Days are getting shorter And the night wind in the trees And the soft skin on your shoulder And the way you wanted me. Hotels welcome me when I need a home. Will you give this to my mother? Once again, it's time to leave. There's no ever after. There's only in between. Hotels welcome me when I need a home. -Juliana Hatfield1

The pen is dry, empty-useless.

Of course it is, she thinks. It clacks plastically as she slams it down on the cheap desk.

She riffles through the wide, drawer-smelling drawer. The ubiquitous leaves of hotel stationary, a hotel notepad, a hotel envelope barely make a whisper. She sighs. The cushion of carpet understates her footfalls as she treads across the room to the window and parts the curtain a sliver.

Outside, the night shrugs its shoulders, dropping an ambiguous precipitation onto the world, or at least on this unappealing little part of it. The wet pavement glows, awash with the mournful ambience of the streetlights, the traffic lights, the restaurant signs, the Howard Johnson signs, the Best Western signs, the Ramada signs, the hum of Exxon signs and the crown of light that is the airport. Her reflection is superimposed upon it all, half-realized. Cars hum absently over the slick streets disappearing past the spill of hotels into the night.

"Fuck."

She sits and examines the melamine-coated nightstand as though seeing it for the first time. Every object upon it gapes at her with an unblinking face; the clock radio, the unopened bottle of Stoli, the blank page, the hotel phone, her bottles of meds. She reaches out, as though trying to brush it all from its surface.

A large collection of dust tumbles into the far corner, traveling along the draft that chills the floor. Standing, she grabs the phone; it's quite greasy, but it's immediately too late to do anything about it. Her fingers dial with a mnemonic clarity. There is the moan of the connection reaching out.

It picks up-voicemail. "Fuck? Hi, Lisette, it's me? look? I was really hoping you'd answer but? shit? well? anyway. I can't believe you've got me doing this thing." She opens her eyes. "I don't even know where the fuck I am, Lisette." She shakes her head. "I'm? I'm sorry. Call me tomorrow." The phone shudders into place in its cradle. She sighs, running her hand through her hair, pretending not to notice how dry it is, how it feels like cotton candy.

She slams herself back down upon the bed. She lies back and blinks up at the dusty ceiling. She sighs.

"Fuck," she says quietly. "Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck."

Her eyes find the nightstand again, the impassive faces. The bottle of meds, doesn't matter which, is in her hand. She pours the contents, forty pills, into her palm. Rolls them there, beneath her index finger, beneath her thumb. My little broken rosary, she thinks. Even her breath is still for a moment. She sniffs and dumps them clumsily back into the tiny brown bottle, some tumbling onto her mattress, onto the carpet.

"Fuck."

More fall to the cold floor when she slams the still open container onto the nightstand. She springs up, onto her feet, and moves to the mirror. A tired, but still beautiful woman stares back.

"Still beautiful," what does that mean?

Someone shuffles in the hall, somewhere outside the door. It is difficult to make out how near or far they are, or what it is they are doing over the disinterested hum of the air system. She leans her head against the solid doorframe, her breathing shallow and slow. In the hall, the elevator closes with a soft echo.

She picks up her coat and opens the door, hoping that her memories of a hotel bar can in some way still be trusted.

She is thankful for the pervading darkness and the virtual emptiness of the bar, two qualities essential in any good drinking spot.

She sits at the bar and orders a vodka and soda with no lime from the bartender. He sets it on a well-used beer coaster with his hairy-knuckled fingers. There is a lime on the rim of the glass. She shuts her eyes, flicking the dry fruit into the trench on the other side of the bar. There goes your tip, fucker.

Taking a long sip, she savors the tickle of bubbles and the clean evaporation of the vodka on her palate. The drink makes her feel mature, yet not old. It speaks of shrugging free life's complications and needless, though ever-present drama in favor of some sort of smooth-running efficiency. She sighs as she places it back on the creased coaster, half empty.

There is commotion, from the kitchen by the sounds of it, a short man backs out of a swinging door laughing as he comes through. When he turns she sees that he has a mean smile, all angles and sharp teeth. His eyes meet hers and he seems to fall out of rhythm, at least momentarily. She is used to having this effect on people; distraction. She can't remember the last time it mattered to her.

"Hey!" It is the man, he approaches and stands in front of her pointing. "You were on that show? what was it? Uh?"

"Spygirl," she sighs without looking up.

"Spygirl, that's it! You're Spygirl! Crazy!" She doesn't pull back from the bar, from her drink as he continues. "What's your name, again? Uh? Kelly? Candice?"

"Carcen. Carcen Ashe," she mumbles, taking a sip.

"Yeah." He nods. "Yeah, Carcen Ashe!" He laughs, pointing a finger then leans close on the bar. She places the vodka-soda back on the coaster between them. "Hey! I still have that issue of Maxim with you on the cover, from like, five, six years ago or whatever." His head bobs, along with the leer on his face. She nods economically, a grimace firmly in place. He doesn't move, doesn't go away. Condensation forms on her glass, clouding the contents. She wipes a clearing with her thumb, a tiny window she wishes she could dive through, disappear, drown on the other side of.

She inhales, rising to full posture, sharply making eye contact. "I'm just trying to have a quiet drink here."

He nods and puts his hand up. "Sure, sure," he says, darting his head toward the kitchen then proceeding to fabricate small tasks that keep him in her vicinity. She sighs and sips at her cocktail.

"Business? Strictly business?" he says, shuffling out some coasters then looking at her with a conspiratorial grin as if he has nonchalantly slipped her the password that would somehow gain him admittance to Chez Ashe.

She bows her head, a customary exhaustion settling across her shoulders. "What?" she blinks at him irritably.

He straightens and attempts to deliver the line again, as though she didn't understand what he said. "'Business. Strictly business.' you know, that's your line. You always say it before you whack someone?"

"Not any more."

"Huh?"

"Not any more. The show finished four years ago."

"Oh yeah? I thought it was still on?"

"Well, it's not." She sips her drink.

"So what do you do now?"

Behind the bar, her reflection sends a sympathetic roll of the eyes her way. "Look, like I said, I'm just having a quiet drink here."

He stiffens. "Sure. Whatever," he says. In the end, all he does is mutter, "Cunt," under his breath.

She drains her glass joylessly, signaling the bartender for another. "That's me."

The room is as she left it.

Except for that spin, she chuckles to herself. That came in after I left?

Ignoring the mirror, she moves somewhat gracelessly to the bed. She gets one of her shoes off easily, but the other makes an issue of it, so she leaves it on.

She falls back onto the stiff mattress, inhaling the dispassionate fragrance of the hotel linen. No smell, no memories. Maybe she should be grateful; grateful for the indifference of the entire room, the null of it all. She sits up, managing to kick off the stubborn shoe after a couple of tries. It clunks against her Louis Vuitton hard case. The sling back lies on its side before the monographed skin of the luggage, its mouth yawning wide in a silent and eternal plea for help. LV-a stranger's initials; she carries a stranger's bags around with her wherever she goes. She shakes her head and smiles. Vodka talk. With a blink, she grimaces at another brittle thought: no matter what you do, you always bring baggage into a hotel room.

Her eyes pass over the nightstand, its coalition of bottles, the disdainfully blank face of the clock, the reliable visage of the phone, its message light flashing. She taps the unopened bottle of vodka then opens one of the drawers. The crumpled cover of the local phonebook stares back up at her. She pushes the drawer shut.

Grabbing the phone, she touch-tones her way through the various options, valiantly wending through the ether between requesting an automated wake-up call and booking a reservation at another of the chain's fine hotels. Finally she reaches her messages. There is one: Lisette. The agent's clench-jawed voice comes in thin over the weak signal from a roaming mobile phone.

-Carcen, it's me. Sorry babe, I was out with Tosh and Calliope-I simply can't avoid popping into Florent for their moules frites when I'm in town-no matter how shitty it is outside. Anyhoo, listen, you'll absolutely love this thing, trust me. People do them all the time. The money ain't bad; it's good exposure; the fans love it. Plus, the producers were over the moon, sweetie, that you were doing it. So listen, take a Zoloft, sit back, sign some things, smile for some pictures and enjoy the freak-show. You can do it. Give me a call and let me know how it went. Kisses!

She slams the phone down, the bristle of indignation clutching her in its spiny arms. The tacky feel of her hair as she runs a hand through it brings her close to nausea. "Fuck."

The window, the curtain pulled aside. More rain or sleet outside. She sighs.

There is the greasy phone again, pressed to her ear, the plastic purr of the dial tone. There is the latent sensuality of the pliant rubber buttons beneath her fingers. The tones in her ear, chanting their digital gnosis, a ring, two. Then there is the voice, impatient, cigarette swollen-not a trace of her accent-echoing in some room in some building at some unknown proximity to where Carcen holds the non-color hotel phone to her ear.

The receiver slides easily back into its cradle. She bites at a nail, then stops almost immediately as she comes to her senses, staring at it. "Fuck," she sobs at the half-ruined thing. "Fuck."

She clutches the nightstand, leaning on it. She rubs her tensed knuckles absently, repeatedly over her kneecap as though trying to warm them or remove a stubbornly viscous material. Blood rattles through her ears until even the susurrus of the traffic outside is lost to her. She raises her head. The bottles, the clock, the phone cast veiled gazes back at her.

She grabs for a paper-wrapped glass, peeling frantically at its yellowed skin. Tearing the wrapping only accentuates her frayed nail. She blows a stray strand of hair away from her nose and lets the wrap fall to the floor. Picking two pills off of the carpet she moves to the sink. Her reflection stares back from the mirror as she turns the clammy tap. She winces at the dubious liquid in the glass then fires back the pills, chasing them with the water that flushes cold and metallic across her tongue.

She lies back on the bed, hands opening at her sides. There is a swelling, cool feeling in her belly as the vaguely harmful tasting liquid and its chemical flotsam come to rest there. She blinks up wearily. The ceiling is dusty, pockmarked with random injuries and imperfections cast in cheap plaster. She imagines an infinite stream of anonymous fornicators gazing up to its placid white span. The tiny points of pressure and pain behind her eyes are subsiding, receding and dissipating gently like a sandcastle into the rolling tide. Her breathing slows, falling into an erratic flutter.

Eventually she remembers she wants-no, needs-a shower. She rises, blood rushing to her skull, and lists her way, without falling, to the bathroom. The taps prove to be more of a challenge than anticipated, but after some time, she manages to regulate the temperature and flow of the water to her liking. She tries not to think of her absent loofah and the nightmares of airport hotel toiletries. Pawing at her clothes, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her eyes twitch hungrily over the reflection, unsatisfied, or perhaps no longer certain of their initial craving. She blinks for a beat, then finishes stripping, leaving her clothes in a pile on the floor. With an unsteady step, she enters the shower and closes the heavy curtain behind her. When her eyes are closed the water feels just like rain.

