I wait behind the bush man’s bush because he is the only friend I have left. I don’t care about his answers or his letters this time. I don’t even care about what’s under his coat.
I want a conversation.
No one ever thinks the pretty girl wants conversation.
If I wrote poems like China does, I would write a poem about how no one ever thinks the pretty girl wants conversation, but I don’t write poems. I bake, mostly.
This afternoon between the hotel and coming here to meet the bush man, I baked a batch of madeleines for him because I know he likes them and that’s how I’ve been paying him for the answers.
Everyone thinks I pay him in other ways, but I don’t.
I have never kissed the bush man. He likes to brush my hair. He likes me to lie so it grows right in front of him like Hairnocchio. He likes to clip off the pieces that grow and tie them in braids and save them in a bag marked LANSDALE’S LIES and I don’t mind because I know I lie. I’m not stupid. I just can’t stop myself.
Last night at the Hilton I said I was eighteen. I said I like champagne. I said newsmen turn me on. I said I believe he grew up in Los Angeles when I know he grew up in Ohio. Last night I said I was once anorexic when I wasn’t. I said I have leukemia, but it’s in remission, which I don’t and it isn’t. I said that when I was seven, I sneezed for four days straight until they took me to the hospital, which I don’t think is even possible. As the Ohio/Los Angeles man snored grossly beside me, I thought of hundreds of lies to make my hair grow so long that it would wrap him in a cocoon.
All that happened was that I was cocooned, not him.
And today, I’m tired of lying.
So I’m waiting to have tea with the bush man. He can have the last of my dishonest hair.