Miss Wyoming (4 page)

Susan's earliest memory was powerful and clear. She was four and a half, and she was in the elevator of the Benson Hotel, Portland, Oregon, wearing a beaded strapless evening gown paid for with the proceeds of rabbits her mother Marilyn sold from hutches adjoining the double-wide trailer back in McMinnville.

Marilyn had toiled for umpteen hours on each of the gown's beaded filaments, in between furtive glances at walls papered with gown photos ripped from ladies' magazines and specialized pageantry publications. Marilyn had also recently purchased a glue gun and she had had great plans for fastening sparkly objects to belts and accessories.

Susan's face was heavily pancaked in a manner calculated to add fifteen years to her age. She was wearing a diagonal rayon sash across her chest readingPETITE MISS MULTNOMAH COUNTY — FIRST RUNNER-UP, and her face was so moist from tears it felt like an unsqueezed dish sponge. She remembered pushing a button for each of the floors. The doors opened sixteen times from penthouse to basement, each time revealing the absence of Marilyn.

Earlier, just before Susan had gone onstage, Marilyn had clasped her shoulders, looked her dead in the eyes and said, «Only the prettiest and the best-behaved girl gets to win, and if you don't win, I'm not going to be here waiting for you afterward. Do you understand this? Is this clear?» Susan had nodded and gone onstage with the fluid military precision drummed into her on a mock catwalk Marilyn had chalked onto the concrete at the cul-de-sac's end back in McMinnville. And yet she hadn't won, and had no idea what mistake had caused her to lose.

Once the elevator reached the lowest level, Susan pushed all the buttons on the pad again, and rose upward. When the doors on the main floor opened, she saw dozens of the mother-daughter molecules specific to pageantry, milling their way out the front door. Marilyn was speaking to the concierge. She looked at Susan exiting the elevator and, cool-as-you-will, said, «Oh my, a runner-
up.
» As Susan came closer she added, «I have a daughter, yes, but she's a winner, and you couldn't possibly be her because your sash saysFIRST RUNNER-UP , which means the same thing as losing.»

Susan burst into tears.

«Oh, shut up,» said Marilyn, and she gave her daughter a handkerchief. «You'll stain the dress. Come on. Let's walk to the car.»

Susan followed, brimming with the shameful gratitude of a puppy in training. The night was cool, on the brink of discomfort.

«Oh
Sus
an,» began Marilyn, «You
know
how long we worked on this one. It's been weeks since I've touched a bingo card with Elaine or even watched TV. I think of the time I spend trying to make you the winningest little girl in Oregon and I start to feeling like those inmates in orange jumpsuits picking up litter on the sides of the Interstate.»

Bums heckled them as they walked through the town center. Marilyn looked their way and said: «They can't pave this city fast enough. Put a ten-lane freeway right through these old heaps, call it a mall, and gas those wretched winos.»

Susan sniffled and her heels clicked on the sidewalk like a sous-chef's cutting knife on a board.

«Don't you have
anything
to say?» asked Marilyn. «You're so quiet, like a Barbie doll, except
Barbie
wouldn't have muffed her lighting cue on the “Spirit of Recycling” dance routine.» Marilyn breathed a sigh like a deflating parade balloon. She lit a cigarette. «You could at least show a bit more spunk with me — fight back — a little bit of give-and-take.»

But Susan remained silent. Susan was going to
be
Barbie. She was going to be more Barbie than Barbie, and in having made this decision, she unwittingly followed Marilyn's dancing lead.

They reached the car, the sunroofed Corvair Susan considered the one truly glamorous aspect of her family's life. It appeared that Marilyn was not going to assist her, so as she got in, she carefully lifted and folded her dress so as not to damage it when shutting the door.

Marilyn started the car, and they pulled out of the downtown core. «Okay then, Susan. Your ramp walking was pretty good. A good stride. And the makeup worked well under that lighting. A bit too tarty, maybe, but good.»

«Mom?»

«Yes?»

