How Perfect is That

by Sarah Bird

  FIND YOUR PATH. Consult with a nondenominational pastoral counselor about the meaning of your life.

  Perhaps it is the grain alcohol. Maybe it is the virtual certainty that she is losing her husband to a dental hygienist named Marigold. Possibly it is accepting that not only will she never have Becca Cason Thrash’s thirteen powder rooms, but that the upstart Lynn Sydney Locke has rendered her Xanadu and her entire way of life obsolete that does her in. Whatever the mix of reality with regret, exhaustion with starvation, tears puddle in Kippie Lee’s eyes as she looks down at Millie’s kind face and asks, “You could find meaning in my life?”

  Millie leans in closer. “No, but you could.”

  “Nondenominational?”

  “Completely.”

  “Because I’m Episcopalian.”

  “We won’t let that get in our way.”

  “And privacy?”

  “Of course. Absolutely. Everything we discuss will be held in the strictest confidence.”

  “Everything?” K.L. asks.

  “I took an oath,” Millie assures her. “Kippie Lee, whenever you’re ready, I can help you.”

  “How about right now?”

  Millie escorts Kippie Lee upstairs to the small bedroom she’s converted into her office/confessional.

  The princesses fall silent as they watch Kippie Lee follow Millie upstairs. Once it is clear that their leader is staying, it is no longer safe for anyone to leave. Women in bare feet scamper over to Olga to sign up for as many services as they can so they won’t be put on the “voloonteer” list.

  After Kippie Lee comes down two hours later, beaming, drying reddened eyes, and giving off a postcoital radiance, all of Millie’s pastoral counseling sessions book up, along with most of the other services.

  Still, that first night is rough, with several walkouts threatened. All by staff outraged at demands for down pillows, nondown pillows, wheat-hull and organic-spelt-husk pillows. Sergio calms the waters by delivering mugs of Sleepytime to each of the ladies. Only when they are dozing soundly does Sergio confirm my suspicion that, yes, he had made Sleepytime into Comatose Time with some extra boot-heel-flavored additives that gave all of our guests the magic ability to doze off with a brick for a pillow.

  “All right,” I tell Sergio, “but from now on there are to be no further additives. I’m going to play this hand without stacking the deck.”

  “You hab changed,” he says.

  “I hope so,” I answer.

  Hump the Ancient Shag

  THE FIRST ORDER of business the next morning is weigh-in. Fatima takes on this chore. The ladies would rather have given out their ATM numbers than their weight, but revealing the digits to silent, shrouded Fatima is somehow acceptable.

  Weigh-in takes place in Millie’s ultraprivate confessional room before anyone has consumed so much as one drop of water or one crumb of nutrition, yet after every microdrop of fluid has been voided. As Kippie Lee steps up, I ache to put a big fat butcher’s thumb on the scales. I yearn to tack on a bonus two or three pounds that could miraculously be deducted at checkout. But I have vowed not to stack the deck. Besides, every one of our guests knows her weight down to the ounce. In fact, Kippie Lee knows how many grams a thong adds and usually insists on waxing before stepping on the scales. Even if I had wanted to, there would be no way to cook the books.

  Toward the goal of achieving slumber naturally, my staff marches the ladies from one end of the university to the other. I have uncovered Old Girls in every department on campus. The bookish Seneca alums all gravitated toward obscure fields. So the princesses are treated to lectures on the importance of the Chadwyck-Healey humanities collection to scholars of Renaissance literature; advances in quantitative analysis of nucleotide modulation of DNA binding by DnaC protein of E. coli; and, the showstopper, adaptations to temperature of the Queensland fruit fly.

  Luckily, years of membership in high-minded book clubs have stupefied the ladies into believing that boring means good. The turgid lectures combined with a dozen cross-campus tromps in record-breaking three-digit heat guarantee an early bedtime.

  Forced to abandon Seneca House, my helpers and I bivouac next door at New Guild, since our sister co-op is empty until the summer session starts. Unfortunately, all the bedrooms are locked up so we have to make do in the common areas. As spare as the accommodations are, I am looking forward to getting horizontal on the pool table Millie and I claimed. As soon as I shed the burka, however, my team starts unraveling.

