the surf while her young mistress sat in the shade (redheads do burn easily) of this or that koa tree, checking and rechecking lists and pouting like the koa itself, whose leaves resemble lips or the crescents of moon. There was one black cloud in all the Hawaiian Islands, and it was parked over
her
head. She was disappointed, to say the least, by the scrambling of the Care Fest, and considering her disappointments of the past year, she was beginning to suspect that she might be jinxed. She wondered if Gulietta hadn’t been bringing that frog along to protect her.
“Goddamn it,” she said. “A princess deserves better than this.”
As if to sandpaper her burn, an oddly beautiful woman in a turban and robe had stopped her in the lobby to inform her (above the noise of workmen busily replacing window glass) that on the planet Argon redheads were considered evil and that if she had any plans for spacetravel, she’d better change her ways. “Red hair is caused by sugar and lust,” the woman, who was blonde, confided. “Highly evolved beings do not indulge in sugar and lust.” It was a rude thing to say, particularly in Hawaii where sugar and lust surpassed even pineapples and marijuana as cash crops. And since Leigh-Cheri only recently had begun to eliminate those very sweets and meats from her life—without any thought to her status on Argon—the woman’s accusations made her defensive and caused an unreasonable guilt to darken the hue of her gloom. She rolled around paradise like four bald tires on an ambulance.
Late Tuesday afternoon there occurred three events to retread her mood. One, Ralph Nader checked into the Pioneer Inn, announcing that he would speak the next evening as scheduled, in Banyan Park. Two, a reporter from
People
magazine asked her for an interview, and for the first time, she felt she had something to say to those media representatives who had tried off and on for years to make some kind of “story” out of her. Three, Gulietta, looking as skinny and blue as a jailhouse tattoo as she bounded from the ever-chill ocean in her bikini, pointed out to her a man on the beach and through gesture and omomatopoeia (“boom-boom” is “boom-boom” in any land, dynamite speaks a universal lingo) identified him as the bomber.
The Princess didn’t hesitate. She walked right up to the man and placed him under citizen’s arrest.
27
LITTLE DID LEIGH-CHERI KNOW that she was arresting a man whom half a dozen American sheriffs had sworn on family Bibles to see dead, that she had nabbed a fugitive who had eluded the greediest nets of the FBI for adecade, all told, although it must be admitted that in recent years, with the social climate altered and Bernard inactive, interest in his capture had waned.
Leigh-Cheri had heard of the Woodpecker, of course, but in the days when he was making headlines by blowing up draft boards and induction centers, the last days of the Vietnam War, she’d been a schoolgirl, picking blackberries, cuddling teddy bears, listening to a certain bedtime story, yellowing her nose with buttercups. Curiously excited by an enema that Gulietta had administered to her on Queen Tilli’s orders, Leigh-Cheri had masturbated for the first time on the very evening of Bernard’s most infamous exploit, and the confusing pleasure of secret fingering—the fresh flush that heated her cheeks, the vague mental images of nasty games with boys, the sticky dew that smelled of frog water and clung like prehensile pearls to the thickening fuzz around her peachfish—this mysterious and shaming little ache of ecstasy eclipsed the less personal events of the day, including the news that the notorious Woodpecker had demolished an entire building on the campus of a large Midwestern university.
Bernard Mickey Wrangle had sneaked into Madison, Wisconsin, in the deep of night. His hair was red then, red being the color of emergency and roses; red being the prelate’s top and the baboon’s bottom; red
her
head. She was disappointed, to say the least, by the scrambling of the Care Fest, and considering her disappointments of the past year, she was beginning to suspect that she might be jinxed. She wondered if Gulietta hadn’t been bringing that frog along to protect her.
“Goddamn it,” she said. “A princess deserves better than this.”
As if to sandpaper her burn, an oddly beautiful woman in a turban and robe had stopped her in the lobby to inform her (above the noise of workmen busily replacing window glass) that on the planet Argon redheads were considered evil and that if she had any plans for spacetravel, she’d better change her ways. “Red hair is caused by sugar and lust,” the woman, who was blonde, confided. “Highly evolved beings do not indulge in sugar and lust.” It was a rude thing to say, particularly in Hawaii where sugar and lust surpassed even pineapples and marijuana as cash crops. And since Leigh-Cheri only recently had begun to eliminate those very sweets and meats from her life—without any thought to her status on Argon—the woman’s accusations made her defensive and caused an unreasonable guilt to darken the hue of her gloom. She rolled around paradise like four bald tires on an ambulance.
Late Tuesday afternoon there occurred three events to retread her mood. One, Ralph Nader checked into the Pioneer Inn, announcing that he would speak the next evening as scheduled, in Banyan Park. Two, a reporter from
People
magazine asked her for an interview, and for the first time, she felt she had something to say to those media representatives who had tried off and on for years to make some kind of “story” out of her. Three, Gulietta, looking as skinny and blue as a jailhouse tattoo as she bounded from the ever-chill ocean in her bikini, pointed out to her a man on the beach and through gesture and omomatopoeia (“boom-boom” is “boom-boom” in any land, dynamite speaks a universal lingo) identified him as the bomber.
The Princess didn’t hesitate. She walked right up to the man and placed him under citizen’s arrest.
27
LITTLE DID LEIGH-CHERI KNOW that she was arresting a man whom half a dozen American sheriffs had sworn on family Bibles to see dead, that she had nabbed a fugitive who had eluded the greediest nets of the FBI for adecade, all told, although it must be admitted that in recent years, with the social climate altered and Bernard inactive, interest in his capture had waned.
Leigh-Cheri had heard of the Woodpecker, of course, but in the days when he was making headlines by blowing up draft boards and induction centers, the last days of the Vietnam War, she’d been a schoolgirl, picking blackberries, cuddling teddy bears, listening to a certain bedtime story, yellowing her nose with buttercups. Curiously excited by an enema that Gulietta had administered to her on Queen Tilli’s orders, Leigh-Cheri had masturbated for the first time on the very evening of Bernard’s most infamous exploit, and the confusing pleasure of secret fingering—the fresh flush that heated her cheeks, the vague mental images of nasty games with boys, the sticky dew that smelled of frog water and clung like prehensile pearls to the thickening fuzz around her peachfish—this mysterious and shaming little ache of ecstasy eclipsed the less personal events of the day, including the news that the notorious Woodpecker had demolished an entire building on the campus of a large Midwestern university.
Bernard Mickey Wrangle had sneaked into Madison, Wisconsin, in the deep of night. His hair was red then, red being the color of emergency and roses; red being the prelate’s top and the baboon’s bottom; red
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