I ran through some chin-ups and did my Kegel floor exercises, and then Mordis called in on my videophone to see if I was okay: he missed me, because no one could work the crowd like me. "Ren, you make them shit thousand-dollar bills," he said, and I blew him a kiss.
"Keeping your butt in shape?" he said, so I held the videophone behind me.
"Chickin' lickin' good," he said. Even if you were feeling ugly, he made you feel pretty.
After that I hit the Snakepit video, to check the action and dance along to the music. It was strange to watch everything going on without me, as if I'd been erased. Crimson Petal was teasing the pole, Savona was subbing for me on the trapeze. She looked good -- glittery and green and sinuous, with a new silver Mo'Hair. I was considering one of those myself -- they were better than wigs, they never came off -- but some girls said the smell was like lamb chops, especially in the rain.
Savona was a little clumsy. She wasn't a trapeze girl, she was a pole girl, and she was top-heavy -- she'd blown herself up like a beach ball. Stick her on stilettos, breathe on her from behind, and she'd do a vertical face-plant. "Whatever works," she'd say. "And, baby, this works."
Now she was doing the upside-down splits move with the one-handed midstroke. She didn't convince me, but the men down there were never much interested in art: they'd think Savona was great unless she laughed instead of moaning, or actually fell off the trapeze.
I left the Snakepit and flipped through the other rooms, but nothing much was going on. No fetishists, nobody who wanted to be covered in feathers or slathered in porridge or strung up with velvet ropes or writhed on by guppies. Just the daily grind.
Then I called Amanda. We're each other's family; I guess when we were kids we were both stray puppies. It's a bond.
Amanda was in the Wisconsin desert, putting together one of the Bioart installations she's been doing now that she's into what she calls the art caper. It was cow bones this time. Wisconsin's covered with cow bones, ever since the big drought ten years ago when they'd found it cheaper to butcher the cows there rather than shipping them out -- the ones that hadn't died on their own. She had a couple of fuel-cell front-end loaders and two illegal Tex-Mexican refugees she'd hired, and she was dragging the cow bones into a pattern so big it could only be seen from above: huge capital letters, spelling out a word. Later she'd cover it in pancake syrup and wait until the insect life was all over it, and then take videos of it from the air, to put into galleries. She liked to watch things move and grow and then disappear.
Amanda always got the money to do her art capers. She was kind of famous in the circles that went in for culture. They weren't big circles, but they were rich circles. This time she had a deal with a top CorpSeCorps guy -- he'd get her up in the helicopter, to take the videos. "I traded Mr. Big for a whirly," was how she told me -- we never said CorpSeCorps or helicopter on the phone, because they had robots listening in for special words like those.
Her Wisconsin thing was part of a series called The Living Word -- she said for a joke that it was inspired by the Gardeners because they'd repressed us so much about writing things down. She'd begun with one-letter words -- I and A and O -- and then done two-letter words like It, and then three letters, and four, and five. Now she was up to six. They'd been written in all different materials, including fish guts and toxic-spill-killed birds and toilets from building demolition sites filled with used cooking oil and set on fire.
Her new word was kaputt. When she'd told me that earlier, she'd said she was sending a message.
"Who to?" I'd said. "The people who go to the galleries? The Mr. Rich and Bigs?"
"That's who," she'd said. "And the Mrs. Rich and Bigs. Them too."
"You'll get in trouble, Amanda."
"It's okay," she said. "They won't understand it."
The project was going fine, she said: it had rained, the desert flowers were in bloom, there were a lot of insects, which was good for when she'd pour on the syrup. She already had the K done, and she was halfway through the A. But the Tex-Mexicans were getting bored.
"That makes two of us," I said. "I can hardly wait to get out of here."
"Three," said Amanda. "There's two of them -- the Tex-Mexicans. Plus you. Three."
"Oh. Right. You're looking great -- that khaki outfit suits you." She was tall, she had that rangy girl-explorer look. A pith-helmet look.
"You're not bad yourself," said Amanda. "Ren, you take care."
"You take care too. Don't let the Tex-Mex guys jump you."
"They won't. They think I'm crazy. Crazy women cut your dong off."
"I didn't know that!" I was laughing. Amanda liked to make me laugh.
"Why would you?" said Amanda. "You're not crazy, you've never seen one of those things wriggling on the floor. Sweet dreams."
"Sweet dreams too," I said. But she'd clicked off.
I've lost track of the Saints' Days -- I can't remember which one it is today -- but I can count the years. I've used my eyebrow pencil on the wall to add up how long I've known Amanda. I've done it like those old cartoons of prisoners -- four strokes and then one through them to make five.
It's been a long time -- over fifteen years, ever since she came into the Gardeners. So many people from my earlier life were from there -- Amanda, and Bernice, and Zeb; and Adam One, and Shackie, and Croze; and old Pilar; and Toby, of course. I wonder what they'd think of me -- of what I ended up doing for a living. Some of them would be disappointed, like Adam One. Bernice would say I was backslidden and it served me right. Lucerne would say I'm a slut, and I'd say takes one to know one. Pilar would look at me wisely. Shackie and Croze would laugh. Toby would be mad at Scales. What about Zeb? I think he'd try to rescue me because it would be a challenge.
Amanda knows already. She doesn't judge. She says you trade what you have to. You don't always have choices.
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