She has a recurring dream. She sits on a subway, surrounded by people, some in seats, most standing. The train is speeding through a black tunnel, the only light being the pale halogen of the car. It is understood that at some point, some time, the train will crash, killing everyone on board. Not surprisingly, this creates a general sense of fear and dread among the passengers, their faces frozen in mute and yellow panic, a tableau of resignation. Further down the car, one of the doors is open and air rushes in that is neither warm nor cold. There is another understanding, that one can leap through the door and avoid the impending disaster, though it is uncertain what happens after that. Occasionally, (for she has often been on the train, sometimes for years at a time, lost in the errant chronology of dreams) a person makes their way through the restless crowd toward the door. Usually, they are polite, saying, "excuse me" and "thank you" as they go. Then, without ceremony, though certainly with a modicum of purpose, they pitch themselves through the door into the rushing air and darkness. They can be seen as a voiceless flash for but a second, then are gone, fate unknown. It is rare that anyone actually attempts this. Mostly, it is the moving train and the unspoken panic and her sitting, waiting it out. She has never been on the train when it crashes, though she spends much of her time imagining it. Sometimes she wishes for it. Always, she sits silent, unmoving save for the unconscious shifting the body conducts to remain comfortable.

Breakfast is light and informal-a box of Jujyfruits and coffee, endured in the faded limbo of the hotel restaurant. The yellow candy box, now empty and absently picked apart, lays on the sticky surface of the table; its gray innards exposed to the haze of the old, orange lights. The driver is late.

Of course he is, she thinks.

Cramped into a corner of the spacious booth, she blinks at her vacant cup. The waitress, Tawnya (no name tag, but this is how Carcen imagines it is spelled) will no doubt be along in moments to fill it, place two creamers (or skim milk, in her case) upon the jaundiced skin of the table, and move along to the counter, where she will continue to read her copy of the National Enquirer. It will be Carcen's third refill, two more than she normally allows herself, but she hadn't anticipated waiting. The caffeine mingles like a practiced debutante through her crowded bloodstream. Leaning into the ancient vinyl, she lets her eyes glide along her form to the floor and back.

She has gone for simple, uncomplicated glamour-a sculpted Gaultier biker jacket, a midnight, Angora wool turtleneck by Dior, and Prada, Prada, Prada below the waist: coal tweed skirt and butter-soft, black boots. Her hair is up and loose, her make-up understated, and her Armani Occhialli, black and impenetrable, have kept Tawnya at bay, but have had no such success with the discolored mange of the restaurant décor.

Carcen peeks over the top of her shades, sad that her focus has to return to the room's actual lighting and not that of the shaded Italian glass. It is hard to make out the Enquirer's smaller headlines, but the main one focuses on a famous couple's break-up, showcasing a grainy diptych of the duo in "civilian" clothes, in different locations, looking disheveled and frightfully normal. J___ Fuming as B___ Caught with Broadway Bimbo, beams the head.

She sighs. When passing through countless, nameless airports, between flights to here and there she still sometimes stopped in at magazine shops, negotiating the racks that crowd the scarce floor-space. Her sunglasses block the relentless fluorescents, the patrons, the clerks and airport staff, neutralizing everything as she flipped through the gloss and ink smell. The covers color-modified, slick and glossy like candies; models and athletes and actors and all of them stars. Even the occasional scientist and CEOs, all of them stars. Covers stretched countless across aisles. Covers like perfect, saddle-stitched steps leading up and into the clouds.

And she had had her cover, too. Maxim. Summer of '95. Shot from behind, standing with her ass hanging out of a black leather thong and her arms over her breasts, spreading them against herself, so that they might be seen peeking around her ribs like impetuous children. Her head turned, hair tousled just so, she had smoldered at the camera, her laser blue eyes flashing beneath perfectly smudged lashes. Woman of Action: Spygirl Carcen's Secret Mission to Make You Want Her, the headline had drawled.

She didn't remember the shoot so much for itself but for the drug of choice: cocaine, present more so in her memories than the phantom entourage that assisted in the occasion. It had been the first time she had done coke, the powder raked across a mirror and passed about absently-the photographer being British and, hence, the drug a ubiquity. She had sniffed at her first line, between rolls of film, as though it might turn into a centipede and dart up her nose. After, she had stared down at herself in the dusty mirror, topless, young, the narcotic spreading wings inside of her, bursting her heart into one million angry points of flame. She had laughed with her reflection.

The day was blurry, as though her eyelid had been fluttering the entire time, punctuated by a photo assistant's sharp cackles and bumps of coke. Faces passed, pushing in and out of the bright lights in her eyes like fish to the surface of a rippling pool. Names, now forgotten, hands shook.

Later, the photographer flopping clumsily between her legs, she had let the moment come down and plant its soft lips on her forehead, let herself experience what she could of it. She had thrown up her arms and let out a long, contented sigh, not caring if the British troll thought he was responsible for it. Through the window, the gritty Brooklyn morning, the clouds seemed that much closer.

Tawnya arrives, polyester atrophy, sad eye shadow and all, tilting the coffee pot just so, as if to suggest the question: More? Carcen inhales, sits herself up, pushes her lips out and gives a slight shake of the head, as if to suggest: Get that fucking stale shit out of my face, you pathetic skid. With a big, stupid grin, Tawnya chirps back to the counter. Soon she resumes glancing through her tabloid with vapid cheer.

From across the room the safe and plain geometric lines and primary colors of the cover stare back at Carcen. She scans the rest of its surface, squinting to make out a smaller photo of an almost indistinct, though somehow familiar blonde shape. An intake of breath.

It is you?

After a second glance, the headline still reads: Wedding Shocker! Lela St. Claire and Chef Beau's Secret Vegas Ceremony. Her eyes fall into shade once again, fingers grasping at the tattered candy box.

Oh, Lela?

At the door, the dark and nervous shape that is the driver appears. His lips peel apart in an inept grimace, as he pushes into the restaurant bringing the outside chill. Tawnya rises from the pulp duck blind that is her Enquirer to greet him with her easy smile, but is ignored. With a spasmodic nod of his head, the driver acknowledges Carcen without maintaining eye contact. She stands, slams a five on the table and walks calmly to the front of the restaurant. He mumbles an apology of some sort.

She stops near Tawnya, trying to focus on the woman, her waitress eyes. "I'm going to grab an orange juice," she says. "Take it out of what I left on the table."

Carcen removes a juice out of the old cooler. The driver paws for her Gucci shoulder bag. "Don't," she says. His hand falls away in obedience.

"Have a good one!" Tawnya chirps convincingly.

Carcen glares at the woman, but is defused by the corner of the tabloid cover. She inhales deeply, looking out into the gray morning and not at the driver. "Let's get this over with."

They pitch along the gray avenue that leads away from the rash of hotels and restaurants near the airport. Nothing but drive-thrus and gas stations and factories lined up against the straight edge of the road. Snow lies in large piles at the corners of parking lots. There is slush sprayed out from the cars, black gouts reaching as far as the empty sidewalks, coating fire hydrants in a sooty cocoon.

The driver reaches for the radio. Carcen decides to let him switch it on before turning on him. "No," she says. He doesn't glare in the rearview as he complies.

The scenery changes at a gradual, logical pace. Buildings age around them, as though they are driving through time and not polluted winter air. There is less glass, more brick. Trees peek over the backs of the old post-war bungalows, line side-streets, stand guard in bald phalanxes throughout the neighborhoods.

Carcen watches it scroll by through her galaxy of mood lifters, with the glass between, the gray shapes blurring across the boundary of tint. Her fingers move cautiously through her hair, threatening to catch in the dry ends. She looks around for a mirror. There is nothing.

"Fuck."

She rifles through her bag and finds her pocket compact. Almost whimpering out loud, she removes a parched strand of hair from in front of her face, her ragged nail catching and tearing. She hurls the compact into the opposite door; it lands half closed, the mirror dislodged from its housing and stuck out between tortoise shell jaws like a tongue. How did I forget that nail? Her teeth sink into her lip.

They enter 'downtown,' and 'downtown' is old, with narrow streets and ornate buildings that stoop over the traffic with an antiquated pomp. There are some old winos and toughs hanging out near the stained face of the bus station, scattered through the rusted diners. The streets don't seem to go anywhere, just over hills in the distance.

The sign outside the gray obelisk of the Marriott (Downtown) flashes in orange pixels: Today! StarCon 2003...featuring Gray Williams... Carcen Ashe... William Farr-Jones... Brooke Simms... Next week... Farm Machinery Expo... She smirks with a full-bodied contempt. StarCon, sounds about right...

She remembers Lisette's phone call from earlier: "You only sign things in the morning, hon, not to worry. After lunch you just walk out on stage; Bill's there, and Brooke is hosting the thing. Plus, Gray is gonna be there. He's such a pro."

"I barely know Brooke and I fucking despise Bill," she had growled into the phone. And I think I fucked Gray once?

"Well they love you, hon. Adore you." Lisette inhaled, probably from one of her ever-present menthol Kool's, which more often than not made her breath smell like ass and mint. "So, you just answer some questions about the show and that's it, sweetie-all done."

She squeezes the armrest and sneers out the window. "Fuck." She worries her thumb along the damage to her nail.

The car pulls around the side of the large building, avoiding the drop-off and lobby, and stops about halfway down, just past a large, rusted dumpster. Instantly puffing steam as he steps outside, the driver swings back and opens her door. She laughs at the gesture. Crisp winter's air grips her skin, pulling it taut. She swings her boots out the door and stands in the glorified alley. Holding her head high, she struts into the convention center through the nondescript side door, trying not to choke on the anti-climax.

The bowels of the place are unadorned, endless, a cinder block and exposed pipe labyrinth, and someone named Missy is leading her blindly through it all. Missy is the convention's publicist, and takes her job quite seriously¾a woman of her weight and stature has no other recourse.

Before Carcen had stepped ten paces, Missy had met her, shaken her hand (a little too hard within her square fingers), cracked a joke (albeit unfunny¾but a joke nonetheless!) and handed her an itinerary of the day's activities. An itinerary! Carcen would have offered her a job as her own publicist right there on the spot were she the type of person who did that sort of thing, and had she not provided for four of the wretched things already.

Now she is following Missy, occasionally fielding the woman's questions or comments, mostly just following. She watches the short, chunky legs navigate on cheap pumps, scraping the smooth concrete. The action is made all the more tragic as Missy must constantly compromise her quick pace to that of Carcen's slow and deliberate stride.

"I really enjoy your show," says Missy, earnestly. "BlackStar Chronicles, I mean."

Carcen nods. "Thank you."

Poor Missy has done her best, given unremarkable looks and figure and the unimaginable nightmare of Midwest clothing options available to her. Carcen doesn't even want to conceptualize in the broadest, most general sense the heinous crimes committed against hair in the "salons" in this town, chasing thoughts of the pouffy, frizzy, over-dyed, burnt, mullet-shag abominations from their resting places in ever deepening ridges above her eyes.

