“Yeah.”

“Well, that darling managed to sneak a compact in here. She had one of her aunts who I swear should be in here herself sneak her in a compact in the bottom of an Easter basket. Some fool examined the chocolate bunnies and shit and forgot to look under the grass, and that’s the first thing you do when you check an Easter basket is look under the grass! Anyway, when Gwendola got her compact, she started going to town.”

“Cut her wrists?”

“No. Straight for the cunt. They saved what they could. Of course they’ve got to wait till it heals to find out how much they did save. I believe in saving the beaver myself, and sparing the rod too.” I shook my head.

She shrugged. “But from what I hear she’ll be lucky if she’s still got a hole.”

I said nothing. I tried to remember what I hadn’t noticed.

“It’s sort of funny, you know. All the women nuts sort of like having her around. We don’t bother her and she don’t bother us, but we sort of just like knowing she’s around. The men nuts, on the other hand, don’t want to know she’s here at all.”

Out in the hall, Gwendola had disappeared, but she left the slippers. The only time I’ve seen her again is in my dreams. Introduce you to her when I see her.

3

I should introduce myself too. My name’s Amanda Wordlaw. Wonderful name for a writer, isn’t it? Not just my pen name either; it’s the name of the man I married. I write fiction. Anyway, I used to. Mostly erotic novels, like those rambling, underground Victorian sex novels. Maybe some of the titles you’re familiar with: Rainbow Stories, The Other Broad’s Story, Don’t Let Cowgirls Fool Ya’? Anyway, someone wrote me up in this magazine article: “The Little Horny Bitches Have Come of Age.” It was a trashy article, like the kind you’d expect to read if The Naked Lunch had been written by a woman. Yet, that’s when I stopped writing erotic fiction and started writing travel books: Fun and Sun in Mexico, Is Paris Really Cleveland?, The Flower Sellers of Madagascar, The Healers of Bahia.

I guess I’m sort of a choice companion for the Shugers—professional watcher and listener that I am. People who know the Shugers’ story—or think they know it—wonder why I stay around them. I don’t know why I stay. I could try to come up with a motive, some cliche like “Catherine is the only one who accepts me without question.” It’s not true. She’s wary of me; Ernest is too. They’re wary of me, but they take me in too. It’s like they need someone else to witness the shit, the spectacle they make of themselves . . . a private spectacle. Catherine has never tried to harm him in public. Even that time on the street in Detroit, as you know, it was a Sunday and the salvage dump was closed; no one else on the backstreet, and the bicycle spoke sticking out between the crevices of the wire fence. And if you have this picture of Catherine receiving her art trophy and then turning suddenly on some stage in Milan, trying to batter Ernest, and then being straitjacketed and carried off, that’s not true either. She waited until they were quietly back at the hotel, still radiant in the splendor of the evening, and Ernest loving and proud of her and forgetful that brass and gold were dangerous.