little round platter. “Order?” she said, clicking her gum in a particularly Brooklyn manner. “A.B.M. with a screw,” Jenny said. “Ya got the wrong lady,” the waitress said. “ I’m taking drinks.” Jenny moaned and wrote her order on a napkin. A voice in the front said, “ To Jenny Jenkins,. Queen of ACROFAD!” Jenny began sobbing in low, deep snuffles. Wednesday morning, Jenny experienced the worst hangover she had known since her sorority rush at Radcliffe. She did not leave her bed until noon, and then dressed only in her shower robe and bunny slippers, the way she used to when she was sick and wanted to stay home from school. The telephone rang constantly, so she removed the receiver. But she felt as though someone was there, lying on the table, listening. So she cut the cord with a pair of scissors. She tried to concentrate on her language, and tried several times during the afternoon to enunciate slowly as she thought, ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question.’ But she could only blurt out, “TB OR NO TB, BIG Q.” She tried to relax and flow spontaneously with her mind, thinking with a smile. ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.’ But she said, “RASP FALMOP,” instead. She reasoned with herself that her mind was overly concerned with making connections between various unrelated objects. Perhaps, as a newswoman, she had specialized to the point of pathology. She attempted to contemplate only one subject at a time. She ambled into the kitchen and opened a cabinet, searching for the one pronounceable item. Perhaps a single can; she opened her lips and licked them in anticipation. Campbell’s soup. “CREAM OF VEGBEFPOTO- MPEAMUSHTRONI,” she said, staring at a can of alphabet soup. She contemplated suicide. Headlines tracked across her mind; ‘NEWS- WMN LPS 15 STOR. TO DTH, KILLS 3 CHLRN IN FL.’ and ‘ANCRWMN MXS VALIUM AND DRANOCOCKTL, RELAXES INTO 50 SQ. FT. PUDDLE.’ But she was not brave, just tired. Jenny spent the evening reading the vacation ads in McCall’s and Redbook. For Baja and Death Valley. Thursday morning, Jenny decided to set the Guiness Book world record for the longest continuous cold shower. “G.B. WOREC,” she shuddered, and turned the faucet to ice cold. She had just began to shake uncontrollably when the doorbell rang. It was the news director. “You’ve got to come back to us, Jenny dear,” he said, wiping his abnormally high forehead. Jenny started to form ten or twelve words, but shut her lips tight. “Do you know how many telephone calls we have had? Favorable telephone calls? Hundreds. Listen, Jenny, love. You are a hit — a sensation. You’ve got a swell gimmick going; people don’t just want to listen anymore. They want to unravel. It makes them feel, feel — "IN", Jenny said. “Well, yes, to use the vernacular...” “ IN GO ONCAM. EVAG.” He stared for a moment, with his finger stuck to his lips. “Going, yes. On camera. In going. I’m not going. Ever again.” His triumph faded into fidgeting. “Jenny, dear, we all love you. I may have been a bit hasty in letting you go. The station is prepared to pay you double your former wages. Ah. temporarily, of course. I mean to say, we’ll work things out. And when this fad of yours wears down, well, you can just revert back to the King’s English and resume your old job. sample as that.” Jenny turned red. like an apple ripening in the sun. “NOT GIM! MY MTH DSNT WK!” She started to cry, almost dropped her towel..“ IM SK,” she sobbed. “Jenny, Jenny — We want you. We need you. We love you. We’ll pay you triple. Just the way you are. This is a great opportunity. Do you want to starve? Think of all the fan mail. Dozens of letters already from love smitten males. Think of the joy and the liveliness you’ll bring to the inner city. Not a sickness. A gift. Come back to us.” She paused, uncertain. “Be at the studio by five,” he said. “And do something with your hair.” “MB,” she muttered. “NO Maybe. Be there. You're the queen of this ACROFAD.” “GELASH,” she said. Jenny listened to the news manager as she sat next to him, just off camera. The makeup lady applied the last touch of talc to her nose and cheeks, which had already started to glow, “A new feature of the Six O’Clock News.” the manager said, “newswoman supreme Jenny Jenkins will present the news in a new. ahh, linguistic style which seems to be sweeping our fair city.” His voice was blithe, chummy. The voice of a beagle, Jenny thought. “During the next five-minute segment,” he continued, “you will hear a carefully prepared synopsis of the national scene spoken entirely in the new craze dubbed by many as, ACROFAD. Folks, pay attention, now; there will be a test to follow.” He turned to Jenny with the kind of smile people use when they inspected their teeth for popcorn