«What's “tarty”?»

Marilyn deemed it inappropriate to discuss tartiness with her four-and-a-half-year-old. She ignored the question. «Next time you're going to have to approach the fore-catwalk more naturally, and I truly think those bangs of yours are going to have to grow out some.» She looked over at her daughter. «Susan, your eyes look like two cherry pits spit onto the floor,» but Susan was drifting off to sleep. A gentle rain was falling and the wipers were slapping. «I was never able to enter pageants myself, Susan. I could only dream of them. The excitement. The dresses. The winning. I was stuck out in the boondocks with my wretched family.» She pulled onto the highway back to McMinnville. «I never had what you have now — a mother who cares for you and who wants you to
win.
And
certainly
not what you're going to have — a big success in life — and trust me, you're
going
to have it. Me, I'll never be the prettiest or the purest or the best, but you — you
will.
»

Susan, sleepy, hoped Marilyn's good mood would stretch all the way home.

«I shouldn't bitch. I
did
end up getting your father — your stepfather — but he's as good as a real father.» Her voice relaxed. «Don the Swan.» She looked kindly over at Susan. «Baby, you'll win next time, won't you, sweetie?»

Susan looked up at her mother, rain splashing on the windshield and her small mouth emitted a calm, clear, and hopefully Barbie-like «Yes.»

«Suzie,
do
be a love and whack this evil little Kinder Egg into the Grand Canyon for me.» Chris handed Susan a 5-iron. It was near dawn and she, Chris, two band members and an arty black-and-white photographer named Rudy were sitting atop the tour bus in lawn chairs, sipping Benedictine and taking turns trying on silvery-orange nipple tassels that Chris, back in Las Vegas and crashingly drunk, had purchased from an off-duty lap dancer for $500.

«Okay, guv,» said Susan, «but we'll never know what the little toy was inside the egg.»

«That's the
point,
you evil,
evil
girl,» replied Chris. «Is the eggy-weggy properly teed up?»

«Chris, your London vocabulary is really driving me crazy.»

«Be that as it may, I repeat, is the eggy-weggy properly teed up?»

Susan checked the foil wrapped chocolate egg perched on a Marlboro box. «Ready for action.»

«Okay then, Sooz, it's time for whackies!»

Rudy, sensing a trophy, slunk into a shooting angle behind Susan, then in tassels, while Chris called out, «Wait! Your tassels are a mess.» With the fingertips of one hand he held her nipples in place while using his other hand to rake the tinsel. «
There.
»

«Thank you,
husband.
»

«We Brits are so dominant, so forceful.»

«Sun's almost up,» called Nash, the drummer.

Susan moved into position. Far across the vast geographical sore, the first chinks of sunlight were breaking through the horizon's rock. Susan shouted, «Foreplay!» and walloped the Kinder Egg with such force that it vaporized and fell into the canyon as a mist. Rudy's flash coincided with the sunrise entering into her eye, and she wasn't sure which was which. The photo was a winner: faded child star now in second bloom as rock-and-roll mama.

«
Rav
ishing,» said Chris.

«You liar. You just like me because I got you a green card.»

«You just like
me
because I let you sing backup vocals on tour.»

«That's not true. I
love
you for the 10K a month you put into my savings account.»

«You just love
me
for the manliness of my member.» Chris dropped his trousers and wagged his hips back and forth, establishing a lewd pendulum as the crowd on the roof shrieked in unison.

And so went life on tour. Susan was alpha road-rat on the North American tour of Chris's band, Steel Mountain, the highly caste-conscious temporary family fueled by drinking, smoking, copious drugs and arcade games inside buses that stank of the ghosts of a hundred previous bands.

Susan married Chris two years after the network canceled
Meet the Blooms,
and her TV career vanished in a puff of dust. Her then agent-manager-lover, Larry Mortimer, phoned her with news of the cancellation while she was in Guam shooting a Japanese commercial for a lemony sports beverage called Pocari Sweat («Hey team —
let's Pocari!
»). Larry was getting bored with TV and had just entered the world of rock management and had connected Susan to Chris.

