"Pets"

"...and when Margot came down with the scarlet fever, it was the only little friend she'd have near her. It helped her to get better." Maggie slides a hand across her damp forehead and blinks her eyes into focus. "Then I took it away and burned it, or I did something to it, but I was only acting in, um, Margot's best interests. I mean there was a point to what I did...or something..."

She trails off as another remorseful tear rolls down her cheek and breaks the surface of the dark, clotted water. Her head is resting on the cool edge of the bowl. "I'm so very sorry," she whispers.

"Hmm," says Joyce, who, on principle, tends to pay little attention to anything that sounds even slightly confessional coming from her acquaintance. She glances down at Maggie's fluffy, little hairdo from her perch on the sink, then continues writing something in a notebook.

"Joyce?"

"Yeah."

"What am I talking about?"

"Hmm...what?"

"I think I'm talking about something."

"Oh, um, you're giving me a highly stylized retelling of the 'Velveteen Rabbit,' I think." There is a pubic hair stuck to Maggie's chin that Joyce chooses not to mention.

"Where am I?" Maggie is attempting a survey of the small, well-lit room without moving her head much.

Looking up again. "Well, you're at Margot's birthday party, in the powder room."

"Oh, I see. What am I doing, incidentally?" Maggie employs a particular voice in asking this. Joyce recognizes it as the tone she's dubbed 'casual panic.' Maggie has just realized that something is, as the French say, terribly fucking wrong.

Joyce turns her attention back to the book and jots down something else. "Six or eight mai-tais, in reverse. Aloha."

"Oh, god." Maggie rolls her face back into the toilet.

"As well several mixed drinks you removed from other guests who, as you said, 'wouldn't miss them.' Oh, and a shot of something called a 'liver-be-gone.' You made an attempt at the sterno under the rumaki dish, but decided against it after discovering it to be on fire."

Maggie's shoulders tense.

"I don't know if you'd care to count the, um, Shirley Temple julep."

"No, probably not. Why not?"

"Because the wint-o-green mouthwash you were under the sink guzzling when I walked in turned out to be, ironically, non-alcoholic." No one delivers a punch line like Joyce, even if Joyce thinks so herself.

Maggie shudders and grimaces. "I thought my breath seemed unusually fresh, given the circumstances. Did I do anything that I should, I don't know, hear about?"

Joyce chuckles. "I actually lost track your sorry ass until shortly before you began to vomit."

Maggie sits up a bit. A tiny, sticky object on the edge of the counter catches her attention. Its little, black eyes seem outraged and bear down on her accusingly. "Um, I'm sorry. What in the hell is that?"

Joyce crosses out something and scribbles something else. "That is a very small, ceramic rabbit."

"Where are its ears?"

"They're not in the toilet?"

Maggie appears startled and drops her head back into the bowl.

"Maggie, what is item number nine on our list of things you should make every effort not to do at parties?"

Full of self-pity: "Hmm...show up, probably."

"Well, that goes without saying." Joyce turns the page and continues her writing. "I think everyone's social existence would be less prone to horrifically bad scenes like this if you just did your drinking at home, on the quiet. But that's not it."

"Um, does it have something to do with not seeking relief in large, potted plants when there are facilities readily available for my convenience?"

"That's number five."

"I really don't know, Joyce," Maggie sighs, desponently. "Oh, wait, is it: 'Don't indescriminently 'pop' anything that happens to be handed to me, just to be polite?'"

"There you go."

"I probably thought it was something nice," Maggie reflects. "Like an ibuprofen. I could so use an ibuprofen."

Joyce lifts an eyebrow. "Who handed you the rabbit, Maggie?"

"I'm not sure." She pauses. "I think I remember Judy appearing, holding a mysterious, little Chinaman who produced it by some sort of eastern devilry." Maggie has an idea that this sounds implausible. "But I guess Judy just handed it to me."

"Alright. And do you find that Judy holds you in a particularly high regard, generally speaking."

"Not at all, really."

