We'd drink diet colas on a big pink bed at Brumbach's. Or sit at a vanity, using contouring powder to change the shape of our faces while the faint outline of people watched us from the darkness a few feet away. Maybe the track lights would flash off somebody's glasses. With our every little move getting attention, every gesture, everything we said, it's easy to pick up on the rush you'd get.

"It's so safe and peaceful, here," Evie'd say, smoothing the pink satin comforter and fluffing the pillows. "Nothing very bad could ever happen to you here. Not like at school. Or at home."

Total strangers would stand there with their coats on, watching us. The same's those talk shows on television, it's so easy to be honest with a big enough audience. You can say anything if enough people will listen.

"Evie, honey," I'd say. "There's lots worse models in our class. You just need to not have an edge to your blusher." We'd be looking at ourselves in a vanity mirror, a triple row of nobodies watching us from behind.

"Here, sweetie," I'd say, and give her a little sponge, "blend."

And Evie would start to cry. Your every emotion goes right over the top with a big audience. It's either laughter or tears, with no in- between. Those tigers in zoos, they must just live a big opera all the time.

"It's not just my wanting to be a glamorous fashion model," Evie would say. "It's when I think of my growing up, I'm so sad." Evie would choke back her tears. She'd clutch her little sponge and say, "When I was little, my parents wanted me to be a boy." She'd say, "I just never want to be that miserable again."

Other times, we'd wear high heels and pretend to slap each other hard across the mouth because of some guy we both wanted. Some afternoons we'd confess to each other that we were vampires.

"Yeah," I'd say. "My parents used to abuse me, too."

You had to play to the crowd.

Evie would turn her fingers through her hair. "I'm getting my guiche pierced," she'd say. "It's that little ridge of skin running between your asshole and the bottom of your vagina."

I'd go to flop on the bed, center stage, hugging a pillow and looking up into the black tangle of ducts and sprinkler pipes you had to imagine was a bedroom ceiling.

"It's not like they hit me or made me drink satanic blood or anything," I'd say. "They just liked my brother more because he was mutilated.”

And Evie would cross to center stage by the Early American nightstand to upstage me.

"You had a mutilated brother?" she'd say.

Somebody watching us would cough. Maybe the light would glint off a wrist-watch.

"Yeah, he was pretty mutilated, but not in a sexy way. Still, there's a happy ending," I'd say. "He's dead now."

And really intense, Evie would say, "Mutilated how? Was he your only brother? Older or younger?"

And I'd throw myself off the bed and shake my hair. "No, it's too painful."

"No, really," Evie would say. "I'm not kidding."

"He was my big brother by a couple years. His face was all exploded in a hairspray accident, and you'd think my folks totally forgot they even had a second child," I'd dab my eyes on the pillow shams and tell the audience. "So I just kept working harder and harder for them to love me."

Evie would be looking at nothing and saying, "Oh, my shit! Oh, my shit!" And her acting, her delivery would be so true it would just bury mine.

"Yeah," I'd say. "He didn't have to work at it. It was so easy. Just by being all burned and slashed up with scars, he hogged all the attention."

Evie would go close-up on me and say, "So where's he now, your brother, do you even know?"

"Dead," I'd say, and I'd turn to address the audience. "Dead of AIDS."

And Evie says, "How sure are you?”

And I'd say, "Evie!"

"No, really," she'd say. "I'm asking for a reason."

"You just don't joke about AIDS," I'd say.

And Evie'd say, "This is so next-to-impossible."

This is how easy the plot gets pumped out of control. With all these shoppers expecting real drama, of course, I think Evie's just making stuff up.

"Your brother," Evie says, "did you really see him die? For real? Or did you see him dead? In a coffin, you know, with music. Or a death certificate?"

All those people were watching.

"Yeah," I say. "Pretty much." Like I'd want to get caught lying?

Evie's all over me. "So you saw him dead or you didn't?"

All those people watching.

"Dead enough."

Evie says, "Where?"

"This is very painful," I say, and I cross stage right to the living room.

Evie chases after me, saying, "Where?"

All those people watching.

"The hospice," I say.

"What hospice?"

I keep crossing stage right to the next living room, the next dining room, the next bedroom, den, home office, with Evie dogging me and the audience hovering along next to us.

"You know how it is," I say. "If you don't see a gay guy for so long, it's a pretty safe bet."

And Evie says, "So you don't really know that he's dead?"

We're sprinting through the next bedroom, living room, dining room, nursery, and I say, "It's AIDS, Evie. Fade to black."

And then Evie just stops and says, "Why?"

And the audience has started to abandon me in a thousand directions.

Because I really, really, really want my brother to be dead. Because my folks want him dead. Because life is just easier if he's dead. Because this way, I'm an only child. Because it's my turn, damn it. My turn.

And the crowd of shoppers is bailed, leaving just us and the security cameras instead of God watching to catch us when we fuck up.

"Why is this such a big deal to you?" I say.

And Evie's already wandering away from me, leaving me alone and saying, "No reason." Lost in her own little closed circuit. Licking her own butthole, Evie says, "It's nothing." Saying, "Forget it.”

On the planet Brandy Alexander, the universe is run by a fairly elaborate system of gods and she-gods. Some evil. Some are ultimate goodness. Marilyn Monroe, for example. Then there's Nancy Reagan and Wallis Warfield Simpson. Some of the gods and she-gods are dead. Some are alive. A lot are plastic surgeons.

The system changes. Gods and she-gods come and go and leapfrog each other for a change of status.

Abraham Lincoln is in his heaven to make our car a floating bubble of new-car—smelling air: driving as smooth as advertising copy. These days, Brandy says Marlene Dietrich is in charge of the weather. Now is the autumn of our ennui. We're carried down Interstate 5 under gray skies, inside the blue casket interior of a rented Lincoln Town Car. Seth is driving. This is how we always sit, with Brandy up front and me in the back. Three hours of scenic beauty between Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle is what we're driving through. Asphalt and internal combustion carry us and the Lincoln Town Car south.

Traveling this way, you might as well be watching the world on television. The electric windows are hummed all the way up so the planet Brandy Alexander has an atmosphere of warm, still, silent blue. It's an even 70 degrees Fahrenheit, with the whole outside world of trees and rocks scrolling by in miniature behind curved glass. Live by satellite. We're the little world of Brandy Alexander rocketing past it all.

Driving, driving, Seth says, "Did you ever think about life as a metaphor for television?"

Our rule is that when Seth's driving, no radio. What happens is a Dionne Warwick song comes on, and Seth starts to cry so hard, crying those big Estinyl tears, shaking with those big Provera sobs. If Dionne Warwick comes on singing a Burt Bacharach song, we just have to pull over or it's sure we'll get car wrecked.