NoV: Yay, more reviews, more reviews! Thanks everyone for wishing me a happy birthday! I had a really great one!
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Quote of the day:
"Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living."
-Mother Jones
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Once Maureen and Joanne returned with enough pizza for everyone, Angel dropped the proverbial bomb on everyone. "We'll have to occupy ourselves until five when Madam Fletcher arrives, but I'm sure there's plenty to do."
This was news to Maureen and Joanne. The latter remarked, "Are you kidding? Stay in this place for—" she glanced at her watch "five more hours?"
"Well, some of us could leave earlier, and Angel can wait for the hat lady," Maureen suggested.
"No!" Angel whined. "Don't leave me by myself!"
After much debate and begging, everyone begrudgingly agreed to stay for Margo Fletcher's lecture. Angel was beaming, happy to have won the argument. The others were all dreading the next five hours in the museum.
Mimi stared at Roger's uneaten slice of pizza. "Where did Roger go?" she wondered aloud.
"Last I saw him, he was running across the room like a man possessed," Maureen mentioned with a shrug.
Then, as if referring to him had conjured him up, Roger appeared back at the table, now shaking and twitching and talking a mile a minute. "They're incredible! The best thing ever! The first one was delicious and pink! Then the green one was even better! But now she has a purple one! I want it! Twenty dollars, somebody please! I have to have it!"
Mimi, fearful and having no idea what Roger was talking about, took him by the hand and made him sit down. "Roger, your hands are clammy!" she exclaimed, wiping her own hand on her skirt. "Look, Joanne bought you a slice of pizza." She pointed to the cooling slice.
"Pizza!" he spat, as if the very word was so vile and insolent that it made him cringe. "How dare you ask me to eat pizza when I have tasted the fruit from the tree of life!"
"Okay," was all Mimi could say.
"What have you been doing?" Mark asked, suspiciously, glad that the topic was not him and his "perverted sexual desires" for once.
"I have been living!" Roger yelled.
"Shh!" Mimi said. "People are gonna think you're nuts!"
"Oh, I'm not nuts now," Roger informed her. "But I was. Living my whole life without so much as a taste of those delicious, perfect candies." He sat there, his chin on his elbow, staring off into space. When he began to drool, Mimi thought it was best that they leave the cafeteria, the seeming source of his insanity. Once upstairs back in the Renaissance, Roger began to exhibit the effects of withdrawal.
Collins asked, "So, Roger, you up for a peek into the abstract wing?"
"Fuck you, you fucking anarchist!" Roger yelled.
"Roger, what's the matter with you?" Mimi asked in disbelief. She shook her head as she watched her boyfriend sit down on the floor and hug his knees.
"I can't live without them…." he moaned.
"We still don't know what you're talking about!" Maureen said. "You're freaking us out!"
"Well, you're freaking me out!" Roger snapped. "Wearing your hair all crazy….earrings and that tattoo…." He trailed off.
"Roger, if you don't stop scaring me, I am going to leave you here on the floor, talking to yourself," Mimi promised, crossing her arms.
"Fine, leave me in my misery!" Roger said. "Just like the candy did….."
"Are you talking about my fruit snacks?" Mimi asked, exasperated. "I've still got some." She pulled the half-empty packet out of her purse and offered it to him.
Roger took it sadly and said, "It won't be the same…." He ate a grape-shaped gummy and drooped. The others could only watch in confusion as he shook his head making a "Brrrrrr!" sound, as if sounding off the start of a conga, and got to his feet. He sighed, "I'm glad that's over."
"Did you just go through addiction and withdrawal in like five minutes?" Joanne wondered, the bravest of them all.
"That's what it felt like," Roger shrugged.
"Well, nothing like getting addicted to candy to liven up your day," Collins said. "So, who's up for abstract?" He cringed, wondering if Roger was going to scream at him again.
"I'm game," Roger said. Mimi and Mark agreed to go with them.
"No way! Naked statues for me," Maureen insisted, grabbing her pookie by the arm.
"Oooh, that sounds fun! Me too!" Angel cried.
Mimi sat down on a bench to tie her shoe. CRUNCH. Mimi grimaced. "Oh, god, I sat in something," she said. She stood up and turned her butt toward the others so they could tell her what it was.
Maureen frowned. "Oh…." she said. "That's the life saver I was choking on earlier today." The crushed red candy was stuck to the back of Mimi's skirt. Mimi turned her head and pulled her skirt around so she could like at it. She tried to pull the tiny pieces off but they were sticky like….a certain caveman that Mark knew.
"Ewww…" Mimi whined.
"Come on, girl," Angel said, taking Mimi by the arm. "We'll go to the ladies room to get cleaned up," she told the others. "I've gotta reapply my make-up anyway."
As the two walked back downstairs, Collins said, "We'll never see them again."
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The three amigos once again stood together in a room full of art. Mark circled the room, looking for a piece of interest to him. Roger plugged his headphones into a random virtual tour guide stand and listened half-heartedly. Collins plugged his headphones into the stand in front of a garbled piece of flotsam called "La Crull."
