Miss Wyoming

ever. Do you hear me?»

«Geez, Mom, I was only joking.»

«You'll never give that type of woman any of your time of day.»

Marilyn returned to her job of cross-indexing Eugene Lindsay's mail fraud scheme, but her body was obviously now awash in stress chemicals. Susan felt like the young wolf who's just discovered the tender, delicious underbelly of the porcupine.

The next afternoon they checked in to the hotel in St. Louis, whereupon Susan stayed up in the room to read comics while Marilyn confabbed with some other pageant moms, learning that Eugene was staying alone in the same hotel because Renata was stuck in Bloomington coping with demand for the following month's Big 'n' Proud convention in Tampa, Florida. With almost no effort, Marilyn determined Eugene's room number, and shortly after she knocked on his door. He answered, clothed only in argyle socks, striped boxers and an unbuttoned oxford cloth shirt. He was holding a scotch and Marilyn could see he had little hairs bleached gold by the sun on the tops of his fingers. Marilyn knew that Eugene was used to opening doors and letting in exactly whomever he wanted when he wanted. He saw Marilyn and said, «What is this — some kind of joke?»

«No joke, Eugene.» She barged into his room. She took it by storm.

«What the fuck? Lady — get the fuck out of my room. Now.»

«No, Eugene.»

«Did the guys at the station set this up? Is this a gag?»

«It's no gag, Eugene, and I don't know any guys from any station.» She coquetted her head and sat with her legs crossed on the bed.

Eugene gulped his scotch. «I'm not into mutton, lady. Out.»

«Oh, Eu gene — you've mistaken my intentions.»

«You're a show mom, aren't you? I can always tell you show moms. You're all nuts. You're all freaks.» He poured himself a new drink.

«Is drinking a smart thing to be doing?»

«I beg your — fuck it — I'm calling the hotel cops.» He moved to the bedside phone.

«I'm not the one on Stellazine, Eugene. I'm not the one who's insane here.»

His finger froze on the phone above the zero button. «You know, lady, I ought to — »

«Oh, shut up, you talking hairdo. My name's not Lady, it's Marilyn, which doesn't mean much. What does mean something is that my daughter wins tomorrow's title. She's going to play Fьr Elise and it doesn't matter if Miss Iowa cures cancer on stage, or if Miss Idaho gets stigmata, my daughter wins. Period. And you will make sure this happens.»

«This is a joke.» Eugene's face relaxed. «The guys at the station did set this up.»

«No joke.»

«You're good. »

«There's nothing for me to be good at, Eugene. This is for real.»

Eugene's face clenched and his voice assumed the cool metered speech of TV reason. «This is so totally Gothic, isn't it? You'd kill for your little proxy to win. I bet you and your little Miss …»

«Wyoming.» The family still had yet to move to that state, but Marilyn had already begun creating technical citizenship by renting a small storage locker on the outskirts of Cheyenne under Susan's name. At the present moment she wanted to unbalance Eugene's thinking. «You're wearing a beef bikini, Eugene.»

«Wha — ?» He reflexively reached for his privates, which had perhaps escaped containment.

«Read these.» From her handbag she removed a bundle of photocopies and slapped them onto the bedspread, and from where he stood, Eugene could tell what they were. «How do we spell “mail fraud,” Eugene? We spell it F-B-I.» Marilyn walked to the door and yanked it open. «You're a big fish in an itty-bitty pond, Hairdo. But it's my pond. Give me what I want and it doesn't go beyond these walls.» She stepped outside and looked in. «I could otherwise care less about you. Turning you in would be like spraying sewage onto a burning house. It'd get a job done, but — well, you think it over. Good-bye, Eugene.» She shut the door.

Onstage that night, the pageant flowed like soda. Susan made semifinalist, then finalist, played her Fьr Elise and then stood with the other finalists on the stage directly before the judge's stand. She felt lovely. She had learned to work with the new all-angle beauty her jaw correction and nose job had loaned her. And then, looking through the lights, one face opened up through the optical fog — a face that broke through and became disembodied from all others in the auditorium. It was Eugene — the trash man! — and he was looking at Susan with the same wise, knowing face as his 8-X-10 head shot. Her eyes linked with his, and for the first time in her life she felt sexual. She didn't just put on the pose, she felt naked, proudly naked, and she pulled her shoulders back as if to give more of herself to Eugene. She was being judged, and she knew she was coming out ahead.

Eugene, meanwhile, looked at Susan. He wondered how he could have overlooked this scrumptious little gazelle at a previous competition.Fьr Elise ? Hell, she could play «Chopsticks» with a spatula and he'd vote for her. He pointed at Susan and then back at himself, smiled broadly with film-star teeth, then winked with the force of a blazing iron scorching linen.

Susan heard music and she heard her name. And then a tiara landed on her head and she felt the reassuring cool fluttering sensation of the winner's sash draped from her right shoulder.

Afterward, when the crowds had dispersed, Susan tried to locate Eugene amid the vanishing crowds under the ruse of looking for another show dog, Janelle, from Hawthorne, California.

«Janelle?» asked Marilyn. «You hate Janelle.»

«I don't hate anybody, Mom.»

«Janelle hid your left pump in Spokane two years ago.»

«They didn't prove that.»

«Winning seems to make you so charitable. Testy, too.»

«I'm not testy.» But she did feel nervous. She was panicking, as her eyes darted about looking for Eugene. Her stomach felt like a kite that was having trouble getting airborne.

«Of course not, sweetie. Oh,look — there she is over there …»

«Where?» Confused, Susan snapped her head in the direction her mother had pointed to. No Eugene there.

«Gotcha.»

«Oh Mom. »

«Don't worry, sweetie. Whatever's going on, I'm not going to press it tonight. You're a champion.»

Chapter Twelve

Susan felt the heat from the cooling cheeseburgers slithering from the trash bag beside her. Having recovered from the explosive clamp of the dumpster's lid, her ears now registered her own slow breathing and the rustle of the bagged trash looming above her like a potential Nerf avalanche. The smell — that was the strongest sensation, sickly sweet — ketchup, buns, fish, beef and potato mingled with their greases and liquids, varnishing the metal beneath her shoes.

There was no light, and in its absence, the shapes she touched burst forth on her fingertips like crippled fireworks. She was hungry, but her repulsion for the dead food overrode her hunger. She tried shrinking herself, like a bird caught inside a house. And then she relaxed. A bit.

She tried to make a seat for herself, batting her hands out into the trash bags and locating a springy one full of paper cups, foam clamshell containers and paper napkins. She sat on the bag in her corner. The smells around her were not diminishing, and her nose refused to acclimatize the way it would around a barnyard's manure. The smell wasn't enough to gag her, but it refused to be ignored.

Her hunger grew worse, but the thought of eating one of the burgers cooling around her made her retch.