"I don't eat dessert."
"Oh, you're gonna love this," Amanda assured her. "A tropical delicacy."
"What happened to you two out there?" Jayce was genuinely puzzled and disturbed. "I can't believe you're even the same people."
"We're not," replied Amanda, genially. "Who wants coffee?"
"As a matter of fact," joked Drake, "we brought back these giant pods for you we found out in the forest. . ."
"You haven't mutilated your body with some exotic practice, have you, Amanda?"
"Show her the tattoo," Drake urged.
"No, you didn't!"
The Copelands laughed.
"Well, Jesus," said Jayce, "at this point I'd think you two capable of just about anything."
"You know," said Brandon, "you don't have to travel halfway around the globe to get your organs pierced. There's a shop down on Santa Monica Boulevard that'll do it, male or female, thirty bucks a hole."
"And how would you know about such things?" asked Jayce.
Her husband shrugged. "I keep my ear to the ground."
"One world, one culture," proclaimed Drake.
"And to think," said Jayce, "you survive this grueling trek through darkest Borneo to return in time for the worst earthquake in years."
"Yes," said Amanda. "We were in the grocery store and I thought I was having a delayed reaction to the trip -- a total nervous breakdown."
"I had mine while we were there," said Drake.
"Yes, he did, and it hasn't stopped yet. You should have seen him in Vons."
After weeks of roughing it in Jungle World, they discovered the innate preposterousness of the modern American supermarket, its extravagant realities inducing in each of them a crazed infectious state of uncontrollable giddiness. Halfway down the first aisle and they were pulling items at random off the shelves, thrusting the gaudy absurd packaging into one another's demented faces.
"Shoestring potatoes!" Amanda screamed. "Vacuum-packed!" And -- crash! -- into the basket went the can.
"Cheese balls," answered Drake. "No cholesterol!" Crash!
They were naughty children on a sugar spree. The notion of gratification a hilarious joke. The more highly processed the product, the less its nutritional value, the greater their amusement, the keener their need. They quickly filled two carts with good ol' American junk food and were being not so subtly stalked by an unamused assistant store manager whose gleaming bald head, Drake decided, would make a stunning addition to the contemporary look of their living room, up on the mantel perhaps, somewhere between the laser clock and the soapstone hand grenade, when the floor turned to Jell-O and cartons of milk began tumbling out of the dairy case.
"I couldn't move," said Amanda. "People were shouting, running for the door, I couldn't move. I thought my springs had sprung."
"The lights were swaying," Drake continued, "ceiling tiles bouncing off our heads, pickle jars exploding at our feet, I thought I was gonna die."
"We were in bed asleep," said Jayce, "and I couldn't understand why Brandon kept shaking and shaking me."
"I was already up and racing for the doorway."
"Nice guy, huh? The heroic gentleman."
" 'Earthquake!' I screamed, 'Let's go!' You knew the drill, Jayce. I assumed you were right behind me."
"One more like that," Jayce declared, "and I'm gone to Oregon."
"That's what you said after the one before this."
"What would you do in Oregon, anyway?" asked Amanda. "The fresh air would make you sick, the trees would give you the creeps, the people would bore you."
"She's right, Jayce," said Brandon. "You can't avoid your birthright. You're a child of pollution and the business. You know you wouldn't be happy anywhere else."
Jayce took a sip of the deer penis wine, momentarily forgetting what she was drinking. "But I'm not happy here," she said.
"Yes, you are," said Brandon, "but you think you're not. We're all happy here, aren't we, Drake?"
"Mega-happy!"
"Let me see the bottle," Jayce demanded. "This stuff ain't half bad."
"Daddy would never permit us to move, anyway," said Brandon. "Let his princess out of his sight? I don't think so. He's got plans for the littlest heir."
"He's got plans for you, too, doesn't he?" asked Drake.
"I hope so, buddy, I sincerely hope so."
After carefully examining the label, Jayce held the wine bottle up to the light, peering intently into its murky depths. "Is this anything like mescal, except instead of a worm at the bottom of the bottle, there's something else you have to swallow?"
"If there is, baby, I know we can count on you to find it."
"Brandon!" said Amanda sharply.
Jayce poured herself another glass. "Oh, leave him alone. He's just jealous because I got another part while you were gone."
