THE PRIVATE PARTY

14

 

            It occurs to you that someone might recognize you, on the street. There is after all a large crowd now for your every performance. Emerson has asked you politely if you would consider some offers made by audience members to purchase some of your panties. The club would provide the panties, of course, and sell them at $100 a pair, of which you would take fifty per cent. There was a contract for you to sign.

            You take to wool hats and dark glasses and thick scarves when you walk the streets of Transfertown. And yet you know you are being silly, that your disguise is worthless, because there is no one walking the streets of Transfertown who could afford entry to the private party with no name, who could afford $100 for a pair of nylon panties. The money feels diseased each time you take it.

            You are in the Matador one early evening before your shift and the Professor is looking particularly tired, rubbing his eyes in front of the laptop that has been open all day, and the television is blaring the endless debates at City Hall, some new scandal with the sweaty mayor. You are naked under your sweatpants and aware of that, aware of your skin and its sensations, the space around it, and how you will be naked soon with strangers and furiously desired, and this makes you a little bold with the Professor; you  lean over his table and try to peek at his screen before he slams it shut.

            You sit next to him and take a sip of his brandy. It burns. “What do you do all day, Professor?”

            He sighs, moves the brandy out of your reach. He takes off his glasses and polishes them. “Watch this guy,” he says, nodding at the big screen.

            You watch the press conference, the big white mayor with his pink face, assuring the reporters offscreen that he knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about the theft or the disappearance or whatever you want to call it, and he can assure the taxpayers that if he finds that any of his staff had any knowledge whatsoever of this disappointing affair then those individuals will be disciplined. He is very disappointed, the mayor is, very disappointed that such actions might have been taken without his knowledge and even further disappointed that any backroom actions might have been kept from him. The mayor can assure the taxpayers that no stone will be left unturned in the investigation to find out who knew what.

            You are already bored when the Professor says, “Do you even know what he’s talking about?”

            “No idea.” You are wondering if you should have a glass of white wine before your appearance. You wave at Anabella the waitress.

            “Titanium. He is talking about titanium. Everybody is talking about titanium. Everybody outside is. Only we in Transfertown don’t care enough about titanium.”

            You stare at the Professor. “Titanium.”

            The Professor opens his laptop. “Take a look.” On his screen are charts, graphs. They are the jagged lines of financial graphs. There is a moving ticker of numbers. “These are titanium prices in New York. These are the prices in Frankfurt. And there in Singapore.”

            “Okay,” you say. “I am not very interested in titanium.”

            “Look here,” he says, pointing with a long finger. “These are the prices last March. Do you see this shape?” He traces a steep rise. “Now we are here.”

            “The price has gone up.”

            “Way up. Up by a factor of about six. There is an unprecedented rise in global titanium prices.”