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plastic Hello Kitty heart-shaped box from her fetal calf leather handbag. «Straight from Miss Bolivia's falsies. Yummie, yummie.» She held out the box to John, and he slapped it with a wave that was just forceful enough to read as purposeful. The box fell onto the floor and exploded.
    «John! That was really stupid.»
    «Mel, please. I don't feel so good. I want to be alone.»
    «Oh cute — like a Simon and Garfunkel song. You remember who your friends are. And remember — twins! From Florida no less.»
    John stared at her.
    «I'm going to leave now, John, before you go and say something else stupid. I'll tell Nurse Ratchet outside that you're awake.
Au revoir,
Johnniepoo.»



Chapter Four
    Susan's earliest memory was powerful and clear. She was four and a half, and she was in the elevator of the Benson Hotel, Portland, Oregon, wearing a beaded strapless evening gown paid for with the proceeds of rabbits her mother Marilyn sold from hutches adjoining the double-wide trailer back in McMinnville.
    Marilyn had toiled for umpteen hours on each of the gown's beaded filaments, in between furtive glances at walls papered with gown photos ripped from ladies' magazines and specialized pageantry publications. Marilyn had also recently purchased a glue gun and she had had great plans for fastening sparkly objects to belts and accessories.
    Susan's face was heavily pancaked in a manner calculated to add fifteen years to her age. She was wearing a diagonal rayon sash across her chest readingPETITE MISS MULTNOMAH COUNTY — FIRST RUNNER-UP, and her face was so moist from tears it felt like an unsqueezed dish sponge. She remembered pushing a button for each of the floors. The doors opened sixteen times from penthouse to basement, each time revealing the absence of Marilyn.
    Earlier, just before Susan had gone onstage, Marilyn had clasped her shoulders, looked her dead in the eyes and said, «Only the prettiest and the best-behaved girl gets to win, and if you don't win, I'm not going to be here waiting for you afterward. Do you understand this? Is this clear?» Susan had nodded and gone onstage with the fluid military precision drummed into her on a mock catwalk Marilyn had chalked onto the concrete at the cul-de-sac's end back in McMinnville. And yet she hadn't won, and had no idea what mistake had caused her to lose.
    Once the elevator reached the lowest level, Susan pushed all the buttons on the pad again, and rose upward. When the doors on the main floor opened, she saw dozens of the mother-daughter molecules specific to pageantry, milling their way out the front door. Marilyn was speaking to the concierge. She looked at Susan exiting the elevator and, cool-as-you-will, said, «Oh my, a runner-
up.
» As Susan came closer she added, «I have a daughter, yes, but she's a winner, and you couldn't possibly be her because your sash saysFIRST RUNNER-UP , which means the same thing as losing.»
    Susan burst into tears.
    «Oh, shut up,» said Marilyn, and she gave her daughter a handkerchief. «You'll stain the dress. Come on. Let's walk to the car.»
    Susan followed, brimming with the shameful gratitude of a puppy in training. The night was cool, on the brink of discomfort.
    «Oh
Sus
an,» began Marilyn, «You
know
how long we worked on this one. It's been weeks since I've touched a bingo card with Elaine or even watched TV. I think of the time I spend trying to make you the winningest little girl in Oregon and I start to feeling like those inmates in orange jumpsuits picking up litter on the sides of the Interstate.»
    Bums heckled them as they walked through the town center. Marilyn looked their way and said: «They can't pave this city fast enough. Put a ten-lane freeway right through these old heaps, call it a mall, and gas those wretched winos.»
    Susan sniffled and her heels clicked on the sidewalk like a sous-chef's cutting knife on a board.
    «Don't you have
anything
to say?» asked Marilyn. «You're so quiet, like a Barbie doll,