Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordperson

by George Alec Effinger

  "I am Joseph of Arimathea," goes Joe, "into whose keeping passed the Saint Graal, that I provided unto our Lord and Savior, and thencefrom carried it I unto the nations of Britain, in order that it should be made ready for the beginning of the noblest of all Questes."

  "Wow," I go.

  "And I was the companion of Sir Perceval," goes Bohort, "and we had the greatest and surpassing honor to be with Sir Galahad upon the moment of the completion of his Queste. We beheld the most puissant Saint Graal, and we beheld Sir Galahad's most holy and peaceful death, and the angels that bare his soul unto Heaven."

  And I'm like, "Wow," again. "So the two of you are going to pitch in and help me with this tall dude?"

  "No," goes Joseph of Arimathea, "we'll watch. This is your third and final Test, and we mayest not help thee."

  "Really," I go. Now, of course giants are just another phallic symbol, so I wasn't totally haired out or anything. I just fell back on Mrs. Stickney's feminist disclosures. According to Hindu traditions, giants could live a thousand years because like their whole existence was what they called centered in the blood. And the blood, you should forgive me, Bitsy, was the menstrual blood of the Triple Goddess. Oh, don't go ewww. This is all true stuff. You know of course that in Greek mythology, the River Styx was really a river of blood. Guess whose?

  Look, I can't tell you where it says that. I just know it, that's all.

  So I like pointed all this out to the giant, and he mulled it over for a while, a heavy frown on his craggy features. At last he came to some decision, because he just stepped out of my way. I guess I dazzled him with my brilliance or something. Anyway, I thanked him kindly and started again on my Queste.

  "A moment, good my lady," goes Joe. "Wot ye not that the giant is to be slain?"

  "What for?" I go. "Seems to me I was just supposed to get by him, and I done did that."

  Joe looked at Bohort, and Bohort looked at Joe. "The giant is supposed to be dead," goes Bohort.

  I shrugged. "A dead giant is a useless giant, and this giant looks pretty useless to me, so he might as well be dead. Come on if you're coming."

  They hesitated a few seconds, and then they followed me, all right. I have these sterling leadership qualities, you know.

  Clue #3 wasn't far away. It was just a note tacked to the last tree before a vast and peaceful meadow. The note said:

  Seek thou, O fortunate pilgrim, seek thou the Castle of Seemly Joy in thine heart of hearts.

  Good luck, and may God bless.

  "In my heart of hearts," I go. What was I supposed to do, tap my heels together three times and wish? I had to think about this one. It wasn't, you know, like the most revelatory clue in the world.

  "The Castle of Seemly Joy," I go. "Joy, huh? As in Joyous Gard? Where Guinevere split to with Lancelot? You know that's just another name for Venusberg which is another name for Mons Veneris. I don't have to spell that one out, do I? See, like I said, it's all sexual symbols, but the male-dominated terrified pathetic heterophobic Church co-opted them and changed them into castrated and powerless images. But we women know. We've been keeping notes."

  "I wish you wouldn't say castrated," goes Bohort.

  "Never mind," I go. "I know where the Castle is. 'Seemly Joy,' my heroic ass. You wish it was Seemly. In your next life, dudes."

  "Why . . . what do you mean?" goes Joe. He was turning into a real hairball right before my eyes. I mean, Bitsy, he was getting into F. D. F. M. N., you know? I don't expect you to get that one, sweetie, I just made it up. Feet Don't Fail Me Now. He was like freaked, huh.

  "What I mean is the Castle is right . . . over . . . there!" And I spun to my left and pointed into the butterfly and songbird-filled meadow. "Where?" goes Bohort. "I see nothing."

  "There," I go, and sure enough, there was the Castle of Seemly Joy. A woman's power had created it, and it was too much for my buddies. When I looked back to see the expressions on their wheezy faces, they had disappeared. No great loss.

  See, it was all so figurative around there that I wasn't letting anything surprise me. I had my key ready, and lo and behold! it exactly fitted the golden lock on the Castle's front door. I opened it and went in, feeling sort of like Goldilocks, like you know? "Hellooo!" I called, but I guess nobody was home. Nobody with lungs, anyway.

