Mark Jude Poirier
"Are they like a couple?" Montana asked. The Prius driver began to walk cowards her miniature car. Montana called after her: "Sorry I invited you to be a guest speaker and come to a catered reception at our mansion! l forgot that Carla and Liz are lesbians!" Then Mo.ntana turned to me. "Did you know they were lesbians, Bianca?" "I was the one who cold ]ana and you-not that either of you should have had to be told. I mean, boys' Lacoste shirts from the '70s and thrift-store Levi's cords? You both are retarded." "We're not retarded, yotl cunt," Jana said to me. "You were probably looking for gay vibes or something." Sometimes )ana's face seemed too big for her head. This was one of those times. If there had been a way to shrink every feature by thirty percent, she would have been quire beautiful. She had her nose reshaped when she turned fourteen, but her parents should have sprung for more, like a horizontal mouth reduction. I bet if she had tried, she could have stuck her tongue in her ear. "It's bitter, isn't it?" I asked. "What?" Jana said. "Earwax." I was glad to be in my own Hummer, alone, as we merged onto the Cross County expressway. Before I finished The Kite Runner DVD, we were already on the FOR. We made it to the Lower East Side in record time, fifty-six minutes, not including the gas stops. "Where are we going?" Montana asked through my iPhone, which 1 had on speaker, Velcroed to my dash. "We're going to Manhattan to get bacto-body-art, you dumb bitch," Jana said. "Which dumb bitch asked that?" "Montana," l said. "You dumb bitch. Like I'd ask that." "Hey," Montana said. "I am on this call, and I meant where specifically in Manhattan arc we going sol can set my GPS." "Pur in like First Avenue and Ninth Street and shut your hole," Jan a said. "Or you could just follow us." Jana ran a red light then, nearly plowed over a woman pushing a small cart and a scruffy guy on a bike. "Manhattatarians are so clueless," she said. Montana and I had stopped for tbe red light and people were looking at us like we were ]ana, like we had nearly killed the pedestrians. Montana thought they were gawking because our Hummers were a year old. She put down her window. "What?" she said to the people. "The new ones aren't yet available in Connecticut! God!" Then she put up her window and said, "New Yorkers are such snobs! God!" "Where are you dumb bitches?" ]ana barked into the phone. We ended up illt!gally parking along Tompkins Square, but everyone there looked too rich and too put-together to have bacto-body-art. Seven of the 74
FUGUE • 36