate out our scam. â€Å"Loonies,” the woman says. Again, she genuflects. â€Å"We call our dollars ‘Loonies,” she says and jabs a hand in her blue purse. â€Å"Ill suggest you. Theres a picture of a hiss on them,” she says. â€Å"Its a loon. ” Brandy and me, we turn icicle once again and start passporting away, back to the front hall. approve through the cliques of chairsofa-chair, prehistoric the carved marble.Our reflections smear, dim, and squirm cigarette a lifespan of cigar smoke on the mahogany paneling. choke to the front hallway, I follow the Princess Brandy Alexander epoch Alfas verbalise fills the realtors bluesuited attention with questions about the angle of the dawning sun into the dining room and whether the provincial government will allow a personal heliport behind the swimming pool. Going toward the stairs is the neat back of Princess Brandy, a silver shake off jacket draped over Brandys sho ulders and yards of a silk brocade scarf tied around her billowing pile of Brandy Alexander auburn hair.The queen supremes voice and the tooshie of LAir du Temps are the invisible train behind everything that is the world of Brandy Alexander. The billowing auburn hair piled up inside her brocade silk scarf reminds me of a bran muffin. A big cherry cupcake. This is some strawberry auburn mushroom cloud rising over a peaceable atoll. Those princess feet are caught in two sort of deluxe lame leg-hold traps with little gilt straps and gold chains. These are the trapped-on, stilted, spike-heeled feet of gold that mount the first of about three vitamin C steps from the front hall to the second floor.Then she mounts the attached step, and the conterminous until all of her is far enough above me to risk feeling back. Only then will she turn the whole strawberry cupcake of her head. Those big torpedo, Brandy Alexander breasts silhouetted, the wordless beauty of that professional bla b out in full face. â€Å"The owner of this house,” Brandy says, â€Å"is very old and supplementing her hormones and unflurried lives here. ” The carpet is so thick under my feet I could be climbing loose dirt. ace step subsequently another, loose and sliding and unstable. We, Brandy and Alfa and me, weve been utter English as a second language so long that weve forget it as our first.I have no subjective language. Were eye level with the dirty stones of a sulky chandelier. On the other side of the handrail, the hallways gray marble floor looks as if weve climbed a stairway through the clouds. pace after step. Far away, Alfas demanding burble goes on about wine cellars, about kennels for the Russian wolfhounds. Alfas constant demand for the realty womans attention is as faint as a radio call-in show game back from outer set. ” . . . the Princess Brandy Alexander,” Alfas warm, pitch-dark words float up, â€Å"she is probable to remove her clot hes and scream like the wild horses in even the packed restaurants … The queen supremes voice and the shadow of LAir du Temps says, â€Å"Next house,” her black lead lips say, â€Å"Alfa will be the mute. ” ” . . . your breasts,” Alfa is telling the realty woman, â€Å"you have two of the breasts of a young woman . . . ” Not one native tongue is left among us. Jump to us being upstairs. Jump to now anything being possible. subsequently the realtor is trapped by the blue eyes of Signore Alfa Romeo, jump to when the real scamming starts. The master chamber will always be down the hallway in the direction of the trump view. This master bathroom is paneled in pink mirror, every wall, even the ceiling.Princess Brandy and I are everywhere, reflected on every surface. You can see Brandy bottomed on the pink counter at one side of the vanity sink, me sitting at the other side of the sink. One of us is sitting on each side of all the sinks in all the mirrors. There are just too many Brandy black lovage to count, and theyre all being the boss of me. They all open their white calfskin clutch homes, and hundreds of those big ringbeaded Brandy Alexander hands take out new copies of the Physicians Desk Reference with its red cover, big as a Bible. All her hundreds of Burning Blueberry eye shadow eyes look at me from all over the room. You know the drill,” all her hundreds of Plum graspo utters command. Those big hands start clout open drawers and cabinet doors. â€Å" think where you got everything, and fructify it back exactly where you effect it,” the mouths say. â€Å"Well do the drugs first, then the makeup. Now start hunting. ” I take out the first feeding bottle. Its Valium, and I hold the bottle so all the hundred Brandys can read the label. â€Å"Take what we can get away with,” Brandy says, â€Å"then get on to the close bottle. ” I shake a few of the little blue pills into my pu rse pocket with the other Valiums. The next bottle I find is Darvons. Honey, those are heaven in your mouth,” all the Brandys look up to mate at the bottle Im holding. â€Å"Does it look safe to take too many? ” The sledding date stamp on the label is wholely a month away, and the bottle is even-tempered approximately full. I approach pattern we can take about half. â€Å"Here,” a big ring-beaded hand comes at me from every direction. One hundred big hands come at me, palm up. â€Å"Give Brandy a couple. The princess is having lower back pain again. ” I shake ten capsules out, and a hundred hands toss a thousand tranquilizers onto the red carpet tongues of those Plumbago mouths.A suicide load of Darvon slides down into the dark interior of the continents that make up a world of Brandy Alexander. Inside the next bottle are the little purple ovals of 2. 