"Jayce, that's wonderful," said Amanda, glancing across the table at Drake.
"No big deal. The remake of
Breathless.
Very small role, folks, and I emphasize the word 'small.' "
"Didn't Orion already do a remake of that?" Drake asked.
"Of course," said Brandon, "and we're going to keep on making it until we get it right."
"And Godard was simply mimicking those old Monogram Studios gangster pictures to begin with, so even the original is a copy." An idea Drake found extremely amusing.
"Cud chewing," snorted Brandon in disgust. "That's the whole process today."
"Who do you play?" Amanda asked.
"A cop," said Jayce.
Now everyone laughed.
"It's a new character Daddy had added to the script to showcase his princess," said Brandon.
"He did not!"
"I'm afraid he did."
"How would you know?"
"Rusty Iacobelli."
"Rusty Iacobelli is a slimy shitass."
"He got it from Caleb."
"Caleb! The worst. He'd set his own mother on fire to tell stories about how funny she looked trying to put it out."
"Maybe so, but he hears what's going on."
"He hears what he wants to hear."
"Now, people," cautioned Drake, "let's watch our stress levels here."
"Anyway," said Amanda, "congratulations. I think that's wonderful about the part."
"Thank you," said Jayce. "It's a move in the right direction."
"Remember her first role," asked Brandon, "when she was a flesh-eating cockroach."
"A nimryx," corrected Jayce. "From the planet Torus. I was the queen. And what are you giggling at?" she asked Drake. "Mister Assistant Director on Lampshades from Hell or whatever the fuck it was."
"
Specks on a Looking Glass.
It's a cult classic."
"For what cult?"
"All right, everybody -- dessert," Amanda announced, carrying in from the kitchen a stylish bamboo tray containing two coconut-sized gourds with impressively thorny husks.
"Durian,"
she said, placing the tray before them. "The national fruit of Indonesia."
Drake showed them how to find the seam without getting pricked and how to wedge the blade of the knife in until the shell split cleanly open. Inside, nestled among the twin compartments of a white Styrofoam-like pod, were a pair of gelatinous gray lobes resembling diseased kidneys or the separated hemispheres of an unfurrowed brain.
Jayce drew back, wrinkling her nose in revulsion. "It smells like kerosene."
"You have to work your way past the odor," explained Drake the connoisseur, "to get at the feast of flavor within."
Jayce looked dubious.
"It smells like rancid milk," said Brandon.
"Just hold your nose," urged Amanda, "and pop a piece."
Drake, already chewing heartily on a large gummy section, made encouraging faces at his guests.
"I don't know about this," complained Brandon, his own obscene morsel slipping twice from his fingers before he finally got it safely maneuvered in between his lips. "Oysters without the half shell." He chewed and grimaced and chewed, working his way through a variety of curious expressions. "Strange," he said, "it tastes like" -- he paused to consider -- "it tastes like soap. . . no, hair cream or. . . or beets or bananas, no, more like onion. . . and tapioca. Fascinating, the taste keeps getting away from me."
"Isn't it great," Amanda said. "It's almost whatever you want it to be."
"The complete Indonesian experience inside one candy shell," Drake declared. "The beautiful, the ugly, the ordinary, the bizarre, the sweet, the sour, simultaneously assaulting your senses."
Brandon reached for another piece. "You know," he said in surprise, "this shit ain't half bad once you get used to it."
"Many Indonesians find it rather addicting," said Amanda. "I think it's the chameleonlike character of the fruit."
"All right, you guys," said Jayce. She made a grand show of biting into the tiniest sample and immediately spit it out into her hand. "Gross!" she exclaimed, chugging from her water glass, then deliberately wiping her tongue with her napkin. "Mayonnaise and bad tuna," she said.
"Okay, then, how about a nice hot cup of civet cat coffee?" suggested Amanda.
"Every precious bean guaranteed having passed through the alimentary canal of said feline," explained Drake. "Promotes health and longevity, too."
"You're not the same people," Jayce insisted again. "In fact, I don't know if Westerners, or anyone else for that matter, should be permitted to visit that loony island."
"It's thirteen thousand islands," said Drake. "It's more islands than there are stars in the heavens -- or on the Warner back lot."
"And loony, every one."
