Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [83]
“That must be what yours is for.”
Luciente threw up her hands. “At a festival, why not be looked at?”
“What about me? Can you dress me up?”
“I don’t have a flimsy for you.” Luciente looked grief-stricken. Then she snapped her fingers. “All is running good. You put on Red Star’s flimsy. Red Star ordered it but that person had an accident picking cherries and is healing at Cranberry. We’ll get per flimsy from the presser for you.”
Luciente scooped her along and they dodged through groups wandering the paths of the village, people in wild and bright, in delicate and fanciful flimsies, carrying wine bottles and passing joints and eating small cakes that left a scent of spice on the air, trailing flowers in leis and in hair and beards, playing on flutes and recorders and guitars and stringed instruments strange and twangy, high and shimmery in their sound, beating on drums and sets of drums and carrying along objects that sputtered sound and light and scent.
The rooms of the children’s house glittered and footsteps echoed down the stairways, laughter and shrieking flew out of every crevice. Adults and children in their flimsies played a game of catch with floating objects that moved in slow-motion S’s. In a room full of tools and devices Luciente addressed a machine. “Produce the flimsy ordered by Red Star.”
Out of the slot a garment slowly protruded, like a paper towel feeding itself from a roll. Luciente grabbed it and shook it out. “Here! Put it on.”
“Here?” She glanced at the busy hall.
“I’ll turn my back,” Luciente said with exaggerated patience, and shrugged to the walls.
The garment was a jiggling thing made of small bubbles, weightless and loosely bound together so that they swayed and bounced and gathered the light as she moved. The garment lay lightly upon her shoulders but did not touch her body elsewhere. She felt very naked under it.
“That’s clever.” Luciente eyed the flimsy, circling her. “Marvelous the way it shivers and moves. You backed into luck.”
“It isn’t … transparent?”
“Transparent? Hardly at all. Come!”
In the fooder many of the panes had been removed so the breeze off the river could blow through the dining room, where small groups still sat picking at the remains of the meal, gossiping and smoking and drinking. One table was singing together in a foreign language, beating time on the tabletop.
“What did you have?” she asked with the passion for food of the institutionalized.
“Would you like leftovers? Of course. I’ll set up a plate.”
A cold cucumber soup flavored with mint. Slices of a dark rich meat not familiar to her in a sauce tasting of port, dollops of a root vegetable like yams but less sweet and more nutty—maybe squash? Luciente had told her they bred squashes here. A salad of greens with egg-garlic dressing. Something rubbery, pickled, hot as chili with a strange musky taste. Young chewy red wine.
“Remember, this won’t nourish you,” Luciente said mournfully, stealing a taste from her plate. “The bread is gone. We bake it fresh daily. Was a graham fruit bread and every bit was gobbled.”
“Who cooks? What is this meat?” she asked between bites.
“Roast goose. We take turns. Hawk—the person who was Innocente, remember?—and I spit-roasted the geese. By rotation every night we have a chef and four assistants.”
“Who cleans up?”
“Mechanically done. Nobody wants to wash dishes.”
“In my time neither. Does it really work?”
“Better than people, more patient. For washing dishes, we are willing to spend precious energy.”
“Couldn’t a machine cook too?”
“Fasure. But not inventively. To be a chef is like mothering: you must volunteer, you must feel called. Myself, I have no gift and only help in the kitchen. But Bee is a chef and at the next feast, person will make the menu and direct—the feast of July nineteenth, date of Seneca Equal Rights Convention, beginning women’s movement. Myself,