The executive looked at me. "Friend of yours?" he goes.
"Yes," I go. "Forgive her. She's a little enthusiastic sometimes."
Maureen whanged his desk with Old Betsy. He didn't like that. "She get the job or no?" she goes.
He looked at me again. "What exactly is your relationship to her? If she's not your patient, I probably don't want to hear it."
"Just friends," I go, kind of meekly.
Muffy held the sword with the point aimed directly at the guy's heart.
"I said, does she get the job?"
"Sorry," the executive goes, "the position's already been filled. We'll keep your application on file, of course. Please leave now."
Muffy raged. "Just a minute, you weaselly little—"
I stood up and got the hell out of there. For all I know, Maureen stayed behind and made Junior Executive Szechuan Style out of the poor man.
I got to my car and drove home.
And I've been living in terror of her return ever since. Wouldn't you?
Maureen Birnbaum
on a Hot Tin Roof
by E. Spiegelman
(as told to George Alec Effinger)
IT'S LIKE PRETTY STRANGE, but there have been two brilliant American writers who've lived on the 1000 block of Dumaine Street in New Orleans. One of them was your Tennessee Williams, famed in song and legend.
I was thinking about him because I was — guess where — in New Orleans on vacation. Mums and Daddy decided I really needed a change of scenery or something. I mean, jeez, my poor parents were probably going out of their individual and collective trees listening to me moan about just how terrible my whole entire life was turning out.
Though God knows none of it was like their fault or anything. I mean, they've never been anything but supportive to me and probably wish that I'd grow up already and stop coming to them every hour of the day and night just because I'd had a horrible divorce and a son who was perfectly wonderful in almost every way except — and I've been told this is just terribly meaningful, and if you can explain it to me I really wish you would — that he can play with unpainted wooden blocks just fine but the brightly colored ones frighten him, and also my job is the worst.
No doubt Mums and Daddy have troubles of their own — a breakthrough revelation that could've changed my life, if I like still had one. No doubt that's one of the reasons my folks flew me to New Orleans and booked me aboard some entry-level Love Boat for ten days in the Caribbean going to islands that the National Geographic Society has never even heard of. I'll give you one. Ste. Tiffany. I was like really looking forward to a stopover in Springfield, the capital and chief port of the island nation of Ste. Tiffany, where the laughing, happy natives would entice me with their straw fans and mushy fruit. Duh, huh?
So, I hear you ask, where is this like leading! Along Dumaine toward Rampart Street, actually. It was there, on the sidewalk at 1014 Dumaine — where my guidebook told me that the second-floor apartment was Tennessee Williams's last home in New Orleans, where he hoped he'd die, but the Lord and geography had other ideas — that she did it to me, you know, yet again. I should've figured. No, not Mums. Maureen. Maureen Birnbaum. Muffy. You know.
"What's happening, honey?" she goes.
'Well, she hadn't changed, but that's one of the things she does best these days — not changing. I'm edging and staggering and creeping toward antiquity. I will turn thirty-years-old sometime before the end of this paragraph. Yet my old high school pal, Maureen, still looks a girlish seventeen. I'm like so sorry if I sound a little grumpy, but how typically . . . girlish of her.
Granted, all her racing around in space and time has trimmed a little baby fat from her shall-we-say ample hips, and she's given up smoking, but she still doesn't look, you know, like an adult. Not like a real woman, I mean. Muffy's done a lot of too-marvelous-for-words things, if you believe everything that comes out of her mouth — and I'm not saying I do, and I'm not saying I don't — but, jeez, she's still never paid a month's rent or changed a flat tire or as far as I can tell, you know, done it. She and I are such good pals, of course, but sometimes I think she's really just such a kid.
Sorry about that. Neither here nor there, won't happen again.
Maureen Danielle Birnbaum is standing on the broken sidewalk at 1014 Dumaine Street, wearing her gold brassiere and her G-string, schlepping her broadsword, Old Betsy, and because we're only like three blocks from, you know, Bourbon Street nobody's giving her so much as a second glance. They figure she's probably, um, on her way to work at Le Club Hotsy-Totsy ("Beaucoup Hotsy, Beaucoup Totsy") or something equally as mundane.
