Iris vomits into the most extravagant toilet I’ve ever seen.
What even are those? Gold inlays on the handle? Flowers, real flowers, in a basket on the tank of water, and this weird series of buttons on the side that I imagine controls the bidet feature of this porcelain masterpiece. What a bizarre display of wealth.
But I guess that’s rich people for you.
I hold Iris’ long golden hair back as she heaves one more time and then pulls away, gasping pitifully. She grabs toilet paper, which also seems ultra-fancy and thick, and wipes her mouth, smearing lipstick across her cheek.
“What’s the time?” she asks.
“You have plenty,” I reply, helping her stand on her five-inch platforms.
She shakes her head, flushing and dropping the smudged paper into the swirling cyclone of water and vomit. “What’s wrong with me?” Her manicured fingers linger on the gold lines of the toilet handle. “For that matter, what’s wrong with this toilet?”
“Rich people,” I remark, smirking a little.
She steps away from her mess, which is now already swallowed up by the piping, and stands in front of the bathroom’s fancy mirror, washing her hands in the fancy sink using fancy soap that smells fancier than normal.
I wait, watching her.
“My makeup,” Iris mutters at her reflection. Sweat lines her nose and forehead, and her lipstick is horribly marred.
“I can get a dresser for you,” I say, but she shakes her head.
“If even one more person touches my face with less than a milligram of powder, I swear I’ll break. I’m going to take it off. I can’t stand this. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
Sensing that familiar ring of stubbornness in Iris’ voice, I stand down, smiling to myself as she dumps the contents of her clutch onto the countertop. Given the fact that, outside of a combat knife, the rest of the items in her clutch are cosmetics, I wonder if this has been her plan all along.
Either way, I get it. I didn’t feel like the cosmetologists currently in the Plus House knew what they were doing, not necessarily because they were poor makeup artists but because they just have no idea who we are.
Iris’ eyelids are matted in golden glitter, her lips a fresh, vivacious pink to match her blush, which gives her a strange frilly look when combined with her classy black ballroom gown. By the time she is bare-faced again, she already looks vastly more appropriate for tonight. Then, she adds her killer eyeliner, dark and thick and sharp, and a blood red lipstick, and she’s fabulous - and lethal.
The way she is in reality.
The way I have always known her.
Blowing out noisily in annoyance, Iris puts her items away and tosses her hair away from her neck, giving herself a final once over.
“How long do those buffoons study before they get to paint their clown faces?”
“Hard to improve on perfection,” I say, “Go easy on them, princess.”
She laughs weakly and turns, facing me. “How much time?”
I check my watch again. “Thirteen more minutes.”
“Do you have a smoke?”
I pull a packet out of my jacket’s inner pocket and hand one to her, taking one myself. I may not have been the one to throw up out of anxiety, but I would be lying to say I wasn’t slightly nervous. In a sense, everything is finally coming together. All twenty years of my life before now were just long, slow stages of incubation, leading up to tonight’s birth.
Iris and I eventually take a seat on the edge of the fancy shower, slowly breathing in and out and letting the drugs calm us down. Maybe we’re about half-way through our cigarettes when there’s a knock on the bathroom door, a sound that immediately registers in my mind as “weird”.
We were on the third floor, in an abandoned hallway next to Heinrich’s office. Everyone should be two floors below, ready to spill out onto the portico to face the journalists. Glancing sideways at Iris, I get up and hesitantly unlock the door, peeping outside. In that second, I catch a glimpse of maybe seven or eight plain-vanilla Maximum soldiers before they slam open the door, almost whacking me in the process, and squeeze into the unaccommodating bathroom.
Iris is on her feet, her clutch open, but I hold her back with a finger at my side, tacitly telling her to wait. These young men, dressed in their formal service attire, are Bellumine’s soldiers, which means that, in a relationship akin to the historical American Army and Marine Corps, these kids are our unofficial allies.
We still hate their guts, but, allegedly, according to our higher-ups, we work together.
Besides, they’re pretty drunk, and fighting drunks is never fair in Heinrich’s eyes.
“Heyyy, Effar! How we about that Maxi?!”
I ignore Dunce A’s coarse slur and reply, “Fine, thanks. Can we help you?”
They snigger, like I’m a comedian, and shove me back a step, so that Iris and I are side-by-side.
“Has the sun been bothering you?” says Dunce A.
Dunce B adds, “Need to borrow my shades, Effar?”
Dunce C elbows Dunce D and says, “Like SPF ten thousand, am I right?”
What’s more amusing is that the sun does bother me, and I do need to wear sunscreen in the daytime. What’s less amusing is that we don’t have time for something like this.
Glancing at my watch, I read 1853, so seven more minutes. I toss my burnt out cigarette into the fancy toilet and grab Iris’ hand, intending to walk confidently past the Dunces and head downstairs. Like most drunk people, if you ignore them, they become confused and fail to respond.
The Dunces, unfortunately, are more aware than I thought. Before I can shoulder past Dunce A, he shoves me back again, except harder this time, in a way that is meant to hurt or spill me over. I narrowly keep my footing as someone else ends up shouldering me in the chest one more time. Knocked out of breath, I trip over the side of the fancy shower and fall, hitting the far wall and landing hard.
Iris stands in the corner between the toilet and the shower, watching with wide eyes and waiting to take action.
“Just want to let you know where you stand,” Dunce A says, smiling, “Did you think we were drunk? With your cool underground skills? Nice performance, huh? Were you patronizing us, just like you condescend everyone? Calm down, Effar. Remember where you were born, and remember what she is.” He throws up a rude sign at Iris that, strangely, out of all of his comments, makes me the most angry.
“Noted,” I reply, a bit banged up, but more damaged in the ego. My heart is roaring in my throat, pulsing from an adrenaline surge in a way that feels like I’m about to be strangled.
“See you downstairs, then.”
The Dunces, who I realize too late actually don’t smell like alcohol, filter out in a cold silence, and Iris offers me a sweaty, shaking hand. I climb to my feet and take a second to catch my breath.
“I need to vomit again,” Iris whispers, “but now is not the time.”
“We can talk to Heinrich about them later. Come on. We’re going to be late.”
~ ~ ~
Write on...at 2:27 AM on a Saturday morning! :P
Clove