The match had its pluses and minuses. Chris had money and Susan did not. Her earnings from her years in TV had been squandered and lost by her mother and stepfather, a fact that she had laboriously kept out of the media. Also, Chris was gay, information that would surely have given surprise to his head-banging musical constituency. Above all, Susan was still in love with the Catholic, divorce-phobic Larry Mortimer. While once it had been easy to find reasons to be around Larry, now Susan needed a better pretext — marrying Chris to land him a green card restored her to Larry's inner-circle. The green-card deal with Chris seemed like just the ticket, and for a while it worked. But when Chris wasn't touring, he lived in London. Susan stayed in California, the partnerless weeks and months adding up across the years. She lived by herself most of the time, in Chris's Space Needle—like orb atop a pole that had the distinct aura of having been handed down from a long succession of emotionally adolescent, newly monied entertainment people. It had filthy shag carpets in longdiscontinued colors, appliances that probably hadn't worked since the dawn of TV dinners, and the impending sensation that the Monkees would pop in through a window at any moment and burst into song. In the Space Needle, Susan realized that the phone really didn't ring too often, and when it did, it was for Chris. Any scripts Larry sent her were for titty flicks. Their phone calls were many: «Oh, come
on,
Larry. We can do better than this. How hard can it be to land a TV movie?»

«You're rock and roll now, Sue. You need to be a Young Mom for TV movies. You know — two kids — those new minivans people are driving. Fridge magnets. People read about you and Chris and the rest of those gorillas trashing a Ramada on a tour and it scares them off.»

«I'm unbankable, Larry. Say it.»

«You're crazy. I send you a dozen scripts a week.»

«Slashers and titties.»

«That's not true. They're entry points.»

«Entry to nowhere. I'm stereotyped as either the sucky little Bloom daughter or the slutty rock bitch.»

«I'm not going to have this conversation, Susan, because it goes nowhere.»

«Don't hang up, Larry.»

«Take acting lessons. Karate. Put on that blue lace number you wore for me down in Laguna Niguel and give Chris a peek. It's so hot, he'll switch.»

«You
liked
that negligée?»

«Liked? Ooh —
Susan.
»

«I looked hot in it? You didn't act like it.»

«I've got worries.»

Larry went quiet. After a while, Susan said, «Can you come over tonight?»

No answer.

«Good-
bye,
Larry.» She slammed down the receiver and it rang almost simultaneously; she picked up the phone and barked, «Hel
lo.
»

«
Suzie
, if you're going to be such a shit about a simple little ringy-dingy, then I needn't waste my time here.»

«Hey, Chris. Larry's being a jerk. Where are you?»

«At a chic little Kensington soirée, and it's so lofty I feel faint. I'm hiding in the library right now.»

«Whose party is it, Chris?»

«Guess.»

«I'm not in the mood to — »

«Think “palace.” »

«No!»

«Yes.»

«Oh God. Oh God. I can't believe I'm going to ask you the question I'm about to ask: what's
She
wearing?» Susan's preoccupation with Larry's dwindling role in her life, for the moment, was deflected. «Steal me a pair of Her shoes and I'll never de-alphabetize your tapes ever again.»

Two weeks after John had left Cedars-Sinai, he was physically restored, but his old life and its trappings felt archaic, slightly silly, and woefully inadequate to meet the changes he felt inside — as if he were now expected to play CDs on a wobbly old turntable with a blunt needle. He kept trying to see his life as Susan saw it, or rather, how his life might seem to the woman in his vision, whose identity remained unknown. He was thumping out tuneless rhythms as he walked through the fuck-hut's slate and aluminum walls. Yes, he was experiencing a type of freedom associated with no longer caring about keeping up the appearance of wealth, but with this freedom came a rudderless sensation, one that made him giddy, the way he'd felt as a child as he waited for week upon agonizing week for the postman to deliver a cardboard submarine he'd sent away for — a device that had promised to take him far away into a fascinating new realm, but which upon arrival was revealed to be as substantial and as well constructed as a bakery's cardboard cake box. But
ahhh
, the waiting had been so wonderfully sweet.

