The Big Kiss Off

There was a large woman sitting at the fortune telling table when Zem walked in. To call her fat would have been unfair. In fact, there was absolutely no way to tell what her weight was, or whether her formidable dimensions might be due to bone structure, or possibly some rare glandular condition, or even just a supremely weird fashion sense. She was swathed in fabric, layer after of layer of paisleys cohabiting with checks and solids. A few lurid strips had come along for the ride. Her head was wrapped in something fringed and lacy, wound round her crown so many times there was no telling what sort of hair was underneath. She might have been bald. She might have been a stick figure, although her broad, round face made those odds low. She might have had huge breasts, a stomach like a sumo wrestler, or a conjoined twin hidden within her wrappings. Zem admired her for one entire, silent minute, then stepped the rest of the way into the storefront.

He stood across the table from her and smiled.

“I thought that Lilith would be here. But now I see you, perhaps I’m lucky.” He allowed his eyes to crinkle at the corners. In his old days, up on that mountain, he had only occasionally had use for eye-crinkling. He’d found since landing here how that sort of thing opened doors and exerted influence. Zem was a quick study. After a couple weeks in Las Vegas, his eyes could throw their weight around in any company.

“She’ll be back soon. Are you her customer? You’ve been in before?”

Her voice was higher than he would have expected. And she sat, not like Lilith tended to, fiddling with the cards or smoothing out the inch-deep shawls thrown over the table, but still and staring off into the distance. She might have been contemplating the infinite, but Zem suspected it was more boredom, a mind emptied and waiting for some catchy amusement to come along.

Every one of her fingers was covered with rings. Zem looked at them, considering a compliment, then he looked again. The thick metal almost matched the pattern of an embroidered shawl, which showed itself between those fingers.

“This is your place,” Zem said. “Not Lilith’s. Does Lilith work for you?”

She smiled, pressing her lips primly tight in the middle of her face. They looked lost there, so far separated from any of their fellow features that they must have felt like pioneers in a vast and featureless plain. “We work together. We’re co-owners. But I did the decorating. Oh, that girl– no style at all. She brought nothing– you should have seen her apartment when we first met– oh–”

She realized, apparently, she’d been talking. Chatting, letting slip privacies rather than bargaining or drawing him in. “I mean–” she began.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he said. He did the eye thing again and watched her relax.

She smiled, more naturally this time, and sat back. “Is Lilith expecting you?” she asked.

“Oh no,” he said. “She never is. But she’s always,” a pause. He waited for the right word, “... interested to see me,” it came.

And Lilith came in. The door had a bell which rang.

Zem turned. “Good evening.” He sketched a bow.

She carried a bag of groceries. “Hello. Are we doing high society tonight? Very genteel.” She brushed past him, to a cupboard on the wall behind her business partner.

“I always try to be a gentleman. I’ve just been talking to your–”

“Cheryl.” The woman stood up, turning to Lilith over her shoulder. Zem watched, entertained by the fall and ripple of her fabrics adjusting themselves, re-layering and draping her new configuration. “I’ll go and let you see your client, dear.”

Lilith wouldn’t look around. “Oh, don’t bother. We won’t be doing a reading. I’m not sure what Mr. Zem wants, actually.” Then she did turn to gaze at him, as she said his name, and he watched and waited, while Cheryl looked back, and forth again.

“Well, honey,” she started, obviously at a loss.

“I did come to hear my fortune,” Zem announced.

“No you didn’t,” Lilith contradicted. “You came to spar, and joust, and play with me. But I’m not in the mood tonight.”

“Oh, honey–”

“Surely you won’t throw me out? I’ve truly come to seek your wisdom.”

Lilith shut her eyes, as definitive as mother cleaning up the games for the night and thunking shut the toy box. “Mr. Zem,” she said, “We both know–”

“If he wants a reading–”

“I’m not angry,” Zem told Cheryl. “I’ll even pay for your time. Both of your time.” He gave a breezy smile. “But perhaps Lilith and I could discuss things.”

He put no emphasis on her name. No warning suggestion, no hinting inflection. But Cheryl pulled her skirts closer.

“Oh, of course. Well, I’ll just leave you then. Honey, you know where to reach me. I have my beeper.” She stuck her hand amidst some lace and some paisley, demonstrating a pocket or merely a worn seam, Zem wasn’t sure. “Then I’ll just go... out,” she said. “I mean– if you’re sure it’s all right.” She looked at Lilith, and her expression amused him. Half worried, half beseeching. The partners approached business differently, to say the least. He laid a bit more pressure on, just for fun.

“We’ll be just fine.”

Lilith turned and faced him. Faced them both, her anxious partner, her sometime client. “Yes, we’ll be fine,” she agreed. Resigned, rolling her eyes. “You go. Take a break. It’s a slow night. Go home, even. It’s silly to stay here like this. Nothing’s going on.” She peered out through the windows. “There’s hardly a crowd waiting.”

“Well, honey,” Cheryl paused. She inspected Lilith. “Do you want me to?” It was heavy with meaning. But she’d taken one step, and was reaching for the door.

Zem laughed silently.

“Yes, go. I’ll close up.”

“All right, then. I’ll go. Call me. If you– nice to meet you,” she turned, stuck her hand out at Zem, “Mr. Zem. That’s a very unusual name.” She smiled at him, all her professional wattage gathered and in force. Now that her partner was behaving, and her own path was settled, she seemed to have gained back some confidence. Or salesmanship.

“It was nice to meet you. Perhaps we’ll see each other again.”

“Oh, I’m sure. Everyone who comes to Lilith wants to come back. I mean–”

“Yes. She’s very, very perceptive, isn’t she?” A smile, a hint of a simper. “Well. It was– well, I said that, didn’t I?”

Cheryl looked back once more at Lilith, but she was looking at the table. She’d stepped up behind the empty chair where Cheryl had sat, and gripped its back. “I’ll go then. Enjoy your reading,” she said.

“I will.” The door tinkled.

“You know this is useless,” Lilith said. “I see nothing about you. Time after time.”

“And you don’t like that.”

She looked up at him. “Of course I don’t like that. I’m a seer, for god’s sake. I’m supposed to see. But you’re a blank. It’s bizarre. I’ve never met anyone– I can read anything. I can’t help reading, it gets annoying. The lights on every sign up and down the Strip show the future, when things are really rolling. Everywhere I look. But you– there’s nothing. A big, flat blank. It’s—”

“Frustrating,” he finished for her.

“Well, yes. But more than that. It makes me doubt–”

“Your vision? Oh, no. You shouldn’t.”

But she wasn’t finished. “... the wisdom of talking to you at all,” she completed her sentence. “Really, it seems pointless.”

“But it’s not pointless to me,” he assured her. He leaned over the table to reach for her hand.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” she pulled it back. “I know you’re not so smitten. You find me amusing, and that’s all right for a little while. But now I may not be in the mood.”

“You have a headache?” he queried solicitously.

“Ha, ha. Yes, if you must know. You give me headaches.”

“I am sorry.”

“No, you’re not. You’re pleased with yourself. That’s been your goal, hasn’t it? To fend me off. Well, you’ve done it. You can sleep peacefully, knowing that I’ve looked and I’ve learned nothing. The cards are silent in regard to you. As are the crystal, the tea leaves, and the stars at night. Even the moon. And she’s infamously chatty.”

“What about the coffee grounds?”

“The coffee grounds aren’t any more helpful. And I still use the same roast, which you certainly didn’t enjoy the first time around. Don’t even suggest we try that again.”

