The Fortunes of Indigo Skye (13 page)

I see a woman who can only be Mrs. Moore,
wearing a stiff-skirted outfit with a jewelly sweater. "Anna! Anna!" she calls,
and a barrel-shaped blond woman comes hurrying over with spot

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cleaner and a cloth to dab at the hem of Mrs.
Moore's sweater. We follow Severin past a stairwell with a rope across it, past
huge windows overlooking the lake, past more vases now even taller than any of
us. It's a stage show, I see, because there's the lighting man, and the
soundman, the costume woman, and the set director. The only problem is, not only
have I forgotten my lines, but the only play I've ever been to was
Death of a
Salesman
with my freshman class, and even though Chief's apparently being
memorialized, he's not dead yet, as he's there in the kitchen, eyeing the cake,
which has this huge photo of him and his wife on it, on the deck of some ship.
Nope, this is not another cardboard cutout of Chief, it's the real, living,
breathing him, because his finger is moving toward the frosting.

"Hello, Mr. Moore," Severin says, and the man
turns. It's the face that we've already seen in replicated miniature.

"Welcome," he says. He holds his hand out and
shakes Severin's, and it's obvious he hasn't a clue who Severin is.

"Severin Skye," Severin says. "This is my
sister Indigo, and her friend Trevor."

Mr. Moore is a little disappointing, really.
You expect someone who is that rich to have dashing jet-black hair or melting
charisma. But Mr. Moore is plain; he's got an average, amiable smile and folding
wrinkles in his forehead, the kind a tiny dune buggy would have a blast on. He
is still looking at Severin with that half-quizzical smile you give the oddly
familiar--he's seen him somewhere, but where? Trimming a hedge? Detailing his
car? Dating his daughter?

Right then, with that thought, Kayleigh Moore
enters, stage left. Her hair has a snowboard gloss and she's wearing a shorter
version of her mother's stiff skirt and sweater. It's beginning to

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feel like those movies where the poor boy dates
some girl named Buffy, who calls her father
Daddy.

But not quite. "You're not eating that
frosting, are you, Chief?" she says. "Hi, Severin."

"Oh, you know each other," Mr. Moore says,
mystery cleared. His voice sounds familiar. Who does he sound like? Kermit? No,
that's not right. A cartoon character. A cartoon character puppet?

"I'll show you where you're supposed to be,"
Kayleigh says.

"This is Indigo and Trev--," Severin says, but
Kayleigh interrupts.

"The Chief shouldn't eat so much sugar--he's
got a touch of diabetes," she says. We follow her to a separate kitchen; this is
obviously the infamous catering kitchen, because here there are actually plates
and food and chopping blocks and crumbs hidden from view, unlike the other
kitchen, a "kitchen" in quotation marks, like those living rooms people have
that no one lives in, only a kitchen no one cooks in. Where the other room had
silvery wall-size appliances that look like art in a museum, and metallic
pillars topped with huge blown-glass bowls, this one has people moving around
and placing things on trays, and the black vests worn by all flash Chief's
miniature face. It darts and dashes and lands and dashes again, like a room of
Chief flies. And speaking of vests, here are ours, placed in our hands by the
caterer, a white woman in some kind of African caftan, wearing an African
turban.

"Boy, do we get to take these home?" Trevor
jokes. "It'd look really good with my 'Happy 80th, Grandma' bowling
shirt."

"Actually, we'll want you to leave those
behind," the woman in the caftan says.

"Sure, next year you can cross out fifty-five
and write in fifty-six," I say.

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Severin looks at me with a homicidal
stare.

"The Chief likes to donate these to the needy,"
Kayleigh says. "Well, I'll let you people do what you need to do," she says. She
gives Severin's hand a squeeze, and as she makes her way across the room, she
lifts her skirt, already short, as she steps over some pieces of cut carrot that
have fallen to the ground.