"But there's a loony place for everybody," argued Amanda. "Even you, Jayce. Some special cuckoo spot waiting to take your measurements."
"Everyone knows Jayce's measurements," said Brandon. "They've been printed in
Vogue
."
Amanda smiled and raised her wineglass to her lips and, glancing up, saw to her astonishment a strange man standing in the bright frame of the kitchen doorway, a presence so incongruous and unexpected he seemed to have stepped catlike through a tear in the very air itself. The boogeyman, she thought.
It was Drake who first noticed the odd expression on his wife's face. Then he saw the man, too. He looked like a shoe salesman at the mall. The stranger was wearing a blue polo shirt and khaki pants. He was holding a gun in his right hand.
"Who are you?" Drake demanded, rising out of his chair.
Jayce froze.
Brandon twisted around in his seat to see what was happening, then tried to move back, out of the line of fire.
"Sit!" ordered the man, waving the barrel impatiently about. "Now, the secret words for tonight's game are composure, obedience, and cash."
Jayce's eyes had grown large and unnaturally bright, as if trying hard to see in the dark.
"Tommy!" It was a woman's voice coming from the back door. "I can't find the duct tape. Where'd you say it was?"
"Under the seat!" the man yelled. "The passenger's side!" Then, with a half smile, to the stunned people gathered around the dining room table, "If I have to go out there myself. . ."
"What cash I have is in my wallet," said Drake.
"On the table," Tommy ordered. "You, too." He tugged at the hair on the back of Brandon's head. "And, ladies, your purses, please."
"I don't have a purse," said Amanda, controlling her voice as best she could. The intruder's eyes were as hard and gray as sun-bleached pebbles.
"Wallet?"
"It's in the kitchen."
"Tell me where."
"On a hook with the keys beside the telephone."
Tommy nodded. "Everyone empty their pockets, too. Quickly." No one spoke or dared to trade a glance. They began making small cairns of change, keys, combs, handkerchiefs, breath mints, etc., on the tablecloth in front of them, and when they were finished, they sat before these modest offerings, their hands in their laps, like chastened schoolchildren.
"Well, well," said Tommy, smirking at the vial of crack cocaine lying atop Brandon's quarters. "Beam me up, Scotty. The ol' Enterprise is hovering over all of us these days, I guess, the anointed and the damned."
No one said a word.
"And I suppose you don't have a purse, either," he asked Jayce sarcastically.
"In the living room."
"I possess many talents, my dear, but I'm afraid mind reading is not among them."
"Beside the white chair."
"I do hope there's some pleasant surprises in your respective wallets, folks," he said in an exaggerated drawl, "because from here it looks like a rather pathetic accumulation so far."
The back door slammed. They heard the woman's voice before they saw her haggard face peering inquisitively over Tommy's shoulder. "Pretty people," she said. Her dyed-blond hair had begun to grow out months ago and hung now, in dull unwashed strands half-blond, half-black, along thin cheeks caked with makeup that couldn't quite disguise the rampant acne. She was wearing torn jeans and a sleeveless black T-shirt. She noted the disappointing piles of change. "Is that all?" she asked.
"Tape their wrists together. Their ankles. Tight."
"I'm sorry," said Drake, "but this is all the money we have on hand. We just returned from a trip overseas."
"What are you going to do?" asked Brandon.
"Tape their mouths, too," said Tommy.
"Please," implored Jayce. "I won't be able to breathe. I've got a sinus condition."
"Tape hers first."
"Hey," said the woman. "It's you, it's Tara Toye. Look, Tommy, look who it is, Tara Toye."
"I'm not Tara."
"Yes, you are."
"My name is Jayce Starling."
"Are you sure?" the woman circled her in a crouch, examining her features from various angles.
"Who's Tara Toye?" asked Tommy.
"Oh, you know. She was in that flick about the cop. . . you know, the rebel cop with the black partner."
"I'm not her," insisted Jayce.
"You are, too."
"Please, you can examine my Actors Equity card."
The woman moved in for a final close-up inspection. She smelled of smoke and garlic and auto exhaust. "Okay, so maybe you're not. Amazing resemblance, though. You could be her twin. So, what have you been in?" But before Jayce could reply, the woman turned to her partner. "Tommy, I can't tear this fucking tape. I need some scissors or something."