He sat back, leaned away in his chair, studied her. “Well then,” he started. But he didn’t go on for several seconds. He waited till Lilith looked up, met his eye.

“Yes?” she mocked him.

“Will you at least let me buy you a drink? To make up for the headaches? I had no idea I was causing you pain.”

“Of course you did,” she discounted that. “But what the hell. I’m not doing anything here,” she said, sweeping her hand across the table to indicate the room’s emptiness. “It’s been a slow night.”

“Then?”

“Okay, fine.” But she reached down and began fastidiously straightening the cards that lay there.

“Coming?”

She sighed. “I suppose.”

He smiled and reached for her arm. “Allow me to squire you to some much finer place than this, my fair lady.”

She glanced at him sidelong. “You mean, let you take me away from all this?” She laughed, sharply. “Fine,” she said again. “And I’ll give it one more shot, taking every opportunity to try to get any insight into you or your mind, and you’ll kick me out, over and over, and then we’ll go our separate ways, never to annoy each other again. Right?”

“I’ve never been annoyed.”

Lilith sniffed in thought. “Well, neither have I, exactly,” she admitted. She looked at him, staring and pensive. “But there’s something...”

“Careful,” he cautioned. “You don’t want to make that headache worse.”

NEXT POST: THE COMING OF THE SUITOR (Friday 9/4)

Ghost of a Chance

He knew the score. He had understanding of how people acted, on seeing what they'd do next in any given moment. This town was built on that, on him, wasn't it?

Well, at least it was built on Bugsy’s understanding, if not his. But Bugsy's ghost could surely still read the signs. He could certainly see when someone else was trying to move in. A new guy had come to his town, and the ghost had abandoned his desert watching place to check things out.

It didn’t do to leave your possessions to the whims of strangers. Bugsy had learned that early.

Now that he was in, though, and moving down the Strip for the first time in such a long time, the place itself was distracting him. The town had changed. The hotels were different. There were new ones, many more than in the old days, crowded cheek-by-jowl on both sides of the street. And even the old ones – Nero’s and the Galaxy and the Oasis and Olympus – had evolved and turned into something very different from what he’d known.

It looked like God had been twiddling the dial of a very big gumball machine somewhere up in Heaven. And what it had poured out, all the flashy, chintzy gewgaws for a penny apiece, had landed here. The ghost scoffed.

“You do not approve?” he heard.

He looked up. He’d reached the very end of the Strip, the southern reaches that had been way beyond the city limits in his day, and where empty lots could still be seen strewn with all the tumbleweeds that had gotten driven out of the rest of the street at his back.

Right in front of him, something ridiculous. He tilted his head back and stared up. How’d they even made this thing?

“What the hell are you?” he asked it.

Its human face got a faraway look, while its lion haunches seemed to settle in deeper to the ground. “I am made to gaze at the moon—” it began.

“Oh, save it. When do they open this place?”

“I believe tomorrow. All the world will be watching. There are television crews inside right now—”

“This is Vegas, kid. The world’s always watching. So whaddya know about this new guy?”

The Sphinx paused. “What new guy do you mean?”

The ghost rolled his black pits of eyes. “You’re even less in the know than I am, monster. You’re never gonna last long in this town that way.”

“Sphinx. I am not a monster.”

“Sure. Sphinx. Just what the town needed.”

“I believe I and my hotel will be a worthy addition—”

The ghost was already adjusting his hat, turning to go. “Sure, sure, kid,” he said over his shoulder. “But if you hear anything, lemme know, okay?” And just then, a gleaming gold limousine shot by heading back up the Strip, and the ghost caught on to a flicker, to a sprayed reflection of the sunshine dappling off it, and was gone.

***

“Sphinx.”

Sphinx looked up from his half doze in the sunlight. As afternoon wore on, he tended to get sleepy. The heat and light of the desert stole into him, the mystery of the night was gone, which meant nothing interesting was happening around him, not to mention that there was no moon to worship. Then the air seemed to weight him, and his thoughts got thicker, and everything went slower…

“Sphinx!”

The shout came from his mini-marsh, the tiny patch of reeds and water lying between him and the sidewalk, keeping the tourists slightly at bay.

But not keeping Venus at bay. “Sphinx!” she screamed. “Do you know that he’s come?”

Sphinx considered. He’d learned from his earlier visitor that not knowing things might appear bad. And then, too, his earlier visitor might be the “he” Venus was referring to, so to volunteer that they’d been speaking might only be an invitation to the goddess’ wrath. Not that she could do much, when it came right down to it, but her rants were long and gave him headaches.

“Uh, no,” he ventured.

“Well, of course not. How could you? I’m sure he wouldn’t ever come down here.” She pulled herself out of the marsh, mud clinging to her thighs and dripping down her ankles, and Sphinx marveled, again, how such things could look enticing on her when he knew on anyone else they’d simply be disgusting. She began the long, involved process of climbing up his front leg to his back, a spectacle which, if she’d made herself visible to the humans around, would no doubt have caused a 20 car pile-up and made every man within a mile pass out from sheer pleasure. “He’s the most arrogant, awful, rude, mean, stupid… I mean, back in Ancient times, he was always… well, some of those human women never knew what hit them, and they wouldn’t have been happy about it, I can tell you. He never even – ooh, Sphinx, this is hard work – he, he just…”

She had achieved her goal, and huffed herself down to dangle her legs over his shoulder and brush them vigorously, so that mud splattered indiscriminately, flecking his headpiece and left cheek. He saw one splat against his nose and caught himself from sighing. He and his original both had bad nose luck, it seemed.

“He’s awful. And he has no business here. This place is mine.” Her tone had changed. She wasn’t brushing off mud anymore. She’d climbed up and stood next to his headpiece, hands on hips and glaring hard. Sphinx couldn’t see her from his angle, but he could feel her anger. He stopped thinking about his nose and paid attention. “These people love me. They love me, not him,” she said. Sphinx suddenly thought of the phrase jealous deity. They were notoriously territorial, these immortals. He suddenly wondered just who she really was referring to. The “new guy” his ghostly visitor had wanted to know about, likely. Who was he? Where had he come from? Sphinx had never known Venus to so much as notice who came and went from the city. She barely noticed who came and went from her bed.

But she wasn’t finished. “Nobody loves him. They all just fear him, and that’s not the same thing. Nobody wants him. I’m the one they want. This is my city. I’m their goddess.” And she stood on Sphinx’s shoulder with her hands on her hips, staring out at the lower climes of the Strip as if she really were its chosen protector, the divinity of choice for all its inhabitants.

Sphinx spoke up carefully. “What are you going to do about him?” he asked.

She frowned harder. Ground her fists into her hips, slitted her eyes against the desert.

“I haven’t,” she declared in a steely tone, “decided that yet.”

NEXT POST: THE BIG KISS OFF (Monday 8/31)

Meet Magnolia

That the mayor of Las Vegas, Magnolia Conner, had once been a showgirl in Extravaganza! was not a secret. The newspaper had published pictures during her first campaign, showing a twenty-two year old Magnolia in feathers and rhinestones. Magnolia got a thousand copies of the photo and signed them for the press at her next rally.

That the mayor had, albeit briefly, been a stripper at a gentlemen’s club behind the Strip, and had taken home a thousand dollars a night for swinging on a pole in nothing but a white lace g-string, was also not a secret. Magnolia’s opposition in her second campaign had dug up that tidbit, but Magnolia went down to the club itself and held a press conference in the parking lot. She told how her worthless husband had abandoned her with five figures of debt and no job when she was halfway through her business degree. She got laughs and applause as she recounted how, with nowhere else to turn, she’d marched through the club’s doors, announced to the few bleary-eyed tourists and hooky-playing businessmen she found assembled there that she was the best dancer they’d ever seen, and then proved it by grabbing the pole and giving them a show that had them all squirming in their seats one minute later. She smiled when she said that, and winked as she declared how good the political contacts in that job had proved.

