Bite-Size Stories

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"You can't put that!"

"Says who?"

"Guys, this isn't, like Scrabble. Just put something down and give it to the dealer."

"Who's dealer this round?"

"Marie."

"Can I mention ducks?"

"Well, you could, but then we'd know it was you."

"Oh. Right."

"What's the category again?"

"'Things Jesus Never Preached.'"

"Ha! I got something."

"I have a feeling this is going to turn dirty."

"Dude. What round hasn't been dirty?"

"Good point."

"Jason, you're last in."

"Give me a freaking second!  Jesus preached on freaking everything."

"You seriously can't come up with something he wouldn't have preached about? Oh, that's right, I forgot—you're a Man-Nun."

"I am not a Man-Nun. Here's my answer."

"All right, 'Things Jesus Never Preached.' We got 'Cannibalism is only frowned upon, not expressly forbidden.' And 'If someone strikes you, turn the other cheek and ask for another.' I know who wrote that one. 'The medicinal properties of weed,' and lastly 'How to Pray Over Irregular Bowel Movements.' Real classy, people."

***

There is a formula—thank God—and if you follow it, you will lead a Good and Successful Life.

First, you are born. You have a cheerful mother and a loving father who works nine-to-five, but is home often enough to go to your little league games or your dance recitals. You are soon joined by a little brother and little sister who adore you. Your parents put you in a private school where temptation of any sort is strictly prohibited. You graduate with honors and go to Calvin or Dordt or Moody and meet the girl or guy of your dreams and get engaged the spring of your freshman year. You get married and have Christian Sex, which immediately produces offspring. You graduate with a degree in Bible. Your firstborn takes his first step and you and your spouse are thrilled. You work in non-profit missions. You retire. You die. You go to Heaven.

Or:

Your father messes up and misses a game. You go to a state school where someone with Pi Delta Pi stamped on their forehead teaches you about temptation and you have Non-Christian Sex. You graduate with a degree in Underwater Basket Weaving, or maybe you don't graduate at all.  You get gonorrhea from a neon-clad neo-hippie at your first rave.  You work minimum-wage.  You get cancer.  You die.  There is no after-life, or if there is, you really didn’t accrue enough brownie-points to stay Up There with the Good Kids.

***

"I don't want to go."

It was useless saying it, but if she didn't try, it would be the same as losing. Resisting verbally put them, in her mind, at a stalemate. She could live with that, for now.

Still, she didn't see the point. She didn't even have a date. The only reason she was going was because Sarah wanted to go and Sarah didn't have a date, either. And once Melissa heard she was going to Prom, the big-sister-alarm went off and she insisted on dragging Brittany to the mall for a haircut and some highlights and a manicure and pedicure and a dress and a bag and shoes and earrings and a necklace and rings and bracelets and it was all ridiculous because she didn't have a date.

But Melissa was working on that, too. She kept babbling on about this guy from work, Craig, a college boy, but only a sophomore so it wasn't too weird if he took Brittany and all Brittany could think was that Craig sounded like such a douche name and he probably wore pastel polos and pretended to be straight and she'd have to show up at Prom with a gay guy in a lilac tux.

***

Mary was a pony on Tuesday. A pink pony with a white tail and a braided mane. She ate sliced apples with peanut butter and preferred apple juice to orange juice and told her Mommy Pony but her Mommy Pony gave her water instead.

On Wednesday she was a cat and she insisted on lapping her milk from a saucer on the floor. Normally, Mommy Cat would have argued with her for a half hour before giving in, but she didn't say anything this Wednesday.

On Thursday, she was a pirate, and the phone rang. She made a pirate nest between the T.V. and the window seat and the sofa and stuck the vacuum cleaner in the middle to hold the ceiling up. Mommy Pirate crawled in and lay down and stared at the vacuum cleaner for a long time while First Mate Mary gave instructions to the one-winged parrot, Mr. Stuffy, who had a rather difficult time perching on her shoulder due to the fact that he was not, in fact, a real parrot, and even if he was, he only had one wing.

On Friday, Mary was a farmer. She planted potato chips on the kitchen floor and plowed the linoleum fields by scooping the ruffled foliage into her mouth. Mommy Farmer slept all day, so Mary could be a farmer as long as she wanted. She planted jelly beans and celery sticks and licorice, and by the end of the harvesting season, her tummy hurt and she didn't want to be a farmer anymore.

