PI On A Hot Tin Roof

entrails scattered.
    But I am sticking,
    I am holding!
    I am making my debut
    As part of something other,
    Something different,
    Something innocent
    And insignificant,
    Yet bigger and more solid
—
    My own tears the glue.
    The crowd, which had gasped when she got to the part about her father, and had held its collective breath ever since, was utterly silent until Lucy bowed and said, “The Princess myself thanks you,” and then wild applause erupted. The audience was cheering for her, pulling for her—maybe not so much for her career as a great young talent, but for a kid in a bad place, struggling to stick, to cling. She had done what Talba had seen few poets do—she had touched them.
    Lucy’s face turned as red as her hair, but she was undaunted, fine to keep going. When she read her “Crow” poem, it was safe to say there wasn’t a dry eye, certainly not Raisa’s—or Darryl’s. Again, the Princess thanked her subjects. Again, applause, at first somber, cautious, and then building, becoming ever more confident. Standing behind her, Talba held her hands palms up, and raised them slowly, but there was no need—half the audience was already on its feet.
    Lucy was crying, really bawling, but she managed to get it together to thank her subjects once again, and Talba stepped forward to ask the audience, “Didn’t I tell you?” which started the whole thing all over again. And then the foot-stomping began anew, with loud shouts of “Baroness, Baroness! Come on, Your Grace, poem, poem!”
    Talba refused and left the stage, but they wouldn’t stop till she came back, Raisa capturing the whole thing. She read “Calamari,” the poem she had written that afternoon. It was inspired by something she’d seen at the aquarium about the largest animal in the world, a monster bigger than a whale, with an eye as large as your head—the giant squid. The poem had images about tentacles and darkness and deepness, and barbs about scientists not being able to go deep enough in their own planet to study it, though they could send a spacecraft to Mars, and then it riffed on Martians and foreignness for awhile, rather cleverly, she thought. It was a lighthearted poem, a funny poem, and the perfect foil for Lucy’s gloom and doom and crazy hope.
    “They love you!” Raisa said later, amazed. And then to Lucy, “And I knew they’d love you. Can we go get some ice cream?”
    “Sure.” Darryl was in a hell of a mood.
    And so they went for ice cream, during the consumption of which Raisa asked Lucy if the animal that ate her was the crow. “No,” said Lucy, surprised. “It was Rikki.”
    “Who’s Rikki?” the kid asked, causing Talba to get a great idea, which she bounced around her brain while Lucy explained.
    “Hey,” she said. “Can we voice-edit that tape?”
    “Sure.”
    “Let’s do this: Take out the place where Lucy says the title of ‘Debut’ and put in another word: ‘Rikki’! And show Adele that version.”
    Lucy got it instantly. “Oh. My. God.” was all she said.

Chapter 20
    Fame, Talba thought, every now and then lived up to its press. All day Sunday Raisa hung on her like an acolyte, her status having magically changed from pariah to hero. But it wasn’t the poetry—it was pure Stardust. Those other people couldn’t be wrong. Could they? She and Darryl took Raisa for a walk, then to a friend’s house for a barbecue, where Raisa kept introducing her as “my friend, The Baroness—you know, the famous poet?” which was puzzling but cute to those unaware of her noble status.
    Talba even got the kid to look at her Web site, which duly impressed her, and they held a viewing of the tape, everyone agreeing to edit out the poet with the bad words so Raisa could show it to her mom.
    And then came Lucy’s phone call: “They said I can keep Rikki! I showed the tape and everybody cried—even me! That is, everyone but Suzanne, and when they said, ‘Who’s Rikki?’ I brought her out and Royce nearly fainted. You’re right—he loves her. Suzanne pitched a fit, but I knew what to say, because you told me, and she stalked off. Mommo was laughing so hard! Swear to God.
Laughing.
And I gave her the book—I mean,
Life of Pi
—and now she’s reading it and everything.”
    But still, Talba spent Monday in a fairly depressed state. She didn’t have a clue what to do next, except talk to the big guy.
    ***
    “Hey, Eddie. Nice weekend?”
Could have been better,
he thought. “Well, we didn’t