I look down at her. It's so easy to imagine her dead.

"Miss Arden, please," she says. "Hit me?"

I drop another Valium.

Brandy swallows. "It was like I couldn't swallow for days," she says. "My throat 'was that sore. I could barely talk. My folks, they thought, of course, it was strep throat."

Brandy's head is almost straight under mine as I look down. Only Brandy's face is upside down. My eyes look right into the dark interior of her Plumbago mouth, dark wet going inside to her works and organs and everything behind the scenes. Brandy Alexander Backstage. Upside down she could be a complete stranger.

And Ellis was right, you only ask people about themselves so you can tell them about yourself.

"The culture," Brandy says. "The swab they did for Strep Throat came back positive for the clap. You know, the third Rhea sister. Gonorrhea," she says. "That little tiny gonococcus bug. I was sixteen years old and had the clap. My folks did not deal with it well."

No. No, they didn't.

"They freaked," Brandy says.

They threw him out of the house.

"They yelled about how diseased I was being," Brandy says.

Then they threw him out.

"By 'diseased' I think they meant 'gay'," she says.

Then they threw him out.

"Miss Scotia?" she says. "Hit me."

So I hit her.

"Then they threw me out of the damn house."

Jump to Mr. Parker outside the bathroom door saying, "Miss Alexander? It's me, Miss Alexander. Miss Scotia, are you in there?"

Brandy starts to sit up and props herself on one elbow.

"It's Ellis," Mr. Parker says through the door. "I think you should come downstairs. Miss Scotia, your brother's having a seizure or something."

Drugs and cosmetics are spread out all over the aquamarine countertops, and Brandy's sprawled half-naked on the floor in a sprinkling of pills and capsules and tablets.

"He's her half-brother," Brandy calls back.

The doorknob rattles. "You have to help me," Parker says.

"Stop right there, Mr. Parker!" Brandy shouts and the doorknob stops turning. "Calm yourself. Do not come in here," Brandy says. "What you need to do," Brandy looks at me while she says this, "what you need to do is pin Ellis to the floor so he doesn't hurt himself. I'll be down in a moment."

Brandy looks at me and smiles her Plumbago lips into a big bow. "Parker?" she says, "Are you listening?"

"Please, hurry," comes through the door.

"After you have Ellis pinned to the floor," Brandy says, "wedge his mouth open with something. Do you have a wallet?"

There's a moment.

"It's eel skin, Miss Alexander."

"Then you must be very proud of it," says Brandy. "You're going to have to jam it between his teeth to keep his mouth open. Sit on him if you have to," Brandy, she's just smiling evil incarnate at my feet.

The shatter of some real lead crystal comes through the door from downstairs.

"Hurry!" Parker shouts. "He's breaking things!"

Brandy licks her lips. "After you have his mouth pried open, Parker, reach in and grab his tongue. If you don't, he'll choke, and then you'll be sitting on a dead body."

Silence.

"Do you hear me?" Brandy says.

"Grab his tongue?"

Something else real and expensive and far away shatters.

"Mr. Parker, honey, I hope you're bonded," the Princess Alexander says, her face all bloated red with choking back laughter. "Yes," she says, "grab Ellis's tongue. Pin him to the floor, keep his mouth open, and pull his tongue out as far as you can until I come down to help you."

The doorknob turns.

My veils are all on the vanity counter out of my reach.

The door opens far enough to hit the high-heeled foot of Brandy, sprawled giggling and half full of Valiums, there half- naked in drugs on the floor. This is far enough for me to see Parker's face with its one grown-together eyebrow, and far enough for the face to see me sitting on the toilet.

Brandy screams, "I am attending to Miss Arden Scotia!"

Given the choice between grabbing a strange tongue and watching a monster poop into a giant snail shell, the face retreats and slams the door behind it.

Football scholarship footsteps charge off down the hallway.

Then pound down the stairs.

The big tooth that Parker is, his footsteps pound across the foyer to the living room.

Ellis's scream, real and sudden and far away, comes through the floor from downstairs. And, suddenly, stops.

"Now," says Brandy, "where were we?"

She lies back down with her head between my feet.

"Have you thought any more about plastic surgery?" Brandy says. Then she says, "Hit me.”

When you go out with a drunk, you'll notice how a drunk fills your glass so he can empty his own. As long as you're drinking, drinking is okay. Two's company. Drinking is fun. If there's a bottle, even if your glass isn't empty, a drunk, he'll pour a little in your glass before he fills his own.

This only looks like generosity.

That Brandy Alexander, she's always on me about plastic surgery. Why don't I, you know, just look at what's out there. With her chest siliconed, her hips lipo-sucked, the 46-16-26 Katty Kathy hourglass thing she is, the fairy godmother makeover, my fair lady, Pygmalion thing she is, my brother back from the dead, Brandy Alexander is very invested in plastic surgery.

And visa versa.

Bathroom talk.

Brandy's still laid out on the cold tile floor, high atop Capitol Hill in Seattle. Mr. Parker has come and gone. Just Brandy and me all afternoon. I'm still sitting on the open end of a huge ceramic snail shell bolted to the wall. Trying to kill her in my half-assed way. Brandy's auburn head of hair is between my feet. Lipsticks and Demerols, blushes and Percocet-5, Aubergine Dreams and Nembutal Sodium capsules are spread out all over the aquamarine countertops around the vanity sink.

My hand, I've been holding a handful of Valiums so long my palm has gone Tiffany's light blue. Just Brandy and me all afternoon with the sun coming in at lower and lowers angles through the big brass porthole windows.

"My waist," Brandy says. The Plumbago mouth looks a little too blue, Tiffany's light blue if you ask me. Overdose baby blue. "Sofonda said I had to have a sixteen -inch waist," Brandy says. "I said, 'Miss Sofonda, I am big-boned. I am six feet tall. No way am I getting down to a sixteen-inch waistline."

Sitting on the snail shell, I'm only half listening.

"Sofonda," Brandy says, "Sofonda says, there's a way, but I have to trust her. When I wake up in the recovery room, I'll have a sixteen-inch waist."

It's not like I haven't heard this story in a dozen other bathrooms. Another bottle off the countertop, Bilax capsules, I look it up in the Phyicians'Desk Reference book.

Bilax capsules. A bowel evacuant.

Maybe I should drop a few of these into that nonstop mouth between my feet.

Jump to Manus watching me do that infomercial. We were so beautiful. Me with a face. Him not so full of conjugated estrogens.

I thought we were a real love relationship. I did. I was very invested in love, but it was just this long, long sex thing that could end at any moment because, after all, it's just about getting off. Manus would close his power blue eyes and twist his head just so, side to side, and swallow.

And, Yes, I'd tell Manus. I came right when he did.

Pillow talk.

Almost all the time, you tell yourself you're loving somebody when you're just using them.

This only looks like love.

Jump to Brandy on the bathroom floor, saying, "Sofonda and Vivienne and Kitty were all with me at the hospital." Her hands curl up off the tile, and she runs them up and down the sides of her blouse. "All three of them wore those baggy green scrub suits, wearing hairnets over their wigs and with those Duchess of Windsor costume jewelry brooches pinned on their scrub suits," Brandy says. "They were flying around behind the surgeon and the lights, and Sofonda was telling me to count backwardsfrom one hundred. You know ... 99... 98... 97..."