husks. Jenny felt a hot, sick wave begin in her cowlick and sweep down over her like old coffee. She smiled back through clenched teeth, and said. “FU.” Words swirled on the news-sheet before her like black birdseed. She could not focus on any one single speck. Her brain, revving, asserted a need of its own to take in everything all at once. She would have to guess what the news might be. Fortunately, she was in the habit of reading Newsweek, and the Midnight Tattler on her days off. “S.N. FEV,” Jenny said, salt stinging her left eye closed. “SWEPCOUNT. MILS OF YOM...” She could listen to herself no longer. She shut both eyes and concentrated on the vibration in her voicebox. “Aummmm," it said to her, and she blacked out. She could hear camera one and camera two alternately click on the remote microphone. She listened to them speak as though they were coaching her, straining to catch some clue that would help her concentrate on her voice. “Saturday Night Fever is sweeping the world of fashion,” she heard the voice say. It sounded familiar, personal; but she couldn’t place it. “Millions of young men are showing off their bodies in the same three-piece white suit and dark silk shirts mimicking the movie idol, John Travolta. No one is allowed inside the Broadway Street Discos wearing dark clothes." Camera one and two clicked like a man eating pistachio nuts. Jenny let go of her consciousness again, remembering her first venture into the tunnel of disco dancing. A young jock wearing a tank-top that said ‘Cherry Picker’s Union' on the front had asked her to dance. She hadn’t known how to move her feet, so she simply mimicked the others, throwing her arms, pushing out her chest and hips in slow alterations, and smiling while she thought of her favorite cream pie. ‘God damn you’re hot.' the jock had mumbled. Jenny thought of Bostom cream pie. She smiled and said, “ PENT DEV. SON OF NUKE." The pistachioes sounded again, and a voice drifted to her. “The Pentagon has developed a successor to the infamous Neutron Bomb." Jenny thought of her lover, her teacher and mentor, who she remembered had spit on her without mercy in her last restless dreams, and who had also not called her once since this nightmare had begun. She couldn’t bear the thought of his abandonment; it was as though her disease had torn a gaping hole in her being. She knew without that she was well on the way to becoming a hermit. Or hermitess. Actually, she sighed, it probably didn’t matter for hermits. The voice continued outside her head; “The bomb, called a ‘Simplex Bomb’, is similar to the Neutron Bomb in that it doesn’t harm structures. But unlike the Neutron Bomb, the Simplex Bomb does not kill people either. Instead, it leaves them with an incapacitating pubic itch...” Jenny became conscious of something cold pressing down on her forehead. It was an icebag. She was lying in a dark alcove behind the cameras. The news manager sat in the circle of blue lights, finished his pitch, saying, “And remember, the first caller to correctly identify the last three news items will win a new cassette tape recorder like the one you see here...” He held a low-priced model in front of the camera alongside the sponsor’s sign. The monitor lights flicked out. So it was over. Jenny did not feel like waiting for the news manager to confront her. He would either tell her she was fired, or ask her to do it again. Thinking about either alternative made her extremely tired. She left by the rear door without motioning to anyone. Jenny walked along Broadway, breathing slowly, trying not to read the blinking neon which tore at the dusky sky. The evening breeze arose, and small bits of paper spiralled at her feet. A car horn interrupted her stride, and she gazed around her. In the window s were diamonds, leather bags, mannikins wearing translucent chemises, microwaves, shoes — each product more desirable than the last. She thought of her late ambition, along with her career, to maintain a fashionable apartment, to appear in public dressed in custom-tailored blouses, to order a ring from Zales. Now her life was so torn from her desires that she was confused, lost. She had no one to turn to for comfort, and no place to hide from her nonstop brain. The sign across the street she had been staring at read. ‘Wait’; she had been content with that. But it shifted to walk, so Jenny walked. Everywhere the neon signs and placards in the windows seemed placed there to ridicule her. as though she were walking along a parade route, and the bystanders had decorated in her dishonor. ‘Fly Pan-Am.’ a sign blinked. ‘Give to UNICEF,' said another. ‘GOP headquarters.’ IT&T., PUD, BIG MAC. She stared at the six-foot plexi-glass hamburger. 