All Families Are Psychotic (28 page)

'No, thank you, dear.'

'Why don ' t I leave the mill here. Just in case.'

Janet surveyed the ludicrous foodscape before her, then looked up to see Florian walking in the door

with an extremely tall, ink-black woman in tow, clad in brilli antly colored, shamelessly expensive designer wear — Pucci? Hermes? Her fingers and neck and ears were dappled with ligh t bouncing off chunks of

gold jewelry. Janet had never seen a woman clad in so many costly items at once. The showiness of it seemed almost illegal. Janet was mesmerized as the tw o approached the table, as were The Shanty's other diners.

'Janet, I'd like you to meet Cissy Ntombe.' Janet stood up, spellbound . 'Hello.'

Cissy said, 'Charmed, I'm sure.' She sat down in the banquette opposite Janet and asked, 'What bring s you to this part of the world, my dear?'

Janet felt like a yokel. 'Family business, you migh t say.' 'How deligh tf ul.' Cissy unfolded a napkin on her lap.

Janet asked, 'And you?'

'I, too, am here on business,' Cissy said. 'But not family business. My family are all dead, I'm afraid, my dear.'

'Good Lord — how awf ul.'

'Your sympathy is too generous, but I have grieved all I shall.' She looked at the food before her. Florian looked eager to hear her response, which was: 'Florian, we shall be needing lemon wedges, and I see

none here.'

She looked at Janet. 'There is no such thing as a fish withou t lemon. Wouldn ' t you agree?' 'Absolu tely.'

'This restaurant is not nearly so grand as last nigh t 's restaurant in Atlanta, but I suppose that is what happens when one ventures through the provinces.'

Florian was savoring Janet's baff lement over this exotic and sligh tly antique-sounding new guest. Janet shot him a pair of
Who-is-this-person?
eyes, but all he did was gesture towards the food and say, 'It 's all for you, Cissy, dear — you dive righ t in.'

'As I said, I shall require lemon wedges first, my dear.'

Florian went off in pursuit of lemon wedges. Cissy asked Janet, 'Do you speak French perchance?' ' Me? A bit. I'm from Canada, which is a bilingu —'

'Oh dear —
Canadian
French, which one hears is a puzzling variety of its Parisian coun terpart.'

'I suppose my French is a bit rusty.' Janet loo ted her brain for conversation topics but found none. In

addi tion, Janet's not kno wing Cissy's role in Florian's li fe was irksome indeed. 'Does Florian always order too much food like this?'

'I canno t say, Janet. I have only kno wn him for tw o days.'

This is crazy.
'Your outf it is amazing. Hermes?' 'It is Versace, my dear.'

Silence.

More silence.

Cissy asked Janet, 'Have you read any good books lately?'

'Books?' The topic caugh t Janet off guard. 'Let me think -mostly I read newspapers and magazines. And

the books I read are abou t health and nutrition mostly. Sorry I can' t do better than that. What abou t you, Cissy?'

'I have recently reread my favori te book of all time.' 'Which one is that?' Janet asked.

'Protocol and Deportment in Poli te Society,
by Miss Lydia Millrod .' 'Is that a new book?'

'No! Heavens no, my dear. It was publi shed in 1913, just before the Great War. But its classical nature rescues it from the fate of being dated.'

'I see.'

Florian returned with a plate-load of lemon wedges. 'Let us begin.' He and Cissy promp tly scanned the meals as though it were a buffet for fift y. Both parties took only the most minuscule por tions of food, further confusing Janet. She asked Florian, 'So how did you tw o meet?'

'Friends of mine told me abou t Cissy, and I simply had to meet her.' 'What did your friends say?'

'They told me that Cissy is from the city of Mubende, fifty miles west of Kampala, Uganda. She's been a prostitute for nearly twenty years and has had unpro tected sex at a very minimum of 35,000 times. She's been directly exposed to hiv perhaps 15,000 times and yet her blood levels show no trace of either the

virus or its antibodi es.'

Cissy looked qui te cross at hearing this. She said, 'Florian, it is improp er to discuss business matters at the dinner table.'

'Cissy, Janet is almost family to me. No business will come of this. I merely want to keep her properly informed abou t you, my good woman.'

'Very well, then. But no mention of money. That is absolu tely forbidd en.'