"We provided everything you requested, Ms. Ashe." Missy informs her in a quaint professional manner. "It's in your section of our backstage area--your dressing room, if you will. Although," and Missy turns here, with a shy tilt to her head, a brave smile. "I'm sure it's nothing like what you're used to."

Carcen nods, unable to stop the "I'm sure," escaping from between her lips and launching toward poor, unassuming Missy-poor, overly competent Missy just trying to claw her way out of this place before it's too late. The line the publicist's mouth collapses into is flawless and straight. They continue quiet now, through the dingy, unheated halls.

Soon, sounds can be heard, opening up and echoing high in a wide expanse of bare concrete. They pass through a large double door, guarded by a fat, pasty-faced man with a sad haircut, and enter the backstage area, which appears to be the equivalent of being lost within an obese woman's negligee, all folds and corridors formed from dusty black cloth.

Missy turns, energy renewed. "I'll show you the common area, where the buffet will be then I'll take you to your personal space."

They pass through a black curtain into a wide room filled with people, cheap chairs and plastic tables covered in food. Carcen straightens, adjusting her sunglasses as she draws a wave of oxygen into herself. Many of the people turn to her, some turn away just as quickly.

"Hello, hello!" a natural, though contrived, English accent calls out. "What do we have here? Our Lady of Perpetual Nightshade herself." It is William Farr-Jones, a BlackStar Chronicles co-star, arms wide in welcome. "Fashionably late, understatedly radiant, and covertly over-medicated¾the quintessential Hollywood starlet."

Carcen conducts a brave, though ultimately futile, struggle with a wince that refuses to twist into a smile, no matter how false. It is somehow appropriate given the circumstances. The older red-faced man approaches, his gin-and-quinine nimbus arriving just slightly before he does. He takes her hands in his, placing air kisses at strategic points just above both of her cheeks. "I guess you finally discovered where the has-beens go when they can't die," he continues.

"Apparently."

The Brit leans in. "You heard about Lela, ya?"

Carcen's mouth remains a flat line. "Yup."

"First a summer blockbuster, now a quickie marriage-can't hold that kid back, huh?" He winked. "No matter how hard you might want to, ya?"

"Oh, Bill," she sighs. "You never know when to shut that deformed fucking mouth of yours."

He cackles Britishly behind unsmiling eyes. Missy shifts, unsure of the encounter. Others chuckle nearby, also unsure, though experienced with such situations. "Wonderful!" Farr-Jones drips, still clutching Carcen's hands in his own.

She tilts her head at a blonde woman, wrapped in a tight black evening dress in the middle of the day. "Is that Brooke? It is," she calls out. "Come here, you little thing, you."

Farr-Jones finally releases her as Brooke, ever-brightening, approaches. Carcen smiles in relief. The two women embrace. More air kissing. Carcen decides to participate this time. She notices Missy growing increasingly out of place then returns her attention to Brooke.

"So, is it true?" Carcen launches preemptively. "Are we to be graced with your presence for more episodes this year?"

Blinking with those big, glassy, candy-like baby-blues, Brooke nodded. "We're still in talks, but I think so."

"Did you know, Carcen, that Brooke was the most sought-after person on the Internet last month?" Farr-Jones has been paying attention, unfortunately. The Brit nods with a drunken leer. "They have to keep you now, my dear."

"But I had heard that you were in talks with the GhostShip people, too, you know, for that space pirate you play so convincingly." Carcen winks. "Can you say spin-off?" She grins, then leans in. "Both sides against the middle is the only way to play it, am I right, girlfriend?"

Brooke sips at her Diet Coke with a grimace, then nods quickly, obligingly. There is a cough behind them, a shuffle.

"Speaking of GhostShip?" Carcen feels buoyant and begins to look around the room. "Where is ole Gray? Mingling with the common folk, as always?"

Farr-Jones nods. "He is, actually-gone outside to talk with some of the plebes in line."

"A true hero." Carcen smirks. "Well, I need to freshen. I'll see the two of you soon, I would imagine." She turns to find, with difficulty, Missy. "Shall we?"

They pass through another curtain, down a black cloth hallway, through more dark fabric into a small space filled with a table, a large mirror, cosmetics, a chair. On another table are two bouquets of flowers, a bowl of fruit, a bottle of vodka, a cooler with cans of club soda, boxes and bags of candy, chocolate bars. There is a small CD player with invasive-looking earpieces. She nods. "Good enough," she says.

Missy turns. "I'll leave you, then. If you need¾"

"Actually, I'd like a copy of the most recent National Enquirer."

"Okay. I'll...uh...I'll have someone drop it by." Missy slips out of the curtain. Exeunt?

Soon, Carcen sits at the table in front of the mirror, vodka-soda to her lips. Off come the glasses. From her bag, she removes a CD case and opens it, prying the chrome disc free and placing it into the sleek player. With a click, the door closes and the disc spins beneath the appraising red eye of the machine. She takes another long sip and places the glass back on the table behind her. Turning to face the mirror, she takes the tiny headphones and gingerly places them in her ears. She hits Play.

The song begins at the perfect volume and she is grateful that she can be immersed immediately in it. Exhausted and bruised-sounding, it drifts into her ears as though lost, stumbling in. She closes her eyes, letting the voice, the sparse accompaniment dissolve everything from her skin outward, letting it set her gently in that soft and lilting place away from the troublesome and twitching speck that is her in there. A song about life: moments shuffled like cards and dealt into a hand that the player has elected to display, even in folding, in defeat. It is not a sad song in itself, but that is what she brings to it, every time.

She opens her eyes and her reflection knows her. And then there is the familiar sensation, like losing one's spot in a sentence, or chewing just to swallow sustenance¾it is gone, though the song plays on and she can only listen now.

When it ends, she removes the phones from her ears, takes the disc out and returns it to its case, to her bag. Din and clatter return passing through the surrounding black cloth and arcing into the wide ceiling of the center. The player is placed on the table behind her.

She looks in the mirror, following the tracks of tears along the skin of her cheeks, along her neck, to where they disappear behind the fabric of her sweater and collect in small pools along the trench of her clavicle. Shutting her eyes briefly, she inhales, holds, releases. Her eyes open in her face, in the mirror. She selects a sable brush, whisking it over the open pot of toner and begins touching up.

The table is particleboard, sporting hollow metal legs, draped in coarse ceremony with hospital linen. It wobbles slightly. She sits at a distance from the thing, Occhialli still in play.

There is a box of markers, the ubiquitous Sharpies, fat and black and ready to spill ink. Beside them are two neat stacks of glossy eight-by-tens, one higher than the other by the width of a Soap Opera Digest. She pokes at the shaky table, as if drawing attention to its handicap. Some of the pictures in the higher pile pull free from the fingers of static holding them together and slide with quiet mischief into minor, though no less irritating disarray.

Even upside down, the face of Spygirl levels her trademark glare with slick, black-and-white flintiness. She levels her trademark, polyvinyl wrapped, twenty-four year old boobs at the viewer as well, all the more perky from this unconventional, though tantalizing angle. Carcen's nail-filed lovingly and re-polished now to a less-than-flawless point-chatters in plastic staccatos upon the fine melamine. She wanted to rub at the shallow pools beneath her sunglasses; instead she slips one of the Sharpies into her purse.

She waves over one of the organizers, Dan or Sam or whatever. He flops up to her in his tired flannel shirt and once-white Tee. A drawing of what appears to be tragically well-endowed schoolgirls and a mess of Japanese script drapes over his concave chest, scrambled by pilly folds. He smells like puppies.

"Water. In a bottle. Not a Dixie cup," she commands.

"Sure, no problem." It is like it is one word: surenoproblem. One passive-aggressive, taut little word. His loose ponytail bounces as he passes through the thin black curtains that lead to the "backstage" area.

She is corralled. A wide square has been blocked off with her glorified picnic table-and Carcen, of course-as its hub. All surrounding the strange bubble of space is activity and anticipation. Voices, shuffling, misplaced hormones colliding in the meta-sphere between doughy bodies. The air at the outskirts is shimmering with noise and odor, pulsing in violent twists that assault her senses and her ever-fading drugs. But within this cocoon everything-and Carcen, of course-is still.

A long line of people, boys or pasty men, and a surprising amount of women, lead out into the expanse of the convention center separated from her by a worn red (pink, really) velvet rope hanging with an unabashed flaccidity between two steel poles. Faces stare unblinking, never maintaining eye contact when she passes her gaze over the shy drift of their circadian mass. She doesn't remember when it-all of this-is supposed to begin.

Her water arrives. Poland Spring, but whatever. There are two pills already free in her pocket. "Thank you, Dan."

"Greg."

She twists the cap, the seal coming apart with its cruel little snap. He leaves in a flourish of ponytail and basement odor, soon lost to the black curtains, the backstage. She washes the pills down with the near-clean tide of water.

Behind the shade, her gaze skulks along the table to her other pile of pictures. The brooding stare of Dr. Sif Raynar, sitting on the bridge of the Blackstar, appears to mock her own weary one. She sips more water. Her breasts aren't in this shot. Not much except her head is. She remembers maybe being hungover the day those shots were taken; the puffiness under her eyes seems to bear this out.

There is a heightened murmur along the line. A man adorned with a myriad of important-looking laminate badges about the various folds of his neck moves toward the velvet-like rope and prepares to unhook it. From a curtain nearby Missy appears, dependable, dumpy, dependably dumpy. She moves in beside Carcen's right ear.

"Are you ready, Ms. Ashe?" she asks.

Carcen smirks with a tightening of the jaw, straightening to perfect posture. She nods ambivalently, the way she imagines a Christian martyr might, before being laid to waste in some unspeakably elaborate execution: with the perfect measure of doubt and certainty that conflates into the monomania of true faith.

Or celebrity...

Missy walks to the front of the line. There is a small smear of mustard on the skirt of her suit, just on the cusp of her somehow wide, yet flat, buttock. Oh, Missy...

"Please try to be brief," the publicist says to the crowd. "And remember that Ms. Ashe will answer all your questions this afternoon during the Q and A in the auditorium." Missy fades back and signals the velvet-rope man, who unhooks the pathetic thing, letting the line advance upon her position.

Faces. So many ugly faces. Unclean, haunted, hopeless faces, turning and twisting into desperate, widening gyres threatening to suck life from her, or pull her apart like she was a bunch of Twizzlers. Some wear costumes. She recognizes the Spygirl vinyl cat-suit, stretched over uneven, pallid flesh. There's even a man with a replica of Bill's alien forehead prosthetic pasted turd-like over his receding hairline.

She is reminded of a song, heard once in the background of some party in the hills; one of those crotch-grabbing, classic rock-type songs. She had picked up on a swatch of lyrics over some conversation, the voice earnest and British, pulled taut as it neared crescendo:

And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people,
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people--
I never thought I'd need so many people.²

Someone has taken the time, made the painstaking effort to place twenty-four, glazed Krispy Kreme doughnuts into six neat and tidy rows of four. They glisten there on the snack table, perfect, golden in the light, winking like pagan treasure. Carcen blinks at them over her sunglasses.