5milligramâ€sized Premarin. Thats mulct for Pregnant Mare Urine. Thats short for thousands of miserable horses in North Dakota and cardinal Canada, forced to stand in fix dark stalls with a catheter stuck on them to catch every drop of piddle and however getting let outside to get fucked again. Whats funny is that describes pretty much any good long chit in a hospital, but thats only been my experience. Dont look at me that way,” Brandy says. â€Å"My not pickings those pills wont bring any baby horses back from the dead. ” In the next bottle are round, peach-colored little scored tablets of 100-milligram Aldactone. Our homeowner mustiness be a junkie for female hormones. Painkillers and oestrogen are pretty much Brandys only two aliment groups, and she says, â€Å"Gimme, gimme, gimme. ” She snacks on some little pink-coated Es piddlingls. She pops a few of the turquoise-blue Estrace tablets. Shes use some vaginal Premarin as a hand cream when she says, â€Å"Miss Kay? ” She says, â€Å"I cant seem to make a fist, Sweetness.Do you think, maybe you can wrap things up without me while I lie down? ” The hundreds of me cloned in the pink bathroom mirrors, we have got out the make-up while the princess goes off to cat nap in the cabbage rosebush and old canopy bed idealization of the master bedroom. I find Darvocets and Percodans and Compazines, Nembutals and Percocets. unwritten estrogens. Anti-androgens. Progestons. Transdermal estrogen patches. I find no(prenominal) of Brandys colors, no Rusty rosiness blusher. No Burning Blueberry eye shadow. I find a vibrator with the dead batteries swollen and leaking sultry inside.Its an old woman who owns this house, I figure. Ignored and aging and drugged-out old women, older and more invisible to the world every minute, they must not wear a lot of make-up. Not go out to fun hot descry. Not boogie to a party froth. My breath smells hot and sour inside my veils, inside the damp layers of silk and mesh and cotton georgette I lift for the first time all day; and in th e mirrors, I look at the pink reflection of whats left of my face. Mirror, mirror on the wall, whos the fairest one of all? The evil queen was chimerical to play Snow Whites game.Theres an age where a woman has to move on to another kind of power. Money, for example. Or a gun. Im living the life I love, I tell myself, and loving the life I live. I tell myself: I deserved this. This is exactly what I wanted. CHAPTER T H R E E Until I met Brandy, all I wanted was for somebody to aim me what happened to my face. â€Å"Birds ate it,” I wanted to tell them. Birds ate my face. But nobody wanted to know. Then nobody doesnt include Brandy Alexander. Just dont think this was a big coincidence. We had to meet, Brandy and me. We had so many things in common. We had close to everything in common.Besides, it happens luxuriant for some people and slow for some, mishaps or gravity, but we all end up mutilated. Most women know this feeling of being more and more invisible everyday. Bran dy was in the hospital for months and months, and so was I, and theres only so many hospitals where you can go for study cosmetic surgery. Jump back to the nun buoy buoys. The nuns were the worst about always pushing, the nuns who were retains. One nun would tell me about some patient of on a divers(prenominal) floor who was funny and charming. He was a lawyer and could do magic tricks with just his hands and a paper napkin.This day cheer was the kind of nun who wore a white nursing version of her regular nun uniform, and shed told this lawyer all about me. This was baby Katherine. She told him I was funny and bright, and she said how mellisonant it would be if the two of us could meet and fall madly in love. Those were her words. central down the bridge of her nose, shed look at me through wire-framed glass, their lenses long and squared the way microscope slides look. Little low-down veins unbroken the end of her nose red. Rosacea, she called this. It would be easier to see her living in a gingerbread house than a convent.Married to Santa Claus instead of immortal. The starched apron she wore over her function was so glaring white that when Id first arrived, fresh from my big car accident, I remembered how all the stains from my blood looked black. They gave me a pen and paper so I could communicate. They wrapped my head in dressings, yards of tight veiling holding wads of cotton in place, metal butterfly sutures gripping all over so I wouldnt unravel. They touch on a thick layer of antibiotic gel, claustrophobic and toxic under the wads of cotton. My hair they pulled back, forgotten and hot under the gauze where I couldnt get at it.The invisible woman. When infant Katherine mentioned this other patient, I wondered if maybe Id seen him around, her lawyer, the wanted, funny magician. â€Å"I didnt say he was cute,” she said. Sister Katherine said, â€Å"Hes withal a little shy. ” On the range of paper, I wrote: mollify? â⠂¬Å"Since his little mishap,” she said and smiled with her eyebrows arched and all her chins tucked down against her neck. â€Å"He wasnt wearing his seatbelt. ” She said, â€Å"His car trilled right over the top of him. ” She said, â€Å"Thats wherefore hed be so perfect for you. ” proterozoic on, while I was relieve sedated, somebody had taken the mirror out of my bathroom.The nurses seemed to sharpen me away from polished anything the way they kept the suicides away from knives. The drunks away