Invisible Monsters

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

So this is life in the Brandy Alexander Witness Reincarnation Project.

In Santa Barbara, Manus who was Denver taught us how to get drugs. The three of us were squeezed into that Fiat Spider from Portland to Santa Barbara, and Brandy just wanted to die. All the time, holding both hands pressed on her lower back, Brandy kept saying, "Stop the car. I got to stretch. I am spaz-am-ing. We have to stop."

It took us two days to drive from Oregon to California, and the two states are right next door to each other. Manus being all the time looking at Brandy, listening to her, in love with her so obvious I only wanted to kill them in worse and more painful ways.

In Santa Barbara, we're just into town when Brandy wants to get out arid walk a little. Trouble is, this is a really good neighborhood in California. Right up in the hills over Santa Barbara. You walk around up here, the police or some private security patrol cruises you and wants to know who you are and see some I.D., please.

Still, Brandy, she's spasming again, and the hysterical princess has one leg over the door, half climbed out of the Spider before Denver Omelet will even stop. What Brandy wants are the Tylox capsules she left in Suite 15-G at the Congress Hotel.

"You can't be beautiful," Brandy says about a thousand times, "until you feel beautiful."

Up here in the hills, we pull up curbside to an OPEN HOUSE sign. The house looking down on us is a big hacienda, Spanish enough to make you want to dance the flamenco on a table, swing on a wrought-iron chandelier, wear a sombrero and a bandoleer.

"Here," Denver says to her. "Get yourselves pretty, and I'll show you how we can scam some prescription painkillers."

Jump back to the three days we hid out in Denver's apartment until we could get some cash together. Brandy, she's cooked up some new plan. Before she goes under the knife she's decided to find her sister.

The me who wants to dance on her grave.

"A vaginoplasty is pretty much forever," she says. "It can wait while I figure some things out."

She's decided to find her sister and tell her everything, about the gonorrhea, about why Shane's not dead, what happened, everything. Make a clean break of it. Probably she'd be surprised how much her sister already knows.

I just want to be out of town in case a felony arson arrest warrant is in the pipeline, so I threaten Denver, if he won't come with us, I'll run to the police and accuse him. Of arson, of kidnapping, of attempted murder. To Evie, I mail a letter.

To Brandy, I write:

let's drive around some, see what happens, chill.

This seems a little labor intensive, but we've all got something to run from. And when I say we, I mean everybody in the world. So Brandy thinks we're on tour to find her sister, and Denver's come along by blackmail. My letter to Evie's sitting in her mailbox at the end of her driveway leading up to her burned-up ruins of a house. Evie's in Cancun, maybe.

The letter to Evie says:

To Miss Evelyn Cottrell,

Manus says he shot me and you helped him 'cuz of your filthy relationship. In order for you to stay out of PRISON, please seek an insurance settlement for the damage to your home and personal property as soon as possible. Convert this entire settlement into United

States funds, tens and twenties, and mail them to me care of General Delivery in Seattle, Washington. I am the person you are responsible for being without a fiance, your former best friend, no matter what lies you tell yourself. Send the money and I will consider the matter dealt with and will not go to the police and have you arrested and sent to PRISON, where you will have to fight day and night for your dignity and life but no doubt lose them both. Yes, and I've had major reconstructive surgery, so I look even better than myself, and I have Manus Kelley with me and he still loves me and says he hates you and will testify against you in court that you're a bitch. Signed, Me

Jump to above the edge of the Pacific Ocean, parked curb-side at the Spanish hacienda OPEN HOUSE. Denver tells Brandy and me how to go upstairs while he keeps the realtor busy. The master bedroom will have the best view, that's how to find it. The master bathroom will have the best drugs.

Sure, Manus used to be a police vice detective, if you consider wagging your butt around the bushes in Washington Park wearing a Speedo bikini a size too small and hoping some lonely sex hound will whip his dick out, if that's detective work, then, sure, Manus was a detective.

Because beauty is power the way money is power the way a loaded gun is power. And Manus with his square-jawed, cheekboned good looks could be a Nazi recruiting poster.