Two dozen, at two-hundred and ten calories each, that's five thousand and forty calories-and about two-hundred and eighty-eight grams of fat. What are these people thinking? Even Bill, with his characteristically British genetic cravings for all things brown and doughy and fried, won't touch them-probably more out of habitual conformity than for any noble motives of cardiovascular health.

Carcen would be hard pressed to remember the last time she ate a doughnut, Krispy Kreme or otherwise. Somewhere, there is a ragged, sepia-toned memory of stopping in at one, some dipshit town like this, as she made her way out to LA way back when. They gave out free samples, which was fortunate considering she had about twenty-five bucks left after her bus ticket. All things considered, a happy time-eating free doughnuts in a parking lot facing west into the sun?

The lights press their tedious weight upon her eyes. She rolls them. How far I've come.

She moves away from the hoard of pastry to what is passing for a salad bar. Soggy lettuce of only one variety-iceberg, (of course)-fermenting in a large and no doubt bacteria-laden bowl; dry carrot sticks; flaccid celery. The only things remotely ripe or edible are a bunch of cherry tomatoes sitting pertly on a tray. Their red vitality calls out to her from the line of vegetable refugees and she feels a kindred sympathy for them. She captures nine with a set of clumsy plastic tongs and places them on her plate. They roll about and misbehave as she moves to the end of the buffet and picks up a bottle of water.

Thankfully none of her co-hosts (or whatever the fuck her title was at this thing-What? Delegate? Celebrity? Celebrity delegate? Hollywood Roadkill? What?) were eating at the moment and only their 'people' huddled around the white plastic tables. Cellular phones were a-blazing, and of course the poor reception and obvious "importance" requires maximum vocal volume. She, for once, wishes the background music were louder, but that might only encourage more boom. As she passes, Carcen is extra careful not to step on any of the dropped names lying like skulls behind a slaughterhouse at her feet.

There is an empty table in a relatively safe-looking part of the room where Carcen hopes to blend into the black cloth walls while she eats. As she wedges into a chair, one of the tomatoes rolls off the plate and onto the floor where it tumbles along until stopping just behind one of the industry-type's chairs. Carcen blinks at it.

For some reason, as she watches the tomato sit in unobtrusive Zen, she is reminded of high school. Maybe the room or the tables bring to mind the ubiquitous cafeteria, the junk food and proto-sexual tension thick in the air. She remembers the cliques, the clubs, the classes (that she skipped to go smoke, or drink cheap whiskey in the brown grass of the park). The boys in their cars with their milky and desperate breaths. Sleeping over at Katie Something-or-other's, leg brushing hers as they watched a Keanu Reeves video, the one where he plays a cop who surfs.

She feels as though she has been keeping something at bay for years, just trying to get herself a minute to think or catch her breath, to be silent, to work out a next move. To try and remember a dream from the night before, lost now in the breezes of morning blowing through a window here or there or wherever she found herself.

It all passes on the flipside of her skull now, like some beam of cheap Super-8 projected wide on a white wall, passing back into minus time?

Me, B.C? Before Carcen?

Her name was Kirsten then. Kirsten Aarflot (of all things) from the black slush outskirts of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Most early memories are clouded, dubious-those of lying in her crib, or of their little three-room trailer, or those of her father-until?

The beauty contests as a small girl, long stretches across dun-colored farmland, just her and her mom and the Gremlin's tinny AM. The competition names, strings of seemingly meaningless adjectives: "Little Miss Perfect Pageant," "Little Miss Sweet n' Sassy Contest," "Tiny Miss Talent Beauty Pageant." She hated the crunch of her little cowgirl outfit, the itch of its vest. Sometimes she had trouble remembering the words to the songs, the steps to the dances. She recalls the faces, pink, bizarre, pressed too close as much as she recalls her mother's bipolar ranting whether Kirsten won or lost.

High school drama class, learning she didn't need to try when it came to acting. The acne-sprayed faces of the rest of her tenth grade class, mouths falling open, as she nailed this or that scene from this or that play. Mr. Leland's breathing as he palmed her breast with his clumsy right hand, her end of the bargain where, in return, he would sign a recommendation to the state's premier theater school.

The bus ride to LA and the first time she saw mountains. The toilet broke halfway through the three-day trip and she wasn't able to wash the stench of waste from her hair for a week after. Waking up at night, black desert swollen indigo against the windows, a small girl in the ambient light watched her across the aisle with eyes like empty holes you could slide your fingers into.

The first weeks in Hollywood, the turn downs, the come-ons. The things that needed to be done; the legwork, the work on her knees. Then she met Lisette with her big plans, big teeth, big bullshit.

-You'll need a new name, sweetie? something slick? Men's names are in this year, misspelled of course? Oo! How about Carcen!

--Carson?

--No, honey. Carcen? Like cigarettes, like French fries, like every damn thing that's oh so good, but oh so bad for you?

Then came the ads, the guest appearances, and finally: The Show. The things that needed to be done; photo shoots, talk shows, that fucking costume, dating closeted queens or grabby, drunk pervs. She couldn't remember when it all stopped bothering her.

-If you don't like it, do something else.

In the trailer, Lela, in the mirror, standing over her shoulder grinning. Her green eyes held embers from the impossible, warm light and offered them in two perfect settings.

With a shake of her head she smiled that smile of hers, that ancient and innocent smile. She held a rouge brush, playing with it, swishing it over her palm, open and flat like some painter's palette, her eyes meeting Carcen's in the mirror, as if picking out a next spot of canvas.

Carcen sighed, punctuated with a pout. She had perfected her pout recently and had been putting it to good use ever since.

-I can't, they want blonde-what am I going to do, go black? And right before the Emmys? Artie'll kill me?

Lela smiled again, sad this time. Her free hand passed through Carcen's hair, smoothing it behind an ear. She gently passed the brush along a cheekbone. With a wink she leaned in and whispered.

-Fuck Artie.

She tickled the brush playfully along Carcen's collarbone.

Carcen met her gaze.

-How do you think I got this job?

Lela blinked at her, unsure.

Carcen smiled eventually and they both broke out into veiled and ragged laughter that failed to leave the confines of the trailer.

She sighs at the far-flung tomato, lying out there in bland, unchurning seas of gray and white like some becalmed warning-buoy. It is suddenly crushed underfoot by Missy. Of course. Poor Missy. The publicist has fetched a National Enquirer and holds it with off-putting reverence in the palms of her hands. Missy crowns her demeanor with a wash of quiet triumph that Carcen predicts will, after years of buried anguish and regret, harden into a formless and insecure hostility-with the possibility of an unfulfilled, though nagging, school-girl/teacher fetish as side-effect.

Not poor Missy? The horror!

"This is the most recent issue we could find," the publicist chirps. She places the magazine on the table just beyond the tray and tomatoes. Lela's face, poorly photographed, looks away as she and her "chef beau" walk to their SUV in some parking lot somewhere.

"That's the one," Carcen says from behind the sunglasses. "Thanks," she adds.

Missy waits that embarrassing extra second before she gets the hint and leaves, which is the difference between working as a publicist for this place and heading up a PR firm in New York or Singapore or anywhere else. She trails dwindling drops of freshly-crushed tomato juice off into the distance.

Carcen never lifts her eyes from the cover. Even in a simple tee, faded jeans, hair up in a baseball hat, Lela is beautiful.

A song, lumbering and whiny drones on the speakers.

Just because you feel it, doesn't mean it's there?³

She sighs and pops a tomato into her mouth. It falls apart without the satisfying burst. The chorus, for effect, repeats itself as choruses often do.

--So it's set, then; we're going together?

Lela stands in the parking lot, just behind the soundstage. It is late autumn, but it feels like anything except winter, it being LA after all. It's early in the second season and still she lapses into a Georgia drawl off the set. Letting 'tuh-geth-uh,' roll off her tongue, and pinwheel in the air like some kind of hypnotic fetish.

Carcen nods, a flaccid copy of the day's pages in her hand.

--Going stag. Yup.

Lela shook her head, grinning mischief.

--Not stag. Together.

Tuh-geeethhh-uhhhh?

Carcen blinked.

--Huh? What's the difference?

--It could be fun.

--What could?

--Going together.

Tuh-geth-uh...

Carcen laughed.

--I thought we were.

--Not as each other's date.

--What?

Lela giggled.

"Eight tomatoes and water?" It is Gray Williams, tall, sandy-haired, tragically masculine, standing at the edge of the table. "Atkins?" His eyes shine but he manages to keep a smile from his face. It is some of the best acting he has ever accomplished.

"South Beach, actually. I didn't spend all that money on veneers just to have my breath smell like shit." She still smiles. "Hello, Gray."

He still doesn't sit. "How was your signing?"

"Sucked." She rolls her eyes from over the sunglasses. "Like a line of extras from Dawn of the Dead-with better costumes and worse skin. Yours?"

He blinks his perfect, clear blue, seemingly vat-grown eyes. It makes him look beautiful but painfully stupid. He shuffles. "It was okay." Shrugs. "It's a living."

She winks. "Any prospects?"

More blinking, three second countdown to realization then launch of boyish smile. "Uhm, not exactly, no." He leans in. "You?"

"A few offers," she chuckles and he joins her.

They are silent as they watch each other. She can only think of the stories.

Gray's heterosexuality is both prolific and historic. Women from coast to coast expound his godlike abilities in bed. Painfully over-hung and over-sexed, he is notorious for never getting off and never losing his pillar-like erection. A starlet, who shall remain nameless, once said that fucking Gray was like "?watching a man pole vault into you?" It once would have been tragic how someone so built for sex, derived no pleasure from it, no matter how much they had. Now it was only a tired and somewhat heavy-handed cliché.

Oddly, Carcen has never been sure if on a certain night in Malibu, at a certain producer's house, she had "been" with Gray. It seemed like something she would remember, especially given the stories. Red wine and cocaine never mixed well and caused nasty blackouts. She remembers sex with someone, not really who, more just not getting off and freaking out a little, then nothing until a slice of pie with Lela at Apple Pan the next morning. There had been a few times where she could have asked him, but she never bothered. Gray was as dumb as a dented can of peaches and talking with him was like trying to get on a merry-go-round horse after the ride had started.

He breaks the silence, pointing at the Enquirer. "Why you reading that shit?"

"How else will I learn to avoid them," she grins. "They could be anywhere." She reaches over and grabs his hand. "We'd better not do anything scandalous." Her gaze passes over the room. No one is looking.

"Okay." More laughter from him, deep, like coughing as he slowly removes his hand. "What hotel they have you at?" Ever the swordsman, even his non sequiturs seem to lead to one conclusion.

"Some disgusting Comfort Inn by the airport," she winces. "You?"

