3. Jordan addresses her Roommate

      Jordan awoke slowly, as she always did, gradually becoming aware of the world outside her. She sent her mind questing. Something was wrong; there was a restlessness in the air she had not felt since the season started. It was still dark outside. There were sounds, unhappy sounds originating from across the small bedroom. An unpleasant, acrid stench emanated from somewhere near at hand. Someone was sick. Hopefully, it was not herself.
     Jordan fumbled for the switch of the small reading lamp above her head.
     Voicing a groan of protest, Jordan’s slender body rolled itself from its warm bed and stood, stretching its blunt fingers as near as possible to the brown interlocking water stains on the plaster ceiling. Jordan’s cotton pajama bottoms, the aged elastic having some time ago abandoned its primary duty of holding them snug about her narrow waist, began a slow descent toward the floor. Nimble fingers caught them at midthigh and hoisted them back into place again so that Jordan could begin her self-appointed task of awaking and interrogating her roommate.
     Her roommate lay sprawled on top of her bed—a volup-tuous rag doll. The girl was topless, not a normal condition for her, and her face was an absolute mess. Mascara and greasepaint were smeared both on her face and the pillow that she clutched tightly against it. The brown makeup was streaked with tears. Her blonde hair was matted and soiled with grease paint. Jordan shook her tousled head in disbelief. Even in this condition, her roommate was beautiful. Jordan sighed. Some girls have it all.
     "Carolyn!" Jordan called. "What happened? Your face is mahogany, your body white and with a most unpleasant cast of gray. You stink of vomit, and you have not quite half a costume on. Did you come home in that attire? Or rather that unattire? Did anyone see you? I hope not. We have bad enough reputation with Missus Whitehouse as it is." Jordan was sensitive about her reputation. She seized the recumbent’s shoulder. "Where hast thou been, sister?"
     "Killing swine," Carolyn growled, then burst into tears. "G’way, lemme die." Instead, Jordan shook the shoulder even harder.
     "No dying today. Best you obey the Good Advice of your roommate and awaken, no matter how painful it might be." Jordan folded her arms under her best assets, spread her feet and prepared herself to wait until her roommate responded favorably. Her pajama bottoms began their slow descent again.
    Carolyn moved her pillow to free her face and comfort her own assets, then opened her weary and bloodshot eyes to survey the worried face of her companion. Jordan’s carrot-top was unkempt, her pajama bottoms halfway down her hips, threatening, should the wearer move imprudently, to cascade to the floor. Carolyn started to giggle, gagged, and tried once more to empty her empty stomach.
     "Ohhh, I’m sick, Jordan."
     "No kidding." Jordan’s’ stock of sympathy was lowest and impatience was highest in the mornings.
     The room and Carolyn stank of the stale contents of Carolyn’s stomach, regurgitated sometime during the night onto the wooden floor. Jordan sighed. Her housekeeping instincts rose from the depths where she tried to keep them securely buried. First thing, she had better clean up the mess before it sank permanently into the aged floor. Thank Heaven Carolyn managed to miss the braided rug, one of Mrs. Whitehouse’s favorites.
     "You look like something the cat dragged in and abandoned in disgust. Look at yourself." The full-length free-standing mirror opposite the bed was called the ‘Allofme’ mirror by the girls to distinguish it from the numerous other smaller mirrors in the apartment, most of which were at least partially covered with ‘important memorabilia’—photographs, reviews and such like. The Allofme mirror offered a depressing view of the half-naked body of young Carolyn. "Can you focus?"
     "No. I don’ wanna."
     "You look like you got mugged. Or raped."
     "Worse," was the best response Carolyn could offer.
     "Worse than rape? Is that possible? You have no visible cuts or bruises."
     Carolyn made no response. Jordan pulled up her pajama bottoms again and decided to clean up the mess first thing, so as to have adequate time to digest her roomie’s last words.
     "You wait right there, Witch Carolyn, until I get the coffee started and your stomach off the floor," she ordered, as if Carolyn were in any condition to go anywhere.
     Jordan hurried across the technical living room and kitchenette adjoining the bedroom to start the coffee maker. She had prepared the coffee before bedtime so that all she needed to do was plug in the ancient percolator. This made life a lot simpler in the mornings, for neither she nor Carolyn were ‘morning people’.
     As she passed the little wooden table that served as breakfast and dining table, she absently and automatically raised the leaf. She smoothed the red checked vinyl cloth and placed the coffee maker in the center, plugging it into the cord that dangled from the overhead light. Its reflection in the kitchen mirror reminded her to check her image. Her hair needed brushing, but then it nearly always did.
     "Well Jordan, look what you got Carolyn into this time," her image accused as she gathered mop and pail.
     "What do you mean I got her into?" she defended herself to her image. As she passed the Allofme mirror, she added, "Listen, she wanted to lose her virginity. I didn’t suggest it. I just told her how to go about it. Don’t blame me if she picked the wrong guy. She left the Green Room before I even knew it. It’s all her own fault."
     Carolyn sat listlessly and helplessly on her bed, awaiting the return of her friend and, at the moment, savior. "Who are you talking to? Not me, I hope."
     "No, my dear roomie. I am talking to me, or rather to what a psycho-whatchacallit would call my Alter Ego. You remember my dear, my deep dark secret—well one of them anyway—is that early in my young life, I developed an alter ego in whom I could intelligently confide. As an adopted child—you with your family of dozens of siblings and aunts and stuff would not understand—I found that communicating with my adoptive brothers was not only unsatisfying, but dangerous, for they always came back to threaten me with disclosure of my girlish confidences if I did not refrain from doing something I wanted or would not do something they wanted." Jordan busily scraped the bedroom floor as she chattered.
