A recorded rhythm track boomed out over a speaker system, BOOMchilla BOOMchilla BOOMchilla BOOMchilla… From behind a mound of filthy black tires steps a tall figure in black. She has chalky white skin… and long black hair that comes cascading down upon the puffed and pleated shoulders of the academic robe she has on, the kind you graduate in. But this one is voluminous. It sweeps down to the floor. She isn’t smiling.
She stands there motionless, without a peep, for about thirty seconds. Presumably, this is Heidi Schlossel.
She brings her hands to her neck and undoes some sort of clasp. The robe falls from her shoulders suddenly, completely, clump. It must have weighed a ton.
Now she stood stark naked in front of a big puddle of heavy black cloth… rigid, erect. Her face was a blank… She looked like one of the undead in a horror movie… without a stitch on.
Magdalena whispered to Norman, “Let’s leave—now!” She nodded toward Maurice. Norman just shook his head… No.
The stark naked woman appeared to be fifteen years too old and fifteen pounds too heavy to play this role, whatever it was. She began speaking in the dead voice of the undead. “Men have fucked me… they have fucked me, fucked me, fucked me over, over-fucked me—”… on and on with this I Was a Fucking Zombie poem—until all at once she inserted a thumb and two fingers into her vagina and pulled out a length of sausage and came alive, as it were, and cried out, “De-fucked!”—and out came another sausage linked to the first—“De-fucked!”—and another and another—“De-fucked!” and “De-fucked!” and “De-fucked!” and “De-fucked!” Magdalena couldn’t believe how many link sausages the woman had managed to stuff inside her vaginal cavity!
Maurice had his hand clasped over his crotch. But instead of stroking it with his hand, he was rocking his body back and forth beneath his hand… so as not to be detected.
Magdalena nudged Norman and whispered on the loud side, “Maurice!” Norman ignored her. His eyes were fixed on Ms. Schlossel. So this time Magdalena didn’t bother hiding it behind a whisper. “Norman! Look at Maurice!”
Norman glowered at her… but did look at Maurice. He just stared at first… calculating… calculating… then he let out a deep, self-denying sigh and put his arm around Maurice’s shoulders… tenderly… and leaned close to him and said… in a voice you would use on a child… “We have to go now, Maurice.”
Like an obedient child who knows he has disappointed his parents, Maurice let himself be led out of the Museum of the Instant.
Maurice was silent… and penitent… but Norman acted cross. He kept shaking his head from side to side, without looking at either one of them.
“What’s wrong, Norman?” said Magdalena.
“There’s supposed to be a great after-party at some gallery near here, the Linger, in Wynwood, wherever that is.” He kept shaking his head. “But I guess that’s out.”
Later on, Magdalena asked around and was told that the Linger, a large gallery, wanted to show its “private collection” of photorealistic pornographic paintings, whatever photorealistic meant, and sculptures of homosexual orgies.
Why was there so much pornography in this so-called cutting-edge art? Magdalena wondered. For what earthly reason? How in God’s name did they justify it?… And just who was more upset about not being able to see it all, the patient… or the doctor?
But by last night it was as if nothing had happened. Here were the three of them, Maurice, Norman, and herself, plunging into another round of parties and receptions before dinner… and dinner was really something last night. Michael du Glasse and his wife, Caroline Peyton-Soames, were the hosts. Michael du Glasse and Caroline Peyton-Soames!… the most glamorous couple in Hollywood, if you asked Magdalena… a dinner for a hundred people at the Ritz-Carlton… and Magdalena Otero, lately of Hialeah, was their guest… and for one sublime and unforgettable moment she had touched their right hands with hers.
In five minutes, presumably, a pair of doors in the glass wall would open, and these old men, these old maggots, would have first crack at the treasures that lay on the other side… Miami Basel!… For two hours these maggots, and these alone, would have the exclusive run of the whole place… whatever in the name of God “the whole place” was…
“—fuck off? You fuck off, you fat—”
“AhhggghHAHAHHHHock hock hock hockdjou see that big ox trying to slip between those two people? Got stuck between themmmmaaagghHAHHHHock hock hock hock! Couldn’t get his belly