Everyone's Pretty

by Lydia Millet

They were showing Cleopatra Empress of the Nile. Normally she didn’t like documentaries but this one was cool. She watched with the Kleenex box on her lap for when she kept crying and hiccuping by accident.

  They showed how Cleopatra captured the imagination of numerous dramatists, and a reenactment of her being bit by a snake. Anyway he pulled the rope so it wasn’t her fault. She was only a catalytic agent. Chemistry P-SAT. She caused a reaction but it wasn’t her fault only her properties. He pulled the rope till when he was choking and then he went soft.

  Cleopatra wore a lot of makeup. She didn’t do her eyeliner too good.

  1:34

  —Yeah Phil, what can I do for you, said Alice. Her phone was ringing. She swung her legs down from the desk and swiveled her back to him. —Wait a sec. Lemme get this, it’s an outside line. Hello?

  —I was just going out your door when this lady called, I gave her your work number okay? Jerry hasn’t seen Ginny and she’s not at school so I’m going to talk to the police like you said.

  —Fine Riva, good luck, said Alice. —Talk to you later. Dammit Phil, the other line is going. Was it something quick?

  —Oh, said Phil, shifting from one foot to the other. —Would you like to have a late lunch?

  —Sorry, let me just get this, okay? Hello?

  —Is that Alice? Honey?

  —Jesus. Mother?

  —Alice, honey. Twelve years! Alice. . . .

  Alice fumbled in her bag for the cigarette pack.

  —Sorry Phil, I have to do this. Would you open a window?

  —I don’t—

  —I mean it Phil! Mother, God. Do you think maybe, could we talk when I get home? Can I call you back or something?

  —Sure but honey I just wanted to let you know, Ray passed away this morning.

  Alice burned her thumb on the match.

  —You know, I just wanted you to know honey.

  —Alice, these premises are nonsmoking.

  —Shut up Phil, my father just died.

  —My Lord! I-I—

  —Alice I wanted to tell you the funeral is in two days honey. Alice sweetheart could you come home for the service?

  —Phil can I have a little privacy please? Sorry mother we have these shitty little cubicles. Can we not talk about this right now? I’d rather call you when I get home.

  —You promise Alice? You promise you’ll call?

  —I’ll call.

  —Because Alice . . . honey I’m all alone. . . .

  —Don’t cry mother, please don’t cry.

  —I jist, I’m all alone. . . .

  —Please don’t cry, all right? I’m sorry you’re alone, I really am. I don’t want you to cry. Are you going to stop crying? You don’t need to cry. I mean it’s okay to cry. I’m—I mean I’m listening.

  —If you would just come for the service. . . .

  —I don’t want you to be alone, but you know how it was with him and me. You know how it was.

  —Please Alice. . . .

  It was easy to extend every courtesy to the dead. They were always polite.

  —Don’t cry. I want to talk to you about this later. Don’t be alone, okay? How about your friends from church? Is Marietta with you?

  —Marietta passed, honey. She got a tumor in her eyeball.

  2:36

  Decetes and Ken were seated in the Pinto in a Vons parking lot, watching a bag lady with rats’-nest hair scour a dumpster for goodies. Decetes wielded a forty-ounce.

  —Next stop Ken, a trade emporium I know. Exchange a few trinkets Ken, get some cash to produce our new movie.

  His grandfather had been a coin collector. He had spent his own legacy when he was fourteen, but fortunately Bucella had kept hers.

  —Let’s go Ken, look at the magazines more later.

  He got out, slamming the Pinto’s front door, and opened the back for Ken.

  —Devil where’d you put the babies? Devilman! Suckass!

  The bag lady was closing on them fast, waving an egg carton.

  —My dear lady please be calm, said Decetes, raising his hands, palms up. —You are clearly a victim of Reaganomics. I believe they set all the schizophrenics free in ’86, or was it ’87. We bear you no malice. The eggs are very nice.

  —Suckass? Pig dog?

  She came to a standstill five feet away, dropped the egg carton and began to pick lint off her cardigan, preoccupied.

  —See Ken? A kind word does the trick.

  —Anyways we can defend ourselves, said Ken. —Mother’s little helper, and with a quick flash of teeth he pulled a corkscrew from the greasy folds of his jacket.

