Invisible Monsters Remix

“When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?”

A kiss, and it’s off on the wind toward Ballard.

“Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. We’ll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.”

Interstate 5 snakes by in the distance. From high atop the Space Needle, the southbound lanes are red chase lights, and the northbound lanes are white chase lights. I take a card and write:

I love Seth Thomas so much I have to destroy him. I overcompensate by worshipping the queen supreme. Seth will never love me. No one will ever love me ever again.

Brandy is waiting to take the card and read it out loud. Brandy’s waiting to read my worst fears to the world, but I don’t give her the card. I kiss it myself with the lips I don’t have and let the wind take it out of my hand. The card flies up, up, up to the stars and then falls down to land in the suicide net.

While I watch my future trapped in the suicide net, Brandy reads another card from Seth.

“We are all self-composting.”

I write on another card from the future, and Brandy reads it.

“When we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves.”

An updraft lifts my worst fears from the suicide net and sails them away.

Seth writes and Brandy reads.

“You have to keep recycling yourself.”

I write and Brandy reads.

“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.”

I write and Brandy reads.

“The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.”

Jump to us going down fast in a TWA return trip home from the moon, Brandy and Seth and me dancing our dance party frug in the zero-gravity brass and glass go-go cage elevator. Brandy makes a big ring-beaded fist and tells the poly-blend service droid who tries to stop us to chill out unless he wants to die on reentry.

Back on earth in the twenty-first century, our rented Lincoln with its blue casket interior is waiting to take us to a nice hotel. On the windshield is a ticket, but when Brandy storms over to tear it up, the ticket is a postcard from the future.

Maybe my worst fears.

For Brandy to read out loud to Seth. I love Seth so much I have to destroy him …

Even if I overcompensate, nobody will ever want me. Not Seth. Not my folks. You can’t kiss someone who has no lips. Oh, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me. I’ll be anybody you want me to be.

Brandy Alexander, her big hand lifts the postcard. The queen supreme reads it to herself, silent, and slips the postcard into her handbag. Princess Princess, she says, “At this rate, we’ll never get to the future.”

Now, Please, Jump to Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter 6

ump to Brandy Alexander tucking me into a Seattle bed. This is the night of the Space Needle, the night the future doesn’t happen. Brandy, she’s wearing yards and yards of black tulle wrapped around her legs, twisted up and around her hourglass waist. A black veil crosses her torpedo breasts and loops up and over the top of her auburn hair. All this sparkle that bends over beside my bed could be the trial-sized mock-up for the original summer night sky.

Little rhinestones, not the plastic ones pooped out by a factory in Calcutta but the Austrian crystal ones cut by elves in the Black Forest, these little star-shaped rhinestones are set all over the black tulle. The queen supreme’s face is the moon in the night sky that bends over and kisses me good night. My hotel room is dark, and the television at the foot of my bed is turned on so the handmade stars twinkle in all the colors the television is trying to show us.

Seth’s right, the television does make me God. I can look in on anybody and every hour the lives change. Here in the real world, that’s not always the case.

“I will always love you,” the queen of the night sky says, and I know which postcard she’s found.

The hotel sheets feel the same as the hospital sheets. This is thousands of miles since we met, and the big fingers of Brandy are still smoothing the blankets under where my chin used to be. My face is the last thing the go- go boys and girls want to meet when they go into a dark alley looking to buy drugs.

Brandy says, “We’ll be back as soon as we sell out.”

Seth is silhouetted in the open doorway to the hall. How he looks from my bed is the terrific outline of a superhero against the neon green and gray and pink tropical leaves of the hallway wallpaper. His coat, the long black leather coat Seth wears, is fitted tight until the waist and then flares from there down so in outline you think it’s a cape.

And maybe when he kisses Brandy Alexander’s royal butt he’s not just pretending. Maybe it’s the two of them in love when I’m not around. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve lost him.

The face surrounded in black veil that leans over me is a surprise of color. The skin is a lot of pink around a Plumbago mouth, and the eyes are too aubergine. Even these colors are too garish right now, too saturated, too intense. Lurid. You think of cartoon characters. Fashion dolls have pink skin like this, like plastic bandages. Flesh tone. Too-aubergine eyes, cheekbones too defined by Rusty Rose blusher. Nothing is left to your imagination.

Maybe this is what guys want. I just want Brandy Alexander to leave.

I want Seth’s belt around my neck. I want Seth’s fingers in my mouth and his hands pulling my knees apart and then his wet fingers prying me open.

“If you want something to read,” Brandy says, “that Miss Rona Barrett book is in my room. I can run get it.”

I want to be rubbed so raw by the stubble around Seth’s mouth that it will hurt when I pee.

Seth says, “Are you coming?”

A ring-beaded hand tosses the television remote control onto the bed.

“Come on, Princess Princess,” Seth says. “The night’s not getting any younger.”

And I want Seth dead. Worse than dead, I want him fat and bloated with water and insecure and emotional. If Seth doesn’t want me, I want to not want him.

“If the police or anything happens,” the moon tells me, “the money is all in my makeup case.”

The one I love is already gone out to warm up the car. The one who will love me forever says, “Sleep tight,” and closes the door behind her.

Jump to once a long time ago, Manus, my fiance who dumped me, Manus Kelley, the police detective, he told me that your folks are like God because you want to know they’re out there and you want them to approve of your life, still you only call them when you’re in crisis and need something.

Jump back to me in bed in Seattle, alone with the TV remote control I hit a button on and make the television mute.

On television are three or four people in chairs sitting on a low stage in front of a television audience. This is on television like an infomercial, but as the camera zooms in on each person for a close-up, a little caption appears across the person’s chest. Each caption on each close-up is a first name followed by three or four words like a last name, the sort of literal who-they-really-are last names that Indians give to each other, but instead of Heather Runs with Bison …Trisha Hunts by Moonlight, these names are:

Cristy Drank Human Blood

Roger Lived with Dead Mother

Brenda Ate Her Baby