"Men," the therapist says, "stress the adjective when they speak." The therapist says, "For instance, a man would say, 'You are so attractive, today'."

Brandy is so attractive you could chop her head off and put it on blue velvet in the window at Tiffany's and somebody would buy it for a million dollars.

"A woman would say, 'You are so attractive, today'," the therapist says. "Now, you, Brandy. You say it. Stress the modifier, not the adjective."

Brandy Alexander looks her Burning Blueberry eyes at me in the doorway and says, "Posing girl, you are so Godawful ugly. Did you let an elephant sit on your face or what?"

Brandy's voice, I barely hear what she says. At that instant, I just adore Brandy so much. Everything about her feels as good as being beautiful and looking in a mirror. Brandy is my instant royal family. My only everything to live for.

I go, "Cfoieb svns ois," and I pile the cold, wet turkey into the speech therapist's lap, her sitting pinned under twenty-five pounds of dead meat in her roll-around leather desk chair.

From closer down the hallway, Sister Katherine is yelling, "Yoohoo!"

"Mriuvn wsi sjaoi aj," I go, and wheel the therapist and her chair into the hallway. I say, "Jownd wine sm fdo dcncw."

The speech therapist, she's smiling up at me and says, "You don't have to thank me, it's just my job is all."

The nun's arrived with the man and his I.V. stand, a new man with no skin or crushed features or all his teeth bashed out, a man who'd be perfect for me. My one true love. My deformed or mutilated or diseased prince charming. My unhappily ever after. My hideous future. The monstrous rest of my life.

I slam the office door and lock myself inside with Brandy Alexander. There's the speech therapist's notebook on her desk, and I grab it.

save me, I write, and wave it in Brandy's face. I write: please.

Jump to Brandy Alexander's hands. This always starts with her hands. Brandy Alexander puts a hand out, one of those hairy pig- knuckled hands with the veins of her arm crowded and squeezed to the elbow with bangle bracelets of every color. Just by herself, Brandy Alexander is such a shift in the beauty standard that no one thing stands out. Not even you.

"So, girl," Brandy says. "What all happened to your face?"

Birds.

I write:

birds, birds ate my face.

And I start to laugh.

Brandy doesn't laugh. Brandy says, "What's that supposed to mean?"

And I'm still laughing.

i was driving on the freeway, I write.

And I'm still laughing.

someone shot a 30-caliber bullet from a rifle.

the bullet tore my entire jawbone off my face.

Still laughing.

i came to the hospital, I write.

i did not die.

Laughing.

they couldn't put my jaw back because seagulls had eaten it.

And I stop laughing.

"Girl, your handwriting is terrible," Brandy says. "Now tell me what else."

And I start to cry.

what else, I write, is i have to eat baby food.

i can't talk.

i have no career.

i have no home.

my fiance left me.

nobody will look at me.

all my clothes, my best friend ruined them.

I'm still crying.

"What else?" Brandy says. "Tell me everything."

a boy, I write.

a little boy in the supermarket called me a monster.

Those Burning Blueberry eyes look right at me the way no eyes have all summer. "Your perception is all fucked up," Brandy says. "All you can talk about is trash that's already happened."

She says, "You can't base your life on the past or the present."

Brandy says, "You have to tell me about your future."

Brandy Alexander, she stands up on her gold lame leg-hold trap shoes. The queen supreme takes a jeweled compact out of her clutch bag and snaps the compact open to look at the mirror inside.

"That therapist," those Plumbago lips say, "the speech therapist can be so stupid about these situations."

The big jeweled arm muscles of Brandy sit me down in the seat still hot from her ass, and she holds the compact so I can see inside. Instead of face powder, it's full of white capsules. Where there should be a mirror, there's a close up photo of Brandy Alexander smiling and looking terrific.

"They're Vicodins, dear," she says. "It's the Marilyn Monroe school of medicine where enough of any drug will cure any disease."

She says, "Dig in. Help yourself."

The thin and eternal goddess that she is, Brandy's picture smiles up at me over a sea of painkillers. This is how I met Brandy Alexander. This is how I found the strength not to get on with my former life. This is how I found the courage not to pick up the same old pieces.

"Now," those Plumbago lips say, "You are going to tell me your story like you just did. Write it all down. Tell that story over and over. Tell me your sad-assed story all night." That Brandy queen points a long bony finger at me.

"When you understand," Brandy says, "that what you're telling is just a story. It isn't happening anymore. When you realize the story you're telling is just words, when you can just crumble it up and throw your past in the trashcan," Brandy says, "then we'll figure out who you're going to be.”

Jump to the Canadian border.

Jump to the three of us in a rented Lincoln Town Car, waiting to drive south from Vancouver, British Columbia, into the United States, waiting, with Signore Romeo in the driver's seat, waiting with Brandy next to him in the front, waiting, with me alone in the back.

"The police have microphones," Brandy tells us.

The plan is if we make it through the border, we'll drive south to Seattle where there are nightclubs and dance clubs where go- go boys and go-go girls will line up to buy the pockets of my purse clean. We have to be quiet because the police, they have microphones on both sides of the border, United States and Canadian. This way, they

can listen in on people waiting to cross. We could have Cuban cigars. Fresh fruit. Diamonds. Diseases. Drugs, Brandy says. Brandy, she tells us to shut up a mile before the border, and we wait in line, quiet.

Brandy unwinds the yards and yards of brocade scarf around her head. Brandy, she shakes her hair down her back and ties the scarf over her shoulders to hide her torpedo cleavage. Brandy switches to simple gold earrings. She takes off her pearls and puts on a little chain with a gold cross. This is a moment before the border guard.

"Your nationalities?" the border-guard guy sitting inside his little window, behind his computer terminal with his clipboard and his blue suit behind his mirrored sunglasses, and behind his gold badge says.

"Sir," Brandy says, and her new voice is as bland and drawled out as grits without salt or butter. She says, "Sir, we are citizens of the United States of America, what used to be called the greatest country on earth until the homosexuals and child pornographers—

"Your names?" says the border guy.

Brandy leans across Alfa to look up at the border guy, "My husband," she says, "is an innocent man."

"Your name, please," he says, no doubt looking up our license plate, finding it's a rental car, rented in Billings, Montana, three weeks ago, maybe even finding the truth about who we really are. Maybe finding bulletin after bulletin from all over western Canada about three nut cases stealing drugs at big houses up for sale. Maybe all this is spooling onto his computer screen, maybe none of it. You never know.

"I am married," Brandy is almost yelling to get his attention. "I am the wife of the Reverend Scooter Alexander," she says, still half laid across Alfa's lap.

"And this," she says and draws the invisible line from her smile to Alfa, "this is my son-in-law, Seth Thomas." Her big hand flies toward me in the backseat. "This," she says, "is my daughter, Bubba-Joan."