  Juniper is the first to rip off her white lab coat. “I don’t care if I have to eat out of a Dumpster, I can’t do another day. Another minute.”

  “Da. Those bitches are focked op.”

  Even Doug jumps on the dog pile. “The way they quiz you on every molecule of food they put into their mouths. It’s insane. I’m with Olga. If I have to do another day of this, I will punch someone.”

  I don’t know how to motivate them; no point in holding out the carrot of a debriefing at Lynn Sydney’s ranch to this crew. I stick with the basics. “We have no choice. We have to make at least enough to deal with the RIAA or we’ll lose the house.”

  Far too much laissez-faire shrugging meets this dire prediction. Juniper sums up the general feeling of the group: “Whatever.”

  “No, not ‘whatever,’” I burst out. “Come on. This is not that hard.” I dig deep into my arsenal of motivational tools and stumble upon the basic credo all of them learned in public school to the exclusion of dreary rote skills like multiplication tables and spelling: appreciation for diversity.

  “You’re just not appreciating the fact that these women come from a different culture, a foreign culture. For them, all these dietary observances are, quite literally, religious. Diet is their religion. It is the one thing they truly believe in, and you have to respect it as such. Look, Sanjeev doesn’t eat beef. Yay Bombah and Nazarite won’t eat pork. Juniper, you won’t eat meat, eggs, cheese. Pretty much anything other than bagels and Mint Milanos—”

  “That is so not true!”

  “So these gals won’t eat a few things.”

  “Like carbohydrates,” Doug says.

  “Just give them a tumbler of olive oil. Listen, I’m the one who paid for the berries and basil and bluefin tuna, I’m the one doing all the cooking. I promise, by tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, they will mellow out, okay?”

  A buzz of grumbling meets my request.

  “Humor them. Just pretend they’ve all got Alzheimer’s. If that doesn’t work, then allow me to share my own personal form of motivation. Pretend that if you can’t make these women happy for just another day or two, just long enough to give us a leg to stand on in court, you’re all going to get thrown out on your asses. Pretend that you’ll be down on Dog Crap Lane with me, except Millie won’t be showing up with the eggs and tortillas. Huh? How about that for a little visualization exercise?”

  The grumbling ceases, and we retire to whatever floor or pool table we have been able to wrest from the cockroaches.

  Weigh-in early the next day is an unalloyed triumph. Possibly because of the walking and sweating the day before. Possibly because most of the group fell asleep halfway through dinner. Whatever the reason, the ladies are bubbly when they come down for the morning meal.

  I am back in chador and back in the kitchen, where breakfast is another hideous chemistry challenge for Fatima. The punishment is so fitted to the crime that I bow to its perfection. Catering without the aid of pharmaceuticals is hard work. I who passed off Cream of Wheat enlivened with the magic of sunny yellow popcorn seasoning as polenta, who slipped catfish through customs as Copper River salmon, now must use a gram scale to cook real food for real food fanatics.

  I whip up a frankly delicious frittata and begin serving. Since I expect a barrage of grumpiness because the food is late, the giddy, sorority atmosphere that greets me in the dining room is a pleasant surprise.

  Bamsie and Jerome jabber at each other without even the tiniest h
int of conversational pauses. Jerome takes advantage of the rare opportunity to speak to a human female who is not backing rapidly away to list his favorite bands and/or performers by genre: “Okay, in reggae or more accurately dance hall, it’s Eek-A-Mouse and, no question, Bob Marley. For punk, I’d have to go with Braindamaged and Massengil.”

  Bamsie doesn’t answer so much as continue her own soliloquy detailing the ways in which her husband does not understand her. “We’re just not soul mates,” she concludes. “He’s afraid of intimacy. He’s a sweaterback who refuses to wax. He doesn’t ever listen. We never talk. Not like this. Just sit down and discuss how we’re feeling. I’m friends with Heather, his first wife. He also refused to do couples counseling with her.”

  Jerome responds by asking, “Should I put goth/techno/ house/ synth all in one category or break them down?”

  In the midst of this roaring Niagara of gab, Missy Quisinberry tracks Kippie Lee’s every move. The instant Miss Kip excuses herself for a potty break, Missy waves the ladies in for a quick huddle, then pronounces the awful words, “Hunt Teeter took the hygienist to Jeffrey’s last night.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Jebediah was there with a client. He called me first thing this morning.”