  And there it was, the crystal Saint Nappie, just as I'd been told. It was sitting on like this comfy-looking satin pillow. I reached out slowly, expecting like these horrible last-second Indiana Jones kind of traps to spring loose all around me. My hand touched the berry bowl and I felt, like, glass, huh? I picked up the bowl, and in that very instant the pillow, the table it was resting on, the parlor, and the whole goddamn Castle of Seemly Joy disappeared. I was standing in the Pearly Path again. Even the nice meadow had gone with the wind.

  It was just me and the Saint Nappie. I looked at it, you know, close up, and I saw these letters of fire along the rim. I peered even closer until I could read them. They said:

  Hazel-Atlas Glass Company, Wheeling, West Virginia

  Suddenly I had a terrible headache. I mean, like I had to wonder if all the derring-do had been worth it. Was this the very berry bowl used by Jesus at the Last Supper? Who could tell? The ways of the unreal and symbolic can be inexplicable, even to such a nimble and resourceful mind as mine.

  I took a deep breath, let it out, and muttered, "Son of a—"

  And then like uh-oh I whooshed right here to your car. And you know the most bizarre thing? I don't even have the Saint Nappie to show you! How's that for irony, huh?

  * * * * *

  TYPICAL. Just too goddamn typical. I dropped Muffy off at Penn Station because she said she wanted to visit her mother, who had recently remarried. Before she left, she asked about Malachi Bret and how was I doing with a little rugrat to take care of Muffy is not, you should know this, the maternal type. I told her I was doing just fine, that Josh was a great help with the baby, and that under no circumstances did I ever want my old Greenberg School chum to become Aunt Muffy. If I could work it, I'd make it so Malachi Bret never even heard the name Maureen Danielle Birnbaum.

  Not that I really dislike Muffy. I guess I don't. I just think Malachi Bret ought to learn to handle a Louisville Slugger before he gets his hand on a full-tilt, blooded and ready-to-party broadsword.

  Still, can you feature the expression on his first-grade teacher's face if he brought Old Betsy to school for show-and-tell? In Muffy's elegant words, "Wow, huh?"

  * * *

  Here's a brand-new (and perhaps final) Maureen Birnbaum story, written especially for this volume. I'd always wanted to pit my resourceful Mufferoo against the eldritch, ichorous evil of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. I just hope I don't end up with tentacled abominations under my bed on account of it.

  * * *

  Maureen Birnbaum

  at the Looming Awfulness

  by Elizabeth Spiegelman

  (as told to George Alec Effinger)

  HAVE YOU EVER had your life fall apart like a condominium of cards? I have, God knows. I know the feeling. One day I'm a happy wife and mother, married to my Josh, a successful doctor in Queens, New York. We doted on our baby son, Malachi Bret. Mums' aggravation I could keep to a minimum, and I couldn't have asked for more.

  We had just about everything a young, upwardly mobile family should have. We had two cars, both sleek, one cream and one fire-engine red. Our condo was in a predominantly non-ethnic neighborhood. We belonged to a very high-class health club, and we went there at least twice a month—we sat in the Jacuzzi, mostly. Josh did tennis now and then, and sometimes when I felt like it I did Richard Simmons. His video tapes, I mean. I had a glass-fronted cabinet stuffed with my favorite Mikasa china pattern in a complete service for sixteen. Josh's practice was growing so quickly that he had to take on a junior partner to handle the boring stuff.

  Life was like good.

  For a while.

  One day Josh came home from his office and sat down heavily in
a chair.

  There wasn't anything unusual in that because he always sat down heavily. That's because he's—heavy. Quite a bit heavier than the slim and trim Josh I married.

  All right, I'm heavier, too. That's why we go to the health club every few weeks. None of that is important, though. After Josh got comfortable enough, he turned to me with an embarrassed smile. "Betsy," he goes, "there's something we've got to talk about."

  Uh oh, I go. There are only a few times in your life when someone goes, "There's something we've got to talk about." One time is when a cherished friend or family member has slipped into an irreversible coma. This happens on "Days of Our Lives" all the time. Somehow, though, I didn't think that was the news that Josh was waiting to tell me.

