The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [89]
“See?” Couch says, shaking Ivy by the waist like a rag doll. “I’ve gained their trust. Pretty soon they’ll be walking around naked in front of me. And from there, getting the ménage up and running will be a lead-pipe cinch.”
“James is going to make me a star,” Ivy says to Ursula, boasting like a child. “I’m going to be a dotcom. I’m going to command serious eyeball hours. Isn’t that right, daah-link?” She cranes her long neck and bats her eyelashes up at him, replicating his smile tooth for tooth.
“Right you are,” he replies in some old Hollywood voice. “Stick with me, kid. We’re going straight to the top.”
“Like Sonny and Cher,” Ivy says.
“Like the Captain and Tennille.”
“Like Donny and Marie,” she exclaims.
“Like Kermit and Miss Piggy.”
“Like the big Schmoo and the little Schmoo!”
“Definitely!”
The unlikely rapport between Couch and Ivy baffled Ursula at first. How could Couch, she wondered, with his lewd smiles and double entendres and the rest of his no less paranoia-inducing behaviors, manage to soothe a paranoiac like Ivy the way he did with such ease at the photo shoot? How did the two of them ever come to bond? As it turns out, they bonded over the same thing most people bond over: pop culture. For them, however, it’s far more than just a shared experience: it’s a shared expertise, about which they compare notes like specialists talking shop. Their favorite subject is bad TV, past and present. Ursula has listened to entire conversations between them—debates seemingly replete with theses, developments, rebuttals, substantiating evidence, and final judgments—consisting entirely of the names of sitcom characters. They can communicate purely in references, some of them dizzyingly obscure. When Ivy says something too obscure even for Couch, he just smiles brightly, nods, and says “Definitely!” and they go right on talking. He has a way of humoring her that she seems to find reassuring. And for his part, Couch is clearly flattered by the way she sidles up to him, with the half-trusting, half-cunning cuteness of a kitten. Indeed, there seems to be an element of cunning on both sides of this saccharine, cartoonish burlesque of a friendship: they clearly feel they have use for each other. Ivy is cultivating Couch, just as he is her; the other day she all but confessed this to Ursula, whispering, “He’s putty in my hands.”
Her little dramatic scene accomplished, Ivy ambles over and sits down on one of the pillows against the wall. Sonja moves over and slides down the wall to join her on the pillow, and the two of them fix their attention on the TV set. The set’s back is to Ursula. She assumed it was off because no sound was coming out.
Or maybe it is off.
“Look at those two,” Couch says softly. “If you want to know what I think, I think Sonja has a little crush on your sister.”
“What on earth gave you the idea I want to know what you think?” Ursula says, orbiting the island counter in a futile search for signs of life. The kitchenware she bought for Ivy and Sonja sits stacked in the cupboards like a museum display. She half believes that this apartment is just part of an elaborate ruse, that every night the two models climb the fire escape to the roof, placidly board their UFO, and speed off to the dark side of Venus, the planet of fashion models, where they serve their triple-breasted, quintuple-buttocked Venusian queen. All things considered, Couch is probably doing them both a service. It’s doubtful that either of them ever would have gotten furniture on her own.
“Guess we’ve got to get cracking on this new tween report,” Couch says. “Speaking of which, weren’t you supposed to pay Javier a visit this week?”
“I did. Yesterday.”
“Well?” he asks.
“Well nothing. He’s depressed.”
“Who isn’t? But did you find out what his big discovery was?” His question drips with sarcasm. False sarcasm. He waits breathlessly for the answer.
“He said there’s a conspiracy against the children,” Ursula replies dismissively.