  The group gasps a communal gasp of mourning because this report from Missy’s husband means that Kippie Lee’s marriage is history. A union is officially over when the rich and powerful husband or, far more titillating, the rich and powerful wife takes the paramour to Tarrytown’s holy of holies, Jeffrey’s, for Crispy Oysters on Yucca Root Chips.

  No one speaks until straight shooter Cookie Mehan gives voice to the anxiety weighing heavily on all the ladies: “There’s a world of women out there who want our jobs. And they’re all younger, their boobs are perkier, and they weren’t around when the big man flunked Management Fundamentals for the third time back at UT.” Cookie has isolated the fear that fuels the trips to the cosmetic surgeon, the hours at spinning class, the lifetime of counting calories, carbs, prestige of children’s schools, stylishness of backsplashes.

  “This is a hard truth to accept.” Cookie looks around the table. The women always listen to Cookie with extra attention, since She Has Her Own Money and, if what she says is true for her, it is doubly so for the non–trust funded. “But accept it every woman must: Men are programmed for novelty, and you can only be new once.” It is a bittersweet moment. Especially for Blitz. On the one hand, since Blitz is included in Cookie’s searching gaze, it means that Austin society has finally accepted her. On the other, she has to face the sad realization that she began tarnishing the instant she said, “I do.”

  All the women sigh heavily. Fortunately, this reminder of for whom the bell tolls is quickly forgotten when the more compelling topic of whether or not this season’s new pastel lip and nail colors make you look washed-out presents itself.

  And then Olga appears to change the subject entirely with the day’s first activity: cardio striptease. All the ladies giddily accept one of the feather boas she hands out. To the accompaniment of some languid electro-house music featuring a singer who sounds like Greta Garbo on downers, Olga starts undulating and barking commands.

  “Swiffel hips!”

  Olga’s previous employment at Exposé Gentleman’s Club comes to the fore. The ladies, dedicated connoisseurs of excellence, appreciate Olga’s obvious mastery of the form as she flips her boa between her legs and rides the pink feathers with heavy-lidded abandon. “Make luf to boa!” she commands before shifting to, “Feekyoor eight! Feekyoor eight!”

  The class follows her, swiveling their pelvises in looping figure eights.

  “Make luf to floor!”

  The class hits the carpet and starts humping the ancient shag. Morgan Whitlow, on the floor next to Paige Oglesby, simulates the most realistic passion.

  A steel beam wedged into the living room to support the sagging second floor is Olga’s next object of desire. “Make luf to pole! Loozen up!”

  The class twines around the beam like ferrets in a mating frenzy. By the time the women have spent themselves and are patting towels across complexions glowing in a way that no amount of retinol or special time with the European handheld shower has ever been able to achieve, they are pretty certain that it would not be possible for them to get any “loozer.”

  Queen of the Stoners

  AND THEN Yay Bombah and Nazarite show up bearing a small bale of the best marijuana a furniture magnate’s money can buy and inquire in their guileless, weed-to-the-people way, “Who wanna black up, mon?” The twins fire up a Paul Bunyan of a spliff and hold the smoldering trunk out to the ladies.

  Ants touch mandibles to trade chemical messages so that all the members of the colony can sync up. Similarly, a dozen gazes bounce from one face to the next as Tribe Tee Town struggles to reach a nonverbal consensus. In the culture war being fought in Austin, Texas, in the year 2003, there are some very interesting casualties. Austin has long been a place where young Tejanas come to get a degree, get a husband, and get wild. And most of the princesses managed to accomplish all three. The problem is, given the tight-assedness of the times, no one knows for sure who has done what, and to come out of the closet as a pothead would be tantamount to admitting to a far, far greater sin: being a liberal.

  So Cookie Mehan, who came of age on a ranch in West Texas, blazing up with the help from the time she was fourteen, does not take the blunt. And Blitz Lord, who got her nickname by being queen of the stoners at Immaculate Conception High School, also holds back. As do Noodle and Lulie, who both used to brag about having been Dallas debutantes on acid, though it has been a long time since either one has mentioned the “on acid” part.

