Special topics in calamity physics - By Marisha Pessl Page 0,56

the front of her black-and-white silk wrap dress so her electric yellow bra didn't show. "I made the suggestion to Jefferson that she have on hand some of those airplane sick bags, you know, right when you first walk in. She hasn't gotten them yet. Oh, and no you're not hallucinating. That really is Cassiopeia. Ursa Minor's in the dining room, Hercules in the kitchen. Jefferson dreamed it up, constellations of the Northern Hemisphere on all the ceilings. She was dating this guy Timber, an Astrologist and Dream Translator, when they were designing the house, and by the time Timber unloaded her and she was going out with Gibbs from England who hated the idea of all the fucking twinkling lights—'How the devil will you change those bulbs?'— it was too late. The electricians had already done Corona Borealis and half of Pegasus."

The foyer was white-on-white-on-white with a slick marble floor on which one could probably triple-lutz and double-toe-loop with little difficulty. I stared up at what really was Cassiopeia twinkling above us in the pale blue ceiling, which also seemed to hum that acid note of Frozen Food sections. It was freezing too.

"No, you're not coming down with something. Living in cool temperatures stalls, sometimes even reverses the aging process so Jefferson doesn't allow the thermostat in the house to get above forty." Jade flung the car keys onto the massive Corinthian column by the door, messy with change, toenail clippers, brochures for meditation classes at something called The Suwanee Centre for Inner Life. "Don't know about you, but I'm in dire need of a cocktail. Nobody's here yet, they're late, the motherfuckers, so I'll show you around."

Jade made us mudslingers, the first alcoholic drink I'd ever had; it was sweet yet fascinatingly throat scalding. We embarked on the Grand Tour. The house was ornate and filthy as a flophouse. Under the pulsing constellations (many of them with extinguished stars, supernovas, white dwarfs) almost every room looked confused, in spite of the very explicit title Jade gave it (Rec Room, Museum Room, Drawing Room). For example, the Imperial Room displayed an ornate Persian vahze and some large oily portrait of an "eighteenthcentury Sir Somebodyorother"; but also a stained silk blouse over a sofa arm, a sneaker capsized under a stool, and on a gilded end table, gruesome cotton balls huddled together in miserable commiseration after having removed blood-red polish from somebody's nails.

She took me to the TV Room ("three thousand channels and nothing on"), the Toy Room with a life-sized rearing carousel horse ("That's Snow-pea") and the Shanghai Room, empty, apart from a big bronze Buddha statue and ten or twelve cardboard boxes. "Hannah really likes it if we get rid of as much material possession as possible. I take stuff to Goodwill all the time. You should think about doing the same," she said. In the basement, under Gemini, was the Jefferson Room ("where my mother pays ohmage to her heyday"). It was a 1600-square-foot family room with a Drive-in-sized TV, carpeting the color of spareribs and wooden walls lined with thirty advertisements for brands like "Ohh!" Perfume, Slinky Silk™ Pantyhose, Keep Walkin' Bootwear, Orange Bliss Lite® and other obscure products. Each featured the same carrot-topped woman flashing a banana-grin that walked the fine line between ecstatic and fanatic (see Chapter 4, "Jim Jones," Don Juan de Mania, Lerner, 1963).

"That's my mom, Jefferson. You can call her Jeff."

Jade frowned as she surveyed one of the ads for Vita Vitamins in which Jeff, sporting blue terry-cloth wristbands, did a jackknife over VITA VITAMIN YOUR WAY TO A BETTER LIFE.

"She was big in New York in 1978 for two minutes. See here, how her hair curves way up over, then ends right there above her eye? Well, she invented that hairstyle. When she came out with it everyone went bonkers. It was called The Crimson Marshmallow. She was also friends with Andy Warhol. I guess he let her see him without his wig all the time. Oh, wait."

She walked to the table beneath the Sir Albert's Spicy Sausages ads ("If it's good enough for royals, it's good enough for you.") returning with a framed photograph of Jefferson, apparently in the present day.

"This is her last year posing for her Christmas cards."

The woman had wandered deep into her forties and, to her evident panic, had been unable to make her way back. She still flashed the banana-smile, though it'd gone mushy on the ends, and her hair no longer had enough