How Perfect is That

by Sarah Bird

  “Maybe,” Millie says as Danny loosens his hold, “that’s because it’s too dangerous for pretty girls when you’re around.”

  “You!” Danny yells. “You! I’m gonna write you another fat check right now. How’s the work going?”

  “Danny supports you, too?” I ask.

  “Oh, all the cool people do. The work is going well. Really well. I used part of your last donation to buy Jesse some special shoes after he cut his right toe off when he was showing Carl how to use a chain saw.”

  Danny holds his hand up. “Good, good. No details required.” He points at the laptop Millie holds. “Any reason you’re clutching that thing like Moses with the tablets?”

  Millie, wearing a smile of secret delight, opens her laptop and proudly holds it out to Danny.

  “What’s this?” Danny studies the screen. His eyes narrow, his brow wrinkles, his mouth drops open. “What the…? Is that my—”

  “Yes! It’s Archive’s latest album…Or is it called a CD now? Anyway, it’s your latest release, and it’s far and away the most popular selection in the house!”

  Danny studies the screen. Behind his back, Jerome presses his palms against his forehead, squeezes his eyes shut, and mouths the word “no.” Watching Jerome is like studying the stewardess on a plane flying through an electrical storm. His expression tells me that we are going down.

  Danny leans in farther. “Someone’s downloading it right now. Hay-sus Kreesto. They sucked that down in what? Ten seconds? What kind of bandwidth do you all have here? This is like NORAD or something.”

  Just then Doug, headphones clamped over his ears, comes downstairs singing, “‘Gimme, I’m gonna take it. Gimme, I’m gonna take it…You feel me…You feel me…Gimme, I’m gonna take it’” from the title track of Archive’s latest release, “Gimme, I’m Gonna Take It” by Li’l CheeZ.

  Doug, noticing that everyone is watching him, stops on the stairs, bites his lower lip, and drops it like it is hot, executing some not-bad dance moves.

  Millie beams at Danny. “See? What did I tell you? Everyone in the house loves your new release!”

  “Oh, I can see that.”

  “You can tell Little Cheesy that the homeboys and homegirls of Seneca House”—Millie pauses to bite back a giggle at her urban outrageousness—“love his work.”

  Danny nods thoughtfully. I consider diving in to do some damage control, but am not sure what the damage is or how to control it. Danny closes the laptop, hands it back to Millie, and requests that we both join him on the porch.

  Outside, he asks one question: “Have either of you downloaded music through this house network?”

  Millie, still suffering under the delusion that pirating music is a gigantic artistic tribute, answers first. “Danny, please don’t be offended, but I haven’t ever downloaded any music. If I ever do, however, yours will be the first.”

  “What about you, Younghole?”

  “Not so much as one phat beat,” I assure him.

  He gathers us both into his arms and kisses the tops of our heads. “That’s my girls.”

  I snuggle against him and breathe deeply. With just one white lie, the crisis has been averted. At least for me and Millie. And, really? Who else is there?

  The Dogs of Law

  OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, Danny calls from all around the state, always shouting above the roar of live music. I want to ask him about the downloading incident, but since he usually can’t hear a word I say, I let it go.

  The call I get early Friday afternoon, though, is not from Danny. “Blythe, hey, it’s Alli. Listen, quick question, can you recommend a good, no, a great caterer?”

  “Yeah. Me. Though, actually, I’m more of an event coordinator.”

  “Oh. Well, you see, it’s for a Platinum Longhorns program and…”

  “Your ladies would stab me to death with their black AmEx cards.”

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  “What’s the program?”

  “You know how I do these fund-raiser trips?”

  “Right. Tuscany. Provence. The Greek Islands.” These were the Plat Longs’ big annual trips where the society ladies would dress up for one another and gossip about their friends while they were supposed to be soaking up culture. If it was Florence, they would do a quick check-in at the Uffizi, brief run-through of the Duomo, then zip over to the Ponte Vecchio to start the main event: shopping. Same deal in Bali, half an hour for temple art, then a day of buying batiked evening gowns. “So why do you need a caterer? You’re not going to take one with you to some foreign country, are you?”

