Following the taping of SFW that afternoon, Susannah Fontaine-Williams accepted the invitation of one of her guests, the British philosopher/astronomer Malcolm Norton-Hollings, for lunch and drinks at Fiorello’s. It was a gorgeous New York afternoon and they sat at a sidewalk table drinking something fizzy and critiquing the passersby. The bag lay at her feet and she checked it by rubbing her leg against it every few minutes. Still there. Norton-Hollings was her favorite (favourite) type of guest: intellectual, witty and tweedily good looking, there to talk up his latest book, generously dishing out the flirty banter. When Norton-Hollings excused himself to relieve himself of too much fizzy, she plopped the bag on her lap and reached inside to check on the contents. She had had no intention of taking more than one item, but once the Vera Wang had been gulped up into the bag’s void, there was the matter of the Dior, the so many things they brought her to try on that they couldn’t possibly keep count of what remained piled on the chairs and day lounge in the dressing room. The dresses were not there, nor were the shoes, nor anything else she had liberated from Neiman’s. She found, however, an envelope that she did not recall placing and pulled it out, did not look at it, and quickly tucked it back. Would it be, she wondered, better to discuss the bag’s properties with Norton-Hollings before or after their upcoming tryst? As the distinguished scholar returned to the table squinting in the bright reflected sunlight, she thought also that it might be worthwhile to read the license agreement she had so eagerly signed.
Month: April 2014
The need to know
It didn’t take long before Susannah Fontaine-Williams began to wonder “just what this baby can do.” Would the bag, for instance, block the signal of an alarm tag on a Vera Wang? She felt like that time her producers put her in a formula one car on a closed track. Her guest, international formula one racing sensation Tony Almondswerth gave her a quick lesson. Then they zipped her into racing togs, popped a helmet on her head, aimed a small camera at her face – she thought she looked adorable and so did the audience. “Take it nice and easy,” he advised. She thought, as did the audience, that he leered salaciously at her. No matter. She floored it, giggling all the while until she sideswiped the wall, emerging exhilarated and unscathed. “Yes,” she said out loud one morning while Antoine happily dozed next to her in bed. “I need to know what this bag can do for me.”
Item #37
Egberto leafed through the license agreement that Susannah Fontaine-Williams had left open on her nightstand. She was painting his toenails purple, not his favorite color, and he'd have to remind himself to pick up nail polish remover on the way home. He'd have to remind himself to remove the color before he went to the pool, not that anyone in New York pays attention to anyone's toenails. The chlorine would do the job if he forgot. Her polish application technique tickled so he wasn't really reading so much as trying to fend off the ticklishness. “Suze, listen to this,” he said. “Item 37: some objects not belonging to nor placed by licensee may periodically appear in bag from time to time.” SFW could not possibly take seriously a sentence with such a redundancy problem: periodically and from time to time. If an assistant brought her uneditd copy like that, she'd fire him on the spot. Or her. She concentrated on drawing a smooth edge on Egberto's big toe toenail while simultaneously tickling the bottom of his foot with the index finger of her left hand. “Hold still,” she said.
License agreement
The man’s name turned out to be Walt and he told Susannah Fontaine-Williams that the bag would cost her ten thousand, not the fifteen hundred he first quoted. And she wouldn’t really own the bag, just a license to use it that Walt could revoke any time. He produced a 40-page document outlining myriad terms and conditions she’d have to agree to. “Here,” he said. “Just check this box and initial. No one ever reads these things.” She was impressed. Walt told her he got the idea from Apple and Microsoft and Google and… Anyway, she really had no choice. During her trial week with the bag she stuffed everything in it she could: files, books, makeup, pens, a notepad, a straightening iron and a curling iron just in case. And still it weighed next to nothing. If she shook it, it didn’t make a sound and nothing shifted inside. Once, it fell onto its side on a table and nothing spilt out, as if it was empty. But reach into the interior void, and there was that hairbrush, exactly where she left it. As she saw it, well worth the ten grand. Hell, a decent bag without this kind of storage would run a few thou and not even Oprah had anything like this hanging from her shoulder. “Deal,” she said and extended her hand.
Deficio Scriptor 