While Manus was still fighting crime, I found him cutting the crust off a slice of bread one morning. Bread without crust made me remember being little. This was so sweet, but I thought he was making me toast. Then Manus goes to in front of a mirror in the apartment we used to share, wearing his white Speedo, and he asks, if I were a gay guy would I want to bang him up the butt? Then he changed to a red Speedo and asked again. You know, he says, really stuff his poop chute? Plow the cowboy? It's not a morning I would want on video.

"What I need," Manus said, "is for my basket to look big, but my ass to look adolescent." He takes the slice of bread and stuffs it inside between himself and the crotch of the Speedo. "Don't worry, this is how underwear models get a better look," he says. "You get a smooth unoffen-sive bulge this way." He stands sideways to the mirror and says, "You think I need another slice?"

His being a detective meant he crunched around in good weather, in his sandals and his lucky red Speedo, while two plainclothes men nearby in a parked car waited for somebody to take the bait. This happened more than you'd imagine. Manus was a one-man campaign to clean up Washington Park. He'd never been this successful as a regular policeman and this way nobody ever shot at him.

It all felt very Bond, James Bond. Very cloak and dagger. Very spy versus spy. Plus he was getting a great tan. Plus he got to tax deduct his gym membership and his buying new Speedos.

Jump to the realtor in Santa Barbara shaking my hand and saying my name, Daisy St. Patience, over and over the way you do when you want to make a good impression but not looking at me in my veils. He's looking at Brandy and Denver.

Charmed, I'm sure.

The house is just what you'd expect from the outside. There's a big scarred mission-style trestle table in the dining room, under a wrought-iron chandelier you could swing on. Laid across the table is a silver-embroidered, fringed Spanish shawl.

We represent a television personality who wishes to remain nameless, Denver tells the realtor. We're an advance team scouting for a weekend home for this nameless celebrity. Miss Alexander, she's an expert in product toxicity, you know, the lethal fumes and secretions given off by homes.

"New carpet," Denver says, "will exude poisonous formaldehyde for up to two years after it's been laid."

Brandy says, "I know that feeling.”

It got so that when Manus's crotch wasn't leading men to their doom, Manus was three-piece-suited in court on the witness stand, saying how the defendant approached him in some lurid exposed public masturbating way and asked for a cigarette.

"Like anybody could look at me and think I smoke," Manus would say.

You didn't know what vice he objected to more.

After Santa Barbara, we drove to San Francisco and sold the Fiat Spider. Me, I'm writing on cocktail napkins all the time: maybe your sister's in the next city, she could be anywhere.

In the Santa Barbara hacienda, Brandy and me found Benzedrine and Dexedrine and old Quaaludes and Soma and some Dialose capsules that turned out to be a fecal softener. And some Solaquin Forte cream that turned out to be a skin bleach.

In San Francisco, we sold the Fiat and some drugs and bought a big red Physicians' Desk Reference book so we wouldn't be stealing worthless fecal softeners and skin bleaches. In San Francisco, old people are all over selling their big rich houses full of drugs and hormones. We had Demerol and Darvocet-Ns. Not the puny little Darvocet-N 50s. Brandy was feeling beautiful with me trying to O.D. her on big Darvocet 100-milligram jobbers.

After the Fiat, we rented a big Seville convertible. Just between us, we were the Zine kids:

Me, I was Comp Zine.

Denver was Thor Zine.

Brandy, Stella Zine.

It was in San Francisco I started Denver on his own secret hormone therapy to destroy him.

Manus's detective career had started to peter out when his arrest rate dropped to one per day, then one per week, then zero, then still zero. The problem was the sun, the tanning, and the fact he was getting older and he was a known bait, none of the older men he had already arrested went near him. The younger men just thought he was too old.

So Manus got bold. More and more his Speedos got smaller, which wasn't a good look, either. The pressure was on to replace him with a new model. So now he'd have to start conversations. Talk. Be funny. Really work at meeting guys. Develop a personality, and still the younger men, the only ones who didn't run when they saw him, a younger man would still decline when Manus suggested they take a walk back into the trees, into the bushes.