  It is pretty much a standoff and would have remained nothing more than an amusing story to spread around at the next ballet gala if Kippie Lee, who’d forgone cardio striptease for another session with Millie, hadn’t rejoined the group at just that moment and snatched up the proffered joint, saying, “I don’t know about all y’all, but there is already too much in my life that I have missed out on.” Then Kippie Lee takes a hit that would have done a Grateful Dead roadie proud.

  After exhaling into her friends’ faces, she explains, “Talking to Millie has helped me see that there is a big beautiful world beyond Pemberton Heights, and if I don’t get out and explore it, I’m going to be dead and never have really lived and no one’s going to care that I had mother-of-pearl backsplashes. Though, just for the record, I did have them before Lynn Sydney got hers. But that doesn’t matter. Not really.”

  Showing herself to be quite a dab hand with the cannabis, Kippie Lee passes the joint to Cookie. Cookie Mehan’s mota- smoking youth becomes obvious as she pinches the joint to her lips, sucks in with a hipster’s locomotive inhalations, then passes it on to Blitz. The twins’ gift makes the rounds with only Missy Quisinberry abstaining.

  The Saperstein sisters’ generosity turns out to be a mixed blessing. Yes, the visitors are all laughing like lunatics, but the ganja interlude also creates a crisis in the diet department, and Fatima has to wrest a box of dry brownie mix from Paige Oglesby’s manicured hands before getting the girls back under control.

  The upside of ravenous appetites, however, is a marked falloff in discernment. Suddenly, even those whose diet imams expressly forbid corn in any form are grinding through the bags of popcorn that Fatima heaves at them like sandbags being piled up on the levees of a raging Mississippi.

  Another positive aspect of the twins’ largesse is that the women find the Saperstein girls’ impromptu lecture on the biblical roots of Rastafarianism utterly riveting. They listen spellbound and glassy eyed as Nazarite recites pertinent verses. “‘He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man.’ It’s right there in the Bible,” Nazarite says, pointing to the passage with fingertips stained a rich ocher. “Psalms one hundred and four, verse fourteen.”

  “Or try this,” Yay Bombah says, offering further biblical endorsement o
f their hobby. “‘Thou shalt eat of the herb of the field.’”

  “Yeah,” Missy Q. agrees pensively. “And what about Proverbs, chapter fifteen, verse seventeen, ‘Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith’?”

  Yay Bombah and Nazarite congratulate Missy on her “dread” knowledge of the Bible. As a devout Southern Baptist brought up on a literal interpretation of the Bible, Missy suddenly understands that Scripture leaves no doubt as to the action she must take. She holds out her hand, and Yay Bombah passes the joint.

  Happy Horseshit

  THE MOMENT OF MELLOWMENT stretches into the next day, then the next. By day 5, Blitz Lord and Cookie Mehan are the only ones who appear in Millie’s crow’s nest for weigh-in. After recording their weight, I rush downstairs to start whipping up the usual periodic chart’s worth of disparate breakfast orders, only to find the women already gathering pens and notebooks for that morning’s lecture to be delivered by everyone’s favorite medievalist, Ariadne. Her topic? “Da Vinci De-Coded.”

  Ariadne was so incensed about all the historical errors in the best seller that she proposed the colloquium as a public service. “How can an author be taken seriously who doesn’t know that King Philip the Fair of France, not Pope Clement V, crushed the Knights Templars?” Every book club in Tarrytown had read the tome so, for the first time in a thousand years, the rest of the world shares Ariadne’s obsessions. The ladies actually want to know the answer to her question.

  They all troop out, the house falls silent. After five days of non-stop servitude, I finally have a moment to think. The first topic I begin to wonder about is what has caused the startling changes in almost all of my former friends. Not only are most of them no longer obsessed with their weight, but the demands, complaints, gossiping, competitiveness have all virtually disappeared. Why? I check the sign-in sheets. Nikki and Kat have been busy with manis, pedis, and facials. Juniper has had a few takers for hot-stone massages. Sergio has seen quite a few of the ladies for deep-tissue work. In fact, I note that Missy has made many repeat visits. Several on the same day. But only one staff member’s dance card is completely filled, only one person has seen every member of the tribe except for no-nonsense Cookie Mehan, and that person is Millie Ott.