  “We’re not going to any foreign country this year. The dollar is so bad that we wouldn’t make any money at all, and, thanks to your big buddy in the White House, everyone in the world wants to kill us.”

  “Why is he my big buddy?”

  “The jacket. The shoes. I’ve learned how to spot the signs. Anyway, the ladies are too freaked out about terrorists to leave the country, which is why Kippie Lee came up with her brainstorm. Without checking with me first, she decided that the thing to do is rent out the Pi Phi house, where many of the women spent the happiest days of their lives, and have the culture brought to them. They’re going to have big-name profs lecture while the maids and butlers bustle around attending to their every need. Compared with Bali, the price is an incredible bargain. Our profit margin is going to be very healthy.”

  Alli gets specific with figures that cause me a moment of intense professional envy. “Healthy? I couldn’t have made that much off an event with a sawed-off shotgun. Mazel tov, my friend.”

  “Oh, thanks. This one trip will float the Plat Longs and give me complete job security for at least a year. But I do need a caterer who can work with all the ladies’—”

  “Insane demands?”

  “Something like that.”

  I recommend Antoinette, at Let Them Eat Cake; I owe her one for stealing Sergio. And most of her clients. The instant I hang up, the phone rings again. It’s Danny.

  “Do you want to come to the Grammys with me? I know it’s a ways off, but you’ve got wardrobe to think about, right?”

  “Are you kidding? The Grammys?”

  “You’ll be sick of me by then. You and Jerome will be married. First kid on the way. He’ll have a job selling egg rolls on the Drag.”

  “They shut the egg roll vendors down. Cockroaches.”

  “Jeez, no egg roll vendors? I existed on those things. Wow, end of an era. Okay, your boy Jerome will be a lifeguard at Deep Eddy. No, a shuttle-bus driver. Or maybe making sandwiches at Thunder-cloud Subs. They haven’t shut Thundercloud down for cockroaches, have they?”

  “No, in fact, I think it’s this week’s special.”

  As Danny goes on free-associating about the perfect Austin fantasy life Jerome and I will be living, I do mental jumping jacks about the hint of a future he is holding out to me. Then Lute edges over and begins singing about the burden of being adorable. “I’m your mirror and you love what you see. But turn it over cuz that ain’t me. I ain’t your toy. I’m a real live boy.”

  Lute nudges me until I tell Danny, “Uh, here’s Lute,” and surrender the phone.

  As Lute goes into the bridge, Millie trundles upstairs and Sanjeev watches her disappear with sorrowful brown eyes.

  Just as Lute is lamenting, “I know you’re one of them girls. All you see is the curls,” I notice a brown car glide to a stop in front of the house. It has the seal of the state of Texas on the door. My heart is thumping madly even before I read, TRAVIS COUNTY SHERIFF’ S DEPARTMENT. A bulky deputy in a khaki shirt gets out, surveys the house, cranes his neck over to one side, and talks into the microphone clipped to the epaulet on his shoulder.

  I grab the phone back. “Danny, I gotta go.”

  Before I can scamper off to the backyard and make a run for the border, a young woman sprints across the front lawn to catch the sheriff. I recognize her but can’t think of the name. Blond, petite, wearing a peach-c
olored suit and too much makeup, she would have been my sorority sister had I ever been in a sorority. But I definitely remember having drinks with the woman. Lots and lots of drinks.

  When Blondie corners the sheriff and sticks a microphone in his face—activities all being filmed by a cameraman—it comes to me that my “old friend” is Amy Truelove, Channel 7 News at 10 newsgal. Many indeed were the drinks Amy and I shared. Entire bottles of Chardonnay polished off in front of the television set as I watched her thrust microphones into the faces of various miscreants in orange jumpsuits.

  Orange jumpsuit.

  Me + orange jumpsuit.

  This equation propels me decisively toward the front door. In full view of the sheriff, who is pounding hard enough to rattle the panes of glass between us, I turn the key in the lock, slam the dead bolt home, pocket the key, and beeline for the back door. My plan is to run down to Dog Crap Lane, where I will hide out among Millie’s egg people until such time as I can regain possession of the van, then embark upon a crime spree. Crime Spree seems the next step up on my career ladder.

