"Quit stalling, Pearl. I know you can do this."
"And how do you know that, Mom?"
"Because I wear contact lenses and so did your father. You've got the genes for it!"
"Great," I said. "Thanks for passing on those sticking-a-finger-in-your-eye genes to me. Not to mention the crappy-eyesight genes." I stared at the little lens gradually drying to razor-sharpness on my fingertip, imagining all my totally lateral caveman ancestors jamming rocks and sticks into their eyeballs, none of them realizing the whole thing would pay off a thousand generations later when I had to look good at an art gallery opening.
"Okay, guys, this is for you," I said, taking a breath and prying my left eye open wide. As my finger approached, the little transparent disk grew until it blotted out everything, dissolving into a fit of blinking.
"Is it in?" my mother asked.
"How the hell should I know?" I opened one eye, then the other, squinting at myself in the mirror.
Blurry Pearl, clear Pearl, blurry Pearl, clear Pearl...
"Hey, I think it's in."
"See?" my mother said. "That was easy as pie."
"Pi squared, maybe. Let's get going." I scooped new makeup into my brand-new handbag, its silver chain glittering softly in my blurry eye.
My mother frowned. "What about the other one?"
I alternated eyes again - blurry mother, clear mother - and shrugged. "Sorry, Mom. I don't think I've got the genes for it."
As long as I could recognize faces, the demimonde was good enough for me.
Out on the street, Elvis made a big deal about my new look, acting like he didn't recognize me, trying to get me to blush. The older I got, the more he thought his job was to make me feel ten years old. Lately, he was tragically good at it.
The weird thing was, though, by the time we arrived at the gallery, I felt twenty-five. There weren't any cameras popping as Elvis swung the limousine door open for me, but there was a guy with a clipboard and headset, other blinged-up art lovers sweeping into the entrance, their bodyguards piling up out in the street, the clink and chatter coming from the crowd inside... It was almost like going onstage.
Even with everything going on, New York still had gallery openings. Civilization was still kicking ass, and here I was, in costume and in character. Ready to charm.
Once inside the gallery, the first trick was extricating myself from Mom. She kept showing me off to friends, all of them dutifully not recognizing me and dropping their jaws, reading from the same script as Elvis. Soon Mom was striking up conversations with strangers, dropping "my daughter" comments and clearly craving "Not your sister?" in response.
And she wonders why I don't dress up more.
Finally, though, I weaseled out of her orbit with the lame excuse of wanting to look at, you know, the art. Her fingers trailed on my shoulder as I slipped away, reminding everyone one more time that I was her daughter.
I made my way straight to a table full of champagne, rows and columns of it bubbling furiously, and smiled. The open bar: where else would a record company rep hang out at an art opening?
I snagged a glass and hovered near the table, keeping an eagle eye (just one) out for the face I'd downloaded that morning. My trap was finally set - I was ready. All my lines were memorized; I was dressed ravishingly and standing in the perfect spot. There was nothing more I could do but wait.
So I waited...
Twenty minutes later, my enthusiasm had faded.
No record company talent scout had materialized, the glass was empty, and my feet were unhappy in their new shoes. The party buzzed around me, ignoring my little black dress and borrowed bling, like I was some kind of nonentity. Bubbles rattled unpleasantly in my head.
All my life I'd wondered how my mother's sole life purpose could be going to parties, even while the world was crumbling around her. Finally Google had shown me the answer: her reason for existence was to get me into this party. Astor Michaels, Red Rat Records' most fawesome talent scout, was also the biggest collector of this photographer's work. He'd discovered the New Sound, signing both Zombie Phoenix and Morgan's Army - not huge, commercial bands, but gutsy bands like us.
It was a perfect match, like when Moz and I had been brought together. Surely this was fate playing with my mother's social calendar.
But as I picked up my second glass and wandered through the crowd, squinting at two hundred half-blurry faces and recognizing none of them, I started to consider an awful possibility: could fate be messing with me?
What if Astor Michaels was out of town? Or busy scouting bands at some undiscovered club instead of here? What if Google had lied to me? All my efforts tonight would be wasted - in fact, my mother's whole life would be wasted...
I stood there, dizzy on my feet, staring at a half-empty glass and realizing something equally dismaying: the champagne gene was another one my mom hadn't passed on. Maybe it was my half-blurry vision or the buzz of the uncaring crowd around me, but I felt like reality was in a blender.
I had to get control.
I took a deep breath and pulled myself out of the crowd, wandering to the party's edge to look at the pictures. They were gigantic photos of the sanitation crisis: glimmering mountains of plastic bags, garbage guys on strike, lots of rats. All were dramatic and weirdly beautiful, almost life-size, as if you could walk straight into them. Which begged the question: Why would you want this stuff on your wall when it was all happening right outside?
The crowd seemed to agree. People were crowded into the middle of the room, shrinking from the images of decomposition. Only a few of us hovered at the fringes of the party, sullen and extraneous, like sophomore guys at the senior prom.
Poor art lovers, I thought, and then, in a fit of champagne-stoked genius, I realized where Astor Michaels had been hiding.
He wasn't here for the prom; he was here for the art. He was one of the sophomores.
I started to circle the room, ignoring the crowd in the middle this time, the ones who looked well connected and happy and cool. I looked for the lonely guys, the losers.
Halfway around, I spotted him out of the corner of my eye - my good eye, luckily. He was ogling a vast photo of a shrine built by sanitation workers out in the Bronx: praying hands and crosses and skulls (again!) all jumbled up to provide protection on their route.
I took a deep drink of champagne to steady myself, my lines beginning to tumble through my head.