Expecting the narrator to tell him something boring about the artist or the medium, Collins was surprised when instead he heard a chilling voice speak to him. "Hello, friend," it said. "I've been waiting…..hear that?" A thump-thump-thump sounded in his ears. "You're heart's beating faster…and faster….and faster….what are you afraid of, friend? I won't hurt you…."
"Hey, Rog!" Collins said, unplugging his headphones. "Come here." Roger abandoned whatever he was listening to and come over to Collins. "Plug your headphones in here," Collins instructed.
Roger did so, but only heard "La Crull was created in 1954 by artist Sanguon McNarthy…." Unplugging his headphones Roger said, "Yeah, so?"
"Didn't you hear the creepy voice?" Collins demanded. "Talking about your heart beat and how he wasn't going to hurt you?"
Roger shook his head and slowly backed away from his friend.
Collins had always known that something was a little quirky in his own brain, but surely he wasn't crazy. He plugged his headset back into the stand and listened again. "You shouldn't have done that….telling that bad man about me….now I'm going to have to kill you…."
"No, please don't kill me!" Collins shouted at the artwork, looking around for someone about to jump him. "I didn't mean it! Let's be friends!"
Of course by this time a small crowd had gathered to watch this man talking to an abstract piece of art. When Mark and Roger noticed the crowd they exchanged a look and went over to save Collins from himself.
"Can you hear me?" Collins was saying. "I said I'm sorry…please don't hate me!"
"Come on, Uncle Jed, it's time for your medicine," Mark said, as he and Roger took Collins by the arms and gave the crowd a pathetic look. The onlookers dissipated, accepting the situation as a crazy man who had missed his regimen.
Roger pried the headphones away from Collins. "Now, Collins," he said, calmly, "if you're going to go nuts and talk to the artwork, we're not going to bring you back to the museum anymore."
"There was a creepy voice!" Collins insisted. "Listen to it yourself."
Mark humored him and listened to the headphones himself. "Hi, I'm Arthur your virtual guide to the New York City Museum of Art. Thanks for joining me!"
"It's not that creepy," Mark said. "A little over-zealous maybe…"
Collins took a deep breath. "I think I'd feel better in the modern art section," he admitted.
"Okay, then let's go there," Roger said. "Whatever will keep you sane…."
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Mimi and Angel walked out of the bathroom. Mimi had managed to salvage the skirt and threw away the candy pieces. Angel had reapplied her make-up, looking no different to anyone else, but to herself feeling very much improved. They split up at the Renaissance, Mimi walking on toward abstract art and Angel ascending the staircase to the third level where Maureen and Joanne were gaping at "erect" statues.
Angel bounded cheerfully up the stairs, having way too much energy after an already tiring day. As she approached the top of the staircase, she called out to Maureen and Joanne, who turned around and waved. Unfortunately, the situation was about to turn to catastrophe. Stiletto heels can only take so much, my friends. And one of Angel's heels decided that it couldn't take the pressure, so it collapsed, leaving a six-inch gap in height between Angel's left and right leg. Normally very stable and graceful, the combined efforts of the stair bouncing and the heel breaking threw Angel off her balance. She lurched backwards down the bottom of the stairs, her bum hitting nearly every step on the way down yet somehow managing to keep her skirt from flying up.
Maureen and Joanne both shrieked in terror as they saw Angel get smaller and smaller until they could no longer see her. Without a moment wasted the two raced downstairs after her. They found the toppled drag queen sprawled out on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, rolling her head around dizzily.
"Oh my god, Angel!" Maureen cried, taking her hand and stooping beside her on the floor. "Are you okay, baby?"
"Ahhh…." Angel said quietly. She sat up, shaking her head, then began to feel the shooting pain in her backside. "OWW!" she yelled, her voice echoing throughout the hallways. "My butt is broken!"
Joanne looked around for help. "Okay, don't panic!" she instructed, mostly to herself. "What would Collins do if he were here?"
Maureen helpfully said, "He'd probably say, 'Angel, baby you broke your booty!'" She affected the man's voice quite nicely.
"I'm going to call an ambulance," Joanne announced, ready to race off to find a telephone.
"No, wait!" Angel exclaimed. Joanne paused and looked back at her. "You can't do that! If I go to the emergency room, I'll be there for like twelve hours! I've gotta see the hats! I'll go to the hospital after I see Margo's lecture."
"You broke your butt!" Joanne insisted. "You need x-rays and medical attention!"
"If you make me go to the hospital now, so help me, I'll strangle myself with my IV!" Angel threatened.
Maureen looked at Joanne, neither of them knowing what to do. "We'll talk to Collins," Maureen said, decidedly. "But if he says you have to go to the hospital, you're going."
"Sure, fine," Angel waved them off, knowing that she could manipulate her little Collins.
"How are we going to get her to Collins?" Maureen wondered. "As fun as it would be, I'm not carrying her around piggyback all day."
"The lobby had strollers. I'm sure they've got wheelchairs too," Joanne suggested. She went downstairs to grab a wheelchair.
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NoV: Lalala, broken butt…..okay, well bad news, I probly won't be able to update again until Friday. I'm having a busy few days ahead, so, yeah….but when I update, you will be most pleased, I'm sure. .
Next time (!): Joanne gets electrocuted. Angel continues to have accidents. Something bad happens to something very old and expensive.