Florian turned to Janet. 'As I was saying, Cissy was discovered in her roadside hut a few mon ths ago by researchers from Atlanta's Center for Disease Control. They were conducting rou tine epidemiologi cal surveys and happened upon her. She was brough t to Atlanta tw o weeks ago and was given a large,

utili tarian cinder block motel room that resembled a dorm room in an Ohio college circa 1967. Fortunately I have tomtoms beating all through the jungl e and was informed of Cissy's pligh t. Two days ago I visited Atlanta armed with tw o garment dolli es I had brough t down directly from Seventh Avenue — the most exotic and expensive clothes available in all of Manhattan — as well as strips of silk on which a
dazzling

array
of Harry Winston gems had been pinned. Cissy had a choice — cinder block dorm room or Versace. And thus I secured her rescue.'

'You
stole
Cissy from the Center for Disease Control?'

' " Stole?" Goodness no,' Florian said, 'And Janet, please, stop being so middl e-class. It 's unbecoming . If Cissy wants to leave, she's free to do so. Righ t, Cissy?'

Cissy said, ' My room in Atlanta was no better than a broom closet. So insulting.' She turned to Florian: 'I shall require a finger bowl presently.'

Florian turned to Cissy: 'Cissy, give me your hand.' He took Cissy's barbecue-sauce-stained righ t hand. 'Janet, give me your righ t hand — across the table — there.'

'I—'

'Trust me, Janet.'

Janet gave her hand to Florian.

'Good.' He picked up a steak kni fe, looked at Janet, li fted his eyebro w and made a small cut on her hand. 'Ouch. Florian, what are you—?'

'Shhhhhhh .' Florian then took Cissy's hand and cut a small sli t in her palm, too. He looked back and forth between the tw o women, then held their bleeding hands together in a clasp.

Cissy's hand was so warm and dry, so
hard to imagine buckets of warm, potent blood flowing within,
but Cissy's blood did flow, dripping onto the tablecloth. Janet watched as blood seeped out through cracks in the bonds of the tw o hands.

Florian said, 'I'm going to coun t to sixty-tw o, Janet. Sixty-tw o seconds is the time required for blood to clot on an open cut.

'. . . one Mississippi . . . tw o Mississippi . . . three Mississippi . . . four Mississippi . . .'

Is this what I think it is?

'. . .
thir ty-four Mississippi . . . thir ty-five Mississippi . . . thir ty-six Mississippi . . .'

It couldn ' t be.

'. . . fifty-nine Mississippi. . . sixty Mississippi. . . sixty-one Mississippi . . . sixty-tw o Mississippi.'

But it is. It 's true.

'Unclasp your hands.'

Cissy looked at Janet. 'You'll need a fresh napkin, my dear.'

Janet was stunned. Her hand remained hovering above the food. Florian said, 'Look at me, Janet.'

Janet looked at Florian, but the colors and shapes in the room were shift ing like TV channels. 'It 's gone now, Janet.'

'Gone?'

'Yes. No more pill s. No more virus. Nothing. All gone.' 'It can' t be that simple.'

'Almost. I'll have to give you one or tw o shots using Cissy's plasma as a base. But for all intents and purpo ses, yes. It is that simple and yes, it 's all gone.'

'I—'

'Yes, Janet?' 'I don ' t . . .'

'What are you feeling, Janet?' 'Ligh t. I feel ligh t.'

'Floating on air?'

'No — the other kind of ligh t.' 'What do you mean?'

'Whi te ligh t. I feel like ... the
sun:

The table was covered in fifteen desserts, and Janet was bloated from having gorged on tw o of them. On top of this, she was still heady from the blood swap with Cissy. She said, 'Florian, I won' t lie to you. The letter I was going to give you is fake.'

Florian froze for a second. 'I'm glad you told me that, Janet, because then we couldn ' t have remained pals.'

'Why do you want the letter so badly, Flor? Just tell me —
why?

'Why do
you
think?'

'Because — because you lost your mother early in li fe. Because you seem to love everything English, and I guess buying this letter is how a rich Anglophil e would funnel those energies and emotions.'

'Very good, Janet. I
do
miss my dear
Maman,
but that's not why I want the letter — or the card inside it — or whatever's in there.'

'You're not making sense.'

'Janet, what I really want is the
envelope.'

'Excuse me?'

'Oh, I'm sure the card inside is sweetness and ligh t itself, but the envelope is what I want.' 'Florian, what are you saying?'

'Janet, think for a second abou t the simple mechanics of card writing. Someone would have had to
lick

that envelope, wouldn ' t they? And I hardly think licking is the sort of job one entrusts to anyone, let alone one's butler, or even to Daddy.'