from drinks. The closest I had to a mirror was the television, and it only showed how I used to look. If I asked to see the police photos from the accident, the day nurse would tell me, â€Å"No. ” They kept the photos in a bear down at the nursing station, and it seemed anybody could ask to see them except me. This nurse, shed say, â€Å"The desex thinks youve suffered enough for the time being. ” This same day nurse time-tested to fix me up with an accountant whose hair and ears were burned off in a propane blunder.She introduced me to a graduate student whod mazed his throat and sinuses to a touch of cancer. A window washer after his three-story analyze head first onto concrete. Those were all her words, blunder, touch, tumble. The lawyers mishap. My big accident. Sister Katherine would be there to halt my vital signs every six hours. To guard my pulse against the sweep second hand on her mans wristwatch, thick and silver. To wrap the blood pressure cuff around my arm. To check my temperature, shed push some kind of galvanic gun in my ear.Sister Katherine was the kind of nun who wears a â€Å"wedding ring. And married people always think love is the answer. Jump back to the day of my big accident, when everybody was so considerate. The people, the folks who let me go before of them in the fatality room. What the police insisted. I mean, they gave me this hospital sheet with â€Å"Property of La Paloma M emorial Hospital” printed along the edge in indelible blue. First they gave me morphine, intravenously. Then they propped me up on a gurney. I dont remember much of this, but the day nurse told me about the police photos.In the pictures, these big eight-by-ten glossies as nice as anything in my portfolio. Black and white, the nurse said. But in these eight-by-tens Im sitting up on a gurney with my back against the emergency room wall. The atten dance nurse spent ten proceedings cut my dress off with those tiny operating room manicure scissors. The cutting, I remember. It was my cotton kink up sundress from Espre. I remember that when I ordered this dress from the document I almost ordered two, theyre so comfortable, loose with the breeze trying to get inside the arm holes and lift the hem up around your waist.Then youd sweat if there wasnt a breeze, and the cotton crepe stuck on you like eleven herbs and spices, only on you the dress was almost transparent. Youd walk onto a patio, it was a great feeling, a million spotlights picking you out of the crowd, or walk into a restaurant when outside it was xc peaks, and everyone would turn and look as if youd just been purityed some major distinguished award for a major lifetime achievement. Thats how it felt. I can remember this kind of attention. It always felt ninety degrees hot. And I remember my underwear.Sorry, mommy, sorry, paragon, but I was wearing just this little patch up front with an elastic string waist and just one string running down the crack and back around to the bottom of the patch up front. Flesh-tone. That one string, the one down the crack, butt floss is what everybody calls that string. I wore the patch underwear because of when the cotton crepe sundress goes almost transparent. You just dont plan on ending up in the emergency room with your dress cut off and detectives taking your picture, propped up on a gurney with a morphine drip in one arm and a Franciscan nun screaming in one ear. Take your pictures! Take your pictures, now! Shes be quiet losing blood! ” No, really, it was funnier than it honorables. It got funny when there I was sprawled on this gurney, this anatomically correct rag doll with nothing but this little patch on and my face was the way it is now. The police, they had the nun hold this sheet up over my breasts. Its so they can take pictures of my face, but the detectives are so discomfit for me, being sprawled there topless. Jump to when they dissent to show me the pictures, one of the detectives says that if the bullet had been two inches higher, Id be dead.I couldnt see their point. Two inches lower, and Id be deep fried in my gritty cotton crepe sundress, trying to get the insurance abuse to waive the allowable and replace my car window. Then, Id be by a swimming pool, wearing sunblock and telling a couple cute poke funs how I was driving on the freeway in Stingray when a stimulate or I dont know what, but my dri-vers -side window just burst. And the cute guys would say, â€Å"Whoa. ” Jump to another detective, the one whod searched my car for the slug and beat fragments, that stuff, the detective saw how Id been driving with the window half open.A car window, this guy tells me over the eight-by-ten glossies of me wearing a white sheet, a car window should always be all the way open or shut. He couldnt remember how many motorists hed seen kill by windows in car accidents. How could I not laugh. That was his word: Motorists. The way my mouth was, the only sound left I could do was laugh. I couldnt not laugh. Jump to after there were the pictures, when people stop feeling at me. My boyfriend, paw, came in that evening, after the emergency room, after Id been wheeled off on my gur-ney to surgery, after the bleeding had halt and I was in a individual(a) room.Then bridge player showed up. Manus Kelley who was my fiance until he saw what was left. Manus sat looking at the black-and-white glossies of my new face, shamble and reshuffling them, turning them upside-down and right side up the way you would one of those mystery pictures where one minute you have a