The sun had set. Another day was over. He'd spent the morning speaking with a lawyer inquiring about his will. He'd spent the afternoon at City Hall doing some paperwork. He was still thumping when the doorbell ran (two bars of Phillip Glass). It was the twins Melody had promised. He sighed and buzzed them into his polished-steel atrium. «I'm Cindy,» said the sister in the pink angora sweater with bare midriff. «And I'm Krista,» said the other in green. They looked at each other, smiled, and overstated the obvious: «We're twins!»

«Yeah, yeah.»

He showed them the living room with its suede walls and panoramic windows exposing a constellational view of the city lights below. «Can I fetch you drinks?» he asked, inwardly noting how many times he'd asked this same antique question.

The girls exchanged looks. «Just one,» said Krista.

«That's all we're allowed,» added Cindy. «Jack Daniels if you have it. With maraschino cherries. I just
adore
them.»

«Why just one drink?» John asked.

More looks were exchanged: «We've heard you can be demanding,» said Cindy, to which Krista added, «We're going to need our wits here.»

«Wits?» said John. «Oh God,
relax.
Sit down. Look at the view. I don't want anything. Wait. Yes I do. I just want to talk.»

«That's okay. We get that all the time,» said Krista.

«What — guys who only want to talk?»

«No. More like guys who don't want to feel like they're consorting with hell-bound floozies, who believe that a cozy chat beforehand will absolve them of moral contagion.»

John looked at Krista:
«Absolve them of moral contagion?»

«I'm an educated woman,» said Krista.

Cindy said, «Krista,
don't.
»

«Don't
what
?» asked John.

There was a pause: «Don't be smart.»

«Why not?» John asked.

«It's a turnoff to customers.»

John howled. «You can't be serious!»

Krista said, «Mention politics or use a big word and a guy deflates like a party balloon.»

«Now you've done it,» said Cindy.

«You've done
nothing,
» said John.

«I've got a degree in organic chemistry,» said Krista. «That's the study of molecules containing carbon.»

«Thank you, Madame Curie,» said John. «What about you, Cindy, what do you have a degree in?»

«Hot nourishing lunches,» Krista inserted quickly.

«I have a degree in nutrition. Florida State University, class of '97.»

«Phone the Nobel Committee,» said Krista.

«Krista, just can it, okay?»

«So what are you two baccalaureates doing in a fuckhouse like Melody's? There must be test kitchens all over America begging for a team like you two.»

«Very amusing, Mr. Johnson,» said Krista. «We both want to act. In high school I did
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
— in drag, no less.» John's heart was sinking. «I'm good. So's Cindy. And this kind of thing just pays the bills.»

«Look,» said John, «you've gotta know that if you hump one of us producer guys, you've humped all of us — which means there's probably all kinds of other junk you've done that the
Enquirer
's going to zoom in on like a smart bomb the moment you get a walk-on part in a cable-access slasher. You won't even get a job as a body double in a Cycle dog food commercial.»

«We'll take that risk.»

«Okay,» said John. «You guys want to do some acting tonight?»

Cindy winked at Krista: «Sure. And by the way,
Bel Air PI
was great. I saw it three times in a row in Pensacola this spring after my wisdom teeth got yanked.»

«How do you want us to act, Mr. Johnson?»

«Oh Jesus. How about
normal.
»

This remark drew a blank.

«Normal?» Cindy asked. «Like housewives? Like people who live in Ohio or something?»

«No. Be yourselves. Talk to me like I'm a person, not a customer.»

«We can do that,» said Krista, communicating with Cindy in what appeared to be their personal Morse of winks. «Yes — let's.»

And so the three of them sipped drinks and watched the city lights for a moment or two.