"Ramada, downtown."

"Well," she purrs. "Someone certainly loves you."

He smiles over his shoulder to one of the loudmouths still on the phone. "It's not a bad place. This whole town is kind of nice, you know? Very Anytown, USA."

She grits her teeth. What the fuck is he talking about? She nods at him. He turns to leave. Her hand twitches, lunges forward then stops-never leaving the surface of the magazine. Gray nods toward the backstage, the town outside, everywhere. "I've got to take care of a few things," he says. "See you on stage, baby." Gray pauses. "You should probably eat something more than those tomatoes, you're looking really tired." He leaves.

Carcen nods with a vacuous lurch of her head she only catches in hindsight. She sighs, eyes disappearing behind her Occhialli. Taking her plate, she moves with a mute determination toward the food tables and the rows of Krispy Kremes lined like faceless enemy soldiers on a field of pale, cheap linen.

The entire washroom-the sinks, the toilets, the stalls, everything-is white.

Carcen was wrong about it, or at least partly incorrect. While the place is a hardened Spartan affair with a row of several cubicles, it is actually very clean. She supposes a white washroom would have to be, but still feels the unsettling revelation one does when they find an empathy or understanding with a hated enemy, as though the most private and still center of such a detestable thing or place could only be twisted and black and not pure or pristine in any way.

There are no extras like hand and face moisturizers, or toner, or make-up remover or the like, but she expects none. The fixtures shine away above scum-free porcelain. For an absolutely dreadful sort of place, it at least gives the impression of being sanitary.

Clean or not, the lighting, the fixtures, the entire space is hellish and bright and too, too white. Even behind the shield of her glasses the blaze of overheads is unbearable. The buzz behind her eyes cannot hold back the white.

White is the color of purity, or so they say. Purity implies an absence of some sort, a positive lacking, yet an absence nonetheless. White is empty, it is nothing, but all colors blended together make white. We think it is black, we are often told it is black, but it is white. So it is strange that white is everything as well as nothing. It is beginnings, it is endings, it is pure light. White is the color of stars winking useless in the black echo of the heavens, it is the color of angel's feathers and holy steel. It is the hue of the soul, stripped clean of its earthly grit, face upturned and buoyant in the firmament. White is the color of passing, of conversion. Transitional zones, places of change are often white-airports, hospitals.

That said, Carcen can't figure out why public washrooms, particularly this one, are white. Washrooms are dirty, impure. Even at their cleanest they are some of the filthiest places. Yet here she is in the midst of scrubbed purity.

Against the pale shell of the room she feels overpowered, lost and small. In the mirror she watches, in her outfit of blacks and grays she moves through the white like a rogue particulate.

Like impurity.

There are so many stalls, it is impossible to tell if she is alone. She enters one. There are toilet seat covers, white (of course); it impresses her as she continues. White door closes and she is a pupa in a cocoon-more change, more transition.

I hope the wings go with this outfit.

The Occhialli go in a pocket, exposing her to more light, more pain. She feels the skin at the edge of her eyes twitch like a dying mosquito. Her eyes adjust though she still must squint. The ponytail slips easily into the collar of her sweater. She is careful to crouch, keeping any body parts away from all surfaces. It has been a while and she has to use a finger. There is the burning in her throat, in her mouth and her eyes water.

After, she blinks down into the bowl-doughy, fleshy bits floating there. It looks as though her head has exploded, bloodless. Adrift among the desiccated doughnuts and other desserts, is a half-digested pill. Ugly within her is the impulse to rescue it, to make sure it doesn't go to waste. In the end she leaves it-as a triumph, a matter of pride.

Not a junkie, after all?

Someone moves in another stall. They sniff about and shuffle papers, maybe peeling a leaf of seat covering free and placing it down. How long have they been there?

Carcen pulls her ponytail from her collar. There is no choice but to get out there. She flushes down the former contents of her stomach, pill and all, clears her throat and exits.

Carcen fights to lead a straight and steady path to the sink, where she turns the tap and palms some cold water to her lips. Its metallic taste stains her tongue as she swishes and spits. The face in the mirror looks back with red-rimmed, red-tinted eyes.

"Fuck."

Lela, in the mirror, standing over her shoulder-always over her shoulder there. She watched Carcen touching up before they left the studio for the day. Their eyes met.

--You should insure those eyes, you know?

It was dumb, but Lela was cute enough to pull it off. Carcen laughed.

--For how much?

Their eyes met again, Carcen pouring on the flirt. Lela wasn't laughing.

--For everything.

"Fuck."

She clutches for the Occhialli as she hears a flush. From the crude stall, the almost impossible form of Brooke Simms exits. There is the quantum instant as they recognize one another, the moment where the situation neatly separates into two threads of surface and subtext and both women decide how they will behave on each one.

Brooke strikes a dramatic pose, hitting a non-existent mark on the tiles. "Doctor Raynar," she drawls in that dreadful accent she uses on the show-sounding like the orally deformed lovechild of Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle and Chekov from Star Trek. "Fancy meeting you here."

They laugh. Brooke's teeth are as white as the room, like tiny windows, doorways into other incarnations of this very place at this very moment in time. Her teeth are disparate from her whole, which would be the color of California if there was such a thing-equal parts blue, bronze and blonde.

Carcen looks around the room, bringing it into the conversation. "You know, our entire careers are based on those?freaks out there never knowing we ever use a place like this."

Brooke laughs without the aid of her eyes. "Have you seen some of them?" she says. "I've been to one of these before, but this batch takes the cake."

"Pretty scary," Carcen agrees, nodding.

Brooke runs a hand through her hair, letting it fall back into place, flawless, "I mean exfoliation: get into it."

Carcen crosses her arms and watches Brooke's glossy lips work around the almost weightless words, watches her straining cleavage bob in time with her impassioned recounting of the morning's events.

Brooke had parlayed her major breasts and a minor guest appearance as Vandall, the leader of a band of space pirates, on one episode of BlackStar Chronicles, into instant geekboy fan obsession; proving that if you've got it (or bought it) and use it, you can go a long way. Thanks to a wave of hormone-inspired viewer response, the producers had put her in another episode, and there was talk of still more next season.

This had resulted in a recurring role on Gray's show (and BlackStar's rival): GhostShip, convention appearances, a website of all things Brooke, and a CD of torch songs, hastily recorded and available online. Carcen hates to know this about her, but Lisette had brought it up countless times as leverage to get her to do something she didn't want to do-like this, for instance.

Brooke shakes her head. "Like, did you have that one with the nose whistle thing?"

Carcen has to laugh. "Yes!" She grips onto Brooke as they giggle about it. "Talk about a restraining order waiting to happen."

"Totally." Brooke becomes somewhat serious. "A lot of them are just sad, I guess. Like the dykey ones. I mean, even if I was-which, between you and me: eewy!-even if I was, though, like, no way. Not with that hair, that gut-" Brooke's face shrivels assuming a pre-vomitous retch. "Those clothes."

Carcen is nodding, her mouth a thin line. "I know," is what she says.

Brooke laughs, her teeth accenting the room once more. She smiles at Carcen. "We should totally grab a bite to eat tonight."

"Okay." Carcen brightens. "God knows where, though-unless you want to order a bunch of appetizers from TGI Friday's?"

They giggle some more. Brooke shakes her head. "Actually, my agent took me to the restaurant in my hotel, forget what it's called, but the food is pretty good."

Carcen blinks then continues. "Where are you staying?"

"Hilton, downtown." Brooke shrugs.

Carcen bites her lip. "Okay. What time?"

"Meet me in the bar for seven?"

"Perfect."

"Well." Brooke checks her watch. "We still have that question and answer thing with the freaks."

Carcen passes her tongue along her lip, absently trailing the dry skin. "I'll meet you there."

Brooke's heels clack her out the door.

Back to the sink, the mirror, her reflection looking back at her, back at her faded, shadow-clad figure in this loud white room. More pills from the bottle, a splash of water. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. The ambient light allows her to see her eyes beneath the sunglasses, the heavy, red lids. She sighs.

"Fuck."

There is nothing in the mirror but her, and the bright white of the washroom over her shoulder.

The bowels of the place seem to have sub-bowels. She has wandered into a dark and quiet storage area of some kind, full of dust and crates. There is a comfort in the nebulous space, the darkness, clustered tightly around her, if only because of its contrast to the rest of the Marriott's convention center with its lofty, agoraphobic guts. Without the dust, it would be perfect, given her predicament.

Her purse is cluttered, but eventually she finds what she is after. It is a passing curiosity how an object as small as her handbag can lose an object as large as the bottle.

She dry swallows another pill. Under the circumstances there is no other choice. Desperate times, and all that? Nothing prepares a person for whatever this was she was in; nothing prepares one for a fan Q&A. It was a disturbing and atrocious concept come to life, not unlike fake finishing or thermonuclear war. She steadies herself against the idea, trying not to touch any of the dust covered materials around her.

This isn't about stage fright?it's about survival.

She taps a finger on the purse, the soft pat diffused in the tight darkness. A symptom of boredom, of impatience-of fear? What does it matter? The tiny points of medication are sinking into her now, like spokes on a wheel and they begin to turn with her at the center, the axis. The shadows lounge against one another, grays bleeding into black, passing into softened nothingness, passing by.

New York City passed black and gray and vertical outside. Carcen was having a difficult time not pressing her face to the limousine's tinted glass. Lela was having no such conflict, she grinned up at all the steel and glass and stone. Occasionally, in her excitement, she would forget the flute full of Veuve Clicquot she was holding and some would jet free and spill onto the leather seats. Carcen winced and dabbed at the droplets with a napkin before they rolled back to be soaked by Lela's Dior gown. She slid the cotton warm inches away from the long slit in the sheer fabric and the lengthy, tanned swatch of thigh showing through.

Lela turned, wide-eyed and smiling. Carcen dabbed at the champagne, making a show of it.

-Watch your dress.

Lela laughed, a short whoop escaping her.

-'Sokay, I didn't pay for it.

Carcen smiled and took a sip from her own glass, abiding the dry eruption of foam in her mouth. She tried not to wince-still hoping to overcome her aversion to the stuff. Champagne, she had realized early on, was something one learned to live with, not unlike a lazy eye or a chronic disease.

Lela leaned in close, meeting Carcen's gaze with a false scowl.

-Wouldn't have worn a dress if you hadn't been so grumpy about it.

Carcen straightened, looking out the window.

-Like you actually would have worn a tux.

Lela leaned back, slumping against the seat as though laden with incredulity.

-It's not like I woulda been the first to do it.

Another sip of champagne. Lela squinted.

-You're afraid.

Carcen turned.

-And you're drunk.

Lela leaned back, her gown offering a glimpse of golden skin at the shoulder, the graceful descent between her breasts. She smirked, green eyes flaring before she brought the glass to her lips.

-Tipsy, actually.

Carcen blinked at her, sighing.