Even the most horny young men with their eyes scamming everybody else would say, "Uh, no thanks."

Or, "I just want to be alone right now."

Or worse, "Back off, you old troll, or I'll call a cop.”

After San Francisco and San Jose and Sacramento, we went to Reno and Brandy turned Denver Omelet into Chase Manhattan. We zigzagged everywhere I thought we'd find enough drugs. Evie's money could wait.

Jump to Las Vegas and Brandy turns Chase Manhattan into Eberhard Faber. We drive the Seville down the gut of Las Vegas. All that spasming neon, the red chase lights going one direction, white chase lights going the other direction. Las Vegas looks the way you'd imagine heaven must look at night. We never put the top up on the Seville, had it two weeks, never put the top up.

Cruising the gut of Las Vegas, Brandy sat on the boot with her ass up on the trunk lid and her feet on the back seat, wearing this strapless metallic brocade sheath as pink as the burning center of a road flare with a bejeweled bodice and a detachable long silk taffeta cape with balloon sleeves.

With her looking that good, Las Vegas with all its flash and dazzle was just another Brandy Alexander brand fashion accessory.

Brandy puts her arms up, wearing these long, pink opera gloves, and just howls. She just looks and feels so good at that moment. And the detachable long silk taffeta cape with balloon sleeves, it detaches.

And sails off into Las Vegas traffic.

"Go around the block," Brandy screams. "That cape has to go back to Bullock's in the morning."

After Manus's detective career started downhill, we'd have to work out in the gym every day, twice on some days. Aerobics, tanning, nutrition, every station of the cross. He was a bodybuilder, if what that means is you drink your meal replacement shakes right out of the blender six times a day over the kitchen sink. Then Manus would get swimwear through the mail you couldn't buy in this country, little pouches on strings and microfilament technology he'd put on the moment we got home from the gym, then follow me around asking, did I think his butt looked too flat?

If I was a gay guy, did I think he needed to trim back his pubic hair? Me being a gay guy, would I think he looked too desperate? Too aloof? Was his chest big enough? Too big, maybe?

"I'd hate for guys to think I'm just a big dumb cow is all," Manus would say.

Did he look, you know, too gay? Gay guys only wanted guys who acted straight.

"I don't want guys to see me as a big passive bottom," Manus would say. "It's not like I'd just flop there and let just any guy bone me."

Manus would leave a ring of shaved hairs and bronzer scum around the bathtub and expect me to scrub.

Always in the background was the idea of going back to an assignment where people shot at you, criminals with nothing to lose if you got killed.

And maybe Manus could bust some old tourist who found the cruisy part of Washington Park by accident, but most days the precinct commander was on him to start training a younger replacement.

Most days, Manus would untangle a silver metallic tiger stripe string bikini out of the knotted mess in his underwear drawer. He'd strain his ass into this little A-cup nothing and look at himself in the mirror sideways, frontways, backwards, then tear it off and leave the stretched, dead little animal print on the bed for me to find. This would go on through zebra stripes, tiger stripes, leopard spots, then cheetah, panther, puma, ocelot, until he ran out of time.

"These are my lucky lifeguard 'kinis," he'd tell me. "Be honest."

And this is what I kept telling myself was love.

Be honest? I wouldn't know where to start. I was so out of practice.

After Las Vegas, we rented one of those family vans. Eberhard Faber became Hewlett Packard. Brandy wore a long, white cotton pique dress with open strappy sides and a high slit up the skirt that was totally inappropriate for the entire state of Utah. We stopped and tasted the Great Salt Lake.

This just seemed like the thing to do.

I was always writing in the sand, writing in the dust on the car:

maybe your sister is in the next town.

Writing: here, take a few more Vicodins.

It was after Manus couldn't get guys to approach him for sex that he started into buying man-on-man sex magazines and going out to gay clubs.

"Research," he'd say.