***

John knew certain things. He knew that if you fiddled with the vacuum-lock system in old Mercedes, you could break into the car without shattering the glass or jimmying the locks. He knew that rolls of silver-nitrate film burned faster than paper and were harder to trace than gasoline. He knew which bones in your hand you needed to dislocate to get out of a pair of handcuffs. He knew that people expected a kick to the balls, but not to the spine. He knew exactly how much of an apple was edible.

John did not know what his last name was. He did not know how old he was or if he had a family. He knew that he was in Los Angeles, but had no recollection of how he got there, and only the vague impression that he had started somewhere else—somewhere very far away, an impossible distance. John did not know what day it was or how long it had been since he'd woken up for the first time.

But he knew certain things. And he had the same vague impression that he had not known these things Before. The only certainty he had was that there was something in this city he needed, something that was going to happen, and he had to survive until he found out what it was.

***

Sam handed Tracie the cigarette with a "God, that's rank," and sat back against the cab of the old Chevy with a shudder. The corner mart where they'd bought cigarettes since they were thirteen was out of their brand.

"How the fuck do you run out of Camels?"  The clerk just shrugged and went back to the black-and-white ball-game that played on his fake security camera circuit.

"Where’s Ben?' Sam asked, still pissed about the cigarettes. He was serious about which brand was going to give him cancer.

"Said he'd be here when he was done at Molly's." Tracie took another drag. It wasn't so bad, really.

"Goddamn that girl; she's fucking corrupting him."

Tracie flicked the stub on the damp ground. "Every time you say ‘fuck’ it makes you sound fucking ignorant. Besides, Molly's Mormon; how's she supposed to corrupt Ben?"

"'Cuz he's not fucking here!" Sam exploded, kicking a dead branch over the side of the truck bed. "And you better watch your language, you're starting to fucking sound like her."

Tracie shrugged.  "Better her than you."

Sam took this as an excuse to tackle Tracie off the truck.

***

Blake was passed out three feet from the front door. Anita stood looking down at him, two steaming Styrofoam cups of coffee in hand. She nudged him with the toe of her workboots.

"Blake. Wake up, Blake. I got coffee."

He mumbled as she stepped past him into the house they'd grown up in, switching the entry light on with her elbow. She set the coffee down on the kitchen table. By the time she had slathered cream cheese on an everything-bagel, he'd shambled into the kitchen and fallen into the nearest chair, which squeaked in the protest of old age and bad care. Blake lifted the lid off the nearest coffee and breathed the steam in deeply.

"You missed work yesterday," she said, setting the bagel down on a towel since all his plates were dirty and he was out of napkins.

"I know," he said in a raspy voice. He swallowed and tried again. "I didn't feel good."

"You off your medication?" Anita asked, carefully blank.

He took a bite of bagel, shaking his head. "Ran out."

"You know I'll pay for the prescription."

He didn't answer, just took a long time to chew that first bite of bagel.  Finally: “Yeah.  I know.”

***

She kept telling herself it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That this was her chance, if she made it, it would open up the stars and nothing could stand in her way.

Her father, Frank, sputtered, flushed purple, red; demanded she respect her elders for God's sake, it wasn't like he was going to be there much longer, the least she could do was stick around 'til he was dead; then she could go gallivanting halfway across the country to be a cheap whatever-it-was, just as long as he was buried first.

It was an audition, she corrected him again, and it meant everything.

More than me, he replied.

She wanted to say yes, but bit her lip hard enough to hurt. He saw.

Your brother and his wife are here to take care of me, he'd sigh, pretending to give in. Go on, prostitute yourself in Hollywood.

She should have just left then.

***

Most people didn't like black jellybeans. They wanted the tart sweetness of Red Cherry or Blue Raspberry. But Sammie liked black. Black Licorice. There was something dark and secretive about the clammy dark candy that appealed to him.

He didn't play with Power Rangers or Hot Wheels. He didn't have squirt guns or basketball hoops nailed above the garage door. He pulled his father's Erector Set from the attic and stole his mother's cast-off hosiery and broken jewelry pins and redesigned his entire backyard toolshed-turned-fort into a Rube Goldbergh dream-laboratory.

It was paradise.