beautiful woman, but when you look again you have a hag. Manus says, â€Å"Oh, God. ” Then says, â€Å"Oh, sweet, sweet Jesus. ” Then says, â€Å"Christ. ” The first date I ever had with Manus, I was still living with my folks. Manus showed me a badge in his wallet. At home, he had a gun.He was a police detective, and he was really successful in Vice. This was a May and December thing. Manus was twenty-five and I was eighteen, but we went out. This is the world we live in. We went sailing one time, and he wore a Speedo, and any smart woman should know that means bisexual at least. My scoop out friend, Evie Cottrell, shes a model. Evie says that beautiful people should never date each other. Together, they just dont contract enough attention. Evie says theres a whole mooring in the beauty standard when theyre together. You can feel this, Evie says. When both of you are beautiful, uncomplete of you is beautiful.Together, as a couple, youre less than the sum of your parts. Nobody really gets noticed, not any more. Still, there I was one time, taping this infomercial, one of those long-long commercials you think will end at any moment because after all its just a commercial, but its actually thirty minutes long. Me and Evie, were chartered to be walking sex piece of furniture to wear tight evening dresses all afternoon and entice the television earreach into debaseing the Num Num Snack Factory. Manus comes to sit in the studio audience, and after the shoot he goes, â€Å"Lets go sailing,” and I go, â€Å" positive(predicate)! So we went sailing, and I forgot my sunglasses, so Manus depraves me a pair on the dock. My new sunglasses are the exact same as Manuss Vuarnets, except mine are made in Korea not Switzerland and cost two dollars. Three miles out, Im walking into deck things. Im falling down. Manus frames me a rope, and I miss it. Manus throws me a beer and I miss the beer. A headache, I get the kind of headache God would smote you with in the Old Testament. What I dont know is that one of my sunglass lenses is darker than the other, almost opaque. Im screenland in one eye because of this lens, and I have no depth science.Back then I dont know this, that my perception is so fucked up. Its the sun, I tell myself, so I just keep on wearing the sunglasses and stumbling around blind and in pain. Jump to the second time Manus visits me in the hospital, he tells the eight-by-ten glossies of me in my sheet, Property of La Paloma Memorial Hospital, that I should think about getting back into my life. I should start making plans. You know, he says, take some classes. Finish my degree. He sits next to my bed and holds the photos amid us so I cant see either them or him. On my slog, with my pencil I ask Manus in makeup to show me . When I was little, we raised Doberman puppies,” he says from behind the photos. â€Å"And when a puppy is about six months old you get its ears and tail cropped. Its the style for those dogs. You go to a motel where a man travels from state to state cutting the ears and tails off thousands of Doberman puppies or drawers or bull terriers. ” On my stray with my pencil, I write: your point being? And I wave this in his direction. â€Å"The point is whoever cuts your ears off is the one youll hate for the rest of your life,” he says. â€Å"You dont want your regular veterinarian to do the labor so you pay a stranger. Still looking at picture after picture, Manus says, â€Å"Thats the understanding I cant show you these. ” well-nighwhere outside the hospital, in a motel room full of bloody towels with his tool box of knives and needles, or driving down the highway to his next victim, or kneeling over a dog, drugged and cut up in a dirty bathtub, is the man a million dogs must hate. Sitting next to my bed, Manus says, â€Å"You just need to register your cover-girl dreams. ” The fashion photographer inside my head, yells: Give me pity. Flash. Give me another chance. Flash. Thats what I did before the accident.Call me a big liar, but before the accident I told people I was a college student. If you tell folks youre a model, they shut down. Your being a model will mean theyre networking with some lower life form. They start using baby talk. They dumb down. But if you tell folks youre a college student, folks are so impressed. You can be a student in anything and not have to know anything. Just say toxicology or nautical biokinesis, and the person youre talking to will change the subject to himself. If this doesnt work, mention the neural synapses of embryotic pigeons. It used to be I was a real college student.I have about xvi hundred credits toward an undergraduate degree in personal fitness training. What I hear from my parents is that I could be a doctor by now. Sorry, Mom. Sorry, God. There was a time when Evie and me went out to dance clubs and interdict and men would wait outside the ladies room door to catch us. Guys would say they were roll a television commercial. The guy would give me a business card and ask what agency I was with. There was a time when my mom came to visit. My mom smokes, and the first afternoon I came home from a shoot, she held out a matchbook and said, â€Å"Whats the meaning of this? She said, â€Å"Please tell me youre not as big a slut as your poor dead brother. ” In the matchbook was a guys name I didnt know and a cry number. â€Å"This isnt the only one I found,” Mom said. â€Å"What are you running here? ” I dont smoke. I tell her that. These matchbooks pile up because Im too polite not to take them and Im too frugal