The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [97]
“Sounds like you guys are having fun.”
Camille Stypnick has appeared. She’s a large woman of about fifty with a cubic yard of black, frizzy hair flowing out from beneath her cap. She’s dressed exactly like Chairman Mao, except for the wide flare of her pant legs, and the plunging neckline of her worker’s shirt, and the puffiness of her red-starred hat, and the dye on her entire outfit, which instead of being blue is particolored, covered with reproductions of Warhol’s silkscreened Maos.
“Now that’s what I call a party dress,” Cabaj says.
“Ha!” Camille mocks, her laugh overloud and intentionally false.
“Revolutionaries,” Lucien says to Chas, his voice as soft as a buttered razor blade. “You trendspotting folks pick up on this one?”
“Bah,” Chas grumbles. “Revolutionaries go in and out like clockwork. Dependable as the seasons.”
“Well,” Lucien says with a sigh, “maybe we can get a little more play out of this savage trend, at least.”
“No, it’s a flash in the pan if I ever saw one,” James T. Couch says. “No offense,” he says, turning to Ursula. “Although I did see the most eminently shaggable high school vixen the other day at Henry the Eighth. You’ll never guess what she was wearing.”
“Let me see,” Ursula says. “Sweatshop worker–skin pants?”
“No. An accessory.”
“A see-through mask?”
“No.”
“Paste-on bullet entry wounds?”
“No.”
“A colostomy bag?”
Couch sighs melodramatically. “You’re not trying, but I’ll tell you anyway. A bow.”
“How festive. Did you offer to unwrap her, or did her father chase you off?”
“No, no. A bow—you know, the weapon kind. And a quiver of arrows.”
Ursula considers this factoid. “How festive,” she says.
“And don’t forget Sonja here,” Lucien says, eyeing her bone-mesh minidress and matching choker. “She’s still into the savage look.”
“She’s into Ivy’s castoffs is what she’s into,” Couch says. “She’s into anything that’s touched that girl’s creamy, delectable flesh. Right, Sonja?”
Sonja looks down at her body. “No,” she says.
“Oh, come on, I see the way you look at her. I see the dirty looks you’ve been giving me lately for taking up so much of her time. But who could blame you? We’re all in love with Ivy, right?”
She reddens, smoothing the ragged hem against her thighs. “No.”
“Oh, you liar,” Couch says, grinning his impossible grin. “Oh, girl love. It gets my blood going. How about I take you little savages down to my altar room and make a virgin sacrifice?”
Cabaj bursts out laughing.
“Well, that explains it,” Ursula says. “I always wondered what you were saving your maidenhead for, James. I’m sure the gods will be appeased.”
More laughter all around. Camille excuses herself to check on her other guests. Couch eyes Ursula, displaying his teeth.
“Well, we can’t all be as sexually liberated as some people.”
The group falls silent, looking expectantly from Couch to her.
“ ‘As some people’?” she says.
“Yes, you know: some people just are, some people just aren’t. Javier, for example—he’s just not sexually liberated at all. He’s so touchingly traditional. Like a knight of old. Totally smitten with one woman. All he talked about was her, all he did was rave about her, how incredible she was, how smart and caring and beautiful and blah blah blah. We couldn’t get him to shut up about this woman. And when it turned out that he was just a stepping stone—you know, that this woman was just sleeping her way to the top—”
“Excuse me,” she says, looking at Chas, his eyes evasive behind the tinted lenses, and then back at Couch. “ ‘Sleeping her way to the top,’ you say?”
“Exactly,” Couch says. “See, she wasn’t only sexually liberated, this woman; she had a keen business sense as well.”
“Sounds like a ballbuster, all right,” Cabaj opines.
Couch grins. “She sure was. Broke Javier’s big, sappy old heart right in two. And now he’s gone, and there’s nothing anyone can do to help him.”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” she asks in a low voice.
“ ‘Gone’ meaning ‘gone,’ ” Couch says with a shrug. “Vanished. Condo’s empty. Up for sale. Not a scrap in it. I just stopped by today and