"Then does it stand to reason that she would hand you something nice to pop, say, an ibuprofen?" Joyce circles something and grins.

"Certainly not," Maggie mutters. "What are you writing, by the way?"

"A little character sketch, since I seem to be stuck with you at the moment. It's a list of everything that's wrong with you, as ponderous as it is fascinating."

Maggie is appalled. "That's so, I don't know, pretentious, or something."

"An hour ago you removed your blouse, took to the coffee table with a dish of chocolate kisses, announced that you were Lady Godiva and began throwing them at people while singing the theme from 'Maude.' That, among several other things, is pretentious."

Maggie notices she is no longer wearing a top and at once regrets an earlier decision to begin the night sans foundation.

"I'll be adding that to your 'things-not-to-do' list as soon as I can think of a clever way to phrase it. What's your favorite word, by the way?"

"Huh? I don't know, um...'complimentary,' why?"

Joyce smirks and writes it down. "That's a stupid favorite word. Sounds like you, though. That's the one-hundred-eighty-fourth thing that's wrong with you: Stupid favorite word."

Maggie looks up, close to tears, "You're on one-eighty-four?"

Irritably: "Do you have any idea how long we've been in here? Your babbling ass started by dragging that poor rabbit through the entire plot of 'Alice in Wonderland,' then you moved on to 'Peter Cottontail'...the porno version...and got most of the way through 'Harvey' before I convinced you that I could see it too, which seemed to make you nervous."

Maggie exhales, slumps and glazes over, giving in to the bleak actuality of things. "Do you suppose Margot is going to miss it?"

"What, the rabbit?" Joyce considers. "No, probably not. That's one of a thousand things that people like Margot stick in shadow boxes on their kitchen walls near framed pictures of geese, knitting. It's probably spent years silently watching Margot sharing her Lean Cuisines with that horrible little pug and wishing someone would have sex with her. I'm certain it's never had much attention paid to it. That is, until it went for its ear-severing death-ride down your tract." Joyce closes her notebook.

"I hate Margot," Maggie mentions.

"I know," Joyce replies.

Footsteps approach in the hallway outside. Judy calls through the door: "Joyce, are you in there."

"Yeah," Joyce calls back.

"We have a bit of a situation out here. Margot is losing her shit. Have you seen Maggie or, by any chance, a rabbit figurine?"

"Why?"

"Apparently Margot is rather attached to this stupid little rabbit thing we were goosing the pug with..."

Maggie's face bolts up in silent horror.

"You were goosing Margot's pug?" Joyce interjects.

"Yeah, you're familiar with the hindquarters on that little cyclops. Like, get a tail. Anyway, I passed it off to Maggie when Margot walked into the room, and now the little bitch is MIA. She was pretty liquored up and naked, and we figured she might do some harm to herself or to the, um, rabbit, so we're all headed down to drag the lake. Well, except for Margot, who's locked herself in a closet, or something."

"What lake, Judy?"

"I don't know, some lake."

"Maggie is in here, Judy."

"Oh, well, we already found some flashlights. So, later." Judy's steps fade.

"By 'goosing,' she didn't necessarily mean..." Maggie whispers.

"Up its ass, yeah. That little piece of shit has had a rough night." Joyce realizes something. "I stand corrected. Margot is the type of person who would notice that sort of thing missing. OCD, totally." Joyce shakes her head.

"Margot will never invite me into her home again."

"She didn't invite you this time." Joyce slides off of the counter and steps toward the door. "I'm bored. I think I'll go look for you."

Maggie has begun to cry quietly and has dropped her head back into the bowl. "Joyce, why, um...why do you like me?"

"I don't." Joyce glances at the back of Maggie's head as she opens the door and then at the tiny, earless rabbit on the counter. "But it seems that someone, for whatever stupid reason, really loves you and will be very unhappy to find you like this. My, but the indignities the world has held for you tonight, you poor little thing."

"Who?" Maggie turns, hopefully.

Joyce chuckles and flips the light off on her way out.