The reporters had laughed, and Vegas had breathed a sigh of relief, but the contacts in question, the men who ran the valley’s economy – and who had once stuck hundred dollar bills under her elastic waistband – got the point and started making anonymous donations within the hour.

That the mayor was, in fact, the unacknowledged, illegitimate, one and only child of the iron-fisted ruler of Extravaganza!, Miss Honoré Jerques – a former dancer, herself, never married, and a fixture in Strip showrooms since the days when the mob owned the place and Vegas barely rated a spot on the map – was whispered by some few backstage old-timers, but if the newspapers had heard that one, they didn’t care. For her part, Magnolia would have been glad to parade her mother for the press, seeing how valuable families were in politics. But Honoré refused, for reasons she would not divulge.

In any case, Magnolia’s parentage was not, strictly, a secret.

Secrets, Magnolia Conner told people, were what killed you in politics. Public people had to run from secrets, dash toward the ugly truth at every opportunity and make sure to publicize the proper version of it, loudly and often, before their adversaries got the chance. In any case, she felt no shame for the ways she’d made her living. She believed they gave her color. Would she, a barely-adequately-educated, middle-class, middle-aged white woman, have had any chance at such an elected office if her past hadn’t held some interest for the voters? She’d snagged their attention by way of shock and novelty, she knew, but why not? Shock and novelty had opened bigger doors, and she was an expert at wedging her foot inside to keep them from closing in her face again.

By the start of the 21st Century, Magnolia was in her mid-fifties and approaching the second year of her third mayoral term. Miss Honoré wouldn’t approve of how she looked, she knew. She’d gained weight, she no longer bothered to work out or run on a treadmill. Her face had begun to sag. Politics aged people more than sunburns and cigarette smoke and red meat combined. Magnolia looked at herself in the mirror and knew she would never be the fresh, young girl who’d danced at the Grand Hotel, or whose flesh had been stroked with cold, hard cash as she crawled along a bar. But she was willing to put up with what she saw, nonetheless. She’d made something of herself, and she was her own product, not owing anything to anybody.

Magnolia brushed a wisp of dark blond hair away from her cheek. She’d gone progressively less platinum over the last few years. Her old look, flashy and unmistakable, might have been useful when she was an unknown first-time candidate and needed every possible hook to make the public remember her, but now she was a serious politician, and she’d found that heavy blond shades worked against her. She’d begun a campaign of low-lights streaking through her hair little by little, and the payoff was unmistakable. The city’s officials, businessmen, and other leaders had always treated her cordially, but now they also paid attention.

What she told them was that they, like she, needed to take stock of their city’s ever-evolving place in the world. The 80s had marked a new boom, with world-class resorts springing up and more coming. The New Las Vegas, home to corporate-run hotels with global pedigrees, was on the world stage, and if the Family Friendly scheme of the last ten years wasn’t quite panning out, and more than one hotel had been forced to quietly take a loss and tear down its thrill rides, indoor carnival, or private zoo, it was just a matter of time before someone came up with the next new thing and all the city followed suit. Vegas was America, Magnolia said, and America was, increasingly, the world. Vegas was well on its way to becoming the capitol of the whole earth, Mayor Magnolia declared to all who would listen.

The mayor had grand, if not well-defined, visions for her future and her city’s. Something about world culture, something about all countries everywhere looking to Las Vegas for their cues in business, politics, and lifestyle. God knew, all the earlier leaders in those areas had fallen short. Washington, Moscow, Paris... all failed experiments in their various flavors of world leadership.

Magnolia wondered, idly and not for the first time, how difficult it might be to get embassies established in her city. Not many, just a couple from the more important nations. Countries with some money, some style, and some foresight.

Or maybe the whole idea of countries was too old-fashioned, and multi-national corporations were the way to go. Vegas had spawned more than its own share of exploding companies. She’d just had a meeting with an old friend, Fletch Harris. Fletch was a Vegas success story, a local boy who’d grown up on a sheep farm north of the city and now owned a dozen hotel/casinos spread around the edges of the valley. Neighborhood resorts, they were called, a new niche within the gaming industry that was already being copied by half a dozen larger, out-of-state companies.

Fletch wanted zoning concessions for his next construction. The mayor had made no promises, but extracted assurances from him that he’d underwrite three new high schools, which should muffle her critics who said that city hall cared nothing for public education. She and Fletch had parted friends and mutual supporters, as they had been ever since he’d been a regular during her days starring at Johnny Torio’s All-Star Gentlemen’s World.

And now the day was over, and a good part of the night, because being the mayor turned out to involve much longer and less predictable hours than any of Magnolia’s previous vocations. She re-stacked some papers on her desk, making sure that everything she needed for next Monday’s meetings was handy. Then she leaned down to pick up her purse, and when she straightened up again, a man stood on the other side of her desk smiling at her.

“What the–” Magnolia exclaimed and reached simultaneously for the pepper spray inside her purse and the alarm button under her desk.

“That won’t work,” Zem told her. “You can’t hurt me, and your security guards won’t be interrupting us. I need to talk to you alone, and it’ll take more than just a minute or two.”

Magnolia considered him. His showed no emotion, and she kept her face impassive, as well. “All right,” she said slowly. She’d always been cool under fire.

“Don’t worry,” Zem interrupted her. He smiled again. “I won’t hurt you. I won’t even threaten you. That’s not my style. Not these days. Threats never work. I’ve learned that.” He grinned. Out-and-out grinned, like an aw-shucks cowboy showing off his prize steer or belt buckle or something. Magnolia looked up at him and had absolutely no idea what to think.

“The thing is,” Zem continued conversationally, pulling up a chair to sit in, “You need me, and you’ll see, you’ll want me, too, when I tell you who I am and what I’m planning to do. You’ll have a choice, in a few minutes, and I think you’ll choose wisely, but we’ll see how that goes. Are you ready to listen?”

He paused, and it seemed as if the air all through Magnolia’s office held its breath, waiting. Magnolia hit the panic button once or twice more, just to make sure it really wasn’t working, and Zem waited for her to be finished. The air made less than no sound at all.

“Don’t worry,” Zem said again. He shifted forward, eager to get to the real subject.

“Okay,” she said. He hadn’t acted dangerous yet.

Zem laughed. “So you’ve decided that I can be trusted long enough for you to figure out how to get rid of me, at least? That’s fine, that’s fine. You’ll change your mind.”

Magnolia didn’t say a word.

“Here we go,” Zem said. “What you need is a Next New Thing. A new concept of Vegas that will cost less than all this toddler-friendly, theme park hoo-ha but draw even more tourists. And make them spend more, too, just maybe. And I’ve got it.”

Magnolia Conner, three-time mayor of Las Vegas (so far), looked interested in spite of herself.

“I thought you’d like that,” Zem said. “And by the way, if you’re still wondering whether you should trust me, I know your secret.”

Magnolia didn’t respond. She barely reacted. There was, perhaps, the merest flicker of an eyelid. The air in the room, a captive audience and definitely intrigued, stilled to utter entropy to listen.

“The big one,” Zem added. “But forget that. We have better things to talk about. Now listen closely, Magnolia. Here’s what’s going to happen in your city between tonight and New Year’s Eve. Ready?”

