Vanessa - Vandee Visits for Breakfast

Marianne asks what I'm sour about again.  If I tell her all the spacy, messed up things I think, maybe we would have a good laugh about them.  But we're not there, wherever that place is.  She munches her toast and sips espresso.  She asks if it's her outfit. 

Marianne's skirt screams Pepto Bismol.  It doesn't go past her knees.  This isn't a big deal until Vandee joins us for breakfast and collapses into one of the tiny Ikea chairs next to her.

"I'd like some scrambled eggs," he says.

Marianne doesn't see or hear him, but he has confused her happy separates at this early hour with the tropical diner or the biker bar a few miles away.  Both serve breakfast.  

"Did the butterfly bring you or was it the skirt?" I ask.

Vandee doesn't seem to know - butterfly or skirt.

"I got the outfit on sale at Macy's," Marianne says.  "Did you want to go shopping?"

The shirt is sleeveless and tight with a glittering flamingo in the center of her chest.  I tell Vandee about the million trips Marianne made to the artist to get the tattoo finished.  Marianne thinks I'm talking about her shopaholic tendencies.  "I'm angry about the many times."  I say it as if we are friends.  Vandee nods.  Marianne does too.

This hallucination, Vandee, is strange - appearing and asking for food, and then he lets me scare him.  He turns his attention from the eggs to the graceful bug on Marianne's shoulder eating up half her arm.  It whispers to the flamingo, what it says I don't understand, but the flamingo isn't as sparkling.  I don't know if Vandee notices.

"It's occult," he says.

"That thing killed my boyfriend and made my dad move away."

I expect Vandee to disappear but he doesn't.

Marianne has heard my abusive talk about her favorite tattoo before, and she laughs.  It reminds me of the way everyone made fun of my high heels because of Vandee, and I tell him this. 

"Wait," he says.  "Beast didn't want to be your lab partner.  He said your shoes were going to mess up his lab.  Don't you remember?"

Marianne asks if I'm angry because I want a tattoo like hers.

And I tell her it isn't for the art, or a special memory, it's because of what it whispers.