so sad for you!” Jayne exclaimed.
“Are you trying to tell me that the coke thing is happy?” Audrey asked with a raised eyebrow. “Because it sounds pretty bad, country mouse.”
A beat of silence passed. Then two. Jayne laughed first, and was quickly followed by Audrey. “It’s the hard-knock life,” Audrey said, and Jayne banged the floor with her crutch, and chimed in: “For! Us!”
And then, together. “It’s the hard-knock life!” They laughed hard and long. Tears filled Audrey’s eyes, and she wasn’t sure whether she was sad, or happy, but the release felt wonderful.
“We are so fucked up,” Jayne declared, and they laughed harder.
13
Humans Raised as Cows!
By glass two-point-five, they were loaded. The wine was so cheap that Audrey’s headache had already started. Her dried-out tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth, so she took another sip to set it free. On the television, Leno was reading nutty-but-true newspaper headlines—“Humans Raised As Cows Graze the Countryside!”—when the buzzer rang.
Audrey hoisted herself up on wobbly legs. The stained-glass crows looked like they were following her. Their red eyes shone especially bright. “Demon birds,” she mumbled.
Jayne waved her hand. “It’s Clara. She wants to raid your fridge. Chick was an orca. Like the woolly mammoth, I mean.”
“Whale.” Audrey simultaneously pressed talk and listen on the intercom. She could vaguely detect the doorman’s French-Haitian accent, but it was mostly just static: blah blah blah Mizz Lucas? She had no idea what he wanted, but it could wait until tomorrow.
“Okay, good!” she said into the speaker, then staggered back to her chair and clawed a handful of string beans into her mouth. They were overcooked, and liquefied on her tongue. They were hot, too, and like everything hot and soupy, hurt the gums under her temporary crown. “Vegetables are bullshit!” she announced.
Jay’s guest was sweating through an act about terrorists with funny accents using canned city smog as a weapon. US 405 in Los Angeles had gotten another bomb threat this afternoon. No one was hurt, but the traffic jam caused two asthma-induced deaths.
Audrey glanced at the pull-down map of Los Angeles behind the man and admired the clean perpendicular roads that counterbalanced its jagged coast and highways. That got her thinking about changing the topiary on 59th Street to something less symmetrical because unless they’ve got OCD, too many right angles make people nervous.
The comedian sprayed his bottle of Aqua Net, over which he’d pasted a SMOG label illustrated by a black death skull and crossbones. Not a laugh in the whole house. A fury rose inside her, and she wanted to reach inside the television and slap him.
“Amateur,” Jayne grumbled. Then she cupped her hands around her mouth like a megaphone. “Too soon!” she heckled.
“What is this, Beirut?” Audrey asked. “I don’t wanna live in Beirut.”
“Like the band? That song ‘No More Words’?” Jayne asked.
“No, that’s Berlin.”
“I don’t wanna live in Berlin,” Jayne said.
“Well, who asked you?”
They were laughing when the doorbell rang, and Jayne hopped up in her lone high heel, leaving her crutches on the floor. “It’s Jay Leno!” she announced. “He needs me to save his ass.”
“You know, a boot would be better for your knee,” Audrey said.
“Better than Leno? I do not think so,” Jayne said as she hopped down the hall.
Still seated, Audrey scooted in her chair until she turned 180 degrees. “Are you answering my door?” she asked. “It’s very rude.”
Jayne’s face was pressed against the peephole. “It’s a guy. He’s really big. Like he could lift a car.”
Audrey’s ears got hot. “Brown skin? Short black hair?”
“Yup.”
Audrey got up and walked down the hall. Jayne stepped aside. She didn’t look through the peephole. She was afraid he’d able to see her eye.
“Audrey, you in there? I need to talk to you.” This time, he didn’t slur.
She turned and started in the other direction. Jayne hopped after her. “Are you going to open it?”
Audrey stopped and leaned against a wall in the hall.
Clack-clack!
He banged the knocker, and they both jumped. Then he used his fists: Bam! Bam! “Please. Let me in. It’s important.” The sound of his voice resonated in her chest. She wished she could be like the normal people of the world who, in her place, would probably not want to pee their pants right now or smoke so much hash they saw stars.
“Audrey!” he called again. She got the feeling he could see her through the wood. Right into the hall, and her eyes, all the way to the curved sockets of