Bent forks, chipped watches, tangled strands of fishing line, half-burnt Christmas lights, the popped tops off soda cans, spirals ripped from old arithmetic notebooks, busted zippers and cracked lenses from old reading glasses — all were his to recreate and he did so with the passion of a god newly born into his powers.

***

She stumbled out of the bedroom she shared with her new boyfriend, Ryan, then into the bathroom. Alice heard her puke, the toilet flush, shuffling and medicine cabinet squeals, the handle and then she stepped out.

"D'jyou make me something?" her mom asked.

Alice pointed to the glass of orange juice and plate of eggs, thinking don't ask me, don't ask me, don't—

"Look, Allie, I need you to take me somewhere today. Ryan has to work."

Alice stared hard at her half-cold toast.

"It'll only be a few hours. In and out."

Alice swallowed the curdled lump of bread in her throat, swallowed the anger so it could digest and spread through her veins and give her the adrenaline she needed to say no, no, for God's sake, no.

"Mom—" Alice began.

"The clinic’s great; I went to them last time."

Alice nodded tightly.

***

"Dear God," he exploded. "Margaret? Margaret?"

Gary opened the door to the refrigerator and began pulling out fixings for his favorite salad: pine nuts, lettuce, strawberries, cranberries, vinaigrette, sliced granny smith apples, and cold chicken.

"You are insanely insecure," Gary said, setting the ingredients on their cutting board. Their cutting board. "Just because I dated her in college doesn't mean we can't be friends now."

"She's a woman," Mark exclaimed as if that explained everything. "Where is she going to sleep?"

"The guest room," Gary replied, pine nuts flying under his knife.

"That's my office," Mark growled, rooted in place, constantly rotating like the center of a Ferris wheel to face Gary, who refused to look at him.

"Well tonight it's also the guest room. This is my house."

Mark froze. "That's where you want to go?"

“Oh stop it!”  Gary turned, waving the knife in agitation.  "Stop making a fuss!  I haven't seen Margaret in fifteen years."

***

Her toe poked out of the blue-and-brown-checkered socks that were in turn shoved into her favorite falling-apart pair of Burckenstocks. Her feet stopped growing in fifth grade and it was hard to find shoes in her size, so she tended to wear the same pair until they flapped and flopped off her feet as she walked and the mailman finally had to say, "My wife has an extra pair of shoes if you need them," which would inevitably drive her to PayLess where she would maybe find a pair of sparkly pink tennis shoes that she would be forced to buy because all there was besides that were the white vinyl kid heels with the bow on them and she couldn't show up at the mailbox and see that pity on the mailman's face again.

Her house was kind of the same way. She'd forgotten to get a man and now the cheerful yellow house with the dark green shutters was looking just a little bit worn, not too bad, just some overgrown hedges and a stuck window and the rain gutters were sort of helplessly blocked, and there was a family of sparrows that pooped on what had been her favorite reading bench in the back yard, but if they really wanted the spot it was fine with her.

***

She was getting married today. Jeremy, the husband's name (husband in thirty-seven minutes, he still had thirty-seven minutes). Husband after he, Jane’s dad, took Jane's arm in his and smiled at her and told her the mantra of all fathers, "You look beautiful, honey," that was nevertheless true, always true.

His wife would be sitting in the front row—would be, if things hadn't happened. She would have liked the husband, Jeremy; Jane's Jeremy. Then things happened and now, in twenty-nine minutes, the husband would be waiting at the end of the aisle and he, the father, would feel terrified, helpless, would choke down tears for the first time since he'd seen his daughter born, amazing, absolutely and perfectly. He would stop, lift back the veil, kiss Jane's cheek and force his feet to walk away, force himself not to grab Jeremy by the lapels of his rented tuxedo and say, "Dear God, do you have any idea what I'm giving you?"

***

Mike wondered if he would die this time. If this time he would open his mouth, let the bubble of air hugging the back of his throat and the roof of his mouth escape into the chlorinated water, and let that chlorinated water in, down to fill the gaps between his molars, push past his uvula and bathe his lungs in a burning purification.

Just as the poetry of this mental image became appealing to him, the reality of being twelve feet deep in his cousin's pool with very little oxygen left to burn terrified his gangly limbs into an ungraceful and desperate scramble to the surface. He burst through the water and nearly hyperventilated on his way to the edge of the pool where his cousin was tanning on the diving board.