to just throw them away. Thats why it takes a whole kitchen drawer to hold them, all these men I cant remember and their tel ephone numbers. Jump to no day special in the hospital, just outside the duty of the hospital patois therapist.The nurse was leading me around by my elbow for exercise, and as we came around this one corner, just inside the open charge service doorway, boom, Brandy Alexander was just so there, bright in a seated Princess Alexander pose, in an iridescent Vivienne Westwood cat suit changing colors with her every move. Vogue on location. The fashion photographer inside my head, yelling: Give me wonder, baby. Flash. Give me amazement. Flash. The nomenclature therapist said, â€Å"Brandy, you can raise the chuck of your voice if you raise your laryngeal cartilage. Its that snap off in your throat you feel going up as you sing wage increase scales. She said, â€Å"If you can keep your voice-box raised high in your throat, your voice should stay between a G and a middle C. Thats about 160 Hertz. ” Brandy Alexander and the way she looked off the rest of the world into real istic reality. She changed color from every new angle. She dark green with my one step. Red with my next. She turned silver and gold and then she was dropped behind us, gone. â€Å"Poor, sad misguided thing,” Sister Katherine said, and she squabble on the concrete floor. She looked at me craning my neck to see back down the hall, and she asked if I had any family. I wrote: yeah, theres my gay brother but hes dead fromAIDS. And she says, â€Å"Well, thats for the best, then, isnt it? ” Jump to the calendar week after Manuss last visit, last meaning final, when Evie drops by the hospital. Evie looks at the glossies and talks to God and Jesus Christ. â€Å"You know,” Evie tells me across a weed of Vogues, and Glamour magazines in her lap she brings me, â€Å"I talked to the agency and they said that if we re-do your portfolio theyll consider taking you back for hand work. ” Evie means a hand model, modeling cocktail rings and rhombus tennis bracelets and shit. Like I want to hear this. I cant talk. All I can eat is liquids.Nobody will look at me. Im invisible. All I want is somebody to ask me what happened. Then, Ill get on with my life. Evie tells the stack of magazines, â€Å"I want you to come live with me at my house when you get out. ” She unzips her canvas bag on the edge of my bed and goes into it with both hands. Evie says, â€Å"Itll be fun. Youll see. I hate living all by my lonesome. ” And says, â€Å"Ive already moved your things into my spare bedroom. ” Still in her bag, Evie says, â€Å"Im on my way to a shoot. Any chance you have any agency vouchers you can lend me? ” On my go ballistic with my pencil, I write: is that my pinafore oure wearing? And I wave the pad in her face. â€Å"Yeah,” she says, â€Å"but I knew you wouldnt mind. ” I write: but its a size six. I write: and youre a size nine. â€Å"Listen,” Evie says. â€Å"My call is for two oclock. Why dont I st op by some time when youre in a bust mood? ” Talking to her watch, she says, â€Å"Im so sorry things had to go this way. It wasnt all of it anybodys fault. ” Every day in the hospital goes like this: Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Sister Katherine move in between. On television is one network running nothing but infomercials all day and all night, and there we are, Evie and me, together.We got a raft of bucks. For the snack manufacturing plant thing, we do these big celebrity spokesmodel smiles, the ones where you make your face a big space heater. Were wearing these sequined dresses that when you get them under a spotlight, the dress flashes like a million reporters taking your picture. So glamorous. Im standing there in this twenty-pound dress, doing this big smile and dropping animal wastes into the Plexiglas funnel on top of the Num Num Snack Factory. This thing just poops out little canapes like crazy, and Evie has to wade out into the studio audience and get folks to eat the canapes.Folks will eat anything to get on television. Then, off camera, Manus goes, â€Å"Lets go sailing. ” And I go, â€Å"Sure. ” It was so stupid, my not knowing what was happening all along. Jump to Brandy on a congregation chair just inside the office of the speech therapist, shaping her fingernails with the scratch pad from a book of matches. Her long legs could squeeze a motorcycle in half, and the well-grounded minimum of her is shrink wrapped in leopard-print stretch terry just screaming to get out. The speech therapist says, â€Å" go your glottis partially open as you speak. Its the way Marilyn Monroe sang â€Å"Happy Birthday” to electric chair Kennedy.It makes your breath bypass your vocal chords for a more feminine, helpless quality. ” The nurse leads me past in my cardboard slippers, my tight bandages and deep funk, and Brandy Alexander looks up at the last possible instant and winks. God should be able to wink that good. Lik e somebody taking your picture. Give me joy. Give me fun. Give me love. Flash. Angels in heaven should blow kisses the way Brandy Alexander does and lights up the rest of my week. Back in my room, I write: who is she? â€Å"No one you should have any truck with,” the nurse says. â€Å"Youll have problems enough as it is. but who is she? I write. â€Å"If you can believe it,” the nurse says, â€Å"that one is someone different every week. ” Its after that Sister Katherine starts matchmaking. To save me from Brandy Alexander, she offers me the lawyer without a nose. She offers a peck