on. “I do know how you can defend her. You defend Gabriella because you created Gabriella. How many times, Stephanie, are you going to root out a fine young thing and turn her into a whatever you want and then cry yourself to sleep at night when she takes what you taught her and turns her back on you?”
“She hasn’t turned her back.” Stephanie halted. “She always picks up the phone when I call her. Sometimes. Her work is very demanding.”
“Yes, I imagine that ritualistic self-harming is quite demanding.”
“And Gabriella was not fine,” said Stephanie. “She had a natural body, sure. She had a supple, Rabelaisian body. A body of excess. Oh, the monstrous feminine excess!” She laughed. “But she was just a nude model. She would have been a nude model all her life if I hadn’t pulled her out of that phallocentric head space and turned her into an artist in her own right.”
“Yeah,” said Marge. “I remember. You were writing that piece on nude models—right?”
“Right.” Stephanie ate another spoonful of posset. “For the LRB. Or was it Spare Rib?”
Marge shrugged.
“Gabriella stood out right away,” said Stephanie. “She looked so sorrowful, the standing female nude. And when she opened her mouth and I heard that she was common like me, I couldn’t resist. I couldn’t resist any single one of my prodigies, Marge. Like you, Marge.”
Marge smiled. “Yes, I remember when I first walked into your class on feminist rereadings of the Hegelian unhappy consciousness at Harvard. You looked so beautiful in that African robe. I was so impressed by you—we all were. When was that?”
“Seventy-eight. Must have been. I was in my third year of grad school. And the Kappa Alpha Theta initiations—such fun!” Stephanie finished her posset.
“Gabriella’s from a later world,” said Marge. “She’s from a later, more disenchanted world. She’s third wave.” She bent her fingers in quotes. “If that is a thing at all.”
“Maybe she doesn’t wanna be part of any wave, Marge,” said Steph, expressively. “Have you ever considered that? Maybe she’s not into waves. Listen. Gabriella’s just doing what we did. She’s just using what she’s got. Her own experience.”
“Bullshit.” Marge put her fork down. “She’s using her cunt.”
The ballerina looked at Marge, who said: “Don’t worry, honey. It’s not a pejorative.” Marge went on: “Gabriella wants a new cunt. And new eyes—better to see out of. Better to see herself out of. She’s just like a . . . she’s a paradigm of selfish fucking neoliberal individualism, Stephanie.”
“We all wanted to be individuals, Marge, remember? We all wanted to be ourselves. That’s why we got involved. We didn’t want to be what our mothers—”
“Yes, but we sought solidarity!”
“But Gabriella is a visual artist,” said Stephanie. “She’s not a sociologist like you—”
“Do artists have the right to disavow their foremothers? To pretend that second wave feminism never happened? That they owe us nothing?”
Stephanie sat back and laughed. “Oh, I get it. So you want her to defer to us. The great wall of us. You want her to pay homage to our grand narrative—”
“Grand narrative?!” spat Marge. “You’re the one constructing the big, macho, monolithic grand narrative, lady. Going around on your book tour. With your fancy agent—”
“Not all of us wanted to stay in the academy, Marge.”
“I entered the academy because of you, Stephanie. I became an academic because you inspired me. You told me that that was my path.”
“Well,” said Stephanie. “It’s not my path. The academy is not necessarily the best way to communicate—”
“Communicate what exactly?!” Marge grabbed her glass of wine and chugged it. “That romantic love is structurally akin to the subliminal power dynamics of sadomasochistic relationships? That domination and submission inform the way we treat each other? Ha! Shulie Firestone, Jess Benjamin were talking about that thirty, forty years ago.” Marge closed her eyes and became still.
“Mommy?” said the ballerina.
Marge opened her eyes. “You’re a populist, Stephanie.”
There was silence.
“Bite me,” said Stephanie.
An alarm started across the street.
Stephanie grabbed her handbag.
The alarm got louder until guests were covering their ears and lowering their heads as though intending to hide under the tables from the noise.
William emerged from the toilets, his eyes googly like a cartoon. He demanded that I check what the fuck—and what the fuck was I doing here anyway loitering near people trying to eat.
I went outside.
The town house across the street was on fire. Its roof burned against the black night, smoking out the stars. Great gusts of red were rising, getting bigger and bigger. I saw arms reaching out of three top-floor windows. The paps had started taking pictures. There were sirens. Fire engines screeched around the corner of Frith Street and firemen leaped out and operated their neon machinery as the smoke curled higher still. Despite the fact that I knew he was nowhere near at all, I wanted to run into the building and save Vic’s life.
William was telling the guests to leave their minks behind.
Marge was gripping the hand of her child ballerina, who looked excited. Her eyes were gleaming in a satanic way. Stephanie had disappeared. Samuel, Jasper, and Freddie had disappeared. There was the sound of glass shattering; glass rained down, shattering more on the pavement. From a door on the right of the burning building, people were sprinting into the frozen air, holding hands and pushing each other out of the way. They were men, well-heeled and mostly middle-aged, some younger, mostly bankers and lawyers, slick, clean-shaven, too terrified to look guilty. There were women too, all young, pretty, or at least women who had cemented a mask that could pass for prettiness over their plain or aging faces. Women in short red skirts and patent-leather, thigh-high boots, women with topknots out of which sprouted synthetic hair, women who were accustomed to being tired. The men and their prostitutes shared neon blankets tossed over their shoulders by firemen.
Soon the power of the hoses had beaten the fire into submission and the area was cordoned off. The guests filed back inside to pay their bills.
The toad gentleman remained seated at table twenty-two while I matched guest to mink. There was a lot of shouting about lost items; William was called, but the fire seemed to have endowed him with an ancient kind of Zen and even his verbal abuse was tranquil.
The toad gentleman caught my eye as I said thank you so much for coming, we do apologize for the disruption—a thousand times or more. He was holding up his iPad for me to see. I squinted at it. He beckoned me closer.
On the screen, a mauve heart was efflorescing
