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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
which would inevitably get ashed in as well, and the waitstaff knows not
to tell her that smoking isn t permitted. When other patrons complain,
the maître d passes on to them the same sob story James T. Couch passed
off on him along with a hundred-dollar bill that the smoker in the far
144 Al ex Shakar
corner booth happens to be none other than Ivy Van Urden, the renowned
schizophrenic fashion model for whom a constant influx of nicotine is
that sole and thinnest of threads from which her sanity dangles. For
all Ursula knows, it may be true. The medication Ivy takes has been mak-
ing her increasingly stiff, and the cigarettes, perhaps due partly to the
nicotine stimulant and partly to the constant use of limbs, lips, and lungs
required to manipulate them, seem to serve her in much the same way
a can of oil did the Tin Man, keeping her just limber enough to clank
along.
The ceremonial ashing-in-the-cup accomplished, Ivy moves on to her
ritual appreciation of the view: the booths are lined with interior windows
that look out into the hotel lobby, and for a good five minutes Ivy follows
the lobby s various motions as closely as a die-hard football fan watching
his home team deploy its offense. She tracks the elevators, rising like air
bubbles in glass tubes; scrutinizes the glass-domed fountain, blasting
glimmering jets of mercury; then loses herself in the lobby s conveyor-belt
product display. Encased in thick, yellowed glass, the conveyor belt rises
out of the lobby floor by the far wall, circles around and passes right below
their window, then proceeds spiraling along the vast rotunda wall up fifty
stories to the glass of the artificial skylights, through which shines the light
of three artificial, pastel-colored suns: a red giant, a blue dwarf, and, as the
designers chose to call it, a green goblin.
After tracing the path of the conveyor belt as best she can all the way
up, Ivy turns her attention to the items themselves, trundling by on the
belt just below the window: an endless parade of scarves, hats, blouses,
dresses, lingerie, bow ties, wallets, watches, and jewelry, each product rid-
ing on its own velvet pillow. She sits very erect, as any good fashion model
should, a sign of progress on which the outpatient care staff takes care to
compliment her at each bimonthly checkup. Ursula was never even aware
that Ivy was taller than her until she became a model, straightening the
familial slouch, levitating her head, stretching her neck like a ballerina.
She s wearing a low-cut maroon minidress that is really too dressy for day-
time but looks good on her nonetheless, nicely contrasting with her skin,
which is pale, luminous, and once more devoid of acne, thanks to her
renewed regimen of glycolic acid and Retin-A. Today is Ivy s twenty-first
birthday, a fact Ursula had forgotten repressed, possibly until Ivy
mentioned it a moment ago. In a few months Ursula herself will be thirty.
The signs of age she sees in the mirror every day are made slightly more
galling by the progress of Ivy s body over time, for though Ursula may
The Savage Gi r l 145
only be imagining this it seems like Ivy just keeps looking younger. The
bloating effects of the medication seem thus far to be confined to her face,
which in expanding has filled in the worry lines around her eyes and
mouth, giving her the soft-focused expression of a much younger girl.
The ads that created her new fame first appeared two months ago, plas-
tered across the sides of Mid City buses. They showed her sprawled out in
a tenement entranceway, dressed in a one-shouldered hide minidress, with
a back so low and a hemline so high that her bare back touched the
moldering door frame and the backs of her bare thighs pressed against the
cement stair on which she sat. Her jaggedly chopped hair was pressed
down against her temples and forehead by a tight leather band, and her
face was made up with slashes of bright-gold warpaint along her cheek-
bones, mauve eye shadow that gave her eyes a puffy, beaten look, and gold
lipstick, sluttishly smudged. The scars on her arms and legs were left visi-
ble and unretouched. A wooden spear leaned against the door frame
behind her. Beside her dirt-streaked, canted thighs stood the plastic liter
bottle, erect and beaded with condensation. The copy bracketed her from
above and below:
traveling lite
litewater
From the streets and sidewalks passengers and pedestrians gazed at the
savage girl hunched between the wheels and the windows of the bus, her
lovely, dirty, naked limbs in a heap, her heart-shaped, gold-painted face
tilted to the side: a broken toy. They recognized her the obscure model
who d gone nuts in that gruesome, titillating, highly entertaining manner [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