-Mm-hmm...

She smiled to soften the edge the comment was unwilling to shrug free. Lela's face clouded and Carcen put her hand on a dress covered section of her thigh.

-What's wrong?

Another sip and Lela shook her head with a self-deprecating smirk.

-Just bein' silly?

-Come on.

-'S nothin'. Really?

The Spygirl patented ice-blue stare was leveled at the girl.

-Le-la?

-I'm scared.

Carcen smiled, not cruelly.

-What ever for?

-Aren't you? I mean? I just? How do you even do this, y'know?

-Do what? Ride in a limo?

Lela shook her head, she looked to the floor of the car, perhaps for the words, perhaps for a piece of missing jewelry.

-How do we do this? This? I mean? what prepares you for any of this? For all of this?

How long has she been standing in here among the boxes of t-shirts and magazines and dusty action figure packages? She rubs at her eyes and sniffs. The dust has dried out her nose.

A voice calls out in the hallway-is it her name that is sounded? There it is again. It's the steadfast Missy looking to collect her and shepherd her off to the fans-their naked and trembling virgin sacrifice. She smirks loathingly at that.

They had pulled around a corner and could already see crowds, flashes of light, fans. Lela indicated it with a sweep of her arm. Carcen blinked at it all then at the girl. She squeezed Lela's thigh meeting the girl's gaze with a warm, understanding smile.

-Don't worry?

Lela grinned brightly, tears in her eyes. Carcen winked.

-I'm scared shitless too.

They both broke into soft laughter, Lela swatted at Carcen's shoulder.

-Asshole?I'm going to stumble out of here sobbing and fall on my face or somethin'?

Carcen rolled her eyes.

-Well, I guess we'll still be guaranteed our "big entrance."

Lela shook her head, putting her champagne in a holder.

-I said I was tipsy, not smashed. There's still a difference, y'know?

-In Georgia, maybe?

She leaned in to Carcen.

-What's wrong with you? Huh?

Lela tickled at Carcen's ribs, causing her to jump back, grinning uncertainly.

-Hey!

-Is my little Spygirl all cranky 'cause she doesn't have a date? Hmm?

Carcen giggled as the drunken Southerner continued to tickle at her, their bodies beginning to entwine. She poked back at Lela.

-Hey! I turned down a bunch of offers because we said we were going stag.

Lela laughed and kept tickling with her left hand as she grabbed at Carcen's wrist, trying to hold her down. The two of them used some martial arts blocks, sparring a little as they tried to gain the advantage. Lela kept laughing. Carcen giggled too, playfully slapping at Lela.

-Stop it. You're going to wreck my Versace.

-Oh, is my little Spygirl upset? Aww. My poor little Spygirl.

Lela wrapped a leg around Carcen's trying to hold her still. She leaned forward as if trying to kiss Carcen, making a lecherous face.

-Don't worry. I'm still gonna try and fuck ya at the end of the evening, if that's what you're worried about?

Carcen pushed Lela off of her, straightening. She fussed with the front of her gown.

-We're here.

The limo fell in line with the other limos. Flashes, gowns, tuxes, crowds could be seen. Carcen slid forward looking out the window, leaning up to it. She turned to Lela, smiling suddenly.

-You ready?

Lela threw back the rest of her champagne, sneering as she swallowed.

-Yup.

Carcen followed Lela's hand as she returned the flute.

-You okay?

Lela's eyes veiled.

-Mm-hmm.

The door was opened, Carcen prepared to swing her leg out to leave. She already had her gaze fixed a hundred feet outside the door. Lela watched her.

-Are you?

-What?

-I didn't say anything?

Carcen turned back to the sound and the flashing lights.

Missy is getting closer, the echoes in the hall are less faint now. The tap and scrape of the publicist's cheap heels resound like the grunts and wails of some mythic gorgon on Carcen's trail.

Who works this hard?

There is a high wall of crates and she moves for it, hoping it will be the perfect hiding spot. She pushes past the boxes, the containers, her footsteps sluggish. The calls from the hall pass close then begin to fade. Soon she must leave, but not yet. She turns and leans against one of the boxes as the unassuming grey swell of the drug overtakes her, leaving her panting ever-so-slightly, like how she imagines women of two hundred years earlier might.

Her body soon adjusts and she opens her eyes. At first she believes it is a mirror she stares into, her face reflected pale and blurry in the shade of the room. But what light there is leaking in from the hall is reflecting off her face in an odd, two-dimensional way. Its impossibility unsettles her before she understands what it is she is looking at. The cardboard cutout of her is slightly shorter than she is and wears the Spygirl vinyl. It was taken early on, before she had insisted on a better hairstyle. She doesn't remember ever being in such good shape.

Beside the cutout are others, several standing out in rows, pushing back into the darkness-or was it out of it?-a legion of the same figure; a clone army befitting any from BlackStar Chronicles. Lela posing as Kat from Spygirl, her eyes, hundreds of her eyes, jagged in the dark and aimed at her.

In another time or place, or with a different bloodstream, Carcen might find it hysterical. Or under those conditions perhaps she might cry. Here and now she blinks in a bare ambivalence, empty though not completely free from her being.

She imagines what she is feeling as an old wooden rowboat tethered to an older wooden dock, bobbing dangerously in the throes of a squall. It is a familiar feeling in many ways, that of connections, tenuous or true that you cannot cut free of. That of coarse weather and unyielding tides. That of being unable to choose between boat and shore; knowing too well the futilities of both.

And with that said, sublimating the steady urge to sink breathless into the twisting embrace of the sea and its green oblivion, as lost and tragic as any one-named maiden from myths or poems half-remembered.

Carcen tries to ignore the fact that her cell phone is completely off. It's not set to Vibrate, not set to Text-Only-it is completely dormant somewhere in her purse. She imagines it there in its fuzzy state of suspended animation, its dreams of Lisette and her evil army of messages lined up in Praetorian rows, ever increasing. She must think of the gadget as useless, devoid of meaning, only a plastic shell.

Competition.

Where is she now? She squints up at a sign. Main Street-so original-with its slush and gray and rubber boots, sags through the center of town, crossing the river at the Main Street Bridge (more staggering creativity). A light, large-flaked snow begins to fall. Carcen can read the signs, see the bridge, the river as though they are on a slide behind a thin layer of wax paper in one of those prissy photo albums that grandmothers nationwide have in their bottom drawers.

She has ditched the rest of the convention. She has decided to take a walk down by the river. She has to keep moving, down to the river and across to the soot stained streets on the other side. Her hands, her feet are cold now in an absent, detached sort of way, as though the sensation was external rather than internal, like they were descriptions rather than feelings, impressions of some far off place spoken by an acquaintance over a static-soaked phone. Without thinking she ducks into a store to warm up, the gust of heat causing her to shiver in time with the hollow sound of the door chime. She smirks at that, imagining her poor little bones rattling and tinkling around inside her skin.

And here she is, late afternoon, that Midwest, mid-winter gray left behind her, and the rude glow of a 7-11 pressing against her. From behind his slit in the bivouac of cigarettes, bullet proof glass and Slim Jims, the old clerk blinks suspiciously at her. She smiles-an embarrassing, stoner's smile-at him and struts toward the magazines.

The pills keep on coming, her earlier binge paying off big dividends now. It slides over her, licking her in tongues, swallowing her in lips of muted violet and coral and she braces against the cheap particleboard magazine racks, resisting the urge to just slump into the aisle beside Twinkies and cans of chili.

Brooke stares at her, pouting her lips as if to say, "There, there, darling. There, there?"

Brooke is on the cover of Maxim this month, straining coyly against a blue bikini. Carcen puts a hand over her mouth as a rush of formless sound escapes it. The chipper script, inked in azure reads: "It's Good to be a Geek! Brooke Simms: At least TWO Reasons You Should Watch Sci-Fi!" She pushes away, blinking, hand clasped over numb lips.

Then she remembers the National Enquirer, and tells herself not to look at it, but then looks at it, finds Lela's face, blurry as it is. Her hand tightens over her mouth.

And then she has to keep moving again. Out the door, chime bleeding into frozen air and the sound of her feet on sidewalk. When was the last time she worked out? Her lungs strain in the cold air and she slows to a walk. She has to keep moving.

During commercials Carcen stood, usually leaving Lela sulking, and mingled as best she could. Fuck her! It was the Emmys! She did her best to push the thought of seat-fillers sitting in her chair from her mind and focused on the tasks at hand. She shook hands with Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, who was actually completely and charmingly surprised that he won. Clinked glasses of water with Best Actress in a Drama Nominee (No Chance) just outside the main theater. She even small-talked with Best Actress in a Mini-series or Made-for-TV Movie. She had to keep moving. Who knew if she would ever get invited to one of these things again? A low point was when Creepy '70s Action Star propositioned her as she left the ladies room, but she managed to pretend that she hadn't heard and slipped away quickly and quietly. Everything sparkled in the lobby, the theater, on the people walking about and so did she. She would pass back into the wide room and make it to her seat just in time for the next segment, before the lights dimmed, just as Lela's eyes drooped sadly away from her.

Her phone is on now. Her fingers are numb as she tries to work and scroll through the numbers, so many numbers, all the useless numbers.

"Fuck."

Then she has it against her ear, surprised there is a connection, that there is a ring, two, three. Then the machine, Lela's voice.

"Fuck."

It's me, leave a message?

Not a trace of her accent. Not a trace of a husband.

BEEP

"Uh? Lela? I?"

Fuck.

"You got married, sweetie. I wasn't invited? A tear, sweetie. A tear?"

Fuck.

"Uh?I'll?I'll be sure to drop by and take you out to celebrate? Oh? by the way? who is he?"

Fuck!

"Anyhoo? Take care, sweetie? I? I'm happy for you?"

She has to keep moving. She has to keep moving, down to the river and across to the soot stained streets on the other side. She drops the phone dead into her purse, all the possible conversations and communications winking out in one silent, electronic yelp.

That phone is my heart, she thinks.

If the pervading undertone in a hotel bar is one of nebulous despair and desperation, in a hotel restaurant it is that of restlessness and fatigue. Patrons who wander in are usually guests on their first night in town, too tired or wary to wander through an unfamiliar place-anxious to begin their vacation but too exhausted and overwhelmed to do so just yet. Red-eyed and tense from their journeys they sit and listlessly order overpriced steak dinners and the requisite cocktails.

The restaurant at the Hilton (Downtown) is no different. Fathers sit bleary-eyed in front of their cooling porterhouses, blinking in disbelief at their offspring as the children squeeze perfectly good (or at the least overpriced) salmon through their fingers, while their wives admonish demurely from behind the fronds of a wilted salad. Older, obese couples sit in silence, often beside one another, as though the other wasn't there. They consume hefty meals, drinks in parallel, independent from each other. There is the steady clink of glasses, the clank of knives, forks and plates, and the constant burr of conversation-though when one looks around the dark room, it appears that no one is eating or talking.

