Thomas Pynchon - Bleeding Edge

“Gargamel’s cat?” Maxine inquires, “like on the Smurfs?”

No, and the disappointment in Lester/not-Lester’s face tells her she should know better. In nonbiblical Jewish tradition, as she is perfectly aware, Azrael is the angel of death. In Islam also, for that matter… And briefly she is back in the corridor, Gabriel Ice’s guarded mystery tunnel out in Montauk. Why? would be an interesting question to pursue, except that Giuliani, in his tireless quest for quality infrastructure, has caused not one but several jackhammers to start up well before working hours, figuring the taxpayers won’t object to the extra overtime pay, and any message is corrupted, fragmented, lost.

Meantime Heidi, back from Comic-Con in San Diego, her head still teeming with superheroes, monsters, sorcerers, and zombies, has been visited by NYPD detectives looking into the address books of Heidi’s old ex-fiancé Evan Strubel, who has recently been run in on charges of aggravated computer tampering, in connection with a federal insider-trading beef. Heidi’s first thought is, He still has me in his Rolodex?

“You two were romantically involved?”

“Not romantically. Baroquely maybe. Years ago.”

“Was that before or after he got married?”

“Thought you guys were from the precinct, not the Adultery Squad.”

“Pretty touchy,” it seems to the Bad Cop.

“Yep, and feely too,” Heidi snaps back. “What’s it to you, Your Eminence?”

“Just trying to get a chronology,” soothes the Good Cop. “Whatever you’re comfortable sharing, Heidi.”

“‘Sharing,’ yo, Geraldo, I thought you got canceled.”

And so forth, sort of like police handball.

As they are about to leave, Heidi finds the Bad Cop beaming strangely at her. “Oh, and Heidi…”

“Yes, Detective”— pretending to search her memory—“Nozzoli.”

“These chick flicks from the fifties? Ever watch any of those?”

“On the movie channels now and then,” Heidi somehow unable not to bat her eyelashes, “sure, I guess, who wants to know?”

“There’s a Douglas Sirk festival next week down at the Angelika, and if you’re interested, maybe we could go grab some coffee first, or—”

“Excuse me. Are you asking me—”

“Unless you’re ‘married,’ of course.”

“Oh, these days they allow married women to drink coffee, it even gets written into prenups.”

“Heidi,” Maxine, when she hears this, sighs as always, “desperate, unreflective Heidi, this Detective Nozzoli, he’s, ah, he’s married himself?”

“You are so the jaded cynic of the universe!” cries Heidi, “It could be George Clooney and you would find something wrong!”

“An innocent question, what.”

“We went to see Written on the Wind (1956)” Heidi continues as if gone starry-eyed remembering, “and whenever Dorothy Malone came on the screen? Carmine got a hardon. A big one.”

“Don’t tell me—the old penis-in-the popcorn-box-routine. Just to keep in the fifties spirit.”

“Maxi, hopelessly-West-Side-liberal Maxi, if you only knew what you were missing with these law-enforcement guys. Believe me, once you’ve tried cop, you never want to stop.”

“Yes but tell me Heidi, what happened to your obsession with Arnold Vosloo from The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, and, and the interviews you keep trying to set up with his office—”

“Envy,” supposes Heidi, “is so often all that stands between some of us and a sad, empty life.”

Today Maxine is halfway through her file of take-out menus when Heidi sticks her head in with the latest episode of a continuing purse drama. Having survived an identity crisis brought on by her old Coach model, which has had observers attentive to bag signifiers mistaking her for various sorts of Asian, she is now deep in the basic princessly exercise of whether to go for a class image with Longchamps, for example, and live with never being able to find anything inside it, or schlep around a more comparmentalized model and accept a slight downgrade to her hipness rating.

“But that’s history now, Carmine bless him has solved all that.”

“Carmine is… he’s some kind of… purse fetishist, Heidi?”

“No, but the man does pay attention. Look, check out what he bought me.” It’s an inexpensive tote in some autumnal print, with a gold-tone heart on it. “Fall and winter, right? Now watch.” Heidi reaches inside and turns the whole thing inside out, presenting a totally different bag, light-colored and floral. “Spring and summer! it’s convertible! you get a twofer, see?”

“How inventive. A bipolar bag.”

“And well then of course it’s a piece of living history also.” Down in one corner Maxine reads MADE ESPECIALLY FOR YOU BY MONICA.

“New one on me, unless… oh. No, Heidi, wait. ‘Monica’. He didn’t get this at, at Bendel’s?”

“Yep, right off the truck—it’s the ol’ Portly Pepperpot herself. Do you realize what this will fetch on eBay in a couple of years?”

“A Monica Lewinsky original. Tough call, but I’d err on the side of good taste is timeless.”

“And who’d know better than you Maxi, all the seasons you’ve seen come and go.”

“Oh but of course it’s a hint isn’t it, Carmine is suggesting a particular act , now let me think, what can that be, something you may not’ve been all that eager to perform…”

It’s a fairly lightweight handbag, but Heidi does her best to assault Maxine with it in a meaningful way. They chase around the apartment screaming for a while before deciding to take a supper break and order in from Ning Xia Happy Life, whose take-out menus keep getting shoved under everybody’s back door.

Heidi squints at the options. “There’s a breakfast menu? Long March Szechuan Muesli? Magic Goji Longevity Shake? what, excuse me, the fuck?”

The delivery guy who shows up is not Chinese but Latino, which gets Heidi further confused. “ Seguro usted tiene el correcto apartmento? We were waiting for a Chinese delivery? Foodo Chineso? ”

Unpacking the bags, they can’t remember ordering half of it. “Here, try this,” passing Heidi a dubious egg roll.

“Strange… exotic burst of flavor… This is… meat? what kind, do you suppose?”

Pretending to look at the menu, “All it said was ‘Benji Roll’? Sounded intriguing, so—”

“Dog!” Heidi jumping up and running over to the sink to spit out what she can. “Oh God! Those people eat dog over there! You ordered this, how could you? You never saw the movie? What kind of a childhood did you— Aaaahhh!”

Maxine shrugs. “You want me to help induce vomiting, or can you remember how to do that OK?”

The Twelve Flavors Drunken Squid is a little overdone. They settle for dropping pieces from different heights onto their plates to see how high they’ll bounce. The Green Jade Energetic Surprise comes in a plastic container molded to look like a jade box from the Qing dynasty. “The surprise,” Heidi nervously, “is a shrunken head inside.” It turns out to be mostly broccoli. The Gang of Four Vegetarian Combo, on the other hand, is exquisite, if mysterious. Anybody eating it at the physical Ning Xia restaurant impulsive enough to ask what’s in it will only get a glare. The Chinese fortune-cookie fortunes are even more problematic.

“‘He is not who he seems to be,’” Heidi reads.

“Carmine, obviously. Oh, Heidi.”

“Please. It’s a fortune cookie, Maxi.”

Maxine cracks open her cookie. “‘Even the ox may bear violence in his heart.’ What?”

“Horst, obviously.”

“Nah. Could be anybody.”