Slaughterhouse High

Pimlico's house was five down on the right, where Stardust Place teed in. She roared into the driveway, jerked up hard on the brake, and killed the engine.

The sound of her black leather skirt shifting over the seat was covered by a vigorous shake of trees outside the car. That and the blare of a TV inside Pim's house turned the night as crisp and alive as cathedral air.

On the umpteenth ring, one of Pim's moms came to the door. It was the scraggly one, whose hair reminded Altoona of tossed straw.

"Oh yeah, right," she said, "come in."

She was thin and naked, fresh welts raised across her belly. Dark puffy bags slung beneath her eyes-not the morning hangover ones that fade with coffee, fresh air, and locomotion, but the sort that endure and define. A hastily pulled-up lobebag hid her lefty.

In the vestibule, the straw-haired mom angled her head back as if readying a sneeze. Her mouth widened. " Pimmie! Your date's here! " A wasted gaze at Altoona. "She'll be down."

"Thanks."

Pim's pop shouted from the TV room, " here! " Nola was already on the move. "I'm coming fast as I can, buttfuck," she mumbled, casting an all-men-are-scum look toward Altoona.

Pim yelled, "Be right down!"

" going?" Again the man's voice, apparently to Pim's other mom.

Altoona had never met her girlfriend's father. All she knew about him was that he cared not the whit of a shit about his daughters.

From the TV room, Pim's kid sisters made gross-out sounds. Altoona recognized the political spot. Oink-oinks blared from a hefty porker. Its throat caught on something. Then a blurt of spew hit an empty trough, replay, replay, replay. The camera jittered through a series of ugly jumpcuts as a stern DoleMoreCrap announcer intoned Fenny Boyle's sins.

And it was only primary season.

Things were certain to heat up, the vitriol eating away at an already frayed political fabric, from now to November, Jesus God!

Onscreen, Fenny Boyle's digital clone, as convincing as technology could make him, knelt and (the kids fake-wretched again) bobbed, coming up with a dripping grin of brownish gunk and saying, "Mmmmm, tastes great!!!"

Passing it off as true wasn't as important as convincing voters it was a plausible scenario- that was what the game was about.

Pim's other mom burst into view, naked as well but with fewer welts. She pumped Altoona's hand, her lobes right out there in plain sight. "How ya doin'?"

As urbane as Altoona prided herself in being, she was always startled to see Britt Franken's left lobe exposed like that, wet with recent chewing.

But she liked Britt a lot.

There was plenty of heart behind her hard-edged exterior, and no room for bullshit.

Not waiting for Altoona's reply, Britt opened the hall closet, her reach stretching the blue-veined backs of her thighs and lifting her right foot off the carpet. When she turned, two items were squat-towered in her hands, a yearbook and a dated Futterware container, the orange-lidded kind that had been popular when Pim and Altoona were in grade school.

" For shit's sake, Britt, you gotta see this! " More a command than a suggestion.

" In a minute, you smelly heap of sewage," said Britt, her last phrase dropped way low and delivered with a grin in Altoona's direction.

Britt's hands worked at the lid.

"He loved me then. Kent Bodeen and Mimsie Chesk were chosen our year, pretty much nothing-people nobody in the class gave a damn about, so it worked out pretty well. The Frankenburger in there," Britt indicated the TV room, "kept looking over at them once they were draped out for all to see. He kept talking strategy, talking about the hunks of flesh he'd go after. His hands, when he wasn't fondling me, drifted to his cleaver. 'Just slice off something good,' I told him, 'something our kids can be proud of.' And when midnight struck, my fella dove straight in and got us some upper lip and the tip of, I'm not fooling now no not a bit, Mimsie's left earlobe."

Sure enough, as the lid drew back, a hefty lobe, shrunken in the process of being preserved and capped at the stump like a rabbit's foot, lay there in all its glory. It may or may not have been a lefty. But right or left, the possibility that he had slashed through to hack off a dead student's lobebag, claimed the coveted tip, and not kept it himself, spoke volumes about their puppy love.

"Wow!" said Altoona.

Britt nodded. "Don't it just beat all?"

Upstairs a door slammed.

" Hey, little miss fat fuck, my lefty's throbbing and my whip hand's getting real itchy. " Deadly warning.

" All right, all right. Gotta go. You two chickies have a swell time." She shrugged at the blood-smeared yearbook in her hands, resealed the Futterware, replaced both items in the closet, and buttocked off out of sight.

"Pretty sorry excuse, ain't she?"

Altoona turned to her descending date.