A View From a Broad (18 page)

“Stinking hog wallow that we call the field of entertainment?”

“Yes. Very nicely put. So, please.
Var să god.
Sign.”

“Mr. Angst, darling,” The Divine responded in her most dulcet and reasonable tones, “I just know you wouldn’t do anything ungentlemanly —now, would you?”

“Of course not. This contract is eminently fair to both of us.”

“I meant with the pistol.”

“Oh, that. I’m afraid I would have to. Loyalty to my Muse would demand it.”

“Well, then,” Miss M said in her most businesslike manner, “you leave me no choice. I’ll just go back to my bag and get a pen. Why don’t you wait right here? Your feet seem a bit bruised from the fall. You must have been climbing for hours.”

“Days,” Angst said as he collapsed onto the sand. “Maybe I will wait here. But don’t try anything funny. I’ll be watching. And aiming.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” Miss M replied as with the sweetest of smiles she turned and strode purposefully back to where she had left her satchel.

B
ut not to get a pen. She was cleverer than that. Oh, yes, she did have a pen in her bag, but she also happened to have a snorkel and a pair of fins, equipment she had never been without.

Her plan was simple. She would simply jump into her snorkel gear and swim around a small outcropping of rock that separated her from the neighboring cove where her beloved band was gamboling, or what was more likely, gambling, in the sun.

If she could only think of a way to distract Angst for a minute. Happily, Fate was on her side. Shouting to Angst to look up, Miss M pointed to a flock of pelicans heading out to sea to feed on a large school of needlefish. She knew full well that Angst, with his Northern temperament and taste, would be riveted by the sight of a flock of gray birds flying over a gray sea towards an even grayer horizon. Using this distraction to her advantage, Miss M deftly donned her snorkel and fins and dived quietly into the ocean.

Which was
writhing.
Within no more than thirty seconds, Miss M was pulled hundreds of yards out to sea by a raging riptide not even a boat could have bucked. Unfortunately for The Divine, the peculiar nature of snorkeling forced her to keep her head underwater, and since she couldn’t tell one patch of kelp from another, she had no idea what the hell was happening. By the time she felt far enough away from Angst to lift up her head and take a look around, she was a good mile offshore, with nothing and no one in sight. Valiantly, Miss M began to swim towards where she guessed, by the position of the sun, the shore ought to be. But since in truth the poor flailing parrot-brain hadn’t the foggiest as to where the sun was supposed to be at
any
given hour, she was bravely and briskly heading directly for the South Pole.

On and on she swam, dodging the sea wasps, trying not to give up hope or her stride. But even Divinity has a breaking point, and soon she reached it. Not one more stroke could she force out of her tired, aching body, curse though she might. There was nothing more she could do. Exhausted and resigned, Miss M turned over on her back and closed her eyes, waiting, with a calm she had learned through years of tech rehearsals, for the end. “Death is to the dead as life is to the living,” she would often say, although no one ever seemed to know what that meant. Neither did she, actually, but now,
in extremis,
she took comfort, as she had so often in the past, in the magic of things she couldn’t understand.

W
hen, at last, the feel of something cold crossing her lips caused her to open her eyes again, Miss M thought she had gone to Glory. In front of her lay a snow-white beach lined with coconut palms bent low, their absinthe leaves caressing a limpid lagoon. Turning her head, she saw a mountain of the most extraordinary grandeur reaching up like a shark’s tooth towards the perfect turquoise sky. “Why, this must be . . .”

“Tuamotu,” a deep bass voice called out from behind her. At the sound of unexpected company, Miss M whirled around and saw, half-hidden in the crimson hibiscus, a man of such astonishing physical perfection that now Miss M was certain she had hopped the twig.

“I found you lying on the beach,” the vision said, his voice as musical as those of the one-and-twenty myna birds perched on his yard-wide shoulders. “My name is Kana. Don’t tell me yours. I have made this potion for you from the bark of the tulip tree. Drink it and be strong again beyond illusion.”

As the naked Samaritan approached her, holding forth a cup in his huge bronze hands, The Divine could hardly believe her eyes. The whole scene was right out of Central Casting. Too good to be true. Or safe. Maybe her manager was behind it all, orchestrating the entire pageant, laughing into his frangipani leaves. But even if it was for real, anything
this
tempting had better be closely watched. Still, she
was
rather thirsty. And it had been
such
a long swim.

