25 • TENDER LOViNG SCARE

MADAME POMPADOUR TUGGED Marlo into her office by her wrist and shut the door behind her, sealing Marlo inside the tastefully decorated tomb. Madame Pompadour grinned, a lioness with a mouthful of veneers, and beckoned for Marlo to sit down next to her on the luxurious, sophisticated cream-colored love seat. Marlo felt as comfortable as a prisoner having tea and biscuits with her executioner on the gallows.

“I would like to apologize for my unconventional techniques in attempting to mold you into something you’re clearly not,” Madame Pompadour said as she scooched closer to Marlo on her dainty haunches. “I assure you, every hurdle was designed to teach you how to soar. The devil’s office, for instance. It is true: he does indeed have a work space here, but it is only one of—”

“Let me guess,” Marlo interjected. “Six hundred and sixty-six.”

Madame Pompadour smirked.

“Yes, very astute. I find my girls are much more motivated when under the impression that the embodiment of all evil is just down the hall, take a left at the broken umbrella plant and sulfur watercooler.”

Marlo trembled as violently as an old man playing Yahtzee, trying desperately to gather her wits before they were shaken apart. Madame Pompadour had set her up to fail while Farzana had simultaneously set her up to succeed. Marlo didn’t know whom to trust less. And after Marlo had blown up at Madame Pompadour, instead of being instantly clawed apart, she was taken—albeit roughly—back to her office for a little dead-heart-to-dead-heart chat.

“Since we may have started off on the wrong foot,” Madame Pompadour said genteelly, “I thought this might be an opportunity for us to set our personalities aside and develop a rapport.”

Marlo’s gaze darted back and forth from Madame Pompadour’s green cat eyes to her tiny forked tongue as if she were watching a tennis match. They seemed as if they had different agendas, her eyes not seeing eye to eye with her words.

“You might say that I’m something of a … fashist,” Madame Pompadour continued pompously. “Fashion is many things. For one, it is a visual language with its own distinctive grammar, brimming with unconscious symbolism. Most ensembles speak clearly and to the point.”

She waved her gloved hand at Marlo, as if batting away an objectionable smell.

“Yours, for instance,” Madame Pompadour said with disdain, “is a metaphor composed of thrift-store hand-me-downs.”

Marlo looked down at her outfit: her deep burgundy vintage waistcoat, silk Victorian mourning gown, Goth-Darn-It tights (with carefully fabricated holes), and shabby granny boots. It was, in Marlo’s mind, a tastefully distasteful collection that merged the essentials she had managed to save from the Surface with some choice finds nabbed in Mallvana.

“It has an ‘angry baby’ energy about it,” Madame Pompadour continued as her eyes assessed Marlo’s clothing, interpreting it like a ready-to-wear Rorschach test. “Ill-fitting, ill-matched childishness with a touch of noisy frolic, dampened by a disparate, funereal mess of hopelessness bequeathed from a time of which you have no real understanding.”

Marlo fidgeted self-consciously.

“Right,” she replied. “That’s what I was going for.”

Madame Pompadour smirked.

“While I find your costume personally repellant—a stinging slap on the chic, if you will—it is, I grudgingly admit, preferable to many of the fashion atrocities so prevalent on the Surface.”

Marlo realized that this was probably the closest thing to a compliment that would ever slide off the scratchy cat/serpent tongue of Madame Pompadour in Marlo’s general direction.

“We are all books judged by our covers,” Madame Pompadour said as she padded across the floor toward a towering armoire. “See for yourself. Come.”

Marlo swallowed and reluctantly joined her. Madame Pompadour opened the doors of the armoire, revealing a dazzling collection of clothing, everything from an Amber Argyle Afghan to a Zippered, Zebra-Skinned ZeBra.

“People don’t wear clothes just because they like them,” she explained. “No, there are much deeper forces shaping one’s fashion persona. Pick a few combinations and I will tell you what they mean.”

Marlo shrugged and pulled out a miniskirt, boots, and sheer blouse. Madame Pompadour held her fist to her chin in contemplation.

“Summer babe by day, club queen by night. Streamlined but not shy. Another, please.”

Marlo picked out another ensemble, trying to be as random as possible.

“Hmm, a see-through shirt, preppy sheath skirt, and pink flats,” murmured Madame Pompadour. “Quel mixed messages! This may be the sign of a deep schism, someone literally skirting their childhood issues.”

Madame Pompadour closed the armoire’s doors. Marlo felt a pang of disappointment. She was almost having … what was that word? It had been so long … oh yeah: fun.

“Secondly, fashion is manipulation,” Madame Pompadour said, smoothing down the scales of her snakeskin skirt. “To choose an outfit is to choose a self-definition, a way to use our vast vocabulary of clothes to lie to our advantage. To fashion ourselves into anything we want, or—more accurately—anything we want others to think of us.”

Marlo crossed her arms, trying hard to resist the madame’s verbal catnip.

“Is that what you’re doing with your big plan for Statusphere?” she posed with a scowl. “To fashion the underworld to suit your … your …”

Marlo stared at the mirror behind Madame Pompadour’s desk.

“Vanity?”

A small storm cloud passed over the sky of Madame Pompadour’s perfect face. She blew it away with a sharp, hollow laugh.