  —Where did you get that Ken, said Decetes.

  —Found it. . . .

  They left the bag lady combing her hair with a plastic fork.

  —What else have you found, Ken?

  —I gotta locker with some stuff, gotta .22 but that’s a girlie gun and I got a good Ruger and some blades.

  In the pawn shop Decetes proffered his coinage and was told it would fetch the measly ransom of forty dollars. —1921, take a gander at that, said Decetes. —1914, First World War mint here. These things are worth more than forty bucks.

  The woman shook her head and took a phone call.

  Ken was looking at knives, the display case open behind Decetes, unsheathing them and holding the glinting blades up to the light. —Cool it there Ken you’re not Geronimo, said Decetes.

  —Lookit this, CASE V-44, said Ken. —You gotcher folding machetes here too, you gotcher Bowies, gotcher Abalone shell handle here, beautiful blade see this? It’s Damascus steel. Practically hard as a diamond. Mokume dagger! Nickel damascus, yeah. She’s a beaut. This is a Fairbairn-Sikes Decetes! Custom-made!

  —Know your knives Ken, I’ll give you that. All right, I’ll take the forty. Let’s get out of here Ken.

  On the sidewalk Ken revealed a small folding knife he had slipped into his pants.

  —A little combat folder Decetes. See this? The handle’s genuine stag.

  2:43

  Due to her bereavement, he would have to proceed with caution. He would be her pillar, her staunch support, rock of Gibraltar in this time of need. When the mourning was complete, she would give of herself.

  There were, of course, habits he would have to break. The filthy cigarettes, the short skirts, the cavalier hygiene, all that would have to be addressed, but gently, in his own sweet time. He could stand at the graveside with her, a firm hand on her shoulder. Make her into a virgin again. Mary Magdalene, beautiful penitent whore. He would reform her. Only for him.

  Above her. Bites of a salty peach. Fruit of the tree. Slurping the peach, filthy but scrumptious. Everything in its place. Worship and sacrament. Wild and rhythmic at first, then later with their heads bowed upright beams of light. Back and forth in perpetuity. Horizontal and vertical, first the earth then the air. By day a great house of rectitude, with slurping at night. Something to atone for. Not nothing as now. No soft unwilling organs. No small pink turtle, shrinking at the sight. Rather a rearing snake. Python unleashed! The raw muscle. Patrician with her beside him, other lesser men wanting, slim-erect-an-idol, her blond lovely yet humbled by his word, eyes widened by the eagles in their might. By night a chastised beggar moaning for the rod.

  —How is Barbara today? Has she recovered?

  —Yes!—thank you Bucella.

  His domestic situation was an impediment, yes. He would have to clean house. Ring out the old, ring in the new. The rotten vessels cast to the rocks.

  Her hair spread out around her face like a halo of golden fire.

  —What about that blue gnome?

  —Excuse me?

  —The garden gnome she stole. It’s sitting in my kitchen.

  —Surely the object has no intrinsic value.

  —But it belongs to someone.

  —We can discuss it later Bucella. I have work to do.

  3:01

  Alice, on break, sat smoking and drinking her coffee on a concrete bench besid
e a flowering palm next to the building. It was a placid day, traffic rushing like a steady river behind the spiky trees. She watched the smoke rise and disperse. When she was sixteen she had invented punishments for Ray and spun them out into epics. He had been lectured by stern judges, kicked by thugs, mocked and jeered at by children.

  But none of this had ever happened.

  Beside her the bench was vacant. Ray was not sitting there; he was not sitting anywhere. What did gone mean?

  One summer she’d built castles out of creek silt, buttressed by twigs and ringed with moats. Crayfish got to be the alligators of the moats, with pale green bodies and red claws. She trapped them there and watched their stalks of eyes brush against the moat walls. When dusk fell she collapsed the walls and let them into the stream again. Back then she had thought all she wanted was to live on the coast, the end of earth and beginning of ocean, where men could not walk. In water her small legs could do as much as Ray’s big ones. It was an endless dream of blue.

