Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordperson

by George Alec Effinger

  STANLEY: People don't realize it, but you can learn a lot about life from watching soap operas.

  MAUREEN: I don't see what, except maybe like, you know, how to behave when you're in a coma or suffering from amnesia. I've never had amnesia. Not that I recall, anyway.

  STANLEY: That's your trouble, Maureen. You're too good for everything. You're too good to watch television like a normal person.

  MAUREEN: I spend most of my life chained up in caves by horrible Neanderthal brutes inside the hollow Earth, and you wonder why I don't know what's happening these days on Santa Barbara.

  STANLEY: Ha! Santa Barbara isn't even on anymore.

  MAUREEN: Neither is Kirk and Spock.

  STANLEY [He throws his magazine across the room.]: Aw, just wax your sword and shut up.

  MAUREEN [She leaps up.]: You're next to dead right now, pal.

  STANLEY [He gets up off the bed and faces her.]: I'm not your "pal," and don't forget it.

  [There is a strained silence, and then Stanley lies down on the bed again.]

  VENDOR [from outside]: Nutria kabobs! Get 'em while they're hot!

  STANLEY: Listen, Maureen, what are we trying to prove here? I just want you to know something. I'm really a very shy, sensitive person. It's just Blanche, well, she doesn't want a shy, sensitive person. She wants a big, bellowing, belching brute. So I try to be one for her. It's not always easy, you know. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I wake up and sneak out of bed and go to the table — right there, where you're sitting — and I write a poem. I mean it. Sometimes poems just come to me like that, and I got to write 'em down. But, darn it, if Blanche knew —

  MAUREEN [looking up]: What?

  STANLEY: Nothing. Just don't tell her I told you that. And I've been wanting to take some classes, too — you know, out at UNO or something, some evening classes in folk dancing — and she'd probably leave me if I did that. I don't know what you think about us, Maureen, but I couldn't go on if she left me.

  MAUREEN: Well, maybe I have been too quick to judge. Maybe I like owe you an apology.

  STANLEY: That's okay. I just wanted you to see how things were.

  MAUREEN: What do you do, Stanley? I mean, during the day? I mean, for a living, you know?

  STANLEY: I'm a pinsetter. In a bowling alley. Except I've been unemployed for a while now.

  MAUREEN: But they've got automatic pinsetters. They've had them for decades.

  STANLEY: I said that I hadn't worked in a while, didn't I? I hate it, but we've been living off what Blanche brings in.

  MAUREEN: And what does Blanche do?

  STANLEY: I thought that was obvious, Maureen. She depends on the kindness of strangers.

  MAUREEN: Oh. Oh! That's like absolutely the crummiest thing I can think of!

  STANLEY: It's just that I have a unique skill that's not much in demand at the moment in the marketplace.

  [Maureen crosses to the bed, grabs Stanley by the shirt and lifts him to his feet.]

  MAUREEN: Here's what's going to happen: I'm going to slap you around this room just long enough to render you stunned but still conscious. At that point I'll allow you to gather your clothes and your other things. Then, jeez, I'm going to like throw you out on the sidewalk and dropkick you all the way across Canal Street. It really seems to me that Blanche doesn't need you for a damn thing.

  STANLEY: Maureen, wait, let me explain. You're a real woman, and a real man doesn't see one very often. Seeing you, in that cute little bikini, with that sword, listening to the way you talk . . . well, I'm feeling things I haven't felt in a long time. I know you don't understand what I mean, but you've got to give me —

  [Still holding him by the bunched-up material of his shirt, she pulls him across the room to the front entrance. With one hand, she opens the door. The sound of the rainfall comes faster and louder. Maureen shoves the protesting Stanley outside onto the sidewalk, then shuts the door.]

  MAUREEN: I mean, God, all men are beasts. That's the first thing a warrior-woman learns.

  STANLEY [We hear his loud, uncomprehending screams through the closed door.]: Maureen! Maureeeen!

  MAUREEN: Quit that howlin' out there!

  STANLEY: MAUREEEEEN!

  SCENE FOUR

  Stanley and Blanche's apartment. Maureen has finished taking care of her sword. She is still sitting at the table, drinking another bottle of beer. Blanche enters from the sidewalk, carrying a heavy brown paper bag and leading the Yorkshire terrier on a leash. The light outside is getting dusky and the sound of rain has stopped.