  I am sprinting through the dining room when shouts of, “Who has the front door key?” ring out.

  Tragically, Millie pipes up, “No worries, I’ve got an extra one!”

  The door is unlocked before I reach the kitchen. The sheriff booms out, “I have John Doe subpoenas for the following IP addresses.” He reads off strings of digits.

  Sanjeev recognizes one of the numbers and asks, “Why is Millie being subpoenaed?”

  My ears are so prepared to be bludgeoned with either the phrase “aiding and abetting a fugitive from the law” or “accomplice to fraud, drug delivery, and tax evasion,” that the sheriff’s answer, “Copyright infringement,” leaves me puzzled. Then, with banjos playing “Oh, Susanna” in a creepy-ominous Deliverance way in my head, I remember the songs I downloaded onto Millie’s laptop.

  In the living room, the entire house is swarming around the sheriff. Jerome gets the last subpoena.

  Invisible? I want to scream at Jerome. You said the house was invisible. What happened to invisible? But of course, I already know what happened to invisible: I happened to invisible. I brought Danny into the house. I put downloaded music onto Millie’s laptop.

  Channel 7’s Amy Truelove sticks a microphone in Yay Bombah’s face and asks, “How does it feel to be part of the latest round of test cases filed by the Recording Industry Association of America for copyright infringement?”

  Yay Bombah shakes her dreadlocks. Before she can answer, Jerome grabs the microphone. “What a joke that is. The biggest infringer upon copyright, upon the rights of artists, is the recording industry. The RIAA’s concern for artists is a cynical smoke screen. The only thing they’re concerned about is the bottom line.”

  While Jerome rants on, Amy furiously scans her cheat sheet of questions. She yanks her head back up before the cameraman turns on her and is ready with a cross-examination. “The RIAA accuses you and most of the other residents of running a file-sharing network designed to promote widespread music piracy.”

  “‘Piracy’?” Jerome yells. “The pirates who plundered the musical legacy of everyone from Robert Johnson and Bo Diddley to Android Peacekeepers and Used Rubbers are calling me a pirate?”

  Out of view of the camera, Amy’s cell phone rings. The news-woman whispers furiously into it as Jerome rails on. “This is hilarious. The record companies have been manipulating copyright laws for years, and all the manipulations were designed to steal everything they could from the actual creators of the work. You know what they are really worried about?”

  “We gotta roll,” Amy announces to her cameraman. “A protest at the Capitol. Something about telling the governor that ‘gay is okay.’” Amy snatches the mike out of Jerome’s hand. Even when the lights flicker off and the sheriff and news team vanish, Jerome bloviates on, as impassioned as ever. “The record companies aren’t worried about ‘lost sales.’ They’re worried about artists discovering that we don’t need them. They’re worried about—”

  A shriek halts Jerome’s screed. The shriekers are the house’s computer phantoms. Juniper interprets for them. “Choi Soon Yong and Elmootaz are worried about losing their student visas. Two of those subpoenas have their IP addresses on them. Choi Soon Yong says that the only way the RIAA could have found out about LANs like ours is if someone told them. Elmootaz says someone would have had to practically invite a record executive in and show them the system for them to find us.”

  With the single-mindedness that makes lynch mobs so successful, the residents turn as one and face me. Before that moment I believed that they couldn’t hate me any more than they already did. I was wrong. There are as-yet-untapped reservoirs of vitriol reserved exclusively for “parasite whores” such as myself who invite record company executives in to witness their Jolly Roger levels of piracy.

  “God, we are so screwed,” Yay Bombah informs Nazarite, matching the numbers on two of the subpoenas to their IP addresses.

  “Daddy is going to kill us,” adds Nazarite, both of them having abandoned the Lion of Judah and reverted decisively to their original identities. “I read that they’ve sued people for, like, one hundred twenty thousand dollars for every song on their computers. We’ve got how many songs?”

  “About a million,” sister Saperstein answers.

  “God, we are so screwed.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jerome says. “These things never go to court. The companies always intimidate their victims into settling.”

  “How much they pay?” Elmootaz asks.