     "When I reached the age of thirteen and began developing my best assets, their interests turned to matters more stimulating than hiding questionable comic books for them. That is when I decided it was well past time I had a girl to confide in. Since none were handy, I invented Betsy. She was not only safer, but much more satisfying, for my confidant usually agrees with me."
     "How’s she doing?" Carolyn asked listlessly. She had heard this story before.
     "Betsy? As usual. Her sharp tongue sometimes gets the better of her. I’ve remonstrated with her endlessly, but it does little good. Alter egos do seem to have lives of their own sometimes."
     Jordan disappeared into the bathroom where she disposed of the scrapings from the floor, checked to be certain her image was reflected in the bathroom mirror. Lately, she had begun to worry that some day it might not. Her hair still needed brushing, but her eyes were clear. Jordan made a few passes through her curls with the long-toothed curl comb, thence back to the bedroom with the sponge mop to survey the damaged goods with more widely awake eyes.
     Carolyn remained propped against the headboard of the twin bed, eyes wide, staring at the defenseless hibiscus-flowered wallpaper. The girls had voted the paper must be at least a hundred years old. Actually it was thirty years old, but the difference between thirty and a hundred to these young women was minimal.
     Jordan returned to the little bathroom to obtain a very wet face cloth. Naturally, she paused again to check with the bathroom mirror. Betsy advised her from the mirror that she herself needed no further help and to get a move on. Her pajama bottoms advised her again that they needed new elastic in the waistband. She kicked them off entirely for their temerity, which exercise revealed to the world that she was not a natural redhead. "Get you gone," she advised her pajamas, "thou art too curst for me."
     "You keep doin’ that, an’ you’ll forget your own lines when th’ time comes," advised the tired voice of the stricken maiden on the bed.
     Jordan stared at the girl languishing on the bed. She was awfully observant for one who appeared to be but semi-conscious. "I’m not likely to ever get to play Beatrice," Jordan replied without rancor.
     "Sometimes I think you are hiding something," Carolyn continued, her illness loosening her normally shy tongue "I like to think you are an heiress in disguise, running away from all your servants and responsibilities." She curled her curvaceous body into a fetal position and pretended to sleep.
     "The incurable romantic. Don’t I wish." Jordan laughed; if Carolyn had been more alert, she might have detected a bit of nervousness in that laugh. "You’ve met my parents. Do they look like millionaires to you?" Carolyn was no longer listening again.
     In Jordan’s opinion, of which she admitted to having many, Carolyn thought too much. A pretty girl should try not to think any more than necessary. It ruined one’s complexion. Carolyn was too concerned about men and the fact that somehow she had reached the elderly age of twenty three without losing her maidenhood, or maidenhead, or whatever. Jordan herself learned early in life that men and sex were disposable commodities. Lately she had been too concerned with obtaining passing grades both in the theater and in the college to worry about men. Why, she’d been practically celibate for at least a year.
     Once again she lifted her semi-conscious roommate to a sitting position, and applying the wet face cloth, vigorously washed the mascara and makeup from Carolyn’s unresisting face. At first Carolyn ignored the rough ministrations, then gradually began to protest, finally raising a weak hand to halt Jordan’s ambitious scrubbing.
     "Don’t," she protested. "I give up. Leave me some face."
     "Then stay awake. When was the last time you washed behind your ears?"
     "Don’t be insulting," snapped Carolyn.
     "Then tell us what happened," demanded Jordan, pleased that her comrade could at least rise to an insult. "What did you mean by ‘Worse than rape’? Did you think I’d forgot that?"
     "Give me a chance. Gee whiz. I didn’t say that. What do you think you’re doing anyway? I don’t need a bath."
     "You do need a bath, and maybe a lot more. I’ll start a tub. And you did say that, too. What about the rest of you? Does that hurt?" practical Jordan wanted to know.
     "No. I never got tupped."
     "You never got what?"
     "Tupped. You know, ‘The old black ram is tupping your white ewe’?"
     "Othello?" Jordan offered as if participating in some long-running game.
     "Yeah." Thus Carolyn finally got the most important issue out of the way. "Oh my, my head," she continued. "Tell Mister Riley I can’t make it tonight."
     "Relax. I’ll do Phebe for you tonight. Or did you have something else planned? What happened between you and the Great Victor?"
     "Things got sort of—complicated."
     "Really?" Jordan allowed some natural acid creep into her voice. "Why don’t you try some of our delicious coffee? Then you can tell momma all about it. And we’ll both have a good laugh."
     "I don’t feel like laughing. Put lots of cream in it."
     "Not likely. You’re going to take it straight, kid. Then you’re going to tell us what happened, and we’ll decide what to do about Mister Victor Edwin Booth."
     "We don’ hafta do anythin’ about Victor." Carolyn began trembling and could not stop.
     "Here, use both hands or you’ll spill it. You’re enough of a mess as it is." Jordan for the moment could not accept Carolyn’s last statement.
     Obediently, Carolyn drank a large swallow, groaned, "I can’t hold it." She lurched to her feet, staggered to the bath and yet again emptied the contents of her stomach.      Two slow cups of heavily creamed coffee later, Carolyn was able to tell her roommate and dearest friend what she remembered of her attempt to allow Victor Edwin Booth to exterminate her virginity.

Neither of them laughed.

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