The mayor had only one secret she considered “big”. The only one that nobody, nobody on earth but her almost-never-seen mother had any hint of. That secret would surely have undone her life, toppled the tower she’d erected of ambition and talent and hard work and success.

When Honoré Jerques had held her baby for the one and only time just after she’d awakened from the anesthesia of the delivery and before handing it over to her roommate’s mother to take care of for the next two decades, she had looked it over, considered, and then handed it back with one statement, and her only decision regarding its future.

“Call him Frank,” she’d said.

Now that was a secret Magnolia kept.

NEXT POST: The Ghost of Vegas' Past (Friday 8/28)

The First Story

This is the story of a boy and a dragon. Of a young man, that is, and the dragon he fought. Because young men battle dragons. Boys only play at it. Old men tell about it. So, this is the story of a young man and a dragon— a hero, a heroic story.

His name was Seth, because I like that name. And we're changing tack here, in case you hadn't noticed. This is a new story. No showgirls allowed. Yet.

Seth was the third son of Adam and Eve. The one who missed all that ugliness with Cain and Abel. The one who made a life for himself. A respectable life. Without murders or Marks or too much divine involvement, from all reports. And Seth battled his dragon foe in San Francisco. Well, why not? Some cities are appropriate venues for fairy tales, even now. Parts of New York are good: Soho probably has unicorns and griffins breeding like crazy in every historic loft apartment, and Brooklyn seems like it has something going on somewhere, doesn’t it? But then again, New Jersey holds nothing more mysterious than . . . well, nothing much mysterious. But London has ghosts and spirits, and France has bad-tempered ghosts and spirits— overindulged clerics or resentful, blue-blooded guillotine victims from the Revolution, most likely. Or maybe both.

There is time travel in St. Petersburg and New Orleans, magic in St. Louis, absolutely nothing whatsoever in Pittsburgh. Washington D.C. has dragons, but they are fat and lazy and uninteresting in the end. But they look good, curled up with the monuments. And San Francisco, with its hills and silly steep streets, where the light is infused with salt spray and the air seems to tingle in front of you, hosts many fairy tales. Why not? Why can’t it do that?

So Seth made his way through the roads across the hills of San Francisco like a hero and a champion, which is to say, interestingly. On the lookout for fantastical things, because San Francisco is the kind of place where fantastical things occur and appear. Something interesting may always be coming around the next-to-nearest corner there: a nun on roller skates, and sporting a beard. A girl pinioned with more metal than clothing. People of all ages sprouting electronic gear and tie-dyed hair and wheels and skateboards and dresses and feathers. And while these may not sound like fairy tale characters to you, I beg to differ. If Rapunzel or King Arthur saw one of those nuns, or someone with those earphones stuck in their head, wouldn’t they think they had seen something otherworldly? It’s really all a matter of context. And for the record, how many people in the wilds of, say, Kansas, have actually seen a drag queen nun in broad daylight? Probably not many more than have seen a unicorn. So it’s relative, isn’t it?

And so Seth made his way interestingly. Unafraid, undaunted. Hero-like. He had a book with him.

Not a magical book. It’s not that sort of story. Just a reading book. Not even a Great Work, necessarily. Maybe E. M. Forster. Maybe Stephen King— just something to read as he went. Not magical, not special, not a meaningful plot twist or a clue in the story— Seth’s book was whatever he’d picked up most recently to pass the slow moments. You realize that even adventures have slow moments. Sure, you get to step into magical sailing ships and sail across the whole ocean in a night and a day in order to rescue a lady fair, but we’re still talking a night and a day, folks. Twelve to eighteen hours aboard with no one to talk to— and the middle of the ocean is a mighty boring place, even from the decks of a magic sailing ship. Think of the magic sailing ship as sort of an ultimate Concorde— mostly fun in theory. Less fun to do than to boast that you have done-- better as a story, that is, than as an experience. The smart hero brings a book along.

Now, on to those hills he was walking through. They’re interesting, too, the hills of a good fairy-tale city like San Francisco. A hill is just a hill, more or less, but in a good collection of them each one becomes a personality. The one you just climbed might be demanding, the one in front of you might be inviting. There might be a dim place to one side, where elves might be hiding, or there might be a tiny desert on another’s flank, beating back the sun into the sky. Hills are like people— multi-faceted. They’re like interesting people, that is, not the boring ones you pass by and don’t want to speak to.

So through this cocktail party of geography goes our hero, in search of dragons. One dragon, anyway. Only one is needed, of course. One at a time. But to be most truthful that is not really what he was thinking of. He was really only thinking of his journey. Because journeys are demanding things— they demand thought and attention. A voyage goes over water, a trip is something you do with your parents, probably against your will and involving a station wagon (or a minivan or an SUV— it’s generational. The vehicles change, but the fundamental nature of traveling with your family does not.) But a journey is travel with purpose. A purposeful movement. And that is what Seth was doing. Moving purposefully through the fantastically peopled hills and flanks of San Francisco, seeing blue-haired roller bladers, finding scenes of greatness and teasing views of the Bay far below. Seeking out the adventures that awaited.

Let’s talk about the dragon now. Where do dragons come from? Well, eggs, presumably, but where does the species originate? Somewhere like the plains of Africa, perhaps— somewhere big and full of life and inexorably slow-moving; somewhere too large and too primitive for human beings to really grasp and pin down. Too subtle.

Or: somewhere like the mountains of Greece or the fjords of Norway, too remote and inaccessible to catalogue completely, where there is always one last crevice or cave that the explorers have missed, and maybe that one is where the dragons come from.

Or maybe they come from storybooks, or maybe they come from Tarot cards. Maybe from our unconsciousness, which is a lot like the Plains of Africa, in a Jungian way— the collective unconscious. Dragons are very Jungian creatures, aren’t they?

Never mind– dragons might come from a number of places.

This dragon, whatever its origin or the origin of its kind (which it probably didn’t care about— it’s humans who worry these issues like dogs with fleas), was hiding in a low niche between hills in Golden Gate Park, on the oceanfront side of the city. “Hiding” because it lay coiled tightly in a shadow, back deep in a fissure. Not really hiding, in other words, but hidden, if you weren’t looking carefully, if you were just bashing along through the wilderness, wandering off from the cultivated lawns of the Park and crashing into someplace wilder where the rangers don’t weed every day. And one says “hiding” because what else would a dragon do? Dragons are Dark Things, and Dark Things hide from us, don’t they? Where would the horror industry be otherwise?

For its part, the dragon was just concerned with being, not hiding. With being a dragon, with being a dark thing. With being a dark thing, with continuing to be one for a long, long time. This dragon had no interest in fairy-tales, which are short things, or with heroics or heroes, which do not last that much longer. It thought of long things, of long lives and a seeming endless existence lying in its niche, feeling sun or rain or whatever, seeing ocean, seeing distant forms of people passing. It preferred just to be its own dark self, uninvolved, remaining separate. To live a quiet life. To be a dark thing. To simply be, without having to prove or defend itself.

It knew, of course, that there were heroes. That they would come hunting it and it would have to defend itself, and maybe eat them. But it didn’t seek the battles, and it didn’t find any titillation in licking its wounds (or the hero’s bones) and gloating over its victories after a battle. It judged such things stupid, and the one or two or three times it had had to have a battle, it preferred not to dwell on. It preferred to leave those things, to leave them in the past from the very moment they were over. To stay a dark thing.

To return to being again.

It was an acceptable life, for this dragon.