'So?'

'Embedded in the envelope's glue, Janet, are a good number of stable and intact somatic cells.' 'Somatic cells?'

'Non-sexual cells — neither sperm, nor egg. In a few years -not righ t now, mind you, but in a few years — as inexorably as CDs replaced vinyl records, it 's going to be almost pathetically simple to clone mammals

—
any
mammals — from somatic cells. Give these cells the correct goo on which to gro w, and then deliver the correct stimulu s, and
whaam!
Instant prince. Your daugh ter is, I believe, running tests on board the shutt le aiming towards this future procedure. The world is truly small.'

'I ... you've got me, Flor.'

'It 's a fair amoun t to swallo w in one gulp. By the way, the launch is still on for 7:40 a.m. day after tomorro w?'

'Yes.'

'Bravo.' Florian looked at Cissy. 'Are you full, dear?'

'I have had enough .' Cissy was content just to sit and touch the palm of her hand so recently cut.

Janet dipped her tongue deep into the martini glass bott om dimpl e to retrieve the final drop of gin. She looked up. 'It can' t be
that
hard to buy royal dandru ff , Florian.'

'Actually, Janet, it is — and good for you for thinking like a business person. But availabili ty of cells is only half the probl em.'

'What's the other half?'

'The other half is the probl em of telomeres.' 'Huh?'

'Human DNA is like a shoelace, Janet, and at each end are li tt le caplets called telomeres. Depending on your family's gene pool — or depending on whether or not you're a one-hundr ed-four teen-year-old Frenchwoman who drink s a glass of red wine each day — the telomeres fray after abou t

seventysomething years. Your DNA unravels, you age and you die.' 'So?'

'The probl em with cloning is that if I were to clone, say,
you,
Janet — and trust me, Janet, cloning is going on like crazy in labs across the planet righ t now — the resulting baby would have used up sixty years'

worth of telomeres.' 'Sixty-five.'

'So technically, we'd have a sixty-five-year-old baby. Therefore, the younger I can nab some cells, then the much, much more pricey they become.
Capisce?

'Yes, I
capisce.'

'As an added bonus, these cells give me a benchmark against which I can verify future princely cells.' 'Of course.'

As a footnote, Florian added,
'And
there's also this cell material called chromatin, but that's a bit complex for our festive li tt le dinner.'

Janet closed her eyes. 'Janet? Are you OK?' 'I'm overwhelmed.'

'We need to get smashed is what we need, Janet. You no longer need to worry abou t drug interactions with alcohol. Cissy has saved you.' Florian went to the bar and simply took a bott le of gin. He brough t it back and poured three glasses. 'Cheers.'

'Flor, just so you kno w, the real letter is beneath a sofa cushion in the living room of the house you picked me up at.'

'How on
earth
did you end up beached inside that dreadful heap?'

'This particular tale begins with my son, Bryan, impregnating a li tt le spitf ire by the name of Shw.' 'Shw?'

'Yes.'

'Spell that.'

The usual Shw nonsense ensued. Janet then recoun ted the sequence of calamities ending up with Lloyd and Gayle impri soned in their own pink dungeon.

'This is too, too much, Janet. I simply
must
meet these people. Are they still in jail?' 'As far as I kno w. The plan was just to scare them a smidge.'

'Let's go now.'

'Why not. Bring the bott le.'

'I
shall.'
Florian stood up and held Cissy's chair. 'Cissy's foster parents were English, you kno w, and she was raised inside Uganda's diplom atic communi ty. Hence her perfect Mayfair patois. Righ t, dear?'

Cissy look sligh ted. 'Florian, it is impoli te to discuss people in their presence as if they were not there.' 'Sorry abou t that, Cissy. You are correct.'

Florian left several hundr eds on the table, and as the trio headed to the door, the staff burst into

spon taneous applause. Florian threw his wristwatch to Steve. In the parking lot, Florian said, 'Jan, why don ' t you take a quickie house tour of the rig. I'm sure you'll find the decor most enchanting.'

Janet follo wed Cissy into a vehicle as big as a high school por table classroom, which on the inside proved to be a fun-house of shining nickel, beveled glass, hidden ligh t sources and a wealth of mirror s. Designer outf its were strewn in layers abou t the minim al charcoal gray furni ture. The sigh t of so much cash frozen in the form of clothing gave Janet an illi cit tingle.

Cissy said, 'It is small, I concede you that, but it is a gracious home. The fridge is stainless steel and the