"You're not dead," she commented, crossing her legs at the ankle, causing a tiny wrinkle to occur in the pale yellow bikini.

He would have responded with something tart and acerbic, but his lungs hurt too much to speak. She laughed and turned over onto her stomach.

"Why don't you just admit you're gay? It's gotta be easier than all these half-hearted suicide attempts."

He glared at her, at her oiled legs and firm backside and willed himself to feel something that a normal fourteen-year-old boy would feel looking at such a perfect specimen of womanhood.

At school, their sex ed. teacher said that it was okay to be gay, it was just as natural as being straight, heterosexual. But he looked at boys in the gym, on the soccer field, and he felt nothing. Right? Maybe he was just weird, a crazy fourteen-year-old freak with an inability to desire anyone.

“I’m not gay,” he finally muttered to Sarah.

She took a sip from the pink straw stuck in her glass of orange juice and said, “You keep telling yourself that. Just tell your therapist ten years down the road that I told you so.”

Mike sank beneath the surface again to cut out the completely ridiculous pop-trash that Sarah blasted from her phone. She was so ridiculous and, just, so ridiculous. He wished everyone would just leave him alone, it wasn’t even important, this stuff. People just made a big deal about it because he didn’t make a big deal about it. Who cared about sex? It just seemed kind of gross and sweaty and weird. Sticking one person’s body part in another person’s body part just seemed completely wrong to him. He got the logistics of the whole man-and-woman thing, but was a little uneducated about the details of how gay people did it—although if he had to take a wild guess, well—well, he wouldn’t, because it just all seemed unpleasant and just too much, all around, too much.

There were two giant splashes above him, crashing bubbles and limbs near his ear as he was forced two feet under the surface of the water. A small arm grabbed around his throat and clung, choking him, sinking him. He began to panic until the arm loosened just a fraction, letting him slip free and hobble to the metal steps tacked onto the interior of the deep end where he pulled himself up. His other cousins, Jack and Cindy, had cannon-balled into the pool without their floaties and now his aunt Marlene was yelling at him for not hauling them to the shallow end. Why was it his job to save the stupid brats? They were the ones that jumped in not knowing how to swim, not him. And she was the one that hadn’t been watching them closely enough.

Still gasping for breath, Mike watched as Sarah sighed, rolling her eyes, and dove into the pool, sunburnt-blonde hair rippling in the pool halfway down her back as she grabbed the twin five-year-olds in her arms and dog-paddled them to where her seventeen-year-old legs could touch bottom.

Great, now Sarah was the hero. Aunt Marlene would probably complain to his mom later and he would get a stern talking-to about how he was three times bigger than his cousins and had to watch out for them and maybe he wouldn’t even get dessert and it was the good stuff tonight because everyone was over for the fourth of July and the sun was hot and the pool was warm and the white Arizona sky just burned on and on forever and it would be perfect if people would just leave him alone to sit in the pressurized silence at the bottom of the pool but of course that wouldn’t happen because that’s just the way life works, that you never get what you want when you want it, only when you don’t want it, which makes it not something you want, so you really just never get what you want.

That’s why he kept trying to drown, because in a burst of sudden and complete epiphany, he understood at fourteen that life sucked, even though nothing bad had ever really happened. It was coming. He could feel it coming. Life. The bad stuff, the sex, maybe, the unpleasantness and the sweat and he didn’t ever want to leave the bottom of the pool where he didn’t have to grow up and deal with all that stuff, the office stuff and the wife (or husband?) stuff or the money stuff or the baby stuff or the getting old and getting tired and getting sick stuff.

Sarah swam on her back, stroking languidly back to the deep end where she hauled her perfect, dripping body out of the pool and onto the kool deck. She let her hair, silver with water, hang off the end of the diving board as she reached for her glass of orange juice, slippery with condensation, and took a sip, turning the page simultaneously in a crinkled old soft-spine titled A Picture of Dorian Gray, which Mike bet was about some really hot baseball player or something; Sarah was always talking about baseball players and the Diamondbacks and blah blah blah.

***

I'm not some crazy-ass, crew-cut, camo-wearing feminist with a butch, tongue-pierced girlfriend. It just seems really stupid that after thousands of years of degradation, women are finally given the same rights as men and what do they want to do with them? Wear tight little shorts that say "PINK" right across the ass.