But on this particular day, of course, Seth was out searching for it. He didn’t know he was searching, he only knew that, as a hero, he was expected and required to make his way to and through fantastical places and to slay the dragons or overcome the other Dark Things that he came upon. Heroes, dragons— they’re drawn together. Like moths and flames, or lemmings and cliffs. And so up one hill and down another; through the Park and past some happy families; past a few girls who looked at and watched him, and past a few boys who did the same; around the trees and the buffalo (did you know there were buffalo in Golden Gate Park? There are, and they are truly fairy-tale creatures. Great and massive and imbued with some sort of wisdom— the philosophers of the cow family, it seems. They’re amazingly peaceful. And Seth went past them, and nodded his respect to them as he walked.) And so to the dragon waiting, lurking, curling and not exactly hiding on the other side, facing out to the ocean.

Heroes, again, just seem to end up near dragons. And dragons can smell young men. You understand that Seth did not in any way sneak up, and the dragon did not in any way ambush him. They met, with a mutual recognition, as if their date had been planned by secretaries and scheduled weeks in advance. (How else could there ever be a story? Isn’t that what one expects? The thing that happens?)

“I’m ready,” Seth said to himself as he attacked the dragon.

What did he mean by that? It might have been unconscious, just a reminder, from his brain to his muscles of all the time they’d spent in training, preparing for this moment. It might have been a pep talk, an attempt to energize his spirits as he threw himself into the fray.

It might have been hopeful, a kind of whistling in the dark to quell his fear. It might even have been a warning, an announcement to the world and the monster that this hero was formidable. It might have been all of these, or something different, but when dealing with heroes, one must expect slogans. A hero muttering “I’m ready” as he points his sword (or lance or sub-machine gun or some impromptu missile he’s created on the spot from his tennis shoe and three old wads of gum) is giving the movie marketers a tag line, asserting his place in history, offering some good last words in case he doesn’t, in fact, get another chance to talk. Heroes have to think of these things. This is their responsibility. It is, again, the thing that happens.

And what next? Well of course, the battle. It was swift and it was terrible, as such battles usually are. And it was breathy, as in heaving, wrenching gasps, and it was endless, as in the sun seeming to stand still while it glinted on the armor and the colorful scales. And for the most part, nothing much was learned by either side. They retired now and then, pulling back to breathe more heavily and to sop up some blood with something— Seth’s various bandages grew redder as the day went on, and the rocks around the dragon got wetter and slicker. But after each break they just went back at it and lost their breaths again and received even more bloody wounds from each other, so what was the point?

Seth tired first, of course. No surprise there— men are smaller and weaker than scaly lizards eight times their size, what else could have happened? Battles in which the dragon loses generally involve either trickery or else a lot of men against one dragon. And eventually, during one of those momentary time-outs, Seth wiped off his forehead and hesitated before going at it one more time. There had been more than a dozen “one more time”s by then, and he was beginning to doubt whether one more one more time would really make a difference.

“I am not accomplishing very much,” he muttered. He didn’t take the time to realize what bad last words those were. He just said them, and then headed toward the dragon again, to engage it and continue battling.

One more time.

And then, after that time, when Seth found himself once again looking at the dragon from a distance and wondering what it was he was supposed to be doing, he got caught staring at the dragon staring at him, and so the two of them spent some time like that, staring and staring back, without movements or words or anything else very productive.

A note on the eyes of dragons. They can be very unnerving. It’s important for the scene that you understand this— they’re downright uncanny. They don’t waver in their focus, and what’s worse is, they blink independently. It is unnerving to be glared at by a creature that never ever loses sight of you even for a split-second, even to blink.

Seth blinked. Then he did it again, over-exaggerating. Defying the dragon.

No reaction. A wink. Another wink. Yellow glare occluded by a rubbery green dragon eyelid. One rubbery green, one yellow glare. Then the other. Independent.

“This is frustrating,” Seth said to himself, and he sighed.

The dragon blinked at him. Coiled a little tighter back into its niche.

It had blinked. Not winked. Did you catch that? Both eyes together. Closing at the same time. Not winking. Not independent.

Seth looked harder. It winked again, with one eye only. Then the other. But Seth kept looking.

A long moment passed. Some breathing. Some individual winks.

Our hero sighed. He wiped his forehead. He had no idea what to make of this. Was the dragon telling him something? Or was it only waiting, and had the blinking incident been a mistake, maybe even an hallucination? Did the monster want to eat him? Did it even care?

He realized that he was wishing for a good excuse to quit this fight, to go and get something to eat and a bed. An excuse, any excuse.

The dragon snorted soundlessly— a puff of black smoke slithering upward.

A young man, and a dragon. They had battled, they had done their duty. Hadn’t they? Had they?

Hm.

“Oh, the hell with it,” Seth said aloud, and he turned and walked away.

NEXT POST: THE MYSTERIES OF MAGNOLIA (Monday 8/24)

The Morning After

Zem, grinning, opened the door of his suite to find the nubile fortune teller standing outside with her arms folded tightly.

“When you invited me for breakfast, I didn’t expect it to be in your room,” she announced. Not quite accusing.

“Lilith,” he rolled her name around his tongue in greeting.

“You still seem delighted by my name,” she said. “Would you like a chance to explain that phone call, downstairs? The P.A. system blaring my name to every tourist in the Western Hemisphere just so the hotel operator could direct me up here to meet you?”

“If you’ll recall,” he pointed out, “I invited you back to my room twice, last night. Breakfast only came up when you refused. And of course I’m delighted. Don’t you know who Lilith was?”

She sighed longsufferingly. “Adam’s first wife,” she recited, “Not made for him as Eve was, but alongside, as his partner. And she refused to play second banana to him, so God cast her out of Eden and tried again. And made a perfect little Fifties housewife, all concerned with aprons and cooking and children, whereas Lilith wanted to name things and have her own career. Which pissed Adam off, and apparently God, too. A cautionary tale,” she concluded.

“Exactly,” Zem beamed like a wise old teacher at his star pupil. “And never a better tale was told. Lilith was, indeed... a caution,” he declared delightedly.

There was a tiny silence. “Yes, well,” she allowed then, “about this breakfast. And your improper invitation. I may have dinner with a lion, but that’s no reason to waltz into his den of my own volition. How stupid would that make me?”

He opened the door wider. “You’ll never learn the lion’s secrets if you stay safe outside,” he scolded.

After one more moment’s hesitation, she strode past him, making a sound of disgust. “Maybe I don’t need to know some secrets.”

“Oh,” he clucked at the back of her head, following her in, “I think you’re a girl who likes all her mysteries neatly solved, aren’t you? T’s crossed and i’s dotted? All the answers, single-spaced?”

She shrugged out of her coat and handed it to him. “That’s just my job,” she dissembled. “And let’s not spend the whole morning bandying all this clever repartee back and forth, shall we? I’m already tired.”

“As you wish,” he bobbed his head. She pursed her lips as she regarded his mane of salt-and-pepper hair, his steady gray eyes focused unerringly on her. “I ordered room service.” He took her elbow and led her toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, where a dozen gleaming service trays rode their linen-shrouded chariot.

“How did you know what I’d want?”

A grin. “Best guess. You can tell me how close I came. Besides, I ordered one of everything, so you can have your pick.”

“How debonair. I feel as though I’m in a wacky Thirties romance. Something starring Cary Grant.” She sat.

He pushed her chair in, then walked around the tiny table to sit, too. He looked her in the eye. “Would you like to admire the view?” The window beside them was hung with lacy draping, which he reached to pull aside.

“Don’t,” she stopped him. “Vegas is best at night, and never good from above. All these casinos look like warehouses from this angle.”

He grinned again. “You’re right. It’s the dirty little secret here. It’s all facade.”

