Comrade Snarky sees the paper plate of curled brown meat, steaming there on the snack-bar counter.

Nobody thinks to stop her.

Comrade Snarky lurches across the blue lobby, falling once on the pink marble floor, her skirts dragging, then reaching up to grab the edge of the snack-bar countertop and pull herself to her feet. Standing there, her face and the pile of her wigs collapse onto the plate of meat.

Behind her, coming down the blue-carpeted stairs, are her footprints in blood.

The on-again, off-again ghost of here.

All any of us can see is her towering gray curls as they bob and bounce over the paper plate on the marble countertop. The seat of her dress is blooming, bigger and bigger, with a huge red flower. Then her wigs pull back, and all of her turns away from the empty plate. A brown curl of meat still clutched in one blue-white hand, Comrade Snarky licks her lips and says, “God, it's so tough and bitter.”

Somebody needs to say something. To be . . . kind.

Skinny Saint Gut-Free, he says, “I don't usually eat meat, but that was . . . quite delicious.” And he looks around.

Holding up the stop sign of one greasy palm, his eyes shut, Chef Assassin says, “I warn you . . . do not criticize my cooking . . .”

The rest of us nod our heads yes. Delicious. The rest of us, our plates are empty. We all swallow, still chewing. Our tongues sliding over our teeth for any leftover film of oil. Of fat.

Comrade Snarky crosses to the tapestry sofas in the center of the lobby, dead center, under the frozen sparkle of the biggest crystal chandelier. Her hands lift a blue velvet pillow, gold tassels hanging from the four corners, and she moves it to one end of a sofa. Her feet kick out of her shoes. Her white stockings stained red. She goes to sit down, to lie back on the sofa with her head on the pillow. And Comrade Snarky, she winces. Her face pulls together, tight for a minute, then relaxes. She reaches behind her, feeling up, underneath the wet layers of her skirts and petticoats. She leans forward as if to stand, and her eyes fall on the footprints of blood that have followed her across the blue carpet from the stairs to the snack bar to the sofa.

We all look at the blood spilling out of her shoes.

Still chewing, her jaw going around and around, a cow with its cud, Comrade Snarky looks at us.

Trying to digest this scene.

When her hand comes out from the back of her skirt, she's holding Chef Assassin's boning knife. The blade still clotted and varnished with blood.

Chef Assassin steps forward from behind the snack bar. His hand open, and wiggling his greasy fingers at her, he says, “I'll take that. It's mine.”

And Comrade Snarky stops chewing. And swallows.

“I . . . ,” she says.

Comrade Snarky looks at the knife and the curl of meat she still holds.

On the snack of meat, there's a rose tattoo she's never seen before. Except maybe in a mirror. Only now it's lightly browned.

The Earl of Slander, his face is hidden as he licks his paper plate.

Comrade Snarky says:

“I only fainted . . .”

She says:

“I fainted . . . and you ate my ass?”

She looks at the empty, greasy paper plate still sitting on the snack bar, and she says:

“You fed me my own ass?”

Mother Nature belches behind her open hand, and says, “Beg pardon.”

Chef Assassin holds out his hand for the knife, a thin circle of red showing under one thumbnail. He looks up to see a thousand-thousand tiny versions of Comrade Snarky sparkling in the dusty chandelier crystal. In her hand, the thousand-thousand Cajun-cooked roses.

Countess Foresight turns away but keeps watching her own, smaller version of this reality, a movie- or television-sized version of Comrade Snarky reflected in the wide mirror behind the snack bar.

All of us seeing our own version of Comrade Snarky. All with our own story about what's going on. All of us sure that our version is what's real.

Checking her wristwatch, Sister Vigilante says, “Eat up. It's only one hour before lights-out.”

All those smaller versions of Comrade Snarky, they all swallow hard. Their blue-white cheeks bulge. Their throats cinch shut, gagging on the taste of their own bitter skin.

Each of us turning our reality into a story. Digesting it to make a book. What we see happen, already a movie screenplay.

The Mythology of Us.

Then, right on cue, the full-sized Comrade Snarky sitting on the tapestry sofa, she slides to the floor. Her eyes still open a little to stare up at the chandelier. To lie in a heap of velvet and brocade on the pink marble floor. It's then she's dying. One hand still holding the boning knife. One hand still holding the brown curl of her fried butt.

The tapestry sofa blotted with dark red where she'd sat down. The blue velvet pillow still dented from her head. Comrade Snarky will not be the camera behind the camera behind the camera. We hold the truth about her in our hands. Wedged between our teeth.

Her voice a whisper, Comrade Snarky says, “I guess . . . I deserved . . .”

And after a moment of rewind, from the Earl of Slander's tape recorder, her voice again says, “deserved this . . . deserved this . . .”

Anticipation

A Poem About Comrade Snarky

“I lost my virginity,” Comrade Snarky says, “through my ear.”

So young, she still believed in Santa Claus.

Comrade Snarky onstage, her knuckles rest on her hips, her arms bent

so her leather elbow patches poke out at each side.

Her laced-up, steel-toed boots planted wide apart.

Her legs in baggy camouflage pants, tied around each ankle.

She leans so far forward, her chin casts a shadow

down the front of her army-surplus olive-drab field jacket.

Onstage, instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment:

the footage of protest signs and picket lines, the bullhorn shapes of mouths

yelling, all their way open.

All teeth and no lips.

Mouths open so far, the effort shuts their eyes, tight.

“After the judge awarded joint custody,” Comrade Snarky says, “my mother told me . . .”

In the middle of the night,

while you're fast asleep with your head on the pillow,

if your father ever tiptoes into your room:

you, come tell me.

Her mother said, “If your father ever tugs down your pajama bottoms and fingers you . . .”

You, come tell me.

If he takes a fat, heavy snake out from the zipper in the front of his pants—that hot, sticky club that smells bad—and tries to force this in your mouth . . .

You, come tell me.

“Instead of all that,” Comrade Snarky says, “my father took me to the zoo.”

He took her to the ballet. He took her to soccer practice.

He kissed her good night.

The colors of sit-down strikes, the shapes of civil disobedience still marching,

marching, marching,

across her face,

Comrade Snarky says,

“But, for the rest of my life, I was always ready.”

Speaking Bitterness

A Story by Comrade Snarky

From the minute he sat down, we tried to explain . . .

We don't allow men. This is a women-only safe space. The purpose of our group is to nurture and empower women with a sense of privacy. To allow women to speak freely without being questioned or judged. We need to exclude men because they inhibit women. Male energy intimidates and humiliates women. To men, a woman is either a virgin or a slut. A mother or a whore.

When we ask him to get out, of course he plays dumb. He says to call him “Miranda.”