  "What is it, Josh?" I go, my voice all weak and like trembling. There'd been a lot of changes—maybe too many—in my life lately. Like I'd been a militant vegetarian for a while but I was cured by a bacon chili cheeseburger with grilled onions from Bar's Mike and Grill not far from our house. And my maroon Renault had gone to car hell because no one in town would work on it, and Josh had bought me a cream '77 Fiat 124 Spider 'cause I'd always wanted a little European roadster. It wasn't running so well, either.

  So I was all set to hear that the condo association had raised its quarterly fee, or that Josh was being sued by someone allergic to cotton swabs, or some damn weird thing. What Josh told me, though, I wasn't prepared for at all.

  He gave me that puny smile again and goes, "Betsy, I'm desperately in love with my receptionist, Candi Ann, and I can't live without her and I'm leaving you for her and you and Malachi Bret have four weeks to find someplace else to live."

  That was the moment I knew Mums' assessment of Josh had been right all along. He was scum or even lower than scum, whatever that might be.

  I smiled back at Josh and I go, "No, huh."

  I've learned a little bit about being a tough, 90s kind of gal from my friend, Muffy. She, of course, was my long-ago-and-far-away best friend from high school, Maureen Danielle Birnbaum. For sure, she absolutely hates being called Muffy these days—though she thought it was like pretty neat when those Andover and Exeter guys called her that. I tell her, I go, "If you keep calling me Bitsy when I want to be called Elizabeth, you just got to expect the same in return." I just laid it out for her.

  Actually, like the only important differences in our status is that my folks have more money than hers, and Muffy has a broadsword and I don't, you know?

  So you got to let me explain about the broadsword. See, a while back, for some crazy reason I mostly fail to believe, Muffy like transported herself spaceshipless to the Planet Mars, where she fought battles and won the undying love and respect of a crushingly handsome prince and his henchlings.

  Ever since, she's been trying to return to Mars and Prince Van, but although she manages to transport just fine, it's like she has no control over the destination. It seems to make no difference, because she always ends up someplace exciting, and she has way rude adventures, and she always comes back here to regale and annoy me with her stories.

  Well, after Josh's lame announcement, I went over to stay with Mums and Daddy for a while. I sure couldn't stay in the condo with my faithless former ever-loving soulmate. And I took Malachi Bret with me. He was four years old now, and he just loved to color in the wall space around Mums' electrical outlets. I must admit that I thought he showed a certain de Chirico flair, but the effect was totally lost on Mums.

  Anyway, I was lying on the bed in my old room. I was watching a "Geraldo" show about how blind people are struggling to deal with the designated driver concept. For some reason I thought this was the most tragic thing I'd ever heard of and I couldn't stop crying. I had a box of Kleenex by one hand and a half-pound bag of malted milk balls by the other. Mums' cat, Loathing, was asleep on my feet. Her mate, Fear, was sitting on the TV, his fluffy tail hanging down in front of Geraldo's face. Mums swears that both of them hate the anthropocentrist word "cat," and prefer to be called 'feline-Americans.'

  I heard a sound. It was sort of a whuffle.

  "It could be Santa," I thought. I was dubious, because it was only September. I turned toward the windows, and there was Muffy, still in her goddamn gold brassiere and G-string, still toting all the spoils from her various conquests, still dragging around Old Betsy, her broadsword. It's not named after me—I should be so honored-but because that's what Davy Crockett called his rifle.

  "Yo, where you at, B?" she goes.

  See, first she called me Bitsy, and then she called me Bits, which I hated in an ultimate sort of way, and now it was just B. I wondered what would be next—just the Buh part, without the Ee.

  "Aw, Muffy," I go, "you practically promised you wouldn't come back here anymore."

  She grinned her warrior-woman grin. "Fortunately, things changed miraculously, aren't you glad? And don't call me Muffy, okay?"

  I took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "So where did you end up this time?"

  She grinned again. "I'll give you a hint. To quote Groucho Marx in 'A Night at the Opera,'—boogie, boogie, boogie!"

  You see what I mean? I cleverly hid the bag of malted milk balls under the covers. She wasn't going to get even one. For what it's worth, here's her stirring account.