“Yes, it is, though I don’t know if that’s really such a secret. I– oh no.”

“What?”

Lilith had caught sight of the suite’s television. “That woman. I can’t stand to watch her.”

Zem twisted around to follow her gaze. “Yes...?"

She inspected him for a split second while he stared at the TV screen. “That, my dear new Vegas visitor, is the Princess of Las Vegas. Mayor Magnolia Conner. She’s just like all these new hotels– all flash, no substance. She’s a fool.”

“Really? Yes the people like her?"

“She's just been re-elected for her third term,” Lilith told him. “But that just proves how much Vegas loves a tacky show. How can you not know this? Where the hell have you been?” She snarled at the television. “Magnolia Connor’s like a circus act. She’s the lady with the sword-thrower. You hold your breath while all the knives just barely miss her, but secretly you’re hoping she’ll get nicked. Just once.”

He smiled over at her. “Very bloodthirsty. I like that in a woman. And just more evidence to prove my point. You’re always looking for the truth, aren’t you?”

He was still bantering. But probing. And she was still waiting for that thing she’d almost seen last night, that tickling, teasing hint at all the rumblings she’d been feeling in the aether. It had almost been out in plain sight, twelve hours ago. Now it had retreated. She could barely feel if it were still there.

She watched Zem playacting his way through this romantic comedy scene with her. He was bobbing and grinning as if he expected her to be blinded by all his charm, as if he thought he could make her forget to look for something more. To delve deeper. Why would he care? And who is he?

“The truth can be overrated,” she scoffed ostentatiously. “Once you’ve seen it, that is. That’s the dirty little secret of my trade. It’s like the backs of these hotels. Finding the truth about something can seem important. But when you’ve stumbled on it... sometimes it turns out to be dull, really.” She shrugged.

“I don’t believe you,” he informed her. A grin tugged at his lips. “You believe in the truth. Through and through.”

She shrugged again. Caught. But... what the hell? “Well,” she admitted, “I like to make that judgement for myself. Whether it’s worth my time or not.” She eyed the shiny coffee pot, wondering if its contents were still hot. “So now that I’ve admitted that,” she spoke again as she reached for it, “Are you going to tell me–”

“Everything?” he broke in. He sighed deeply, with satisfaction. “No, of course not. I’m not even going to admit there’s anything to tell. Now, let’s have our eggs, shall we?”

“Obviously, there’s something to tell,” she said. “You’re a man of mystery. I said that in the beginning.”

He lifted silver lids, revealed eggs, sausages, all the cholesterol-laden, politically-incorrect foods Las Vegas thrived on. There was a pile of fruit to one side, but that was probably just for color. “But some mysteries,” he countered, “are really cover-ups for nothing underneath, as you keep saying. I’m a simple man. Just here to have a good time. A standard tourist.”

She sat and watched him serve her for a silent half minute. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. She picked up her fork and speared a strawberry.

“At least, that you’ve heard so far this morning,” he qualified through a mouthful of food.

NEXT POST: ONCE UPON A TIME... (Friday 8/21)

Second Show

Sometimes, all Venus wanted was to be looked at.

Wait – let’s be clear here. She always wanted to be looked at. But occasionally, not too often, that was all she wanted. At those moments, her normal tastes in worship – stroking, licking, thrusting, obeying – fell away, and the rapt attention of a few dozen human eyeballs was all the tribute she required.

In the old days, of course, such a thing would never have occurred to her. She’d started life, way back in prehistory, as Goddess of both Love and War. To humans then, those two weren’t very different. Making love and making war in the ancient world were as mutual and as interdependent as conjoined twins.

How long ago that had been, Venus had forgotten. What she remembered was springing forth with her blonde hair and her perfect skin, and also with a spear and a predilection for inspiring men to kill each other. It had been a lot of work, being a goddess in those days.

She’d been happy to lose her war responsibilities after the Greeks fell. Rome recognized her true calling. The Romans gave her a new name that she liked better than her Greek one, and separated her from all her extraneous, more bloodthirsty responsibilities. She’d become, simply, Love Embodied, and gone happily about the world– or the Ancient part of it, anyway– dispensing her gifts, which were also her greatest pleasures.

And, some millennia later, she was still dispensing. She’d found her perfect venue, the only place in the modern world where her particular talents were still celebrated unabashedly, where the gifts she offered were still craved, where her beauty was still recognized as an end unto itself. Her entrance into a casino always caused an uproar, simply because she looked so good. No one knew she was a goddess, but in this place, with its singular morality, any woman who looked like her was treated as divine.

Of course, really, there were no other women who looked like Venus. She was, by definition, one of a kind.

So lust was what she lived for, but sometimes the acts of lust got in the way. Especially in these latter years, when clumsy human hands had to be involved. The touch she liked best, in any case, and the body she liked best to touch, were her own.

All she needed was an audience. Admiring eyes alone could give her a climax that would explode like the original Big Bang, erupting through her to whirl into stars and worlds and the whole cosmos. Venus, she thought, mother of galaxies. She liked that image.

Just now, she’d found a suitable venue for display and begun slowly exposed herself to the passersby. She didn’t just appear without warning, shocking them into screaming and running. She revealed herself, little by little. She was right in front of them, but they only saw her in glimpses at first, out of the corners of their eyes. Then she smiled at one. It turned out to be a little boy, years away from finding pleasure in women, but he recognized her anyway. Venus was universal, impossible not to know. She was written into his DNA. He gaped back at her, then pointed, goggling at his mother half in joy and half in uncertainty, unready for the wholeness of the goddess. She smiled once more and winked at him and retreated from his sight, and left the seed that would grow in his dreams for the rest of his life.

A moment later she chose another to share herself with, and she let him see her for longer, and then she exposed herself to a few more all at once. Before many minutes had passed, she’d revealed herself utterly. Immediately, a crowd gathered, as one always did when she allowed herself to be looked at. Humans couldn’t help themselves, Venus was everything they liked looking at. They– and she– were made that way.

“Holy cow,” one man breathed, just arrived in Vegas.

“Sh!” his girlfriend shushed him, jerking his forearm, retaining just enough awareness, herself, to insist on propriety. “Don’t stare!” They both fell silent then, and looked.

Everybody stared. People still passed, but they slowed, and more and more of them stopped. Venus leaned back and laughed in her low and subtle way, shimmying the sound through the air and caressing their ears, their cheeks, just as their eyes caressed her hair, her breasts, her thighs and ankles and stomach and wrists...

She could feel the pressure building, somewhere so deep down, it felt like it was in the ground below her. Her onlookers stoked the fires, built up the steam of the rush waiting, roiling, preparing to burst from her soon. She dropped her head back till her hair– bouncy, greedy for movement– brushed her elbows where she leaned on them, and she heard sounds of appreciation for her nipples, pointed to the sky, her chin, her soft, downy crotch.

“Very nice, Venus,” she heard.

She snapped her head around. Her cotton candy hair flew around her head and set off a few sparks in its depths, the discharge from all that built-up energy.

“You,” she said, low and angry as any soap opera diva facing her most hated rival.

“Me,” he responded conversationally. He stood at the back of the crowd, smiling and perusing her worshipers. The people still stared, still breathed, but were still. Not caught and immobile, like the victims of Vesuvius frozen for all eternity, but paused, on the verge of the next moment, like a raindrop trembling on a windowpane. They did not react as Venus pulled herself up, felt the boiling heat subside and a new warmth, made of anger and long-fermented resentment, took its place without pause.