  “I don’t know,” Jerome answers. “A few thousand. I’d be happy to spend that much just to expose their hypocrisy.”

  “And you’ve got a few grand stashed away?” Juniper asks.

  “No, but—”

  The house sinks into a stunned silence as we contemplate how impossible it will be to pay even the smallest settlement.

  “Look,” I say, “this has got to be a mistake. Danny is just not that kind of person.”

  Jerome snorts loudly. “Yeah, right.”

  “I’ll talk to him and get him to call the dogs off. It’ll be okay. Really. Trust me.”

  Perhaps the “trust me” is ill-advised. At least it lightens the mood, since Juniper breaks into hyena convulsions of laughter.

  I call Danny and he answers before the second ring. “Younghole, you bitch, why did you let that Aussie torture me? If I want to listen to blond airheads sing, I’ll call Britney. So, have you figured out what you’re wearing to the Grammys?”

  “An orange jumpsuit.”

  “No, I think Beyoncé already has dibs on the orange jumpsuit.”

  “Danny, the sheriff was here.”

  “Subpoena time, huh? Bet that made your boyfriend Jerome happy. Answer to a martyr’s prayer.”

  “You did this? You turned the house in? You couldn’t have done this on purpose.”

  “No, you’re right, I accidentally called the RIAA and reported egregious criminal activity.”

  “Danny, how could you do that? To me? To the house?”

  “What do you mean, ‘you’? I specifically asked you if you had downloaded any music and you specifically told me you had not. You and Millie. No music. That’s what you told me.”

  “Okay, there might have been a song or two that I downloaded onto Millie’s laptop.”

  “You lied? To me? Why?”

  “I didn’t think it mattered.”

  “God, Younghole, you thoroughly porked the pooch on this one. I never in a million years would have turned the house in if I thought it would hurt you or Millie.”

  “I never in a million years would have believed you would do this.”

  “And I can’t believe you would think I’d do anything else. What do you imagine Henry Ford would do if he walked into a chop shop filled with stolen Thunderbirds? You think—”

  “Yeah, but you aren’t Henry Ford and this isn’t a chop shop. This is a house filled with pe
ople who have no money, who took me in and helped me. Danny, this is Millie’s—”

  Danny ignores my interruption. “—you think Henry Ford might mention it to someone in the company? You don’t think Henry wouldn’t be derelict in his duty to that company if he didn’t mention it? Look, there aren’t any kindergartners over there who have no idea what they’re doing. No quadriplegics who can’t haul themselves to a record store. You’ve got a full-blown file-sharing network. Now, whatever you or your friends might think about the industry I work in, it’s what we’ve got. We spend millions developing new artists, rolling out new product, and if we go down, well, I hope your Herman’s Hermits albums are in good shape, cuz there ain’t gonna be no new music.”

  “Please, Danny, for me, call off the dogs.”

  “For you, Sister Mary Younghole, anything. If I could I would, but I can’t. It’s out of my hands. They’ve already let slip the dogs of law. As your little buddies, the music pirates, are so fond of saying, the genie is out of the bottle.”

  Guilty as Sin

  I SIT IN the deep leather hush of the waiting room of the best intellectual property rights law firm in town. Which just so happens to be Teeter, Tawter, and Deaux. I have no worries that I will run into Hunt Teeter, Kippie Lee’s philandering asshole of a husband. Since he is a founding partner our case rests safely below his radar. Next to me are Doug and Juniper, representing the house, and Dr. Dr. Robin, who insisted on coming to look after the interests of the Old Girls.

  It turns out that we, the residents of Seneca House, are the Great White and Unpopular Minorities test case the RIAA has been dreaming of. Overprivileged college kids, one Middle Eastern, one Chinese, no children or widows. They couldn’t have put together better defendants in a lab.

  “Waiting room” is not quite the right term for where we are. Not with its connotations of ancient copies of Field & Stream and screaming children. No, we have been supplied with Evian by a solicitous intern named Chloe who has the manners, clothes, and teeth of someone with roots in the Ivy League. The reading material on the carved rosewood coffee table is an art book about Victorian snuffboxes. And screaming children? Not on Planet Billables.