The best thing that ever happened to shamelessness

It's not a sin to be rich. It's not a sin to have fun, my momma said. She would know. She was living it up until two days ago. Now I'm left here with four spaceships and nowhere to go.

Momma did know how to have a good time. So did her boyfriends. Daddy wasn't that type really, but even he could live it up once he had some liquor in him, provided the boyfriends weren't kissing on Momma too much. But that was before Daddy left for good, taking the bank with him.

It's lonely in space. It's especially lonely when you haven't been able to get a date since Saturday. The party ended on Saturday. Now I call the LaunchPad for more cuties and they all say, "Maybe next week." I know they're just itching to get out of here now that both the money and the power have gone. And I have these four spaceships and I can't even buy fuel for them.

Momma was a killer. Not literally, unless you count indirectly. But figuratively speaking, she was the bomb. She had nails out to here. She had a woman she brought in from China just to organize her four thousand dresses. She had the gravometer set at .5 Gs on the deck of this thing so that she could wear the eight-inch heels she bought off the Princess of Mars. She had class. And she had something nobody else in this corner of the Galaxy would ever have, which was a contract with XFashion Biogene.

She got it as a wedding present from Daddy. Daddy was smitten with her. Momma was smitten with his honor -- he was the only man who ever told her they should wait before doing the horizontal moonwalk -- and with his money. Mostly with his honor. Or his money. I don't know, they hadn't decided to make me yet. When they got married, twenty years ago, Daddy was the heir to the throne of Intervelop Industries and Momma was the queen of celebrity on thirty-five worlds. She'd been a nobody but a nobody with a mushroom cloud personality and teeth that were out of this world, and somehow she was exactly what they were looking for. I've seen broadcasts of her from that era. She was the best thing that ever happened to shamelessness.

Daddy walked her down the aisle in a five-piece suit. Momma wore white. She had to. It was in her BeautyFool contract. The first thing after the wedding, I guess, she had to leave for L.A. to star in one of her boyfriend's films -- Barry Huck, who was always in the top five or at least the top ten. After the ten or so I could count on seeing pretty much every month, I lost track.

But it wasn't the boyfriends or the fashion contracts or even the excess that did Momma in. It was the loneliness. Because it is lonely up here, you know.

"Angel," she used to tell me, "you're the only one I can talk to." And she would tell me everything, all night long -- but it was always night -- she would talk to me about the terrible things her agents signed her up for, and how Daddy was falling out of love with her, and how Frank and Tip used to fight so awful over who got to sleep with her that night. It was always like this. When I was five years old I used to tell her to not be sad, and it'd make her smile. Now I'd tell her she was incredible, she was gorgeous, she was still young, she had more style than anyone ever born, that she had more hair on her head than an eviorg -- and she wouldn't care.

I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand to see Momma cry. Not with all those cameras around all night long. Not with her eyelashes so perfect for once, with the new eyelights. So one night, with my heart wound up like a streed converter, I finally told her the truth.

"Momma, you'll be a hundred soon," I forced out. "I think you should let me take over, just for a while. Just like you and Daddy planned when you made me."

Well that was on Friday, and I haven't spoken with her since. Because after she heard that she turned away from me and clicked up the corridor in her stiletto slippers, and she wouldn't talk to me, not even when I said I took it back and that I never wanted to be a model, I just wanted her to be able to relax for once.

But I did want to be a model, kind of.

Because it's awfully quiet here since Momma opened the airlock, and I may have the Jetter and the Mach 90 and the twin Starliners, but all the staff has disappeared, and now I'm making myself sturkey sandwiches in the echoing galley, and drinking all the champagne... and I can't get a hold of Daddy, whose men say he needs to be alone right now, and I can't get a hold of Momma's agents, whose secretaries say it's for the best, and I can't get a hold of any of those fine things at the LaunchPad because they're spooked. And it's very empty here with Momma gone.