“What are you doing here? This is–”

He smiled broader. “Very nice. They’re certainly enjoying you.” He gazed around and fastened on one young man, barely adult, who stared at her with his jaw hanging open.

“Stay away. They’re mine,” she hissed.

“Are they?” He blinked but didn’t look her way. He gazed at the crowd as if they were lobsters in a tank at the front of a seafood restaurant, a herd of wildebeest with the weak ones beginning to straggle.

By his side there stood a woman, who also looked at the crowd rather than Venus.

“Found a follower?” Venus spat.

He glanced at his companion. He laughed. “Oh no. But I will. I like Las Vegas.” A glint bounced off his teeth. Venus glared, speechless.

“Enjoy your little display,” he said as he turned away. He took the woman’s arm in his and started to lead her off again. “And I like your stage,” he added over his shoulder. “I always said you were a whore at heart.”

He was gone. The raindrop swelled and slipped, and the crowd rustled. Venus, forgetting them, stared after him and then down at the object she was lying on.

It was a vehicle, a nicely sized platform at the perfect eye-height for the worshipers she’d gathered. And this one was painted bright, shiny gold, which struck her as appropriate for an impromptu altar. But as she leaned over, she saw that there were words painted in clamoring colors all along its side.

Totally! Nude!! Showgirls!!!, they read.

Venus made an indeterminate, jagged, growling sound as she looked up again after Zem.

“Excuse me, Miss?” another voice interrupted her scowling– which still worked magic on the crowd, making all the men shift back and forth and all the women lick their lips. “I don’t know what you’re supposed to be, if you’re doing some sort of personal appearance for the club,” the speaker was taking his time, gazing at every inch of her, lying there, “but you can’t do it out here in the open without any clothes on.”

He was dressed in blue and black, leather and weapons. He bristled. Venus got distracted from looking for her nemesis and glared at him, instead.

“Sorry,” he shook his head, his eyes fastened on her thighs shining creamily and sweatily against the gold roof, “But I’m going to have write you a ticket.”

“Oh–” she growled, and grabbed his lapel.

“Miss?”

His voice cut off suddenly. And all the crowd around the limo blinked, wondering for a fraction of a second what had happened to the lovely girl they’d stared at, and the cop who’d been remonstrating with her. Both of them were gone, and then... the memory of them was gone, too.
Venus took the cop out of sight with her and forcibly forgot Zem and his words, along with any thoughts of what would come next or what she should do. The blue and black clothes ripped away easily, and the leather belts and harnesses became playthings in her experienced hands.

“Uh...” he faltered once more. She didn’t have to tell him to be quiet. Humans, especially human males, never could think of much to say to her once she got her fingers on their skin.



“What was going on back there?” the gypsy asked.

“Nothing,” Zem answered her. “Just an old friend.” He laughed, inexplicably.

“Really? That whole crowd–” she was frowning. There had been dozens of people, all glued to a single object, but she hadn’t been able to discern exactly what...

“Don’t worry about it. Ah– how about here?” He waved negligently at a four-star place called Pan’s, complete with carved grape arbors and miniature satyrs arching over the door. It lay to one side of the Olympus Hotel, part of its newest extension. “I’m staying here. I could have you up for a nightcap after dessert.”

“I’ll bet you’d like that.” She considered the restaurant. “Oh good,” she said. “The most expensive plate in Vegas, I hear. Are you sure you can afford this?” she added flippantly.

“Surely you wouldn’t settle for less,” he flirted.

She laughed, an echo of his gunshot guffaw from their reading. “I’d settle for a TV dinner. But I have the feeling you demand white table cloths and twenty waiters.”

He was eyeing the passersby, waiting for her. Not particularly interested in what she had to say, she thought. “Good service is what makes life worth living,” he commented.

“Is it. I don’t know. And we probably can’t get in here, anyway. I hear there’s a six week waiting list.”

“They’ll make room,” he said as he swept her inside.

NEXT UP: THERE'S GOT TO BE A MORNING AFTER (Monday 8/17)

A Turn of the Cards

One block West of the Strip, along an oversized alley called Industrial Road, shadows and stillness hover all day and night, rain or shine or sun or moon. The backs of all the hotels and their parking garages loom over it on one side. Warehouses and cheap businesses are scattered on the other: gentlemen’s clubs hang by industrial suppliers, electronics repair stores by upstart video companies. And, in one small, threadbare strip mall of five storefronts, two of which were empty, a fortune teller’s parlor lit up its three parking spaces in a blaze of fluorescence and neon.

Zem stood in front of the storefront and considered it. He liked gypsies. And Vegas, he had realized, was really little more than a gypsy encampment. It was a bunch of wagons all pulled up into a circle, each louder and more garish than the last, and all dedicated to keeping the marks from thinking clearly for just as long as it took to empty their pockets.

“I will read your fortune,” the gypsy woman announced, when he stepped through her door and flashed some money. She was young and pretty, in contrast to her surroundings, with lots of glossy, dark hair and large black eyes and narrow brows that framed her expression into something slightly amused and quizzical. She wore jeans and a burgundy, button-down shirt, but she also wore a loose shawl and huge hoop earrings that glittered with a gypsy promise. And her manner was as businesslike as her wardrobe. She hadn’t wasted time on melodrama or affectations, but simply directed him to sit, to relax, and then made her announcement.

“I will read your fortune.”

As if she were the one deciding whether to hire him.

Zem smiled and sat obediently. Fortune tellers often got confused when they met him. Or else they got scared. Sometimes, they burst into flames. But he thought it was worth the risk, this time. He’d had no luck yet finding his priestess.

The young woman surprised him by not pulling out cards or uncovering the enshrined object that was patently a crystal ball in the center of her table. She poured him coffee, instead. Then she poured some for herself, looked down into it, and nodded once.

“Good. Now you will drink, and I will drink, and then we trade cups.”

All right. Zem looked down into his cup, as she had, and saw black liquid with a slight oily film. He shrugged, picked it up, and took a sip.

“Blech!” he exploded, swallowing. It tasted like hot water drained through compost. The gypsy smiled, Zem scowled at her. She nodded at his cup.

“Drink up!” she told him.

“It’s terrible!” he accused.

She shrugged extravagantly, her shawl shifting into new folds off her shoulders. “Insight isn’t easy, brother,” she informed him.

He gave a single shout of laughter and looked into the evil cup again. The oil swirled as if it were leering at him. He scowled down into it and took another swallow, vaulting it right past his taste buds. He looked in again and saw he’d finished half the cup. Half would have to be enough. He set the cup down.

“That’s right,” the gypsy told him.

What might her name be? He’d make a point to ask her. He gave her his most piercing look, and wondered if she might offer other client services besides fortunes. She watched him right back.

“She smiled and took his cup in her hand,” the woman intoned, doing so.

His head hurt. He waited. What the hell had been in that foul coffee? He stared hard at her.

“You’re a mystery man,” she said before she even took a sip.

“Is that what the coffee says?” he taunted.

She allowed one side of her mouth to bend upward. It was a lazy, summer-day smile like you would see on the heated bank of a pond where children swam nude and a tire hung on a rope for swinging. She tapped the cup with one long finger, and he noticed her nail: clean, unvarnished, short enough to deal cards without splitting the edges.

An honest fortune teller. Who could have guessed the wonders of Las Vegas?

“No, that’s just a comment,” she said. “You’re not what you seem.”

“What do I seem?” he growled.

She shrugged. “A man. Ordinary. Strong. You’re large and gruff. You reveal very little. You came in here ten minutes ago and you’ve been observing things, making judgements, all that time. Yet, from your face, I’d never know you’d had a thought at all.”