My best friend got her ass pinched by this repeat customer at Denny's. Every Friday at 10 p.m., a slice of pie, a cup of coffee, and an ass-grab. She was scared to tell me about it because he tipped well and she knew I'd get angry. I told her to tell her manager. She said her manager was a woman who'd dealt with shit like that for years and that was just the way it was and be thankful he at least tipped 20%.

I walked into Denny's the next Friday night, identified him by his pie, and slapped him so hard he spewed coffee on the group of teenagers the next table over.

That was the first time I went to jail.

But not before I challenged him to an old-fashioned knife fight in the parking lot. He just stared at me, then ran out the double doors into the greasy, fast-food night where twenty-year-old girls standing at five foot three inches didn't challenge his notions of masculinity.

I grabbed the first thing I saw, which happened to be a can of whipped cream, and followed, spraying him down in a white blaze of glory. I may have spent the night in county, but somebody else went home missing a pair of balls. And the deputy got such a kick out of the story that she let me go the next morning, "forgetting" to file the papers that would put the night's vendetta on my permanent record. I asked her what she thought about breasts and she said they kept her lungs warm. Following this episode, I seriously considered a career in law enforcement.

Two days later, however, I heard of a motorcycle gang down in Mexico run by the meanest senora you ever saw, so I put my deputy dreams aside and hitched a ride down to Teotihuacan where the Senora Cuchillo walked with me among the ancient ruins and imparted ancient Harley Davidson wisdom upon me. We scoured the coastal cities for parts and by the time I left her six months later, I had a new hog all my own that I affectionately called La Asesino del Empanada.

My and my thousand-pound Pie Killer cruised back to the states where I met up with my best friend again. She was still working at Denny's, but she wasn't taking the ass-grabbing crowd anymore. She'd reported her manager to the head of the West Coast division and the woman had been promptly demoted. I was excited for my friend, but thought the Denny' s vibe wasn't grooving with her potential, so I loaned her La Asesino de la Empanada and sent her down to the Senora. To this day, my best friend is her second-in-command, roaming the Mexican countryside in search of women who are fit to wear the Cuchillo badge, which is, namely, a giant machete strapped across one's back.

I moved on to Kentucky. There wasn't much in Kentucky, so I moved on to New York.

I got a job in a bar run by a lady named Wendy who wore blue silk and white lace and sipped aged apple cider from a wooden goblet that her husband made by hand. If you bought three drinks or more, she gave you a goblet to take home.

The bar was called Neverland and she made her employers wear tattered green uniforms with gold embroidery. There was Celtic music every night and special performances the last weekend of every month by an 81-year-old Irish singer who, purportedly, sang spells and incantations of the ancient Druids that seemed to transcend the Brooklyn basement brick into stones of an ancient seer's circle and cast the light of the stage into a golden wash of transcendent, otherworldly phosphorescence.

The old woman's name was Eowyn and she swore that Tolkien stole the name from her mother when they danced at a summer solstice party under a canopy of stars and the watchful eyes of the Muses. I didn't know and it didn't really matter. You just had to hear her sing.

***

Her bangs hadn't been cut properly and they fell across her eyes in five-minute intervals. She brushed them back or jerked her head and continued to talk, hunched forward on the rolling chair, elbows on her knees, wrists crossed in the empty space between. She was pretty, maybe, but she looked like she'd been tired for the past ten years and would only get tireder over the next ten. She kept bringing in comments about how you should never hire your boyfriend to play Pinocchio and actors hate when you feed them KFC.

No one can see her from the back row, and the hum of the overhead vents all but drowns out her voice. There is the impression that she can speak louder, but she is so sleepy she doesn't realize the need.

Nevertheless, the information that is heard above the air conditioning is important. She has lived fully, she has done things. Her tiredness, the bad blonde bangs, fade into unimportance.

By the end, people want to meet her—they don't see the bags under her eyes, they don't see the broken promises and the roads not taken.

***

"Sammy?" Lily pulled on her brother's hand.

He ignored her, staring at the brilliant flying lights, tiny bug-spots in the otherwise absolute dark.

"Sammy, where's Daddy?" she asked.

He shrugged without looking away from the tall field of weeds and heather.  "Dunno. She said he'd be back soon."