“You’re smarter than I gave you credit for,” she replied. “In fact, you remind me of myself, when I was just a kitten, err, girl. Before I learned that it takes sharp, expertly manicured nails for a girl to claw her way to the top.”

“But what is your plan, anyway?” Marlo asked from beneath a muddle of conflicting thoughts and emotions.

Madame Pompadour sashayed to her desk.

“There’ll be plenty of time to talk about that after our … girl time.”

Oh no, Marlo thought. Girl time.

Madame Pompadour flicked a switch beneath her desk. To her right, the green bookshelf with the cast-iron grill opened, exposing an elegant room beyond.

“Welcome to my little slice of Heaven,” Madame Pompadour purred. “Or as close as one can hope to achieve so far south. Behold … Me-Wow. My own private spa. Just for me. A place to curl up and dye, or wax, or simply unwind.”

She stepped inside, with Marlo—literally—on her tail. It smelled of exotic, soothing spices, the air thick and humid, the consistency of a good nap. Marlo crossed the white tile floor, gazing up through swirls of steam at the vaulted ceiling.

Two demons with hands sporting extra fingers stood at the opposite end of the spa behind two plush massage tables.

“Me-Wow is a spa with chutzpah,” Madame Pompadour explained. “It features an array of ancient and cutting-edge therapeutic techniques, all meticulously designed and administered to pamper one into a state of bliss.”

Marlo eyed a bubbling tub of fragrant green-black mud.

“Do you invite all the girls here?”

One of the demons handed Madame Pompadour two sumptuous white robes and matching slippers.

“I only invite the … special girls here.” Madame Pompadour grinned as she threw one of the robes across a gilded, three-framed dressing screen covered by patterned velvet. “The ones who are crying out for some quality time with the madame.”

Madame Pompadour glared at Marlo’s outfit, scanning it up and down as if she were trying to erase it with her eyes.

“Let’s get you out of … that. We’ll have it destroyed, and a proper outfit will be selected for you, one that expresses not who you are but who you could be.”

Marlo, intoxicated by clouds of heady, aromatic herbs, nodded groggily and stepped behind the screen.

“I’ve got our entire day planned out,” Madame Pompadour said while nodding to one of her demons. “We’ll enjoy seaweed body wraps, an exfoliating salt scrub, and vigorous shiatsu.”

“Gesundheit,” Marlo replied as she languidly undressed.

One of the demons filled a strange enclosed tank with gallons of white liquid poured from a huge carton marked MILK OF AMNESIA. Madame Pompadour quickly waved for the demon to hide the carton as Marlo shuffled from behind the screen in her robe and slippers.

“It sounds great.” She yawned. “Though I may sleep through most of it…. I’m suddenly so tired.”

Madame Pompadour grinned.

“That’s your body relaxing … preparing to let go of tension, of worry, of … everything.”

Marlo cocked her eyebrow at the odd tank.

“What’s that?” she asked as a demon opened the hatch on top of the capsule.

“It’s a sensory-deprivation tank,” Madame Pompadour explained. “It’s a surefire way of forgetting all your troubles … every last one. But why don’t you try it out for yourself?”

Marlo scrutinized the creamy white water.

“That isn’t milk, is it?” she asked. “I’m totally allergic.”

“It’s … pistachio nut milk,” Madame Pompadour shot back. “Much more therapeutic.”

Marlo shrugged as the demon slipped off her robe.

“It must take tiny hands to milk a pistachio,” she said as she eyed the demon’s larger-than-normal mitts. “Obviously you don’t milk them here.”

“Very droll, Miss Fauster,” Madame Pompadour said. “Now, we mustn’t dawdle. We’ve got a big day of doing very little ahead of us.”

Marlo slid into the tank.

“Ooh, it’s like sinking into a hot vanilla milk shake. So how come you’re not soaking in this stuff?”

Madame Pompadour shot her demonic assistants a look, quick and quiet, as if shot with a silencer.

“Side effects.”

“Side effects?!” Marlo yelped as she bolted upright in the tank.

“Yes, such as utter tranquility. As the director of Heck’s premiere Infernship program, I can only afford to be so relaxed.”

“Oh,” Marlo muttered as she succumbed to the Milk of Amnesia’s velvet tug.

Another demon, cradling a small jar of blue goo, began to slather the mixture onto Marlo’s face as she settled into the tub.

“What’s this?” she mumbled.

Madame Pompadour folded her arms smugly, a wry smile forming on her thin pink lips.

“My own, personal mixture,” she said. “A moisturizing, deep-penetrating mask, a blend of chloroform, ether, bergamot, and mud dredged from the bottom of the Bermuda Triangle.”

Marlo slid into the milky bath. Her expression was as blank as a new chalkboard.

“I can feel it … working … already,” Marlo mumbled, every thought, every memory slowly loosening its grip on her mind. “It’s like taking a vacation … from myself. It’s … nice.”

Madame Pompadour nodded to the demon, who secured the tank’s hatch with three swift, powerful turns of its wheel.

“Oh, forget about it, Miss Fauster,” Madame Pompadour murmured as she played with the newest charm dangling from her wrist, one marked MARLO.

“Forget … everything.”