The waiter brings Carcen's drink-her second-and places it on the white table in front of her. She nods, still unable to remove her eyes from the salmon-fingered child. When she finally does, she notices her vodka and soda is accompanied by a lime. She turns, but the waiter is gone.

In resignation more than anything else, the lime is launched at its similarly unwanted predecessor, where it slumps and bleeds into the tablecloth. She sips at the drink, which is once again woefully deficient in vodka.

"Fuck."

With as much patience as possible, Carcen performs a small list of tasks-taps finger on table; watches obese man devour plate of fried clams; wishes cancer of the scrotum on waiter-before finally checking her watch. She takes a large gulp of the drink. It is seven forty-two and counting.

Along one wall of the restaurant is a large authentic-reproduction oil painting. Rendered in the usual pale and fleshy tones, the eighteenth-century odalisque comes equipped with the requisite huge thighs and small boobs. She smirks at this. How many other bricks in the foundation of society beside the definition of feminine perfection were completely reversed now, as well? she wondered. The woman's eyes, her coy yet confident gaze cast over a pillow-like shoulder, make up for a face that fails to translate through time. It's as if the woman is in a gesture implying: Despite everything-and because of it-you will want me.

Carcen downs the rest of the drink. Sneering unconsciously at the painting, she announces to no one. "I have to take a piss?"

As she navigates the tables and chairs, a family of four comes barreling toward her. She narrowly escapes collision, finding refuge in an empty side room, full of odd, fake trees. One of the children stomps by, singing the theme to "Friends" in a sinister, Village of the Damned monotone. I'll be there for you, I'll be there for you, I'll be there for you, I'll be there for you?

The NBC party was hopping and Carcen was initially very glad she had accepted the invite-even if Lela didn't want to join her. It was held in the elegant upper two floors of a midtown hotel and the champagne and ass-licking was flowing. The party itself was lame, to say the least-mostly execs and first season sitcom stars waiting around to see which Friend might show up.

Carcen had drifted on the fringes of the party all night and finally found herself slightly inebriated and seeking refuge in a large, glass enclosed solarium. A solarium at night, where else would she find herself?

There were dozens of flowers and plants, most of them asleep, although a sweet fragrance still pervaded. Carcen clutched her champagne to her, as though it might protect her or light the darkened enclosure.

Someone was in there with her.

Of course?

They stood, turning to face her.

-Lela?

-Hi?

She smiled sweetly, drunkenly. Carcen grinned.

-I thought you were going back to the hotel?

-It seemed like a good idea at the time? but then it just sounded-

-Lonely?

Lela smiled as if Carcen had spoken her secret name.

-Yeah. Lonely?

She said it: lone-lay, rendering the state appealing somehow. They stood looking through the dimness at one another. Then Carcen clinked her glass against Lela's.

-Well, you're not, now.

Lela sipped, smiling up at her.

-No. I suppose I'm not.

The little boy has stopped his song and stares up at Carcen. He aims his fingers at her, opening fire almost immediately. "Bus-i-ness?strictly, bus-i-ness," he says before his mother calls for him.

On the way to the washroom she passes the waiter and glares. "Hey, I'll have another drink." He nods. She sneers. "Less lime more vodka this time, 'kay?" As she moves away she feels flush. Guess there was some vodka in there after all?

Another check of the watch, another sigh. Five after eight.

She pushes aside the heavy door of the restroom and finds herself looking at a tacky print of the New York skyline, World Trade Center intact. Like it was on that night too?

Carcen tilted her head at the girl.

-Sweetie, what is it? Something's been up your ass all night.

Lela slouched.

-Dunno? This? All of this? Everything? It's too much, you know?

-I think so?

Lela looked out the glass, out into the photon-rich Manhattan night. Her face stained in a pale light.

-None of this ever seemed real until tonight. It was just the two of us, playing dress-up, you know? I guess it just seemed like playtime until that guy who was the kid from "Married with Children" hit on me.

They laughed. Carcen nodded.

-He grew up real creepy, didn't he?

Lela's smile waned.

-Two years ago, a year even, this was all I wanted. This was all I could remember wanting. Now, all it makes me feel is-

-Scared?

Lela met Carcen's gaze, holding it fiercely. She nodded.

-Very afraid.

Carcen took a sip of the vile champagne.

-Afraid and misunderstood?

-Like no one could ever understand?

Carcen smiled a completely uncomplicated smile.

-I do.

They stood nodding at each other in silence, with New York City peeking in through the glass.

There is a phone in the hall outside the washrooms. She tries to remember how to access her messages back at the hotel. Has she even given out her number to anyone? After a few botched attempts, she is finally able to check. In the end, there are only four messages-all Lisette. Each begins: "SIGH! Sweet-ie?" and are obviously in reference to Carcen's AWOL status at the convention. There are no other messages.

As she maunders back to her seat, the little boy and his sister come charging through the hall knocking Carcen off balance, causing her to sprawl out of the passage. Cutlery and plates rattle loudly as she crashes into a nearby table. Faces turn, there is tittering, that fuck of a waiter has a smirk she could cut off his face. Rage thrashes through her now as the bitter flood of alcohol tussles with the other chemical tenants in her bloodstream. Her hand knots up in the table cloth.

A deep breath sublimates the tendency for outburst and she straightens. Not even an accidental glance at her watch (which reads twenty three minutes after eight) shatters her hard-won calm. With perfect posture she strides to her table, past the shiny yellow faces of diners who return to their plates.

Her drink is waiting, lime resting snuggly upon its rim. Her fist tightens at her side. She takes the glass in her hand and hurls it full force into the long odalisque where it splashes and shatters with a loud crash. There are a few gasps and a small scream-conversation comes to a halt.

"Motherfucker!" Carcen yells.

Workers in the back, guests in small private chambers poke their heads out. The waiter appears locked in stasis, caught between a sheepish slouch and embarrassed anger. He begins to skulk toward her.

She turns, rage tightening in her chest. "Yeah, you, you little shit."

"Ma'am, calm down?"

"Calm down? Calm down?" Her face constricts. "Fuck you!"

The waiter will not enter an invisible circle drawn around her, six feet in radius. Carcen blinks at the room, at faces open and gawking. Vodka and soda shimmers on the surface of the painting, on the nude skin of the model, giving it that slick Playmate shine. Her anger is thrust out to the extremities, like quills proffered, while her core is coiled tight and detached. It is all unsophisticated and embarrassing but out of her control for the moment.

As she shouts more obscenities, an unhealthy, overweight woman moves through the tables toward her-a manager, perhaps?

"Ma'am? Ma'am, please calm down." She has a kind face, honest though tired and pudgy. "Ma'am, are you a guest at the hotel?"

"I was supposed to meet someone here, at seven."

There's giggling from somewhere behind them. She spins in rage, seeking the person out, not finding their face in the brown light of the room. The manager continues to speak calmly to her. "Ma'am, are you a guest at the hotel? Do you have your guest ID card? The one you use as a key?"

"Fuck!" Her vision is cloudy-tears? "Fucking bitch, fucking bitch!"

"Ma'am, there's no need to call me names." The manager coos at her. "Do you have a guest ID card?"

Carcen riffles through her purse, fingers brushing against the bottle of meds, then a card of some kind. She pulls it free and stares at it. She laughs bitterly and throws it at the woman; it bounces off her fat bosom and onto a table. It is the trading card the whistle-nosed fan had placed into her hand-Spygirl stares up at the two of them. Carcen laughs in harsh spasms.

The manager sighs sadly. "Ma'am, if you're not a guest here we're going to have to ask you to leave?"

The Ramada Inn (Downtown) is just a motel with delusions of opulence. Surfaces are ersatz wood and marble, faded in a dejected sort of way. The lobby is big but not grand and has a chandelier which can best be described as the decorating equivalent of premature ejaculation.

Carcen sways as she waits for one of the elevators to arrive just off the empty lobby. The intoxicants pass over her now, washing free the grit of perception, if only for a moment, leaving something almost clean and empty like nothingness. It is a blissful few instances, then they pass and she is there, so there in the bright lights of the Ramada Inn (Downtown) waiting for the elevator to arrive.

The Musak version of "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" buzzes tinny and tiny like a smattering of iron filings in the bottom of a can. She bites her lip as the chorus crackles.

"Fuck."

Her eyes look to the elevator for salvation of some kind. The little round light makes its descent toward her, blinking on and off, closer and closer with an adorable menace.

10?9?8?7?6?

Backwards, counting down like the hours lost to her now. She checks her watch. How did it get to be eleven forty-three? All she can remember is the compact, oddly attractive (though handsome) girl behind the hotel desk recognizing her and exchanging Gray's room number for an autograph (scribbled blearily on the hotel's cheap stationary) and now here-elevator limbo.

Another rush of soft toxins, feathers behind the eyes, under the skin like she is a pillow or a comforter or an old winter's coat thrown absently across a bed.

The elevator arrives without announcement, doors opening onto an empty car.

"Ding," she says to no one and staggers aboard.

She selects the top floor and slouches back against the wall. Suddenly, she begins removing her boots with a clumsy haste, fumbling with them and tossing them aside. She slides her stockings off next, slipping them off and standing upright in bare feet. She reaches out blindly and presses Stop. The elevator shudders to a halt between the sixth and seventh floor. With a long exhale she leans her head back against the wall again.

New York City lights still swelled at the center of things, choking the street in front of Penn Station with a rush of visual clamor. Their limo waited, caught in a line of traffic at the stoplights in front of the taxi stations. Lela made drunken gargoyle faces from behind tinted glass at the three tourists waiting in mute panic. She turned and beamed at Carcen with eyes that were all pupil, her lips curled back in a charming, though obviously tipsy, grin.

-You're fucking gorgeous, you know that?

Carcen laughed and took another sip of champagne. She had insisted they open another bottle, even though she detested it, even though they had both had enough, even though Lela had adamantly protested they don't, whispering her reasons into Carcen's ear.

-Any more and I'm gonna do something we're both gonna love, but ultimately regret?

Carcen checked the vent to see if it still leeched cool air into the back. Her eyes traced along Lela's calf-she had turned back to the street-and up her thighs. She rolled her fingers in the breeze of air conditioning then reached toward the point where her friend's legs met at mid thigh, a point framed aesthetically by the slit in the Dior.

Lela turned, her glance traveling along Carcen's fingers and up her arm, gaining a momentum, a strength, as she finally met her gaze. Carcen's mouth opened slightly. Lela smiled. Carcen straightened, indicating the champagne bottle.

-I?I wondered if you wanted more?

Lela exhaled then slumped back into her corner of the back seat.

-Fuck? whatever?

-Lela-

-Don't.

Outside the city passed unawares as it unfolded toward the park. Carcen sipped at the champagne again. It still tasted wrong in her mouth.