  BLANCHE: Well, here we are, home again, Stella sweetie, little Stella for Star!

  [She puts down the paper bag and releases the dog from the leash.]

  MAUREEN: Did it stop raining out there?

  BLANCHE: It always does, you know, dawlin'. [She picks up her bag and carries it to the table.] Now, I don't believe I've forgotten anything. I've got the balloons, I've got the streamers, I've got the cake and the candles. What could I have forgotten? The good Lord knows I always forget something.

  Sometimes Stanley says I'd forget my nipples if they weren't attached. Now, let me think, if anyone can think in this heat and this humidity —and do you hear that noise out there? They're surely starting early enough tonight. I warned you about them, I believe I did, and now you'll see what the French Quarter is like at night. Pardon me if I predict that you'll be amazed, despite yourself and your wonderful seen-it-all done-it-all been-everywhere lifestyle.

  MAUREEN: Is there some special occasion tonight?

  BLANCHE [sits heavily in one of the chairs]: Oh my, yes. It's Stanley's birthday, you know. He pretends that birthdays don't mean anything to him. He pretends that he hates his birthday and that he'd just as soon forget about it. But let anyone else forget his birthday! Well! I'd just better not, that's all. He would be just too impossible to live with for days and days. So we'll just take these balloons and things over to the K-Slash-S and decorate the place up for him. As a surprise.

  [Maureen doesn't say anything. Blanche digs around in the paper bag for a moment, then looks up, puzzled.]:

  By the way, where is the big lug?

  MAUREEN: Oh, while you were out we had an argument. I guess like he went out for a while.

  BLANCHE: I was afraid that might happen. I thought maybe I shouldn't leave the two of you together. Stanley doesn't really understand women very well.

  MAUREEN: I can believe that, all right.

  BLANCHE: Everything will be all right in a little while. Stanley never carries a grudge.

  MAUREEN: Maybe I should just leave —

  BLANCHE [raising one hand to her throat]: Nuh uh! Aren't I entitled to have some friends, too?

  MAUREEN: Blanche, I think you should know. While you were gone, your dear Stanley made advances to me. He was pretty clumsy and pretty stupid, but I understood what he meant. You don't need him, Blanche. You deserve someone lots better than him.

  BLANCHE [She looks worried.]: What happened, dawlin'?

  MAUREEN: Like I said, he started telling me that he was a real man and I was a real woman, but I didn't want to listen to him, so I just threw him out. Forget about him, Blanche. He wasn't good for anything.

  BLANCHE: Oh, my God. Oh, my dear Lord. Maureen, what have you done? How dare you interfere? How dare you judge me, or judge Stanley? What do you know about what we have together?

  MAUREEN: I . . . I'm sorry, I guess. I'm just so used to getting dropped into battles and other situations that are mostly black-and-white, easy to understand. I mean, you know, clear-cut good guys and bad guys. It just seemed to me that Stanley was one of those bad guys.

  BLANCHE [in a very low voice]: He is my bad guy.

  MAUREEN: It's just my firm belief that no woman really needs to settle for that. Why not the best, Blanche? When one woman accepts less than the best, then all women everywhere lose a little at the same time.

  BLANCHE: Maureen, for me, Stanley is the best, whatever you think of him. If the truth be
told — and the Lord knows how infrequently the truth is told — he is better than I could actually hope for. He may not be a perfect man, I agree, but then in some ways I'm not a perfect woman. Not if the truth be told.

  MAUREEN: Now, don't be so critical of yourself. Stand tall and be proud, woman!

  BLANCHE: If the truth be told . . . if the truth — You know, of course — I mean, I'm sure that Stanley told you — that I'm not exactly what you'd call a "perfect woman." I'm sure he told you. That I'm more what you'd call a "naturalized" woman. Not the least bit perfect.

  MAUREEN: What the hell does that mean?

  BLANCHE: It means that I'm a woman because I . . . went to this office and took an oath. Actually, I affirmed rather than swore. That's because I went to Catholic school.

  MAUREEN [sitting down]: I didn't know you could do that.

  BLANCHE [smiling, happy again]: Well, of course, this is New Orleans and things happen differently here. You see, we've got here what you call the Napoleonic Code. It means that what is the wife's is also what's the husband's. What he's got, I've got. In all sorts of ways.