«My panties feel too tight,» said Cindy.

«And my sweater's too hot,» added Krista. «I'm so hot. I'm going to have to remove my sweater.»

«Cut!» John was upset. «I don't mean normal dirty talk. I mean
normal.
Like we're talking in a restaurant and there's no possibility of sex.»

The twins had heard rumors at Melody's about some of John's kinkier scenes. Maybe this was how they started out.

«I'm going to freshen your drinks,» John said, «and then you're going to tell me about yourselves. How you got to where you are now. Your life if it was a movie.»

«More like a beauty pageant,» called Cindy as John jiggled with bottles and crystal glasses.

«I was Miss Dade County,» said Krista.

«And
I
was Miss United Fruit Growers,» added Cindy.

«And we were
both
Junior Miss Florida Panhandle,» continued Krista. «One year apiece, one right after the other, but because we're twins people weren't sure if we were technically the same person.
USA Today
did a thing on us. It's real scary how evil the pageant circle is.»

«Tell me,» John said, returning with the drinks.

«Oh! Where to begin?» said Cindy. «At birth, I guess. The important thing is to have a hungry unfulfilled mother who needs a piece of herself up there on the winner's dais being bathed in adulation. There's no such thing as a child star by herself. Child stars exist only in conjunction with a stage mother. Earth and sun.»

«We really lucked out in that department,» said Krista. «In her sophomore year at U. of F., Mom got the heave-ho from
Godspell,
and she vowed to wreak vengeance on the state of Florida. We're her weapons.»

Said Cindy: «You have to have a mother pushing you the whole way from, like, two onward. For most of us show dogs, we're not even aware of how distorted and grimly fucked up we are until it's too late. They have to get you when you're young.»

«And your mom has to buy and make you, like, a thousand little outfits a year,» said Krista, «and your mother has to make you dress like a stripper at the age of, like, five.»

«Some parents will do anything. There's this actress out there — Susan — oh — what's her name, Kris? She's in the Where-Are-They-Now? file — the one who disappeared for a year.»

«Colgate. Susan Colgate,» Krista answered.

«Yeah. In junior high her parents moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, just to improve their chances of being able to represent an entire state in the national competitions. Yeah — Miss Wyoming. Ha!»

«Missed her,» said John. «I don't pay attention to TV. It turned to trash in the eighties. I stopped watching it, period.»

Music then swirled through the room's air — horns and jazz, and the lights dimmed to candle strength. «The lights are on a timer,» John said, but it didn't matter, because the room became smaller, the air charged like summer's eve, and the three of them clinked the ice that remained in their glasses. The sisters began to remove their angoras. «No, don't,» John said. «No. Let's keep it perfect.» And the girls said, «Fine.»

«Come work for me,» he said.

«What?» came the reply in stereo.

«Be my assistants. I need help right now.»

There was a pause. Krista said, «I don't
know,
Mr. Johnson.»

«No. No. It's not a sex thing. I swear, no sex. You guys are smart and ambitious,» John said.

«Is that what you look for in assistants?» Krista asked.

«Fuck, yes. Smartness, hipness, alertness, greed and speed.»

Krista continued: «Is this how you normally hire assistants?»

«
Nahhh.
What I normally do is put ads in the paper advertising Eames furniture at ridiculously low prices.»

«That's that 1950s stuff, isn't it?» asked Cindy.

«Bingo. It's this furniture designed for poor people, but poor people never liked it, and the only people who know about it or care about it are rich or smart. So anybody who answers that ad really quickly is de facto smart, alert, greedy and hip.»

«What's Melody going to say?» asked Cindy.

«Mel has two ugly little brats I helped put through Dartmouth and Neufchâtel. She owes me.»

«But then what about, say, the salary?»

«See — I was right. You're a little bit greedy,» at which point the girls quickly huffed up and their spines straightened. «Relax. In the film business it's a compliment.»

«So what do
you
want?» Cindy asked.