So Miss M took the potion and a number of other things Kana had to offer, including an invitation to enjoy his island for a day or two. After all, she could use the rest, and it was certainly a relief to get away from that moron Angst.

Time on the island, whose exact location Miss M never
could
figure out, went by as languidly and as beautifully as the butterfly fish that drifted lazily in the clear blue lagoon. From sunrise to sunset The Divine lolled about eating and sleeping and slapping away the flies. I could go on like this forever, she thought.

But in actual point of fact, after about three days of sun and surf Miss M began to feel a pull back to what was, for her, real life. “I am a woman of responsibility and commitment,” she said to herself one day when the soft, peaceful lap of the waves was particularly annoying. “My life belongs to my public. And besides, if I don’t get my feet off of these burning sands, I’ll never wear spikes again.” She made up her mind to ask Kana to take her back to the mainland—wherever
that
was—as soon as he returned from fishing.

But when Kana finally pulled his outrigger ashore, Miss M saw that he had with him not only his usual string of dead fish, but a fresh newspaper as well. Her heart leaped up at the thought of even this distant contact with civilization, for when all was said and done, The Divine preferred pavement to palm trees and gossip to grouper.

“Here,” Kana said, “I got this for you on the Big Island.” Miss M ripped the paper right out of his hands. “There’s something about you in it.”

“Oh, really?” Miss M said, trying to sound blase but secretly relieved that she was not already forgotten. “Where?”

“On the front page.”

The front page! She’d have to remember to give her press agent a bonus. Quickly, Miss M opened the paper, and there, right on the front
page just as Kana had said, was a picture of Miss Frank and the girls weeping, and her manager holding up a gold record.

the headline read.

Presumed dead! How perfect! Immediately Miss M changed all her plans. She would not go back to the mainland. Not today. Instead she would wait for the press to actually
pronounce
her dead—they’d been dying to do that for years anyway. Well, let them do it now. Let everyone read that she had joined the Choir Invisible. Maybe then they would all go away and let her be—Angst, her manager, everyone who had tried to control her life for so long. And as for her public, her beloved fans, what could be more dramatic, more thrilling than a Return from the Dead—which, she would carefully arrange for maximum effect?

Miss M threw the newspaper in the air and her arms around Kana. “How about making me one of those drinks of yours?” she said gaily as she tossed Kana’s string of limp
poissons
back into the boat. “They can wait. After all, what can a bunch of dead fish do, raise a stink?” And with that godawful pun fouling the innocent air, Miss M and the man she knew only as Kana walked toward the little thatched hut.

O
f course, it wasn’t until two days later, when the police came and arrested Kana for breaking parole, that Miss M discovered he had been filming the entire idyll in both color and black and white. For pay TV or blackmail, whichever paid more. The Divine was, needless to say, a bit disgruntled, even hurt. Still, she bore no malice. Her feet might be killing her, but after all, the weather had been pleasant, Angst had gone back to his baboon, and Kana
was
gorgeous. Thus with the press clamoring for interviews, her fans falling on their knees in thankfulness for her miraculous resurrection, and her every hair in place, Miss M returned to the Australian mainland, a martyr and a saint, and with her nipples once again firmly to the wind, finished her tour in triumph and in thongs.

FINAL PERFORMANCE •

AUSTRALIA

. . .
O
h, Sydney! Sydney! How you have received me! What love you have shown! I’m so glad this turned out to be a deep, meaningful relationship and not just a one-night stand. God knows, we have had our share of those. Ain’t that right, girls? . . . Oh, I tell you, we’re just aflutter this evening what with this turnout and this being our last night and all. Of course, we have had a wonderful time flipping and flopping around the world, but on the morrow, my dears, we get to go
HOME!
I mean I
do
love you down here
—I
do—but honey, I’d
kill
for a Fÿtburgen . . . But let’s face it, kids—once you’re out of Sydney, every town is Perth. Let’s talk about Perth for a minute. Actually, a minute is about as long as you can talk about Perth. . . . and Melbourne is the kind of town that really makes you consider the question Is there life before death? . . .

You know, I wanted so to leave you with the memory of the good beneath the gaudy, the saint beneath the paint, the pure little soul that lurks beneath this lurid exterior . . . but then again I figured:

Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke!

B
ETTE
M
IDLER