In her hospital bed, her skin looked purple with bruises. Her head was shaved bald. The plastic band around her wrist, it said: c. Clark.

 

 The county medical examiner swabbed her for penis cells—which he said are long-shaped, unlike the round-shaped vaginal cells. They swabbed her for semen. The team of detectives vacuumed her scalp and hands and feet for foreign skin cells. They found fibers of blue velvet, red silk, black mohair. They swabbed the inside of her mouth and cultured the DNA in petri dishes.

 

 Police counselors came and sat at her bedside, saying how important it was that Cassandra talk out all her pain. That she speak her bitterness.

 

 The television and radio crews, the newspaper and magazine reporters sat in the parking lot, shooting their stories with her hospital window in the background. Some stepping back to film crews filming crews filming crews filming her window. To show what a circus this had become, as if that was the final truth.

 

 When the nurse brought sleeping pills, Cassandra shook her head no. Just by shutting her eyes, she fell asleep.

 

 After Cassandra wouldn’t talk, the police fell on Mrs. Clark, telling her about the total cost to the taxpayer for their investigation. The detectives shook their heads and said how angry and betrayed they felt, working this hard, caring this much about a girl who didn’t give a rat’s ass about the pain and hardship she was causing her family, her community, and her government. She had everyone weeping and praying. Everyone hated the monster who’d tortured her, and they all wanted to see him caught and put on trial. After all their searching and effort, they deserved that much. They deserved to see her on the stand, weeping while she described how the monster had cut off her fingers. Carved her chest. Shoved a wood stake up her starving ass.

 

 And Cassandra Clark just looked at the detectives lined up alongside her bed. All their faces, all their hate and rage focused on her because she wouldn’t hand over another target. A bona-fide real demon. The devil they needed so bad.

 

 The district attorney threatened to sue Cassandra for obstruction of justice.

 

 Her mother, Mrs. Clark, among those glaring faces.

 

 Cassandra smiled and told them, “Can’t you see, you’re addicted to conflict.” She says, “This is my happy ending.” Looking back to the window, to the birds flying past, she says, “I feel terrific.”

 

 Still in the hospital, she asked for a goldfish in a bowl. After that, she lay propped up in bed, watching it swim around and around, sketching it. The same way her mother watched program after television program every night.

 

 The last time Mrs. Clark went to visit, Cassandra looked away from the fish only long enough to say, “I’m not like you anymore.” She said, “I don’t need to brag about my pain . . .”

 

 And after that, Tess Clark didn’t visit.

 

 

 

 

19.

 

 In her dressing room, Miss America is screaming.

 

 In bed, her skirts pulled up and her stockings down, Miss America screams, “Don’t let that witch take my baby . . .”

 

 Kneeling next to the bed, toweling the sweat from America’s forehead, the Countess Foresight says, “It’s not a baby. Not yet.”

 

 And Miss America screams, again, but not in words.

 

 In the hallway outside the dressing-room doorway, you can smell blood and shit. It’s the first bowel movement any of us has had in days, maybe weeks.

 

 It’s Cora Reynolds. A cat reduced to a flavor. To crap.

 

 “She’s there, waiting,” Miss America says, panting, biting her fist. Pain pulling her knees up to her chest. Cramps turning her onto her side, curled in the mess of sheets and blankets.

 

 “She’s waiting for the baby,” Miss America says. Tears turning her pillow dark gray.

 

 “It’s not a baby,” the Countess Foresight says. She wrings water from a rag and leans over to wipe away sweat. She says, “Let me tell you a story.”

 

 Wiping Miss America’s face with water, she says, “Did you know? Marilyn Monroe had two miscarriages?”

 

 And for a moment, Miss America is quiet, listening.

 

 From our own rooms, putting pen to paper, we’re all listening. Our ears and tape recorders tilted toward the heating ducts.

 

 From the hallway outside the door, in her Red Cross nurse uniform, Director Denial shouts, “Should we start boiling water?”

 

 And, kneeling beside the bed, the Countess Foresight says, “Please.”

 

 Again from the hallway, Director Denial’s head and white nurse-hat leans in through the open doorway, and she says, “Chef Assassin wants to know . . . how soon should he put in the carrots?”

 

 Miss America screams.

 

 And the Countless Foresight shouts, “If that’s a joke, it’snotfunny . . .”

 

 The invisible carrot, the story left over from Saint Gut-Free.

 

 And from the hallway, Chef Assassin shouts, “Calm down. Of course it’s a joke.” He says, “We don’thaveany potatoes or carrots . . .”

 

  

 

 Shortsighted

 

 A Poem About the Countess Foresight

 

 “An electronic tracking sensor,” says the Countess Foresight, shaking her plastic bracelet.

 

 A condition included in the terms of her recent parole from prison.

 

 

 The Countess Foresight onstage, she’s folded inside the webs of a black lace shawl.

 

 A turban of blue velvet wrapped around her head.

 

 A ring with different-colored stones on every finger.

 

 Her turban, pinned in front with a polished black stone,

 

 onyx or jet or sardonyx,

 

 some stone that absorbs everything. Reflects nothing.

 

 

 Onstage, instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment:

 

 The shadows of dead movie stars, the residue of electrons bounced off them

 

 a hundred years ago.

 

 Those electrons passed through a film of cellulose,

 

 to change the chemical nature of silver oxide

 

 and re-create chariot races, Robin Hood, Greta Garbo.

 

 

 “Radar,” says the Countess. “Global positioning systems. X-ray imaging . . .”

 

 Two hundred years ago, these would get you burned as a witch.

 

 A century ago, at least laughed at. Called a fool or a liar.

 

 Even today, if you predict the future or read the past from indicators

 

 not everyone can recognize . . .