  But the tall ships were gone, and the most she got was a syringe in her foot or a day cruise out to Catalina with tourists and sunscreen. Once on a windless Sunday she had driven up to Malibu and stood on the lip of a cliff at Pepper-dine, and then she saw the blue. But its peacefulness was an illusion; this was the land of no escape. The sea was a free-for-all, real estate with no title. Shrimpers with their snares cast like gray wings, industry afloat with drift nets a hundred miles long. Going and gone the fish, going gone the great slow giants of the deep, the living coral reefs. Give them time, and they all would be gone.

  Honey mama’s gotta go to work. You jist call 911 fe comes round agin. You got that sweetie, 9, 1, 1.

  3:10

  —I never stoled a camcorder before, said Ken, gnawing on a cord of beef jerky. —Electronics is hard.

  —Strategy Ken, it’s all strategy, said Decetes reassuringly. —And make it digital. We’re going to make a movie.

  —After that you gonna set me up with July: Jezebel?

  —All in good time. You will have your dream date Ken, just leave it to beaver.

  —You talk to the sales guy okay Decetes? So he doesn’t watch me.

  —Sure Ken. We’re on your turf here my son. Let me hold your little knife for you.

  Ken hauled the knife out of his grimy athletic sock, handed it over and swaggered through the sliding doors. Decetes stashed the blade in his pocket and followed.

  —If something goes wrong Ken, just start running. Rendezvous behind the parking structure in the alley at six p.m. I’ll be right behind you all the time Ken, moral support. I will distract the employees. But remember Ken, this is no petty shoplifting caper. This is the glorious beginning of the last crusade.

  3:22

  Bucella clicked her mouse and exited SAS. She was too distracted to run a multivariate regression. She was a Sister of Charity, tending the Infirm and Deranged with no Reward. She was surrounded by the Profane, but walked through it with her head held High. Catherine of Siena took a vow of Virginity, Mary of Oignies helped Lepers. And hardly anyone appreciated them either, before they were dead.

  In her whole life she’d never done anything mean to anyone, except maybe in fifth grade when she killed a frog by mistake. However frogs apparently had no Souls, although the girl who brought it in to show and tell did have a Soul. Plus, for the rest of the year after that she gave the girl her snackfood at Recess, be it celery with peanut butter or oatmeal cookies. One week, when she had no snacks, she gave the girl five pennies from her piggybank, one penny every day. Dean had found out she broke her piggybank for the purpose and stashed the money in a jar. He stole the jar and took the rest of the pennies to buy firecrackers. Then he burned down a Historical Oak.

  They suspended him after that, but it didn’t bring her pennies back.

  Phillip Kreuz never even apologized for his wife. That mentally challenged Felon. Gnome stealer and Vomitus Maximus. He had borrowed her staple remover three weeks ago and never gave it back. Now she was going to get it. She pushed her swivel chair back and walked to his desk, approaching him from behind. He was bent over, a paper smoothed across his knees.

  She reached out a hand to tap him smartly on the shoulder but then withdrew it fast before it touched. We are twinned—

  Lordy God!

  3:40

  —Please, you have to come down here, you have to come, wailed Riva. Alice had returned to her desk to find the phone ringing yet again. —Jerry’s out to lunch and there’s no one else!

  —Just tell me what happened, said Alice. —Slow down and tell me what happened.

  —It’s the police, said Riva. —I gave them the description and they called back and said there was, there. . . .

  —What was there, said Alice. —I’m listening. Go on.

  —They say there’s a girl who meets her description. . . .

  —Yes?

  —She’s, it’s a dead girl. They say I have to go to the morgue and identify—what—

  —Stay there, said Alice. —Oh. Where is there?

  3:52

  He would keep her in his sights. She was inclined to be freewheeling, disregarding her own safety at the drop of a hat. For now. Before the new regime.

  Fortunately he had parked his rental on the street, and could follow her easily. He was not surprised to learn that she drove as erratically as she behaved. It was all he could do to stay close without violating traffic regulations, which had after all been promulgated for the sake of collective welfare. He made a mental note to remind her of this at an appropriate time. Reckless driving was a crime like any other. He stopped at a red light. She was two cars ahead. A Mexican stood on the median, hawking oranges and grapes. Phillip rolled down his window.

  —Orange orange? Three-dollar bag?