The faux African woman, who is attempting to
abduct the African culture and take it as her own for borrowed depth, tells us
her name is Denise. Her catering business has a reputation for being "the best,"
or so she tells us. The food is some bizarre collection of cultures--there's a
sushi chef in the corner, bent over his knife and his platter of edible art, and
Denise has us fill trays of Moroccan beef-tipped skewers (beef on sticks), fresh
mahimahi on whole grain flat breads (tuna on crackers), and free-range chicken
with sesame teriyaki and rice wine glaze (chicken on sticks). The director with
the cowboy tie rushes in after a while and stirs everyone up like a wooden spoon
in a soup pot, shouts that there are only five minutes to go, then four minutes,
and so on, and I'm hoping we'll have a chance to duck before the rocket ship
takes off. We all (the three of us and about six other helpers) are supposed to
burst into the room at once with trays of food.

The director gives us the cue and we're off.
The lights have been dimmed and the guests mingle in with glasses of champagne,
handed to them as they enter. Everything's aglitter, and the orchestra is
playing--violins, cellos--"Hail to the Chief." I'm having this overwhelming
sense of the odd and laughable, only no one seems to be laughing. The women all
have the same hair and are wearing clothes that probably cost what a month in
college would. A booming, God-like voice comes over an intercom (kudos to the
sound man), and suddenly there's this film being

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played on the white walls of the second- and
third-floor balconies, and it's apparently a documentary of The Chief, and God
is saying, "The Chief is a man who likes the finest things in life," and the
crowd laughs, and there's the Chief in the film, smoking a cigar, a cap over his
wrinkled forehead. "The Chief is a man who's earned his reputation
..."

It's a group ass-kissing orgy, but I don't have
much time to think about that, because my tray is empty, and off I go to refill
it, and it's almost hard to see with all the people and the lightbulbs going
constantly off. I head back to the kitchen, put Baked Egg and Red Pepper in
Mediterranean Pastry (little previously frozen quiches) onto my tray. I pass
Trevor, who says, "The Chief is a man who likes to bonk girls half his age," in
a God-like whisper. He nods his chin toward Mr. Moore, who is chatting with a
young woman with a spilling cleavage, a grin splashed across his face, rolling
forehead wrinkles in an upward arc.

The champagne glasses are refilled, and there
is food also on long tables across the living room. The paintings in here are
bigger than the walls of my house. I offer my tray to three women standing in a
group.
I hear they really give little to charity,
one says. She's too tan
and has short, curly black hair and a beaky nose.
I hear they had a poor
relation who had leukemia who asked them for money. They turned her down,
says another, in a sexy, glittery gold top whose skirt is way too short for her
age.
The girl died,
she says, and plucks a second quiche to set onto her
napkin.

I smile my polite servant-girl smile, but it
doesn't matter, because no one sees me. I have no money, so I am a shadow. I am
so far beneath, that I am not on the plane of existence. I move to another
group, a woman in long silver crepe and wearing a diamond that's so big, it
looks like the kind I had in the dress-up box

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when I was a kid. She's talking to another
woman with the same short curly brown hair, who's looking resplendent (I always
wanted to use the word "resplendent" and never had a chance before) in some
swaying, beaded skirt.
It's obvious that he's on the B list if he got the
invitation so late. I don't know if I even want to go with him.

Trevor cruises past again. "The Chief is a man
who's gonna get sloshed if he drinks any more champagne," Trevor-God says. I
sneak a pinch to his butt, which is the most fun I've had all night.

More food, more circles round the room. There's
an open bar, and the bartender has a vest on too. "Groovy vest," I say to him.
"Hey, you too," he says, and grins. "I saw it in
GQ"
A group of two men
and their wives.
How's it going, Bob, since I saw you last? Sweetheart, can
you move? They want to take our picture.
I step aside, refrain from doing a
Bex chop to the guy's family jewels for calling me sweetheart. The couples stand
in a group. Smiles all around, dropped after the flash goes off. One woman
shakes her head at the tray; the other plucks a
Fresh-Garlic-and-Lemon-
Squeezed Hummus on Traditional Naan (bean dip on
bread).
Since you saw me last?
The other man says.
You mean last
weekend?