The elevator has stopped. She is startled for a second as she thinks it is stuck between floors, until she remembers it is she who has stopped it here. Then she remembers the rest. She sighs and slides her hands under her skirt, removing her panties and drops them on the floor on top of the stockings. Kneeling, she slips on her boots and stands. She draws in a deep breath and then presses the stop button again. The elevator lurches back into action.

The doors open on the tenth floor and she swaggers out into darkness. Following a dim sign, she is led along the crimson lit hallway to the room number she was given. There is no difference in the color of the lighting and that behind her eyelids, the equal transition between the two states is somewhat disconcerting, but she forges on.

She arrives at the door. A TV hums at the far end of sound. A quick preening of the hair, patting down of the skirt and she is ready. The knock is loud enough, though she doesn't believe so at first. There is a shuffling from inside the room. The door opens.

Gray blinks out into the hall, his body covered in a white terrycloth robe. "Carcen? What're you doing here?"

She grins wide, batting her eyes at him. "I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd stop in, sweetie?"

He sniffs at the air. "Are you drunk?"

"I've been drinking, sweetie." She shakes her head in admonishment. "I'm not drunk."

He doesn't move. "What happened to you today? A lot of people were pissed off."

"Fuck 'em." She tosses her head back and laughs. "I had a call, it ran long." She crosses her arms in mock disappointment. "Well, aren't you going to invite me in?"

"Uh?"

She pushes past him into the room. It's actually quite spacious and somewhat luxurious, all things considered. The TV's large face displays another large face of a local newscaster. Carcen can't hear what he's saying. She leans against a waist high set of drawers. He follows her in, the door shutting softly on its hydraulic arm. "Uh?I was just about to turn in?"

"Into what?" She winks.

He blinks in that good-looking but stupid way he often does. "Huh?"

"Never mind." Carcen reaches out her hand. "Come here?"

He steps toward her after a moment, eyes darting about. She takes his hand, feeling all the muscles in his forearm knot for but a second. Her eyes meet his as she places his hand just under her skirt, just under the patch of hair between the legs, moving his hand so the fingers part her. His eyes widen as he feels her skin slick there. "Don't go to bed right away?" she purrs.

Gray wrenches his hand free. "Look?it's been a long day?" He steps back into the middle of the room. He won't look at her. "Why don't I give you a buzz tomorrow, huh? Maybe we could grab some brunch or whatever, huh?"

Carcen slumps at the shoulders and is about to speak when the bathroom door opens. Brooke, a towel draped around her waist only, blinks wide-eyed at her. Gray bites his lip and shakes his head.

Carcen shoves a vase off the chest of drawers. She runs a shaking hand through her dry, dry hair.

"When does the 'show' fucking stop?" she yells.

She breaks into a run, passing Gray who stammers something, passing Brooke with her huge fucking tits, out the silent door that doesn't slam.

And then it is the red Hell hallway and the feeling she is not moving. Embracing her and cooing at her are the drugs, they pass her along to the elevator (which is still there, thankfully) and soon she is back in the cleansing, sterile light and going down.

At the time, she had been too distracted to actually appreciate the generous gesture that was the gift basket she was rummaging through. The production company had sent it as a token of their esteem, and for a successful first season of the show, using Emmy night as an occasion to reward her achievements.

A serious contract renegotiation would have been nicer, she thought with a scowl.

The basket had been sitting on a table in her hotel room when she had returned late that night. She had put the perfume, the trendy electronics, the streetwear aside and had opened the bar of Belgian chocolate, nibbling sadly as she watched New York pass below her window.

She sighed and moved for the phone. In her distress, she had ordered yet another bottle of champagne, of all things. With a thud, she slumped into a chair at the table and dialed the front desk. Soon, she had canceled her order and returned to the chocolate.

There were flowers on the table as well, from Lisette, from the producers, even the crew had sent some along. With a wince she slipped off her heels and relaxed her feet, leaning back and taking in the large suite. Two spacious rooms, expensive furniture, wide bed, quiet, empty. Her nail tasted bitter in her mouth. She exhaled.

She darted to her closet and pulled out a casual-looking dress, laying it out on the bed. She needed a drink. Maybe the hotel bar was still open? Off came the diamond earrings, the necklace, the gown. She slid the dress on and stepped in front of the mirror. The hair worked with it somehow-maybe the jacked-up tits helped? She nodded.

There was a knock at the door. Fucking assholes? They hadn't canceled her order. She moved for the door, clasping up the final bits of dress as she did.

-Well, I'm not paying for-

It was Lela. In a silk robe, short sapphire nightie, trembling-Lela. As the door swung open, she had looked into-claimed-Carcen's eyes and entered the room. Carcen stepped back. Lela let the door close and stood, still looking into her eyes. Their breathing was the only sound.

With a rush of fabric, of breath, they embraced, lips brushing tentative at first then with a mounting comfort. Somehow they found the bed, bodies pressed together, hands through hair. Lela's hands, her lips were spinning, malleable things, parting like thrown clay, swelling and soon moving out of Carcen's control. She lay back.

Her skirt, their other clothes came free and they clutched each other, blindly claiming skin in the darkness. Soon, Carcen felt the soft electric tickle of Lela's hair, skin, her lips at the center of her. She leaned her head back into the pillow, unable to stop one word from escaping her in a whisper.

-Fuck?

The elevator hasn't moved. The number remains on 10. With a bleary eye she blinks up at it. She hasn't pushed the button.

"Fuck."

Now she does and the machine comes to life. Push the button, the machine comes to life-one of the axioms of the Modern age?

Her legs are cold and she looks down to discover they are bare. Then she remembers the rest. She sees the stockings, panties on the floor in a pathetic little heap. Her stomach heaves violently; once, twice.

Push the button, the machine comes to life?

She puts a hand to her mouth, but has to remove it and bends into the corner of the elevator. In the end, it is mostly liquid. She collects her clothes and steps out when the doors open.

The lobby of the Ramada Inn (Downtown) is empty and quiet, its only window yawning wide onto darkness. She hopes there are still cabs running.

Out there, through the rain, the suburban lights have the sublime and detached glow of stars. Thousands float scattered in the slick ether of the winter night. They twinkle, disembodied and radiant against a depthless wall of black-a wide nothingness defined only by their existence among it.

Further out the huge chain restaurant signs hang wide and bright like cheap, ugly pictures beside dormant little barn-shaped or chalet-shaped or restaurant-shaped buildings. The parking lots lay empty, garbage blowing disinterested and listless over the asphalt. On the roads, the street lights continue to work grudgingly, changing half as often as they might in the day. The occasional car hums by, lights flickering and flaring in intensity. They approach in a widening white glare and pass into red, fading like a cigarette's heater between inhales, passing along and on to the interstate and the photon noise of the airport.

Carcen turns from the window, letting the curtain droop back into place. For a moment, she stares back into the room without moving. The large collection of dust rolls into the opposite corner, flowing along the continuing draft that chills the floor, leading her to believe that the only thing cleaned out of her room in the last day was the tip she left on the nightstand that morning. She sits on the edge of the bed, not caring that her clothes touch the bedding.

On the nearby nightstand, the usual suspects: the unopened vodka, the clock radio, the phone, a fresh bottle of meds. She runs a hand through her hair, leaves it tangled at the neck for a moment. Her breath knots in her chest, held there. Exhaling, she reaches for the phone.

After an initial misdial, she gets the number right. Her eyes are closed, at least until the room begins to spin. She whimpers. It rings through to the message service.

-It's me, leave a message?

She returns the receiver to its cradle. Standing, she moves to the desk and opens the top drawer. There are four sheets of paper, though she only takes three-the top one left behind because of the ghostly squiggle she left on it when testing the faulty pen the night before. She thinks she hears a car horn in the distance.

New York City morning; car horns and complaining from the street below the window. Carcen sighed as she realized she was awake for good. The bed was empty. She opened her eyes and stretched happily. A coalition of muscles she didn't even know she owned-most of them below the navel-informed her of their tender state and made a serious and formal protest. She felt herself blush. Her head ached a little and she curled up under the scattered sheets.

In the bathroom, the shower was running. Through the door, just over the running and splashing water, came Lela's humming. What time had she got out of bed? And why wasn't she hung over, too?

Carcen turned away from the door. Scattered throughout the room lay various articles of Lela's clothing, mixed with her own. On a side table the robe, there on the couch the blue nightie-a narrative of the night before rendered in strewn clothing. She lay there, looking out into the room, the sound of the running shower, the other woman's singing still pouring from the washroom.

Tangled in the sheets, just at the edge of the empty side of the bed, Lela's blue panties lay in a curled bunch. She blinked at them, unmoving. Her head continued to ache and throb. Soon, her hand reached out for the underwear, her fingers unraveling to trace along the line of lacework. She tilted her head at them, twisting her lip inward.

-Fuck?

She sighed.

From the shower, Lela's voice rose in half-chuckled singing:

"And someone saved my life tonight, sugar bear,
You almost had your hooks in me didn't you, dear?
Blah-blah blah roped and tied,
Blah-de-blah and hypnotized;
Sweet freedom whispered in my ear."

"You're a butterfly,
And butterflies are free to fly;
Fly away, high away bye-bye,
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh!"⁴

She has the dream. She is on the subway, surrounded by all the people, some stand, most sit. The train speeds through the tunnel. The same sense of fear and dread exists among the passengers, their faces yellow in the light. Further down the car, the one door is open and air rushes in. It blows through her hair, one of the few pleasant instances in the dream. No one moves, save to bow their head or raise it if it was bowed already. She rings her hands as the realization of impending doom washes over her as it does many times during the experience of the dream. The open door sits dark and yawning just down the aisle from her. She stares unblinking into its amorphous rush. Then she is on her feet, moving calmly through the aisle, past the standing passengers. Politely, she says, "excuse me" and "thank you" as she goes. The breeze through her hair strengthens, pushing open the coat she is wearing. Then she is at the open door. Looking out through the portal she cannot make out even the tiniest detail in the darkness, not one feature lit by even the most infinitesimal speck of light. The black of the tunnel is so complete that it casts the illusion it is entering the train itself, clawing its way onto the car. She steps back. The air blows her hair out of her face. She steps back again, this time bumping into a tall, horrified-looking man. With an apologetic look she steps to the side. She looks out the door again. There is an empty seat nearby, the effort to approach the door has made her tired and she sits now. She has never been on the train when it crashes, though she spends much of her time imagining it. Although sometimes the thought crosses her mind, she does not wish for it to happen now. Instead, she sits silent and unmoving save for the unconscious shifting her body conducts as it attempts to remain comfortable.

-April 2003-July 2004 and October 2004.


Song Credits:

1. Juliana Hatfield, "Hotels," from the album, Beautiful Creature, © 2000 juliana hatfield music.

2. David Bowie, "Five Years," from the album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, ©1972.

3. Radiohead, "There, There," from the album, Hail to the Thief, ©2003.

4. John/Taupin, "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," from the album, Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, ©1975.