2 billion sold. Jenny though about it. It wasn’t just her; she was just a forerunner of a giant national ideopathic disorder. And people at the newsroom thought it was cute. Wait until they hopelessly tangled their entree order at the Top of the Sixes. Wait until the man in their life leans over on a romantic midsummer evening and whispers, “OR-IDA!” Then they would all understand, Jenny thought. But it was just too tough for her to wait for the slow empathy of a derelict culture — at least while sober. She turned in the direction of the White Horse Inn. The Inn was sufficiently crowded to force patrons outside onto the sidewalk for air. Several men. and one or two women, all dressed in light-colored suits regardless of their gender, stood by the entrance, smoking and holding wine glasses by the stem. “Beav eve.” a square-jawed beard said to one of the pant-suited ladies while she squinted through her contacts. Jenny pretended not to hear. She swung the door wide and stepped in with all the confidence she imagined a regular person would muster. She was halfway to the bar when someone behind her shouted. “ It's J.J.!” Hands gripped and caressed her waist and shoulders like brushes in a car wash. “Hey-hey, Gee - Tee - Ess - You,” the voices said. And. “TATAMELOV,” which she interpreted as, talk to me, lover.’ She wedged herself in next to the bar and said to the tender, “SCREW.” He smiled and nodded, holding up two fingers near his watch. She grit her teeth at him, indicating that she didn’t care what time he got off work, she wanted a drink. Then she turned to face her admiring assailants, reasoning that they would not be so free with their caresses on that side. But she was a celebrity, and she was decidedly mistaken. The anonymous had undone almost all of her pant-buttons when she slapped the last one away and retreated with her drink to the rear of the bar. ‘Hi, there; Gee - Tee - Ess - You,” she heard like a password, echoing like a disco-beat. “Good to see you. I mean Gee- Tee- Ess- You,” a familiar voice greeted her as though apologizing. It was her school teacher; she gazed into his eyes — they were bloodshot from martinis. “ If you can’t beat ’em, and all that.” he drooled. So; nothing was sacred. The last stone had toppled. “LEMME LONE,” she said, and backed through the only escape route she could find — a door marked “EMPLOYEES ONLY.” Jenny found a stool in the dark and sat beside a pile of boxes, too exhausted to whimper. “Hey lady,” an imperious, startled voice shouted. “You can’t be in here." the voice continued, growing more haughty. “This is an official place. Authorized Personnel Only. Or. A.P.O., as they say." Jenny stared at him. He was young and blondehaired, and he was dressed all in white, as though living in a stock room had bleached all the color out of him. He stared at her while she scrutinized him. then he disappeared. She sank her head deep into her hands and dreamt of long, lonely beaches of fine dark sand, the only sound the crash of the breakers, and — the tapping of a cane on tile floor. “Young lady, you are in a place you are not supposed to be." The voice arose from beneath a grey tweed vest, as though that was all it was capable of pronouncing. She looked at him without lifting her head. “This is not a public part of our establishment," the grey vest continued without a pause. “JURSTG." Jenny mubbled. Just resting for a moment. “ I'll have your name, young lady. Be straight-forward. You are tresspassing, and you are inside a posted area. That is serious." The king of grey tweed tapped his cane. Jenny regarded his seriousness as a kind of truth; the gentleman believed totally that what he had said was unassailable. And because he did. it was. All of it. She smiled for the first time in five days; she no longer believed a shred of it. “ I'll have your name." the man said. Jenny stood up. and realized the man was surprisingly short for a commanding person — napoleonic. She filled her lungs with the sweet, pungent aroma of old cardboard, and shouted. “MY NAME IS JENNY JENKINS!" She jumped, she danced, she twirled through the forbidden door into the crowd beyond. “ I'M JENNY JENKINS. AND YOU CAN GET YOURSELVES ANOTHER DAMNED QUEEN!" she shouted into the ears of the first few startled drinkers. “Gee - Tee - Ess - You. Jenny." a tipsy voice answered. It was her teacher-friend. She cleared her throat and landed a glob on the center of his polka-dot necktie. “ Let it blend in awhile. You certainly do." Jenny smiled. She strode with wide steps to the White Horse exit, and burst into the cool, smokeless evening air. She began leisurely foraging along the sidewalk for a daily newspaper — the one which would likely have, she thought, smiling, the most Help- Wanted ads. 31
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