Oops, what have I said? Muffy — I mean, Maureen — would absolutely kill me for putting her in the same sentence as the word "mundane." Muffy — I mean, Maureen — is seriously fascinating at all times.
Just listen to her. I mean, for God's sake, if I had to, you have to.
* * * * *
SCENE ONE
This is the French Quarter of New Orleans, and it is three or four days earlier. We are standing on the broken and partly sunken sidewalk in front of the three-story pink townhouse at 1014 Dumaine Street. The buildings in this part of the city are more than a century old, but most have been purchased and renovated in recent years by wealthy residents and landlords. This particular neighborhood does not have the same shabbiness as is so evident half a block away in either direction, on Burgundy or Rampart Streets. There is a decadent charm here, of course, but it is a very carefully maintained decadence.
The green-painted shutters are closed over two windows on the ground floor, but a white wooden door is flung open revealing an entrance to an apartment. A young feminine figure sits in the doorway on a low step. This is Blanche; she is working with some concentration on painting her fingernails a drastic red the color of a traffic signal.
It is October 31st, Halloween, the day before All Saints' Day, an important religious observance in this Roman Catholic city. The sky is gray and threatening rain; the afternoon is cool, but summer is still lingering, winter is still weeks away. Cars and trucks bump along Dumaine Street, rattling and thumping from one pothole to the next. In the background are drunken voices, laughing.
A young woman is walking along the sidewalk. She is wearing the gold-and-jeweled garb of a mighty warrior-woman. She carries a huge broadsword across her back. The barbarian heroine is me, Maureen Birnbaum. In one hand I carry a small slip of paper.
BLANCHE: [Blanche speaks with a heavy magnolia Southern Belle accent, which comes and goes.]: Where y'at, dawlin'?
MAUREEN: I think I'm lost.
BLANCHE [laughing]: No, honey. "Where y'at?" is a colloquial New Orleans greeting.
MAUREEN: Uh huh. I still think I'm like lost, though.
BLANCHE: Whatcha lookin' for?
MAUREEN: Well, they like told me to take a bus named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at — Elysian Fields!
BLANCHE: Somebody messin' with you, dawlin', or you got it wrong, 'cause you can take the Desire bus up Decatur Street and transfer there to the Cemeteries bus okay — you want the Canal bus on the neutral ground, the Canal-Cemeteries, not the Canal-Lake Vista — but you ride it six blocks and you're still on Canal Street. Now, you could've transferred from the Desire bus to the Elysian Fields bus, but you'd have had to skip the Cemeteries bus, and then you'd be riding right back the way you came. Now, if you wanted to get to Elysian Fields, you should've stayed on the Desire bus and gone past Dumaine Street and Esplanade Avenue. Then you get to Elysian Fields. There's a big old Schwegmann's store on the comer. You still got your transfer?
MAUREEN: No. I just told the bus driver I wanted to see the Tennessee Williams house, I'm just so sure, and he told me to get off here.
BLANCHE: This is the Tennessee Williams house. He lived right upstairs.
MAUREEN: I didn't mean the house where he lived. I meant the house in the play. I wanted to see the house in the play. The one on Elysia
n Fields Avenue.
BLANCHE: What play?
MAUREEN: I don't know. The play that starts, you know, with somebody getting lost and talking about taking the streetcar named Desire and the Cemeteries line and the Elysian Fields line.
BLANCHE: Oh, that's only poetic license, dawlin'. The bus lines don't really connect. See, it's all symbolic how like Desire leads to the Cemeteries and death and all, and death and all leads to Elysian Fields, which was like your typical heaven in some old religion. I forget which. I think it was Summer and Smoke.
MAUREEN: The play with the house on Elysian Fields? No, like I'm totally sure that was A Streetcar Named Desire.
BLANCHE [shaking her head]: Nuh uh, girlfriend, you're mixed up. You're thinking of The Glass Menagerie. I'm sure about it. It had this hussy running around in her slip. We were supposed to read that one, 'cause I went to junior college for the beginning of a part of a year.
MAUREEN: You've got the wrong play again. The character's name was Maggie the Cat. The one in the slip.
BLANCHE: Yeah you right. She was the title character in Sweet Cat of Youth. You've got it confused —
MAUREEN: — with Bird on a Hot Tin Roof? That just sounds plain dumb.