"He didn't tuck me in," and Sammy would have rolled his eyes if she'd meant it as a whine, but she didn't. She said it like adding two plus two and getting five, it didn't make sense, it wasn't right.

***

Everything about him was wrong. His little green corduroy overalls, his yellow-blonde hair, his charcoal-blue eyes.  He did not match. She did not want a brother, this small boy.

"Ralph, this is Rebekah. She's going to be your big sister," her father explained to the four-year-old. "Becky, why don't you go play with Ralph? Show him the farm."

Rebekah stared at her father with all the betrayal her seven-year-old body could muster. She did not want a little brother. She did not want to show him their farm. She didn't understand how he could be related to her in any way. The woman in the blue suit who'd dropped Ralph off had not been his mother. Rebekah didn't know where or who his father was. The only children that had been on the farm the past several years had been the occasional neighbor kids who came to play Sunday after church when the farms weren't too busy.

Ralph started to hiccup and cry as the woman got back in her silver car and waved goodbye, calling, "I'll be back in a week to check on you, Ralphie."

He held a hand out to her, cupping and uncupping his fist as if he were begging for alms. The woman looked old as she backed out the dirt drive to the main road. Ralph just stood there, staring at her like the sun had gone out.

"Who was she, Dad?" Rebekah asked, stalling.

He blinked and looked at his daughter, remembering she was there, too. He took her in his arms and hugged her tight, and the world seemed solid for a second.

"She was a social worker. She's here to make sure Ralph is being taken care of."

So saying, he picked the small boy up and added him to the bear hug. Ralph leaned his head against her father's soft flannel shirt and cried exhaustedly, snot and drool mixing into one big puddle of grief on her father’s shoulder. Rebekah didn't like the boy, but she wasn't really cold-hearted. She'd stayed up all night with her father once to help birth the new sheep, and some part of her felt the same mothering instinct for this boy as she did for the bleating newborns in the barn.

James—that was her father's name—stood, carrying them each in an arm, although Rebekah was really too big for that, and went upstairs to lay Ralph down in the over-sized master bed on the side where Rebekah's mother used to lay. Rebekah felt a sharp bite of jealousy—she used to sleep there, right after the funeral. Her dad had said that it was time to move on, though, and made her go to back to her own room. Now this boy who wasn't even family got to take her place and it wasn't fair.

Ralph huddled under the hand-quilted comforter, one hand wrapped firmly to James' collar, even in sleep. Her father carefully unclenched each of the tiny, pale fingers.

"Honey, go get that bear from the other bedroom."

Rebekah faltered. This was sacrilege. No one went into the other bedroom, it was off-limits.

"Go, Rebekah," her father said, more firmly.

She went, woodenly, turning the brass oval doorknob in awe. She could barely remember what this room looked like, it was so long since she'd been in it. The door opened, creaking prophetically. There.

A faint layer of dust covered everything. In the corner, his small bed, her great-grandfather's creation, and the waiting bear. The two corner windows shut tight with the white and blue lace curtains. The bureau with the faded blocks that still spelled out "Benjamin," as if he was still coming home.

***

Starlight's mother and father were hippies, and they weren't very good at it. Her mother joked that Starlight had special cosmic powers because she, Cassandra, had taken a variety of hallucinogenic mushrooms to facilitate the flow of energy around her womb.

Starlight's father was a guitarist and therefore baked out of his mind on all major holidays—including Kwanza and Ramadan and President's Day—and on days that fell on specific celestial arrangements. He never really explained what those arrangements were, so Star pretty much guessed that the stars were in alignment every day.

Cassandra and Bill (Star's father) liked to have sex, and they did it in exclusively odd places, claiming that "Afternoon Delight" was the theme song that kept their common-law marriage together. They would light up, don their gaudiest hippie gear, and mount up on the meditation mat in the screened-in front porch or throw a sari on the peaked roof and greet the dawn with whollops of, "Yeah, this is fucking awesome!"

They also liked to do it in the muddy, waist-deep koi pond in the backyard and in the bucket seat of the rusted tractor that sat permanently tilted to the side of the dilapidated barn. They used to do it on the kitchen table, but Star put a stop to that as soon as she learned about germs and hygiene in school. Pretty much the only place her parents didn't do it was in their own room, which didn't even have a proper bed, just a mound of beaded pillows and yards of sheer, vibrant clothed tacked up like a sheik's imperial tent.