27: LADIES OF THE NIGHT

Your infestation profile is threefold:

1) Mr. Burt Reynolds is our finest living

actor. We write a grievous injustice, and

so many of us wasted our youth

on the girls who will take our money

—the breaking of an old lady's heart.

I'll fall in with a bad crowd whose

leader looks like Ethel Merman.

2) My body is tingling. (Quiet, you

trash.) I'll sear my fingers with battery

acid, just three helpless females and

an accomplice behind the desk—

a bellhop. Butter. I wanted to be Butter

Queen. We're neighbors, and jealousy

is a very ugly thing. (I want to live!

I want to live!) He's undressing me with his

eyes. I thought he meant Neiman Marcus.

3) I ended the evening dancing in the

arms of the President. Dom DeLuise!

(Wow!) Loni Anderson! (Wow!) You would

never do this to your own flesh and blood.

These bitter butter memories, these traditions,

and these Johns. I've never felt so good

and so cheap in my whole life but for the hotel.

The ladies retire, a story retold, while Burt

seeks the slut: the answer to my termite problem.