  * * * * *

  THE MOST MERCIFUL THING in the world, I think, is the inability of my mind to remember things from one day to the next. I have had some startling and thrilling exploits—many more than you have recorded for the education of my audience—yet so often my adventure is made all the more arduous by what I have come to call "inappropriate forgetfulness."

  In the mirror I still appear young, as young as I did when I studied at the Greenberg School; nevertheless, I sometimes wonder if I have developed an unusually premature case of Alzheimer's Disease. I get lost in jungles more easily than I care to admit, I sometimes forget the names of heroic people of both sexes, and likewise the villains, and I'm always leaving behind just those items that would substantiate the oral histories of my wonderful journeys, when I tell them to you, my dear friend, Blitzy Bitsy Spiegelman. Or Spiegelman-Fein. Or maybe it's just Spiegelman again these days. You've got to let me know which you want me to use.

  I have just returned from an exploit filled with occult evil, wizardry, and terror beyond imagining. Alas, I—and one other—alone remain to tell the tale, and once more, alas, I have nothing to support my words but a bit of charred rope which I could have obtained anywhere.

  Bitsy, have you noticed that my narrative style has become like, you know, dated, clumsy, and ornate? That I'm not talking in the airy colloquial phrases for which I'm justly celebrated? That is one of the insidious effects of my brush with . . . the horror. For now, that's the only way I can refer to it. I dare not name it until I have made the setting clear. Later you will know all, and you will wish that you did not. It will be my fault if your dreams are troubled for weeks and months to come, but I know how eagerly you look forward to these recitations of my courageous endeavors.

  It all began in the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University, like the largest open-stack library in the Free World. I saw your eyes open wider when I mentioned the college. I suppose as old as you get, you never lose the certainty that New Haven, Connecticut and Yale University are pretty much Heaven as far as we Greenberg School girls were concerned. Harvard was too stuffy, Princeton too rural, but Yale—and those gallant Yalies!—was what our education and training had prepared us for. We were to go forth and charm a Yalie into marriage; or else, if we failed, we tried to be satisfied entering matrimony with, oh, like a family practitioner, as you did.

  Be that as it may, in my final (and I do mean like final) attempt to reach the boffable Prince Van on Mars, I stretched myself out toward Mars; instead, I hit that library in that university on the north shore of Long Island Sound. I realized that I was on Earth immediately, of course; I've had other exploits on Earth, but they've all been with mythical figures or in historica
l times. Now, however, I had dropped into the Sterling Memorial Library, and a newspaper there informed me that it was March 1, 1966.

  I worried for a moment. I had whooshed, all right, but I hadn't whooshed very far in either time or space. This had been happening pretty often lately. The next time I whoosh, who knows but I may end up only an hour in the past, standing in my magnificent Amazonian regalia in Rabbi and Mrs. Gold's bedroom four houses down the block.

  Did this mean that my career as the premier female swordsperson and all-around savior of men and women in distress had come to an end? Was I like stuck here, in the recent past in New Haven, forever? Well, it could have been worse. I could have journeyed back to Mars and discovered that Prince Van broke our dates all the time and never called the next day. He might have been interested in One Thing and One Thing Only, something I wouldn't like give up easily even to him. He might have wanted the two of us to go live with his mother, the queen, for God's sake.

  I guess that as the years passed, and as my failures to return to Mars became embarrassingly numerous, my once-vivid memories of the glorious Prince Van began to fade. Also, I'd begun to suspect that the handsome prince didn't want to be found, and that I'd been put on some kind of interplanetary Hold or something.

  Further, I might mention, I'd met another young man early in my adventures, a stalwart and courageous person of great intellect and daring. I was to meet him again during this shocking and unspeakable experience, although I did not know it when I first arrived, dressed in my fighting harness of skimpy leather and strands and strings of gold and jewels. I still wore my battle sword, Old Betsy, in her scabbard at my side, and my tangled hair and grim, warrior-woman expression left me pretty much out of place in the cool and quiet precincts of the Sterling Memorial Library.

  In fact, security personnel were already hurrying toward me, either to like slaughter me where I stood or, at the very least, to eject me forcibly from the premises. As a fighting woman proud of her accomplishments and possessing superior combat skills, agility, and strength, I welcomed the challenge. It was only later that I realized that I'm always causing unnecessary uproar when I might fare better without making a scene at all.