  [There is a long pause. From outside, there are drunken voices, laughing.]

  VENDOR (from outside]: Estofado de lengua! Best tongue in the city!

  MAUREEN: It's fantasy and magic, all right. If we're going out tonight, maybe I should put another coat of wax on old Betsy.

  SCENE FIVE

  Somewhat later. Stanley has returned, and he and Blanche and Maureen are seated at the table. The green shutters have been opened, the windows raised, and the front door opened again also. There is a great deal of traffic noise from the street, as well as the voices of passersby.

  OLD MEXICAN WOMAN: Flores?

  BLANCHE: Who is that, Stanley?

  STANLEY [He gets up to look.]: It's just an old Mexican woman selling flowers, honey.

  OLD MEXICAN WOMAN [From outside]: Flores. Flores para los muertos.

  STANLEY: No, no, we don't want any flowers. Now go away.

  BLANCHE: Tomorrow's All Saint's Day, dawlin', she's sellin' flowers to put on the graves.

  MAUREEN: You think that's the only reason she's here? She shows up in A Streetcar Named Desire doing that same thing, right? And where else? Think about it, Miss Junior College, think about it. Okay, in Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? Remember? George comes in with the bouquet and says "Flores para los muertos?" Like, jeez, the very same line! A quote, or a literary allusion? And Martha, in the same play, keeps saying, "Truth and illusion, George, truth and illusion." Same thing as fantasy and magic, I guess.

  [Stanley and Blanche exchange glances.]

  BLANCHE: What are you talking about, sweetie?

  MAUREEN: I mean, I think I've learned an important lesson here. I think sometimes like I come on just the teensiest bit too strong. Maybe sometimes I'm not exactly entirely sure of whatever situation I find myself in. I should probably be more careful in the future.

  STANLEY: Aw, we're not blaming you, Maureen.

  BLANCHE: Real life can be confusing sometimes, honey.

  MAUREEN: As long as you guys aren't angry at me. I jumped to a lot of conclusions and said some things I shouldn't have said. I promise, in the future there will be a kinder, gentler Maureen Birnbaum.

  BLANCHE: But what about all the weak and down-trodden folks?

  MAUREEN: Oh, I'm sure I can be kind and gentle and fierce and barbaric all at the same time. It's just a matter of careful planning and sound time-management.

  STANLEY: Then let's head over to the K-Slash-S.

  BLANCHE: Bring the doggie, dawlin', 'cause the bartender there has a cat that thinks Stella's a tribble.

  VENDOR [from outside]: Hot and crispy! Deep-fried watermelon on a stick!

  * * * * *

  A KINDER, GENTLER MAUREEN . . . ! That's a start, and like a good start, if you ask me. A silent, invisible Maureen would be even better, but I'll take what I can get. I listened to her stupid story until she finished, but unlike all the other times, here I thought I could finally put her in her place. I mean, like retribution was at hand. I go, "Maureen, sweetie, you mean Stanley and Blanche live right here?"

  And she goes, "Well, in a kind of hyperspatial, too-intensely-difficult-for-you-to-understand sort of way."

  I go, "Huh?"

  She goes, "See, the Blanche and Stanley I knew lived at a 1014 Dumaine Street in a completely different space-time continuum parallel-universe sort of thing."

  "Uh huh," I go, "so they wouldn't be there if I knocked on that white door in the pink three-story townhouse?"

  Maureen just shrugged her naked shoulders. "Don't know who lives there, honey. Somebody does, probably, but probably not Blanche and Stanley. Like I said, they're not of this Earth. If you follow me."

  I closed my eyes and sighed, then looked at my "good friend" again. "Then how did you get from there to here?" I go.

  Maureen just smiled. "You know the St. Charles Avenue streetcar? Well, you take that up to Napoleon, then you get a transfer—"

  I left her standing right there on the broken sidewalk. I was thinking about getting a whole muffaletta sandwich and a Coke at the Central Grocery and having lunch under the banana trees in Jackson Square.