BLANCHE: I don't know. Birds on a roof make more logical sense to me.
VENDOR: Calas! Rice cakes, hot with pecans and cane syrup!
MAUREEN: Well, which one did he write here? In this house?
BLANCHE: I don't know as he wrote any of 'em in this house. Somebody else lives here now. Tom — they call him Tennessee but his name was Tom — William has been dead for years. By the way, my name is Blanche DuBois. It means white woods.
[She stands up and offers her hand to Maureen but shakes her fingers when she realizes the nail polish is still wet. They both laugh.]
MAUREEN: And I'm Maureen Birnbaum. It means pear tree. Maureen means dark, so my name means like tree of dark-skinned pears.
BLANCHE: Uh huh. Great.
MAUREEN: Yeah, well, I'm stuck with it.
BLANCHE [brightening]: Anyway, we're both like trees, right? So we can be great friends and you can come in and wait for Stanley and Stella to get home.
MAUREEN [her eyes narrowing a little]: Stanley and Stella?
BLANCHE: Stanley's my boyfriend. Stella for Star — she's our little Yorkie, the sweetest doggie in the world. C'mon inside in the air-conditioning. I can give you a Dixie beer or, if you're a health nut like you look like, just a Barq's.
MAUREEN: All right, honey. You know we rugged swordsfolk are pretty big on drinking lustily, so a Dixie'll be just fine. Everybody's been so friendly here, I wonder who I'm gonna have to kill.
BLANCHE [laughing]: Ha ha, you remind me of my Daddy. He was a cop, too. Just wait 'til tonight, though. The street gets pretty crazy. I'll point out a couple few folks we can do without.
SCENE TWO
The interior of Stanley and Blanche's apartment. There is only one room visible, the combination living-room and bedroom. The king-size bed —neatly made up with a purple chenille bedspread — dominates stage left. There is a small portable television set on a chair beside the bed. Behind it are two doors, one leading to the bathroom, the other to the kitchen. There is a small bookcase filled not with books, but with dozens of small glass animal figurines and two or three old teddy bears. There is also a small table and three straight-backed chairs. The room-is dimly lighted. There is one small overhead chandelier; all the light bulbs are burned out except one, and that one is covered by a red paper Chinese lantern, softening the brightness of the light bulb but making it garish at the same time.
Maureen and Blanche are seated at the table, drinking beer. Blanche is drinking hers from a conical pilsner glass, and Maureen is drinking hers directly from a longneck bottle.
BLANCHE: If you're in the Quarter very long, Maureen, you will learn that it is a place of magic and fantasy.
MAUREEN: I haven't seen a lot of magic and fantasy yet, sweetie, but I have seen a lot of people who've sent away for their self-images out of the wrong mail-order catalogs.
BLANCHE [raising a hand to her throat, shocked]: Maureen, honey! Are you being . . . judgmental? You? I mean, dawlin', here you are carryin' a sword around with you and all. What's that for? To protect you from the palmetto bugs, I suppose? And I'm not even going to mention your costume, which the less said about it the better, and the more appropriate as well, tiny little thin. g that it is, although I won't bring it up, I won't, because I was always taught to value the person within and not make hasty impressions based on superficial appearances.
MAUREEN [sourly]: How fantastic and magical of you not to bring it up, honey. As for my sword and my raiment — they are for sure altogether fitting and proper for a barbarian swordsperson such as myself. When peace rules, then the weak and helpless of this and every other world feel empowered to mock and belittle their defenders. Yet let a ravening horde threaten, and how quickly your tune changes!
BLANCHE [Once again her hand flutters to her throat. She smiles coquettishly.]: A ravening horde? Oh my goodness, wheah? [This time, she makes the word into two syllables.] I must see to my hair! I must look a horrible fright. I hope they do their ravening of us here indoors, because if I'm dragged outside, in the harsh light I'll be exposed as a perfect shambles of exhausted loveliness.
[Maureen just sighs loudly and takes another gulp from the beer bottle. The bathroom door opens, and Stanley enters. He is not overly tall, but he is strongly built, broad through the shoulders with muscular arms revealed by the T-shirt he wears, which is white with the emblem K/S printed in large purple letters on the front. He sits at the table in the third chair.]
BLANCHE: Well, Stanley, I'm glad you recalled at last that we are entertaining a guest.