«Truth be told,» John said, «the one thing in this world I want more than anything else is a great big crowbar, to jimmy myself open and take whatever creature that's sitting inside and shake it clean like a rug and then rinse it in a cold, clear lake like up in Oregon, and then I want to put it under the sun to let it heal and dry and grow and sit and come to consciousness again with a clear and quiet mind.»

The CD player clicked and purred as it changed albums, and Cindy and Krista kept their bodies still. Cindy said, «Okay. I'll work for you.»

Krista said, «Me, too. I'm in.»

John said, «Good,» and music came on, Edvard Grieg, a flute solo. «What's going to be your next move then —
John
?» asked Krista.

«I'm going to liquidate myself.»

«Like going offshore or something? Taxes?» asked Cindy.

«No. I'm going to erase myself. I'm going to stop being me.» John saw the look on the twins' faces, and it wasn't fear, but neither was it comprehension. «No. Not suicide. But suicide's cousin. I want to disappear.»

«You've lost me,» said Cindy.

«I'm going to start my own witness relocation program.»

«Help us out here, John.»

«It's easy. I don't want to be
me
anymore. I think I've gone as far as I can go in this body.»

«In this body?»

«Yeah.»

«Who gets your money?» Cindy asked.

«Probably the IRS.»

«Who gets your residuals and your copyrights?»

«I don't know. Crack babies. Jerry's Kids. Something like that. That's a detail. Think of the bigger picture here.»

He would be
gone.
Completely. He would no longer be John Lodge Johnson. He would be —
nobody
— he would have nothing: no money, no name, no history, no future, no hungers — he would merely be this sensate creature walking the country's burning freeways, its yawning malls, its gashes of wilderness, its lightning storms, its factories and its dead spaces. «Ladies, my atom's stopped spinning. The twitching barnyard animal lies silent in a heap. The machine has
stopped.
»

Cindy and Krista made
ooh …
noises.

Two drinks later, John, Cindy and Krista were going through John's house, with Cindy pushing a SmarteCarte and Krista holding a clipboard on which she recorded each item John tossed into a box on the cart, the contents bound for the local Goodwill drop box.

«DKNY blazer. Unworn. Charcoal.»

«Check.»

«Prada slacks, cocoa. Unworn.»

«Check.»

«Where'd you get a SmarteCarte?» Cindy asked.

«Stole it from SeaTac Airport up in Seattle. I've spent so much on those goddamn things over the years — I put the SmarteCarte children through beauty school. They
owed
me one after all this time.»

Cindy said, «You seem to put a lot of people through a lot of things, John.»

The doorbell rang — it was his business partner, Ivan McClintock, with his wife, Nylla. John buzzed them in and called from upstairs, Ivan and Nylla climbed a series of chilly aluminum slabs that led up to the bedrooms. «John-O?»

«We're in here, Ive.»

The couple rounded a corner. «Guys, this is Krista and Cindy. Gals, this is Ivan and Nylla. Ivan and I have been making movies ever since we both had acne.»

The group exchanged hellos, and the work of emptying John's wardrobes of conspicuously expensive clothing continued.

«See anything you want, Ivan?» John asked, holding out a nest of ties.

Ivan was doing his best to keep his cool.

«Our styles are opposite, John-O. That's why we make a good team.»

Nylla, pregnant and wrapped in one of her trademark silk shawls, asked, «John, Melody called Ivan at work and then me at home. She said you were making plans to — .» She paused. «
Erase
yourself or something. Something radical.»

John was silent.

Nylla persevered. «So what's the score?»

A TV-sized Tiffany box full of enema tools clattered down from an upper shelf, bouncing on the sisal flooring and rattling onto the white limestone hallway. «Why don't we go downstairs?» John said to Ivan and Nylla.

From the landing, he shouted back, «Remember gals-
every
thing goes.»

They went into the living room. It was night outside. Ivan and Nylla drank in the view. «I never get tired of looking at the city, John-O. It's like we're flying over it, about to land at LAX.»