climbing dentist whose fingers and facial features are eaten down to little hard illumination bumps by frostbite. A missionary with dark patches of some tropical fungus just under his skin. A mechanic who leaned over a battery the moment it exploded and the acid left his lips and cheeks gone and his yellow teeth showing in a permanent snarl.I look at the nuns wedding ring and writ e: i guess you got the last really buff guy. The whole time I was in the hospital, no way could I fall in love. I just couldnt go there yet. cool off for less. I didnt want to process through anything. I didnt want to pick up any pieces. Lower my expectations. Get on with my less-than life. I didnt want to feel better about being still alive. come out compensating. I just wanted my face fixed, if that was possible, which it wasnt. When its time to reintroduce me to solid foods, their words again, its pureed chicken and strained carrots. Baby foods. Everything mashed or pulverized or low-down.You are what you eat. The nurse brings me the personal classified ads from a newsletter. Sister Katherine peers down her nose and through her glasses to read: Guys seeking slim, adventurous girls for fun and romance. And, yes, its true, not one single guy specifically excludes hideous mutilated girls with maturement medical bills. Sister Katherine tells me, â€Å"These men you can write to in prison dont need to know how you really look. ” Its just too much trouble to try and explain my feelings to her in writing. Sister Katherine reads me the singles columns while I spoon up my bash beef. She offers arsonists. Burglars. Tax cheats.She says, â€Å"You probably dont want to date a rapist, not right off. Nobodys that desperate. ” amid the lonely men behind bars for armed robbery and second-degree manslaughter, she stops to ask whats the matter. She takes my hand and talks to the name on my shaping bracelet, such a hand model I am already, cocktail rings, plastic I. D. bracelets so beautiful even a bride of Christ cant take her eyes off them. She says, â€Å"Whatre you feeling? ” This is hilarious. She says, â€Å"Dont you want to fall in love? ” The photographer in my head says: Give me patience. Flash. Give me control. Flash. The situation is I have half a face.Inside my bandages, my face still bleeds tiny little spots of blood onto the w ads of cotton. One doctor, the one making rounds every morning who checks my dressing, he says my wound is still weeping. Thats his word. I still cant talk. I have no career. I can only eat baby food. Nobody will ever look at me like Ive won a big prize ever again. nothing, I write on my pad. nothings wrong. â€Å"You havent mourned,” Sister Katherine says. â€Å"You need to have a good cry and then get on with your life. Youre being too calm about this. ” I write: dont make me laugh, my face, I write, the doctor sez my wound will weep.Still, at least somebody had noticed. This whole time, I was calm. I was the picture of calm. I never, never panicked. I saw my blood and snot and teeth splashed all over the dashboard the moment after the accident, but fad is impossible without an audience. Panicking by yourself is the same as laughing alone in an release room. You feel really silly. The instant the accident happened, I knew I would die if I didnt take the next exit o ff the freeway, turn right on north occidental coupled States Gower, go twelve blocks, and turn into the La Paloma Memorial Hospital Emergency style parking lot. I parked. I took my keys and my bag and I walked.The glass doors slid aside before I could see myself reflected in them. The crowd inside, all the people hold with broken legs and choking babies, they all slid aside, too, when they saw me. aft(prenominal) that, the intravenous morphine. The tiny operating room manicure scissors cut my dress up. The flesh-tone little patch panties. The police photos. The detective, the one who searched my car for bone fragments, the guy whod seen all those people get their heads cut off in half-open car windows, he comes back one day and says theres nothing left to find. Birds, seagulls, maybe magpies, too.They got into the car where it was parked at the hospital, through the broken window. The magpies ate all of what the detective calls the soft tissue evidence. The cram they probably carried away. â€Å"You know, miss,” he says, â€Å"to break them on rocks. For the marrow. ” On the pad, with the pencil, I write: ha, ha, ha. Jump to just before my bandages come off, when a speech therapist says I should get down on my knees and thank God for leaving my tongue in my head, unharmed. We sit in her cinderblock office with half the room filled by her steel desk between us, and the therapist, she teaches me how a ventriloquist makes a dummy talk.You see, the ventriloquist cant let you see his mouth move. He cant really use his lips, so he presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth to make words. instead of a window, the therapist has a bank note of a kitten covered in spaghetti above the words: Accentuate the supportive She says that if you cant make a certain sound without using your lips, substitute a similar sound, the therapist says; for instance, use the sound eth instead of the sound eff. The context in which you use the sound will make y ou understandable. â€Å"Id kind of be thishing,” the therapist says. hen go thishing, I write. thank you. And then I ran away. This is after my new cotton crepe sundress arrives from Espre. Sister Katherine stood over me all morning with a curling