"You can come with," he'd tell me, "but don't stand too close, I don't want to send out the wrong signal."

After Utah, Brandy turned Hewlett Packard into Harper Collins in Butte. There in Montana, we rented a Ford Probe and Harper drove with me squashed in the back seat, and every once in a while Harper would say, "We're going one hundred and ten miles an hour."

Brandy and me, we'd shrug.

Speeding didn't seem like anything in a place as big as Montana.

maybe your sister's not even in the united states, I wrote in lipstick on a bathroom mirror in a motel in Great Palls,

So to keep Manus's job, we went out to gay bars, and I sat alone and told myself that it was different for men, the good looks thing was. Manus flirted and danced and sent drinks down the bar to whoever looked like a challenge. Manus would slip onto the bar stool next to mine and whisper out the side of his mouth.

"I can't believe he's with that guy," he'd say.

Manus would nod just enough for me to figure out which guy.

"Last week, he wouldn't give me the time of day," Manus would rant under his breath. "I wasn't good enough, and that trashy, bottle-blonde piece of garbage is supposed to be better?"

Manus would hunch over his drink and say, "Guys are so fucked up."

And I'd be, like, no duh.

And I told myself it was okay. Any relationship I could be in would have these rough times.

Jump to Calgary, Alberta, where Brandy ate Nebalino suppositories wrapped in gold foil because she thought they were Almond Roca. She got so ripped, she turned Harper Collins into Addison Wesley. Most of Calgary, Brandy wore a white, quilted ski jacket with a faux fur collar and a white bikini bottom by Donna Karan. The look was fun and spirited and we felt light and popular.

Evenings called for a black and white striped floor-length coat dress that Brandy could never keep buttoned up, with black wool hot pants on underneath. Addison Wesley turned into Nash Rambler, and we rented another Cadillac.

Jump to Edmonton, Alberta, Nash Rambler turned into Alfa Romeo. Brandy wore these crinoline shorty-short square dance petticoats over black tights tucked into cowboy boots. Brandy wore this push-up bustier made of leather with local cattle brands burned all over it.

In a nice hotel bar in Edmonton, Brandy says, "I hate it when you can see the seam in your martini glass. I mean, I can feel the mold line. It's so cheap."

Guys all over her. Like spotlights, I remember that kind of attention. That whole country, Brandy never had to buy her own drinks, not once.

Jump to Manus losing his assignment as an independent special contract vice operative to the detective division of the Metropolitan police department. My point is, he never really got over it.

He was running out of money. It's not like there was a lot in the bank to begin with. Then the birds ate my face.

What I didn't know is, there was Evie Cottrell living alone in her big lonesome house with all her Texas land and oil money, saying, hey, she had some work that needed doing. And Manus with his driving need to prove he can still pee on every tree. That mirror-mirror kind of power. The rest you already know.

Jump to us on the road, after the hospital, after the Rhea sisters, and I keep slipping the hormones, the Provera and Climara and Premarin, into what he ate and drank. Whiskey and estradiol. Vodka and ethinyl estradiol. It was so easy it was scary. He was all the time making big cow eyes at Brandy.

We were all running from something. Vaginoplasty. Aging. The future.

Jump to Los Angeles.

Jump to Spokane.

Jump to Boise and San Diego and Phoenix.

Jump to Vancouver, British Columbia, where we were Italian expatriates speaking English as a second language until there wasn't a native tongue among us.

"You have two of the breasts of a young woman," Alfa Romeo told a realtor I can't remember in which house.

From Vancouver, we reentered the United States as Brandy, Seth, and Bubba-Joan via the Princess Princess's very professional mouth. All the way to Seattle, Brandy read to us how a little Jewish girl with a mysterious muscle disease turned herself into Rona Barrett.

All of us looking at big rich houses, picking up drugs, renting cars, buying clothes, and taking clothes back.

"Tell us a gross personal story," Brandy says en route to Seattle. Brandy all the time being the boss of me. Being this close to death herself.

Rip yourself open.

Tell me my life story before I die.

Sew yourself shut.