60.

It was a crisis of calculation. Kalamazoo thought they could fund the reconstruction of an entire city with the profits from tacky celebrity merchandise. The plan worked for the first year. But the famous face never showed her famous face. She granted no interviews. She lived like a bat. She hated cameras. She didn’t speak publicly, didn’t smile. In many ways, and especially to the outside world, Audrey never was. She existed only as a name, a concept. At best, she was a caricature, a cartoon figure. At worst, she was a Freudian nightmare—the cherubic, fair-skinned girl-next-door with the mouth that might swallow your head.

Most importantly, though, Audrey stopped capturing hearts and imaginations because people didn’t believe in her. How many T-shirts can you sell of a fraud, a cheat? Ask Pete Rose. Ask Milli Vanilli. Ask Jim Bakker. Ask Tonya Harding.

To millions, she was a hoax. Conspiracy theories abounded. There is no Audrey Mapes, they said. Kalamazoo bulldozes their own buildings in the dead of night so we’ll think they’re hot stuff. We’ve done the math: She’d have had to wolf down fifty buildings a day to finish in two years. Sure, there’s a girl named Audrey Mapes. A shyster who faked her way through a sideshow performing tricks any third-rate magician can do. She just “happens” to be gorgeous? With a handicap, no less? UC Berkeley did a comprehensive study in 1995, and they proved she couldn’t do what she said. But you didn’t care about that, did you, Kalamazoo? Slap adrawing of the pretty cripple on a bumper sticker; sell it for ten bucks. Instant attention, instant cash. Add computer effects to some grainy night-vision footage and boom—a modern-day legend!

Don’t you want to buy an oven mitt?

Yes, pretend you’ve been chosen, Kalamazoo. Pretend you matter. Exploit the world so you can find an identity. Shame on you, Kalamazoo. We knew you were desperate, but geez.

Of course, millions of believers remained, all around the world. Audrey received fan letters from Argentina, Zimbabwe, Russia, Malaysia, Mexico, India, Iceland. Families saved money to pilgrimage to Kalamazoo in hopes of catching a glimpse of the “Miracle Mouth of Michigan.” Unable to actually see her, they did their best to elicit stories from the locals. Most every Kalamazoo resident had met Audrey. She’d slept in their beds. She’d played “Simon Says” with their children. She’d taken coffee with them, kissed their babies good-bye. But no one was talking anymore. They were all talked out. Even the most destitute refused fifty bucks for an anecdote of their encounter with the eternal. That’s how badly they wanted Audrey gone. She’d become a bad dream; they wanted to wake up, or at least move on to a different dream. Travelers inevitably left Kalamazoo with a few dozen photographs of construction vehicles, a profound sense of disillusionment, and a souvenir tennis visor.

The merchandise stopped selling. The cash dried up. Construction crews went weeks, months, without getting paid. Flatbeds bearing lumber were turned away due to lack of funds. Businesses and homes couldn’t be reassembled. Campus dormitories lacked walls. Church parishioners waited impatiently for Italian marble altars that never came. A waiting list was created. By August of 1999, the backlog was one thousand strong. An emergency meeting was called. Taxes were raised. Undocumented laborers were shipped in to speed production. Shoddy materials saved the city a bundle, but now and then a house caught fire.

People stopped helping one another. They noticed each other’s crooked teeth, love handles, double chins. The imperfections sickened them. They elbowed each other in the pews, if they were lucky enough to have pews. They no longer kicked off their sheets in the morning and rushed out to gab with their neighbors. Instead, they huddled under the covers and cursed Audrey. Out of a job indefinitely. All those lucky assholes that got their houses eaten first. Who came up with the stupid spiral idea, anyway? Rich people, probably. Portage was probably behind the whole thing.

Some people actually moved away. Most didn’t. But they talked about it.

Audrey ate through it all. Protesters gathered. Unruly crowds waved crude messages—“Mapes Rapes the ’Zoo,” “Audrey Can Eat Shit For All I Care,” “Beelzebub Called, He Wants His Appetite Back,” “Bite on THIS, Mapes!” and “Last Time I Checked, Gluttony Was a Sin.”

The friendliest Gazette editorials commanded her to leave town and never return. The others called for a criminal investigation. Local television news ignored her. The evening “Mapes Watch” was replaced by the “West Michigan Golf Course Spotlight.” Activists or ganized; petitions were circulated. Twenty-five thousand signatures for Audrey’s immediate ouster were presented to the mayor.

Mayor Bowman stood firm. Not much longer, he said. We need patience, he said. We need to stick to the plan. No one said it would be easy.

It was October, 1999.

Security forces were doubled. Two dozen rent-a-cops guarded the downtown structures Audrey ate: the court house; the Michigan News Agency, which hadn’t missed a day of business in thirty years; Jiffy Print; a parking garage.

One night, three angry, unemployed men carrying handguns snuck past security into the dry cleaners Audrey was ingesting.

The men emerged five minutes later. Their faces were bloodless. They surrendered without resistance.

One of them said, “I never expected it to move. Jesus. Was that her ?”

Another one said, “I think she’s alive.”

The other one didn’t speak for a month, until after Audrey was gone.

Even as she fed on the machinery of civilization, she wasted away.

Even as she consumed the muscle of society, she shriveled.

Even as she chewed cinder blocks the size of Buicks, she shrank.

In darkness, she drifted through corridors. Outside every window hung a moon she could never swallow. Clouds she could never wrap herself in. Stars that twinkled, stillborn, into her eyes.

Icy wind crept into her lungs, swirling.

Her flesh withered. A veil shrouded her eyes, turning them to ink. Her bones screamed softly, and her hair fell out, slow and gray, in the moonlight. Her once-enchanting glow faded. Her rib-cage yawned.

She ate her own teeth, and then she ate no more.

Nobody held her. Nobody came running when she finally cried out, her ragged voice indistinguishable from the machines on the streets, the earthmovers.

She relived the baths, the tender hands. She splashed diamonds in the sun.

She was my sister.

She shivered on a concrete floor that smelled of gasoline.