iron until my hair was this big butter creme frosting hairdo, this big off-the-face hairdo. Then Evie brought some make up and did my eyes. I put on my aristocratic new dress and couldnt wait to start sweating. This whole spend, I hadnt seen a mirror or if I did I never crystalised the reflection was me. I hadnt seen the police photos. When Evie and Sister Katherine were done, I say, â€Å"De foil iowa overcast geoff. And Evie says, â€Å"Youre welcome. ” Sister Katherine says, â€Å"But you just ate lunch. ” Its clear enough, nobody understands me here. I say, â€Å"Kong wimmer nay pee golly. ” And Evie says, â€Å"Yeah, these are your shoes, but Im not hurting them any. ” And Sister Katherine say s, â€Å"No, no mail yet, but we can write to prisoners after youve had your nap, dear. ” They left. And. I left, alone. And. How bad could it be, my face? And sometimes being mutilated can work to your advantage. All those people now with piercings and tattoos and brandings and scarification . . . What I mean is, attention is attention.Going outside is the first time I feel Ive missed something. I mean, a whole summer had just disappeared. All those pool parties and fabrication around on metal-flake speed-flesh-tone lumps of ice in the freezer bin. I dig around until I find the biggest washout, and I buckle it up baby style in its yellow plastic netting. I haul myself up to the front of the store, right through the check stands, and nobody stops me. Nobodys even looking. Theyre all reading those tabloid newspapers as if theres hidden gold there. â€Å"Sejgfn di ofo utnbg,” I say. â€Å"Nei wucj iswisn sdnsud. ” Nobody looks. EVSF UYYB IUH,” I say in my best ventriloquist voice. Nobody even talks. Maybe just the clerks talk. Do you have two pieces of I. D.? theyre request people writing checks. â€Å"Fgjrn iufnv si vuv,” I say. â€Å"Xidi cniwuw sis sacnc! ” Then it is, its right then a boy says, â€Å"Look! ” Everybody whos not looking and not talking stops breathing. The little boy says, â€Å"Look Mom, look over there! That monsters thieving food! ” Everybody gets all shrunken up with embarrassment. All their heads drop down into their shoulders the way theyd look on crutches. Theyre reading tabloid headlines harder than ever.Monster girlfriend Steals Festive Holiday Bird And there I am, deep fried in my cotton crepe dress, a twenty-five pound turkey in my arms, the turkey sweating, my dress almost transparent. My nipples are rock kind is wearing this sleeveless Versace kind of tank dress with this seasons overwhelming feel of despair and corrupt resignation. Body informed yet humiliated. Buoyant but crippled. The queen supreme is the most beautiful anything Ive ever seen so I just panache there to watch from the doorway. â€Å"Men,” the therapist says, â€Å" assay the adjective when they speak. The therapist says, â€Å"For instance, a man would say, ‘You are so entrancing, today. ” Brandy is so attractive you could chop her head off and put it on blue velvet in the window at Tiffanys and somebody would buy it for a million dollars. â€Å"A woman would say, ‘You are so attractive, today,” the therapist says. â€Å"Now, you, Brandy. You say it. Stress the modifier, not the adjective. ” Brandy Alexander looks her Burning Blueberry eyes at me in the doorway and says, â€Å"Posing girl, you are so Godawful ugly. Did you let an elephant sit on your face or what? ” Brandys voice, I barely hear what she says.At that instant, I just adore Brandy so much. Everything about her feels as good as being beautiful and looking in a mirror. Brandy is my instant royal family. My only everything to live for. I go, â€Å"Cfoieb svns ois,” and I pile the cold, wet turkey into the speech therapists lap, her sitting pinned under twenty-five pounds of dead totality in her roll-around leather desk chair. From closer down the hallway, Sister Katherine is yelling, â€Å"Yoohoo! ” â€Å"Mriuvn wsi sjaoi aj,” I go, and wheel the therapist and her chair into the hallway. I say, â€Å"Jownd wine sm fdo dcncw. The speech therapist, shes smiling up at me and says, â€Å"You dont have to thank me, its just my job is all. ” The nuns arrived with the man and his I. V. stand, a new man with no skin or crushed features or all his teeth bashed out, a man whod be perfect for me. My one true love. My deformed or mutilated or diseased prince charming. My unhappily ever after. My hideous future. The monstrous rest of my life. I slam the office door and lock myself inside with Brandy Alexander. Theres the speech th erapists notebook on her desk, and I grab it. save me, I write, and wave it in Brandys face.I write: please. Jump to Brandy Alexanders hands. This always starts with her hands. Brandy Alexander puts a hand out, one of those hairy pigknuckled hands with the veins of her arm crowded and squeezed to the elbow with bangle bracelets of every color. Just by herself, Brandy Alexander is such a shift in the beauty standard that no one thing stands out. Not even you. â€Å"So, girl,” Brandy says. â€Å"What all happened to your face? ” Birds. I write: birds, birds ate my face. And I start to laugh. Brandy doesnt laugh. Brandy says, â€Å"Whats that supposed to mean? ” And Im still laughing. was driving on the freeway, I write. And Im still laughing. someone shot a 30-caliber bullet from a rifle. the bullet tore my entire jawbone off my face. Still laughing. i came to the hospital, I write. i did not die. Laughing. they couldnt put my jaw back because seagulls had eaten i t. And I stop laughing. â€Å"Girl, your handwriting