  —Please be advised that I am planning to report you to the proper authorities, said Phillip sternly. Patrician. The eagles spread their wings. —Do you possess a vending permit?

  —Grape one dollar bag señor, extra cheap.

  —Obviously you do not. Have those fruits been checked for pesticide residue and parasites?

  —Real cheap, orange yust three dollars, said the man, and leaned down close to Phillip’s head at the window, holding out a bag. His teeth were blackened and he smelled. Phillip quickly retracted his head. The proximity could be dangerous. A smell signaled molecules entering his nasal passages. They might well be molecules of disease.

  —Are you an illegal alien? If necessary, I will telephone the Immigration and Naturalization Service. I am a taxpayer, unlike yourself. That fruit may constitute a hazard to public health. I,N,S. Do you hear me? INS!

  —Don’t try to scare me you cheap asshole, said the man with no trace of an accent. —I’m as American as apple pie.

  Good gracious. Thankfully the light had turned green. As Phillip pulled away a bag of oranges smashed across the side of his face. His glasses fell. Grappling to hook them on his ear again, he lost his grip on the wheel and narrowly missed the bumper ahead as he swerved.

  4:02

  Bucella hid in the bathroom, having Palpitations. He had probably stolen the letter right out of the envelope on Ernest’s desk. Marked PRIVATE INTEROFFICE MAIL. He could be laughing and mocking her this very second. Why did he do it? She just tried to be a good hostess and friendly coworker. His wife desecrated her house when it was just steam-cleaned, costing two hundred dollars, and then he read her private correspondence. Even the saints had been known to cry out against their Attackers. He was sitting there right now laughing, rubbing his hands and chortling.

  It was after lunch hour, and anyway she knew for a fact that he never went home for lunch. He brought tuna sandwiches in foil or soup in a Tupperware container.

  She pushed her chair back on its rollers and grabbed the key to the Budget Rent-a-Car Buick. Then she looked on her list of employee home numbers and wrote down his address on a Post-It.

  An eye for an eye.

  16:19

  —They fou
nd her last night! said Riva.

  She was chafing her wrists, flushed, and had bit into her bottom lip until it bled. Walking beside her Alice put an arm around her shoulders, stared down at the linoleum unfurling itself beneath them. A morgue technician strode ahead. Alice noted his white rubber-soled shoes: vinyl nurse’s shoes with patterns of perforated dots.

  —They said a knife! She was a mathematics gifted. My little girl. Gifted!

  —Don’t think about that right now, said Alice gently.

  —Right through here ladies.

  The room was large and clean. They stood behind him waiting. He pulled back a curtain. Alice saw Riva’s chin shake. A covered form on a gurney. Riva balled her hands into fists.

  —Whopper and fries, called another technician over his shoulder as he sped out the double doors.

  —Are you ready ma’am?

  Alice’s wrist was squeezed. She was an impostor, a standin. She would hunt down the absentee husband and flog him to within an inch of his life. The sheet was pulled back. A small brown head, face still.

  —It’s a—it’s a black person!

  Riva released Alice’s wrist to clap her hands.

  —This is a little black girl!

  Alice felt the muscles of her cheeks loosen. There was an obscenity in it, an obscene freedom.

  —She’s not it. It’s not her!

  Riva was shaking her head, with a smile that stretched her lips too far. Alice bent over the small head. A slight dent in the skin beside the nose. It looked like a scar from chicken-pox. The face seemed softer than felt.

  —I’m sorry, it must—an unacceptable, uh, error—

  —My baby’s not dead!

  —I’m very sorry, stuttered the technician, —What a ridiculous—I just came on, I don’t—do you know who called you? Jesus!

  He snapped the sheet back up with a jerk of his wrist.

  —It’s okay, it’s just fine, it’s not her! babbled Riva, smiling giddily. Stupid with relief.

  —Let’s go please, said Alice.

  4:26

  She finished calculating his total surface area. Sure Mr. Alan was skinny, but he was also tall. She sat down on the bedroom floor, spread the white sheet out on the carpet and began to cut it into strips.

  In Cleopatra Empress of the Nile there were slaves. They built the pyramids with their bare hands. In those days they didn’t have bulldozers but it didn’t matter because they had slaves.