David Wallace - Broom of the System

The author thanks the following for their help:

Robert Boswell

Gerald Howard

William Kennick

Bonnie Nadell

Andrew Parker

Dale Peterson

The Trustees of Amherst College

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. Theyre long and thin and splay-toed, with buttons of yellow callus on the little toes and a thick stair-step of it on the back of the heel, and a few long black hairs are curling out of the skin at the tops of the feet, and the red nail polish is cracking and peeling in curls and candy-striped with decay. Lenore only notices because Mindys bent over in the chair by the fridge picking at some of the polish on her toes; her bathrobes opening a little, so theres some cleavage visible and everything, a lot more than Lenores got, and the thick white towel wrapped around Mindys wet washed shampooed head is coming undone and a wisp of dark shiny hair has slithered out of a crack in the folds and curled down all demurely past the side of Mindys face and under her chin. It smells like Flex shampoo in the room, and also pot, since Clarice and Sue Shaw are smoking a big thick j-bird Lenore got from Ed Creamer back at Shaker School and brought up with some other stuff for Clarice, here at school.

Whats going on is that Lenore Beadsman, whos fifteen, has just come all the way from home in Shaker Heights, Ohio, right near Cleveland, to visit her big sister, Clarice Beadsman, whos a freshman at this womens college, called Mount Holyoke; and Lenores staying with her sleeping bag in this room on the second floor of Rumpus Hall that Clarice shares with her roommates, Mindy Metalman and Sue Shaw. Lenores also come to sort of check out this college, a little bit. This is because even though shes just fifteen shes supposedly quite intelligent and thus accelerated and already a junior at Shaker School and thus thinking about college, application-wise, for next year. So shes visiting. Right now its a Friday night in March.

Sue Shaw, whos not nearly as pretty as Mindy or Clarice, is bringing the joint over here to Mindy and Lenore, and Mindy takes it and lets her toe alone for a second and sucks the bird really hard, so it glows bright and a seed snaps loudly and bits of paper ash go flying and floating, which Clarice and Sue find super funny and start laughing at really hard, whooping and clutching at each other, and Mindy breathes it in really deep and holds it in and passes the bird to Lenore, but Lenore says no thank you.

No thank you, says Lenore.

Go ahead, you brought it, why not, croaks Mindy Metalman, talking the way people talk without breathing, holding on to the smoke.

I know, but its track season at school and Im on the team and I dont smoke during the season, I cant, it kills me, Lenore says.

So Mindy shrugs and finally lets out a big breath of pale used-up smoke and coughs a deep little cough and gets up with the bird and takes it over across the room to Clarice and Sue Shaw, who are by a big wooden stereo speaker listening to this song, again, by Cat Stevens, for like the tenth time tonight. Mindys robes more or less open, now, and Lenore can see some pretty amazing stuff, but Mindy just walks across the room. Lenore can at this point divide all the girls shes known neatly into girls who think deep down theyre pretty and girls who deep down think theyre really not. Girls who think theyre pretty dont care much about their bathrobes being undone and are good at makeup and like to walk when people are watching, and they act different when there are boys around; and girls like Lenore, who dont think theyre too pretty, tend not to wear makeup, and run track, and wear black Converse sneakers, and keep their bathrobes pretty well fastened at all times. Mindy sure is pretty, though, except for her feet.

The Cat Stevens song is over again, and the needle goes up by itself, and obviously none of these three feel like moving all the way to start it again, so theyre just sitting back in their hard wood desk chairs, Mindy in her faded pink terry robe with one shiny smooth leg all bare and sticking out; Clarice in her Desert boots and her dark blue jeans that Lenore calls her shoe-hom jeans, and that white western shirt shed worn at the state fair the time shed had her purse stolen, and her blond hair flooding all over the shirt, and her eyes very blue right now; Sue Shaw with her red hair and a green sweater and green tartan skirt and fat white legs with a bright red pimple just over one knee, legs crossed with one foot jiggling one of those boat shoes, with the sick white soles-Lenore dislikes that kind of shoe a lot.

Clarice after a quiet bit lets out a long sigh and says, in whispers, Cat is God, giggling a little at the end. The other two giggle too.

God? How can Cat be God? Cat exists. Mindys eyes are all red.

Thats offensive and completely blaphemous, says Sue Shaw, eyes wide and puffed and indignant.

Blaphemous? Clarice dies, looks at Lenore. Blasphemous, she says. Her eyes arent all that bad, really, just unusually cheerful, as if shes got a joke shes not telling.

Blissphemous, says Mindy.

Blossphemous.

Blousephemous.

Bluesphemous.

Boisterous.

Boisteronahalfshell.

Bucephalus.

Barney Rubble.

Baba Yaga.

Bolshevik.

Blaphemous!

Theyre dying, doubled over, and Lenores laughing that weird sympathetic laugh you laugh when everybody else is laughing so hard they make you laugh too. The noise of the big party downstairs is coming through the floor and vibrating in Lenores black sneakers and the arms of the chair. Now Mindy slides out of her desk chair all limp and shlomps down on Lenores sleeping bag on the floor next to Clarices pretend-Persian ruglet from Mooradians in Cleveland, and Mindy modestly covers her crotch with a comer of her robe, but Lenore still cant help but see the way her breasts swell up into the worn pink towel cloth of the robe, all full and stuff, even lying down on her back, there, on the floor. Lenore uncon siously looks down a little at her own chest, under her flannel shirt.

Hunger, Sue Shaw says after a minute. Massive, immense, uncontrollable, consuming, uncontrollable, hunger.

This is so, says Mindy.

We will waitClarice looks at her watch on the underside of her wristone, that is one hour, before eating anything what soentirelyever.

No we cant possibly possibly do that.

But do it we shall. As per room discussions of not one week ago, when we explicitly agreed that we shall not gorge when utterly flapped, lest we get fat and repulsive, like Mindy, over there, you poor midge.

Fart-blossom, Mindy says absently, shes not fat and she knows it, Lenore knows it, they all know it.

A lady at all times, that Metalman, Clarice says. Then, after a minute, Speaking of which, you might just maybe either fix your robe or get dressed or get up off your back in Lenores stuff, Im not really all up for giving you a gynecological exam, which is sort of what youre making us do, here, O Lesbia of Thebes.

Stuff and bother, says Mindy, or rather, Stuth and bozzer; and she gets up swaying and reaching for solid things, goes over to the door that goes into her little single bedroom off the bathroom. She got there first in September and took it, Clarice had said in a letter, this Playboy-Playmatish JAP from Scarsdale, and shes shedding whats left of her bathrobe, battered into submission, leaving it all wet in Lenores lap in the chair by the door, and going through the door with her long legs, deliberate steps. Shuts the door.