Into the Earl of Slander’s tape recorder, Comrade Snarky says, “Do you know there’s no hot water?”

 

 Comrade Snarky, the one who traced the copper pipes along the basement ceiling, following them back to the boiler for heating water, where she shut off the gas. She should know. She pried the handle off the gas valve and dropped the handle through a drain in the concrete floor.

 

 “We’re going on strike,” skinny Saint Gut-Free says. “We’re not writing any brilliant, amazingFrankensteinshit unless we get some heat.”

 

 This morning: No heat. No hot water. No food.

 

 “Listen, lady,” the Missing Link says. His beard almost scours Mrs. Clark in the forehead, he stands so close in the narrow hallway outside the dressing rooms. He slides the fingers of one hand under the lapel of her bathrobe. Leaning to press her chest flat with his, the Missing Link’s hand makes a fist, and he bends his elbow to lift her off the floor by that fistful of flannel.

 

 Mrs. Clark, her slipper feet kicking in air, her hands grabbing around the hairy wrist that holds her, her eyes bug out, driving her head backward until her hair hits the closed door. Her head hits the door with a boom.

 

 Shaking her in his fist, the Missing Link says, “You tell old man Whittier he needs to get us some food. And get us some heat. Or get us out of here—now.”

 

 Us: the innocent victims of that oversleeping, evil, kidnapping madman.

 

In the blue velvet lobby, we’ll have nothing for breakfast.

 

 Bags holding anything made with liver, they were pincushioned with ten or fifteen holes. Everyone had to punch that ballot.

 

 Out in the lobby, every silver Mylar pillow, it’s gone flat. All of us with the same idea.

 

 Even with the furnace not working, the air already cold, the food’s gone bad.

 

 “We need to wrap him,” Mrs. Clark says. To wrap him and carry the body to the deepest subbasement with Lady Baglady.

 

 “That smell,” she says, “it’s not the food.”

 

 We don’t ask the details of how he died.

 

 It’s better Mr. Whittier died offstage. This way leaves us to script the worst: His eyes rolling to watch his belly swell bigger and bigger in the night, until he can’t see his feet. Until some membrane or muscle splits, inside, and he feels the rush of warm food flood against his lungs. Against his liver and heart. Next, he’d feel the chills of shock. The gray hair on his chest would turn swampy with cold sweat. His face, running with sweat. His arms and legs shake with the cold. The first signs of coma.

 

 No one will believe Mrs. Clark, now that she’s the new villain. Our new evil supervixen oppressor.

 

 No, we get to stage this scene. We’ll have him screaming with delirium. Mr. Whittier will be bleached pale and hiding behind his spread fingers, saying the devil is after him. He’ll be screaming for help.

 

 He’ll lapse into his coma. And die.

 

 Saint Gut-Free with his complicated words about the peritoneum, the duodenum, the esophagus, he’ll know the official term for what went wrong.

 

 In our version, we’ll kneel at Whittier’s bedside, to pray for him. Poor, innocent us, starving and trapped here but still praying for our devil’s eternal soul. Then a soft-focus dissolve and toss to commercial.

 

 That’s a scene from a hit movie. A scene withEmmy nominationwritten all over it.

 

 “That’s the nicest thing about dead people,” says the Baroness Frostbite, putting lipstick on top of her lipstick. “They can’t correct you.”

 

 Still, a good story means no heat. Slow starvation means no breakfast. Dirty clothes. Maybe we’re not as brainy-smart as Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, but we can tolerate some shit to make our story work.

 

 Mr. Whittier, our old, dead monster.

 

 Mrs. Clark, our new monster.

 

 “Today,” the Matchmaker says, “is going to be a long, long day.”

 

 And Sister Vigilante holds up one hand, her wristwatch glowing radium-green in the dim hallway. Sister Vigilante shakes the watch to make it flash, and she says, “Today is going to be as long asI say it will be . . .”

 

 To Mrs. Clark, she says, “Now show me how to turn on the damned lights.”

 

 And the Missing Link drops her slipper feet to the floor.

 

 Clark and the Sister, they feel their way off into the darkness, patting the damp hallway walls, moving toward the gray of the ghost light onstage.

 

 Mr. Whittier, our new ghost.

 

 Even Saint Gut-Free’s stomach growls.

 

 To shrink their stomachs, Miss America says some women will drink vinegar. That’s how bad hunger pangs can hurt.

 

 “Tell me a story,” Mother Nature says. She’s lit an apple-cinnamon candle with bite marks in the wax. “Anybody,” she says. “Tell me a story to make me never want to eat, ever again . . .”

 

 Director Denial hugs her cat, saying, “A story might ruinyourappetite, but Cora is still hungry.”

 

 And Miss America says, “Tell that cat, in a couple days he’ll qualify as food.” Already, her pink spandex boobs look bigger.

 

 And Saint Gut-Free says, “Please, can anybody please take my mind off my stomach.” His voice different, smooth and dry, for the first time without food in his mouth.

 

 The stink is thick as fog. That smell no one wants to breathe.

 

 And, walking toward the stage, toward the circle around the ghost light, the Duke of Vandals says, “Before I ever sold a painting . . .” He looks back to make sure we’ll follow, and the Duke says, “I used to be the opposite of an art thief . . .”

 

 While, room by room, the sun starts to come up.

 

 And in our heads, we all write this down:The opposite of an art thief . . .

 

  

 

 For Hire

 

 A Poem About the Duke of Vandals

 

 “Nobody calls Michelangelo the Vatican’s bitch,” says the Duke of Vandals,

 

 just because he begged Pope Julius for work.

 

 

 The Duke onstage, his scruffy jaw, scrub brush with pale stubble,