LITMIR.BIZ

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of the couch. She had on a dark wig, a tidy men’s hairpiece, black and shiny as shoe polish.

      Matey saw me first, and nodded. “Here she is, Boss.”

      Crack looked up. She said, “Christ, could you be any later? When I said 6:30, I meant sharp, like on the dot, like the point on your head, see?” She moved fast and bumped into a short girl dressed like an after-dinner mint, all white with red piping. Crack didn’t look at the girl even after she ran into her.

      “What is this?” She pulled the flyers from my hand. “Missing Chicken. Plucky. Aw, real sweet. Now forget about it.” She threw the flyers on the couch and slapped a party-store bowler hat and a bamboo cane against my chest. The hat was made of plastic covered in a thin spray of fuzz like faux felted wool. “Got your suit, sister?”

      I had on the big wool pants, and my thighs were sweaty from walking in the summer evening. The air-conditioned hotel was cold as a walk-in fridge. I shivered in my own cooling sweat. I already had on a pair of men’s wing tips, one black, one brown, both size massive. The suit coat was compressed, tight in my shoulder bag. I pulled the coat out of the bag and shook it.

      “Right,” Crack said. “Put it on.”

      I rested the cane against my leg, pulled on the coat. The shoulders pinched and the sleeves ended half a foot before my arms did.

      “Perfect,” Crack said.

      The coat had the Goodwill seal of hobo authenticity in mingled cigar smoke and rancid sweat. I could barely move my arms as I collected my flyers, shoved them in the pink bag. If I moved too fast, the coat would rip in two. I said, “All this for a prom gig? That’s a little small-time for what you said. The big bucks.” Prom was teenagers, once a year at best.

      “If prom was our gig, I’d shoot myself,” Crack said. “Then again, why shoot myself when I’ve got you two?” She turned on her heel and waved a hand, speaking clown sign language, directing Matey and me to follow.

      In the ladies’ room there was a counter of sinks a mile long lined with a mirror on one side and prom girls on the other. Every prom girl was cloned across that counter, all of them in pastels, with big hair and bigger plans. They leaned in close, as though to kiss themselves as they painted their eyes and lips with tiny brushes. The air was a sickening war between the bathroom’s sanitizer and an army of cheap perfume. Crack, in her black suit and white shirt, pushed dresses aside and wedged her way into the line. Prom girls cackled and fluttered, hens in a henhouse.

      “Hey,” a hen girl clucked. She had lipstick on her top lip but not yet on the bottom, one bright red lip, the other dry and pale. “You can’t be in here. This is the women’s room.”

      Crack tipped her hairpiece. “You must be the housemother, yes?” She grabbed her own boobs through her oversized, rumpled men’s dress shirt. “Want to go over my credentials, cupcake?”

      Matey moved in behind the girl, hands flat on her flat chest. She stuck her tongue out to one side and let her eyes roll. “Me next, me next!” She pressed up behind the prom queen.

      The girl backed off, wobbly in high heels, and found a place between her friends, body guards in tulle and crepe. Matey and I wedged into the girl’s spot. I tipped my plastic bowler and smiled, clown sign language for Sorry. To say, We’re all friends here.

      To Crack I hissed, “What is this, West Side Story? You give these birds reason to hate us.”

      Crack said, “Aw, you’re going soft.” She snapped open her hot pink shoulder bag. The shoulder bags were the matching part of our costumes, bought at Ross to look like a team and to hold props while we worked. She poured trays of makeup on the counter, along with triangular sponge applicators, makeup pencils, tampons, a kazoo, and a washcloth. Our makeup came in kits like grade school watercolors. Each color was a small round cake. A paintbrush snapped in place to the side.

      Crack spread white makeup on her cheek. She said, “Chaplin. Hop to it,” and she looked at me. “Well, step on it, Sniff. Get your Chaplin on, girl.”

      “All of us?” I asked. “So, we’re all the same?”

      Matey nodded, twisted sideways and crowded in beside me in the mirror. “We’re all Chaplin.”

      I said, “We’re all Chaplin. Bejesus. That’s so redundant. Like three Mickey Mouses in the Macy’s parade, or three promotional Snow Whites at the same video store.”

      “Or ten prom queens in the same john,” Matey said, loud. Painted eyes flickered our way and glared in the mirror.

      “What’s redundancy got to do with the price of eggs?” Crack said. “Fetishism is the key. Tap into a fetish, we’ll make a fortune, see?” Her face was white now, with no color at all: Lips, white. Eyebrows dusted white. Only her brown eyes, moving fast, were still dark against her face. Her eyes sized me up in the mirror. “If you’re not interested in cash, let me know.” She looked at me in the mirror, then at herself, then at Matey, then at me again. “If you’re keen on small potatoes and Food Fairs, that’s your trip. Fine. I’ll find another clown girl, read me?”

      I twisted my hair into a high topknot. “‘Greed has poisoned men’s souls,’” I said, and slid a bobby pin in.

      “Hell-o?” Crack said. “Say what?”

      “…has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.”

      Crack painted on her tiny Chaplin mustache. “Look, I’m not exactly taking it out of your hide. I don’t know what you’re getting at, but I’m here to make a buck…”

      I said, “Just quoting Chaplin. I’ve sure you’ve seen The Great Dictator.” I tucked in more hairpins to keep my hair off my face and flat under the bowler.

      Matey piped up: “Like, how do you quote a silent flick? Riddle me that one.”

      I finished pinning my hair and said, “You’re doing that on purpose, I hope.”

      “Don’t count on it,” Crack said. With her tiny mustache and the slick hairpiece, Crack looked halfway to her own dictatorship.

      I said, “So, what kind of fetishes are we selling tonight? Chaplin and hairbrush spankings, for the prom crowd?” I pulled my makeup palette from the bag and found a sponge in a plastic Baggie. I ran the sponge under cool tap water. I touched one edge of the sponge to the white cake of base.

      Crack said, “Again, Miss High Artiste, it’s not about prom, see? It’s corporate stuff. Call it a logo, branding, whatever they want to call it, but underneath, it’s a fetish. A fetish, by any other name, is still the big bucks.” She closed one eye and used a long paintbrush to circle her eye with black. “Matey knows about fetishes, right, Mate?”

      Matey said, “Hey, fetish? Me? Nah, these clothes were fresh this morning.” She bent one foot up, hopped in a circle, and tried to sniff her shoe. Her face was white, her hair pulled back by a dozen tiny bands. She grabbed the counter and swung herself back up to face the mirror, stuck her bowler on her head, and offered a nightmare smile.

      “Cover the bruises,” Crack said. She smacked Matey on one bruised forearm. “These corporate yahoos ponied up for their own style fetish, not S&M, you read me? A little wear and tear takes the shine off the illusion.”

      Matey dug in her bag and came up with Flesh Tones Cream, shade: sallow. She dropped the tube on the counter. Farther down the wall of mirrors, a prom girl ran a line of silver eye shadow over her eyes, same movements as me and Crack and Matey, different color was all. Crack drew on eyebrows. “They want Chaplin, we’ll be Chaplin, see? If they want their mamas, I say play mama for enough cash. If we give ’em what they want, they’ll find a reason to have us back. High demand, high demand. That’s us. Mark my words, ladies.”

      I touched up the white makeup along my chin.

      Matey drew a heavy, black, straight line over her thin, arched eyebrows. Her arms were like sticks, her elbows sharp. The

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