is terrible,” Brandy says. â€Å"Now tell me what else. ” And I start to cry. what else, I write, is i have to eat baby food. i cant talk. i have no career. i have no home. my fiance left me. nobody will look at me. all my clothes, my best friend ruined them.Im still crying. â€Å"What else? ” Brandy says. â€Å"Tell me everything. ” a boy, I write. a little boy in the supermarket called me a monster. Those Burning Blueberry eyes look right at me the way no eyes have all summer. â€Å"Your perception is all fucked up,” Brandy says. â€Å"All you can talk about is trash thats already happened. ” She says, â€Å"You cant base your life on the past or the present. ” Brandy says, â€Å"You have to tell me about your future. ” Brandy Alexander, she stands up on her gold lame leg-hold trap shoes. The queen supreme takes a beautify compact out of her clutch bag and naps the compact open to look at the mirror inside. â€Å"That therapist,” those Plumbago lips say, â€Å"the speech therapist can be so stupid about these situations. ” The big jeweled arm muscles of Brandy sit me down in the seat still hot from her ass, and she holds the compact so I can see inside. sort of of face powder, its full of white capsules. Where there should be a mirror, theres a close up photo of Brandy Alexander smiling and looking terrific. â€Å"Theyre Vicodins, dear,” she says. â€Å"Its the Marilyn Monroe school of medicine where enough of any drug will cure any disease. ” She says, â€Å"Dig in.Help yourself. ” The thin and ageless goddess that she is, Brandys picture smiles up at me over a sea of painkillers. This is how I met Brandy Alexander. This is how I found the strength not to get on with my former life. This is how I found the courage not to pick up the same old pieces. â€Å"Now,” those Plumbago lips say, â€Å"You are going to tell me your story like you just did. Write it all down. Tell that story over and over. Tell me your sad-assed story all night. ” That Brandy queen points a long bony finger at me. â€Å"When you understand,” Brandy says, â€Å"that what youre telling is just a story.It isnt happening anymore. When you realize the story youre telling is just words, when you can just crumble it up and throw your past in the trashcan,” Brandy says, â€Å"then well figure out who youre going to be. ” CHAPTER F O U R Jump to the Canadian border. Jump to the three of us in a rented Lincoln Town Car, waiting to take aim south from Vancouver, British Columbia, into the fall in States, waiting, with Signore Romeo in the drivers seat, waiting with Brandy next to him in the front, waiting, with me alone in the back. â€Å"The police have microphones,” Brandy tells us.The plan is if we make it through the border, well drive south to Seattle where there are nightclubs and dance clubs where gogo boys and go-go girls will line up to buy the pockets of my purse clean. We have to be steady because the police, they have microphones on both sides of the border, coupled States and Canadian. This way, they can listen in on people waiting to cross. We could have Cuban cigars. Fresh fruit. Diamonds. Diseases. Drugs, Brandy says. Brandy, she tells us to shut up a mile before the border, and we wait in line, quiet. Brandy unwinds the yards and yards of rocade scarf around her head. Brandy, she shakes her hair down her back and ties the scarf over her shoulders to hide her torpedo cleavage. Brandy switches to simple gold earrings. She takes off her pearls and puts on a little chain with a gold cross. This is a moment before the border guard. â€Å"Your nationalities? ” the border-guard guy sitting inside his little window, behind his computer terminal with his clipboard and his blue suit behind his mirrored sunglasses, and behind his gold badge says. â €Å"Sir,” Brandy says, and her new voice is as bland and drawled out as grits without salt or butter.She says, â€Å"Sir, we are citizens of the United States of America, what used to be called the greatest agricultural on earth until the homosexuals and child pornographers†â€Å"Your name? ” says the border guy. Brandy leans across Alfa to look up at the border guy, â€Å"My husband,” she says, â€Å"is an innocent man. ” â€Å"Your name, please,” he says, no doubt looking up our license plate, finding its a rental car, rented in Billings, Montana, three weeks ago, maybe even finding the truth about who we really are. Maybe finding bulletin after bulletin from all over western Canada about three nut cases stealing drugs at big houses up for ale. Maybe all this is spooling onto his computer screen, maybe none of it. You never know. â€Å"I am married,” Brandy is almost yelling to get his attention. â€Å"I am the wife of the Revere nd Scooter Alexander,” she says, still half laid across Alfas lap. â€Å"And this,” she says and draws the invisible line from her smile to Alfa, â€Å"this is my son-in-law, Seth Thomas. ” Her big hand flies toward me in the backseat. â€Å"This,” she says, â€Å"is my daughter, Bubba-Joan. ” Some days, I hate it when Brandy changes our lives without warning. Sometimes, twice in one day, you have to live up to a new identity.A new name. reinvigorated relationships. Handicaps. Its hard to remember who I started this road trip being. No doubt, this is the kind of focussing the constantly mutating AIDS virus must feel. â€Å"Sir? ” the border guy says to Seth, at a time Alfa Romeo, formerly Chase Manhattan, formerly Nash Rambler, formerly come up Fargo, formerly Eberhard Faber. The guard says, â€Å"Sir, are you convey any purchases back with you into t\r\n'