STANLEY: Sorry, Blanche. How are you two ladies getting along?
MAUREEN: I don't like being called a "lady," pal. I'm a woman, confident and proud of her gender, and I make no pretenses. I don't appreciate being treated as if I'm weaker or more delicate than I am or in need of any special treatment at all.
STANLEY [grinning]: Oh, so you don't appreciate a little special treatment? If that's so, you'll be the first one.
BLANCHE: Stanley! You be nice, now. Well, I for one am pleased to be thought of as a lady. Wheah I come from, ladies are respected and prized for their qualities and refinement.
STANLEY: You're refined, all right, Blanche, the way they refine light sweet crude oil!
MAUREEN: I'd get up right now and flatten your nose, buster, for talking to a oman that way, except that at the moment I feel it's better for her to learn to stand up for herself and realize that you don't have some Goddess-given right to treat her with disrespect.
STANLEY: Is that right?
MAUREEN: In another minute, I'll probably like change my mind and punish you, in my role as protector of all, you know, down-trodden women.
STANLEY: Is that right? Blanche, get me another beer.
MAUREEN: Don't do it, Blanche.
[There is an uneasy silence, during which drunken voices can be heard from outside, laughing.]
BLANCHE: Oh, please, can't we have some fantasy around here? Some magic? [She gets up and goes into the kitchen. Stanley shakes his head.]
VENDOR (from outside]: Gingerbread! Pornographic gingerbread!
STANLEY: While she's gone, I should explain — I'm not the dumb lug you think I am. It's because of Blanche. She wants a certain kind of guy, see. She wants — [Stanley is interrupted by Blanche's return.]
BLANCHE: Here you are, dawlin'. Okay? Everybody friends now?
STANLEY: Sure, we are. Say, why don't we all go bowling later?
[Blanche and Maureen glance at each other.]
BLANCHE: We'll pass by the K-Slash-S later, Stanley. See who's there. See what's happening.
MAUREEN: What's the K-Slash-S?
STANLEY: A bar around the corner.
BLANCHE: A fantastic, magical place. K-Slash-S stands for Kirk and Spock.
MAUR
EEN [looking bewildered]: Who?
STANLEY: Kirk and Spock. From TV. From Star Trek.
MAUREEN: Sorry. We heroic myth-figures don't spend a lot of time sitting on the couch watching game shows. We're out there every day, freeing lost cities from the grasp of mad tyrants, opposing single-handedly the murderous schemes of galactic conquerors, defeating the cruel plans of scientific super-geniuses unhinged by limitless power. I haven't had much time in recent years for popular entertainments. Except The Planet of the Apes. Not the book or the movies, the TV series. Remember that? That was a great show! Some terrific scripts. There was this one episode
BLANCHE: You never heard of slash fandom?
MAUREEN [shakes her head slowly]: A bar where broadsword enthusiasts hang out? My kind of people. Sounds good to me.
STANLEY: Not quite.
MAUREEN: Oh, you mean "slash" as in gory, bloody horror movies? Sorry. I've seen too much of the real thing to sit around with amateurs who only like the pretend stuff. Let me tell you one thing I've learned: Carnage isn't pretty. And sometimes it's not as much fun as it looks, either.
BLANCHE: The K-Slash-S is for people who like to think Kirk and Spock were actually closer than they seemed on the show.
MAUREEN: Pals?
[Stanley and Blanche exchange glances.]
BLANCHE: We've dropped in there once or twice. And tonight I desperately need the companionship of my own kind!
STANLEY [standing up]: Me, I got to pee again. Excuse my vulgar manliness, ladies!
VENDOR [from outside]: Swimps! Fresh boil swimps! By the pound, remoulade sauce
SCENE THREE
It is later in the afternoon. Stanley is lying on the bed, with his head propped up against the wall on a pillow. He is reading a copy of Soap Opera Digest. Maureen is still sitting in her chair. Her broadsword, old Betsy, is lying across the table, and she is applying a coat of Turtle Wax to it. A radio is playing softly. When Stanley and Maureen's conversation pauses, the sounds of Easy Listening music can be heard, the kind of music that you heat in dentists' waiting rooms. Also, even more softly, there is the soft patter of an afternoon rain shower.
Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordperson Page 17