  Maureen Birnbaum

  in the MUD

  by E. J. Spiegelman

  (as told to George Alec Effinger)

  SO PICTURE THIS:

  I'm like sitting on the edge of the upstairs bathtub, which in Mums and Daddy's house is half-sunken so my knees are jammed up under my chin, and I'm watching my dear, dear friend, Maureen Birnbaum the Interplanetary Adventuress, apply eye shadow. Maureen is, you know, very finicky about makeup when she uses it, which isn't open these days because she's mostly a barbarian swordsperson who only rarely bothers with normal stuff.

  Her style of dress begins and ends with her solid gold-and-jewel brassiere and G-string, and her grooming habits have likewise been put on hiatus in favor of perpetual vigilance. Muffy—that was her old nickname back in the Greenberg School days, but you should know how much she hates it now—spends her waking hours hacking and hewing villains and monsters. She is, she tern me, a very good hacker and hewer indeed, and I should doubt her? Well, okay, entre nous sometimes I have just these little teem suspicions that Muffy's narrations are how-shall-I-say preposterous.

  Be that as it may. Muffy applied the eye makeup in layers of several different but carefully chosen shades. In the olden days, sometimes she'd end up looking like a surprised raccoon north of her nose. She's gotten more skillful since then—though like I still wouldn't want to call the results tasteful It seemed to me that she was aiming at a kind of Monet-at-Giverny waterlilies effect between her brows and eyelids.

  The color she was, well, slathering is a good verb, was called Azul Jacinto. Muffy was vigorously but like inexpertly blending this weird purple eye shadow with the previous tinctorial stratum, which if I remember correctly was Caramel Smoke. They should've put a Kids: Don't Try This At Home warning on the containers.

  She goes, "Finally, finally, I've found a way to get back to Mars and my own true beloved, Prince Van. And like I want to look just absolutely devastating. So be cruel, Bitsy. Tell me what you really think. Honestly, now."

  "You look terrific, sweetie," I go. Let her find out the hard way. That's what she gets for calling me Bitsy. I've told her a million times that if she can't stand being called Muffy, I can't stand being called Bitsy. I'm not seventeen anymore. I'm a grown-up divorced mother with responsibilities, and I want to be treated with respect every bit as much as Muffy—Maureen—does.

  She smiled at herself in the mirror. "Great," she goes. "I'll only be a little longer." She'd said that an hour ago.

  "Should I go out and tell the cab driver? Take him a Coke or some coffee or something?"

  Maureen just shrugged. "I'll give him a big tip. He'd rather have that than coffee anyway, for sure. Cab drivers wait for me all the time."

  "Whatever."

  "So," she goes, making h
er mouth into a big open O and stretching her right eyebrow upward with her pinkie, "where was I?"

  Damn it I was, you know, praying that she'd forget about telling me the rest of her most recent thrilling exploit. "You whooshed out of New Orleans and wound up in this bitty little medieval village."

  "Uh huh," she goes, hastily daubing Azul Jacinto like a muralist rushing to met the NEA grant deadline. "Well, be a darling and open that other box of Frango chocolates, the raspberry ones, and I'll just finish up here."

  Comment dîtes-vous en français "Yeah. Right." What follows, I swear, I am not making up. I should only be so clever.

  * * * * *

  I SHOULDN'T EVEN BE LIKE talking to you anymore, Bitsy, the way you left me standing there on the sidewalk in New Orleans. Do you mind if I tell you that I thought you were just too R-U-D-E for words? Still, all that's forgiven, because we've been best friends forever and I can see what a wretched life you've carved out for yourself, but didn't I warn you about Josh? And didn't I point out—

  All right. Never mind. I'm sorry I brought it up. So there I was, like simply abandoned in a strange city, thank you very much. They call New Orleans "The City That Care Forgot," but they've forgotten other things, too. Like the past participle. All over town, I kept running into "ice tea' and boil shrimp" and "smoke sausage." I really wanted to sample that smoke sausage, just to see if it was like my Nanny's shadow soup. She said when they were too poor to buy a chicken, she'd, you know, borrow someone else's and hold it over her pot of boiling water. That's how you make shadow soup. Cossacks were involved in that story somehow, but I can't exactly remember how.

  I've lost my train of thought, I must be getting old. Oh, for sure, the village. You know that I can whoosh through time and space with ease, but that I don't always end up exactly where I planned. Believe me, sweetie, I hadn't planned to visit this—well, I hate to call it a town, exactly, because it was made up of just five horrible tiny shops and no houses at all. Don't you think that's a little odd?