Farewell Miss B

 

Panties and Miss B met around 9. They were seated in the great hall hung with chandeliers and smoked mirrors. It was like dinner with the girl-next-door, quite different from Miss B’s hypnotic incantations to Panties, kneeling at her feet. She has not told any of her friends she’s leaving because she knows they will give her a hard time. She asked Panties to come visit her as soon as she arrives. We are visited by a glamorous blonde, the manager, who has never lived there, but has been often and she gives us pointers. Miss B handed over a bag for Panties which turned out to contain an apple pie. Miss B listened without the slightest territoriality, to Panties’ account of training with Miss D. She proposed traveling with Panties to Oklahoma to visit her mother someday. Panties asked her about her Big Plan, whether she really believed she could have pulled it off. (“You will work another few years and your salary will be deposited directly into your account. You won’t even know the pin number. You will buy me a house...”) She flashed Panties a quick smile which sort of read “How could you think otherwise?,” and stated lightly how Panties would have followed her all the way, without a doubt. Which gives you some sense of what kind of girl she is, because even though she is sometimes down to her last few dollars (which she would spend to put an inebriated friend in a cab), she is indifferent to a vulnerability she could convert to a house with a back yard. She rubbed her hands together hard, that way she sometimes does, as if to restore circulation to her body and took a picture of the happy birthday written in chocolate script. Panties agreed to drop in and keep her cats company on Monday. The pie turned out to be really good, the crust almost like a dense cake, a separate dessert in itself.