I've lost track of Severin, but I see his
girlfriend everywhere. She's there, the real her, talking with three frat boys
in suits and half-spiky haircuts. But there's lots of fake hers, too (these
people love photographs). She's in various poses in several electronic frames of
rotating photos. She's skiing. Fade out to her in a bikini. Fade out to her and
her brother on horses. Fade out to her and The Chief and Mrs. Chief on a green
lawn. Appearing and disappearing images of the perfect life.

My calves are starting to burn, and the bottoms
of my feet,

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too. I haven't sat down in hours. My biggest
wish at the moment is to take off these horrible nylons and fling them,
slingshot-style, into one of the two swimming pools. There's something about
being here that's making me feel like there's a slow gas leak somewhere. My head
hurts. Nothing feels quite real. There's an absence of honesty, and it's
actually squeezing the blood vessels in my brain. Even the hors d'oeuvres
lie.

But we're not done yet, because plates need to
be gathered, and someone claps their hands to make a speech. It's Mrs. Moore,
with her stiff face and stiff skirt; she's giving a jingly but firm laugh that
means she wants everyone's attention. People start that
tink-tinking
of
knives on drink glasses.

She thanks everyone for coming, then reads some
poem she wrote, choking up midway at the power and beauty of her own words,
which rhyme "happiest years" with "shedding of tears." Mr. Moore takes the
microphone, says a few words, thank you blah, blah, blah. It's driving me nuts,
trying to think who he sounds like. Someone on
The Simpsons
maybe?
On
this special day
blah, blah, blah, he says, and then it hits me--Grover. Mr.
Moore, CEO of MuchMoore Industries, is a dead-on ringer for your furry pal. Then
Mrs. Moore takes the microphone back, tells everyone that there's something very
special about to happen, which turns out to be a hip-hop group singing and
dancing some Chief rap, just in case you thought the Moores were out of touch
with contemporary black culture. Mr. Moore watches and snaps his fingers, and
Mrs. Moore sort of sways from side to side until she notices some crumbs on her
skirt, which she brushes off and looks concerned with, but apparently not
concerned enough to interrupt her show of finger-on-the-pulse fun (and support
of inner-city blacks, to boot).

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Finally, the cake is sliced up into smeary
images of the now cut-up Moores. People dig in to Moore noses and elbows and
shoes with the edges of their forks, eating bits of their host in a twisted
version of a religious ritual. We weave around serving coffee, and then guests
start to amble out, and are handed cups of hot cocoa on their way through the
door. We are free to turn in our vests and go; the cleaning staff takes over
from here. I've lost Severin, who I want to nag about going home. Trevor and I
aim out into the big room, where some guests still linger, unwilling to part
from the magic and memories. I'm afraid I'm going to have George Orwell dreams
about the Chief.

I spot Severin, who is aiming straight toward
Jim Riley, who's on this television show called
Seattle Tonight.
Now, I
would never go right up to the guy and introduce myself, but Severin would and
is. In my opinion, there are two kinds of people in the world--the ones who
actually ask salespeople for help, and the ones whose most often-used shopping
phrase is
Oh God, here she comes again.
Severin is in the camp of the
former.

Jim Riley looks just like he does on TV. Blond,
with a perfect smile, and a clean, putty-smooth face. Severin holds out his
hand.

"Hello, Mr. Riley," he says. "My name's Severin
Skye and I work for Mr. Moore. I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your
show, and that it's an honor to meet you."

I can hear Severin's words just as I am walking
up to him, catch the tilt of Jim Riley's blond head, the rising of one corner of
his mouth. He looks at Severin. "They sure packed you into that shirt," he
says.

Severin gives a little laugh, that uncertain
kind you give when you're faced with cloudy intentions. I look at his shirt, and
I guess it's true. Severin has grown since last year's
homecoming--the

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cloth pulls across his shoulders and there's a
gape at the buttons; the cuffs hit the bones of his wrists. My insides gnarl, a
winding sense of shame. "Come on, Severin, let's get out of here," I
say.