“Then how do you know I’ve been having them?”

She touched a drop of coffee that he’d spilled and drew it across the table. “I can observe, too.” She went on, tracing a pattern. “You’re broad-shouldered, strong, an impressive physical presence. You look like you’ve spent your life constructing buildings,” she said, “or tearing apart plumbing. People probably get out of your way in a crowd,” she added. “But you’re graceful, too. You have an awareness of your body. You move sensually, deliberately. Not like a plumber.”

“Plumbers can’t be sensual?”

She looked directly at him. “Are you a plumber?” He shook his head. “Well then,” she continued. “Perhaps we’ll get to what you are.” She smiled again, then lowered her eyes to look down into his coffee cup. “This is the good part,” she added. She took a sip.

Zem leaned back, watched her face as she swallowed. She stayed silent, considering as carefully as a sommelier identifying an unknown vintage.

“Interesting,” she commented. And then she said something that truly made him laugh. He burst out with a sound that could only be called a guffaw.

“You’re a spiritual ma–” she began.

Guffaw. A gunshot in the sunrise hush of a forest. Zem’s gypsy medium reacted, startling like an early-rising deer. Then she relaxed again, a deer that sees the sound was just its mate stepping on a tree branch. Then, when he kept laughing, she looked suspicious. Maybe it was a hunter stepping on a branch.

“Is something funny?” she asked, not-quite frostily. Fortune tellers have got frosty down to an art. It’s part of the lore they learn, along with all the things the King of Cups can mean depending on where he falls in a Tarot spread. A fortune teller’s pride is like a little pet curled up next to her feet underneath her fringe-covered table. It looks sweet and affectionate– it is, to her– but if you wake it rudely by insulting it, it uncurls and turns out to be a Rottweiler with teeth the size of machetes. It leaps up in less time than your brain can catalogue all that and goes straight for your throat.

Her tone, asking the question, was not-quite frosty, though. Not quite insulted. Considering and waiting. Judging. Offering Zem one last opportunity to prove he hadn’t been insulting. Ready to release the hound.

“Is something funny?”

Zem had met other pride-Rottweilers. He thought that tonight there was no need for a tangle with one. He gasped, gulped, and caught his breath. He stopped laughing, in other words.

“Not really,” he informed her. “There are people who’d find that amusing– calling me spiritual, that is.”

She turned her head a little. Looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. “Are there?” she allowed. “Let’s go on.” No more laughing! her tone said. No more guffaws! And pay attention!

Zem composed himself to listen more respectfully. She was a very lovely fortune teller, after all.

“Forgive me,” he bobbed his head to her.

She nodded back to accept his apology. He smiled, but was careful not to make a sound.

There were also those who would have been shocked to hear Zem apologize. To anyone, at any time. There had been times when he’d have flown into a rage if anybody had so much as asked for an apology. And, of course, no one had. They’d known.

But now... well, what the hell? A pretty girl, a little misunderstanding... He hadn’t meant to mock her with his great guffaw. He hadn’t known that it was coming. So what? He apologized. The world went on. He waited.

“There’s something strange here,” she said.

“Yes?”

She met his eyes. “You’re hungry.”

He let a little grin creep onto his lips. “I haven’t had dinner yet. Would you–”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” she cut him off sharply. “You’re hungry for...” she looked down into the dark cup again, “people? Love?” She shook her head at the words. “I’m not sure yet. But it’s a force in you, something that’s been growing till it’s become insatiable. That’s why you’re here. You’ve been... alone for a long time. In fact–” she stared into his face again, “Have you been a prisoner somewhere? It looks like–” her voice drifted off.

“A distant place? An unknown country?” he filled in, balancing his tone on the fine knife-edge between jesting and mocking. He watched to see if any pride-Rottweiler eyes opened.

“More like solitary confinement,” she retorted.

It was his eyes that opened wider. “You think I’m a convict?” His grin was full of delight at the notion.

She shrugged. “We get lots of men just out of prison. The state penitentiary’s just up the road, and Vegas is the land of opportunity, didn’t you know?”

“And they all want to know what their future holds, I’m sure.”

“They all think they know what their future holds. They think it’s up to them.”

He nodded. “I’m not just out of prison.”

“I know.” She looked down again, but not, this time, as if she were inspecting his cup. “But you’ve been away. You’ve been... lying low, incognito.” She shook her head and frowned. “Those aren’t the right words. Give me your hands.”

“My hands?”

“Don’t act as if you’re afraid,” she frowned. She reached toward him, resting her elbows on either side of the covered crystal.

“I was only concerned for your safety,” he assured her.

“Very solicitous. Give me your hands.”

“All right.” She waited as he slowly sat forward and deliberately lowered his hands to meet hers.

This gypsy was not old, but she was an old hand on hands, and all the things they could say. The lines in the palms, the length of the fingers, the weight and firmness of the flesh in general– all these spoke to her. All these attributes, and others, formed a chorus, loud as clapping, banging away at the message of the hand’s experiences, its path through the world. Its owner’s life, and his future.

She looked at Zem’s hand, and was stumped.

There were none of the signs she looked for. Where she should have read of childhood, she saw war. Where she looked for love, she found conquest and diversion. She looked up into her client’s eyes.

“Interesting,” she said.

He chuckled. “I’m glad. What do you see there?”

“That you’re a man of... unusual passions. You feel no shame, do you? There are people who spend thousands of dollars on analysts to achieve this.” She tipped her head at him, quirked one side of her mouth up, and waited for his response.

He chuckled back again. “A good way of putting it. What else?”

She blinked, and then looked down again. “Again, this isolation,” she read. She ran her own fingers lightly down the length of his palms. There was something unused about them. The creases, even where they ran deep, were faded like old ink on thin parchment. “Where have you been?”

He smiled. He seemed pleased. “Going where the wind blows. Waiting for the world to catch up to me again,” he said.

“Hm...” She stared some more. “You’re hungry,” she said again.

“Everybody needs a little love,” he put in. She looked up to find him watching her intently. He wasn’t blinking.

“I’ve always thought so,” she hazarded. “But there’s a kind of... sustenance, for you, that I’ve never run across before.” This is ridiculous, she thought.

“And the future?” he asked.

She blinked, hard, to clear her mind, and looked back at his palms. Tried to place a few of the strange puzzle pieces in order, come up with some readable picture.

The future, at least, was a little clearer.

“I see you,” she said. “Standing in a high place. Here in Vegas.” She frowned at that. There weren’t high places in Vegas. But she went on. “I see people all around you, many people. There’s a woman by you– not me, you can wipe that smirk off your face–” she didn’t bother to look up at him, “She’s standing by your right shoulder. She seems–” she furrowed her brow, “familiar to me. Like an actress, maybe. A celebrity.”

“How exciting.” His same smooth, untouched tone.

“Yes, very glamourous,” she agreed cynically, breaking her gaze at his hands to frown at him. “I don’t think you’re the type to get excited about cheap fame.”

“Probably not. The thrill fades,” his voice lilted into humor just for one second. “And what are the people doing? The ones you see around me?”

“I– they’re standing there, but I can’t– Waiting for you, maybe...” She frowned deeper. The Tower card from her Tarot deck flicked through her thoughts. A vision of cataclysm, bodies tumbling from a lightning-struck fortress. She felt that same weight, that same foreboding, looking at this man’s blank hand.

There’d been something strange in the air, and underneath the air, for weeks now. Every palm she’d turned, every fortune she’d told, every message she’d read in the stars or the cards or the pattern of reflections in her dinnerware, had all spoken of something coming. Something big. And dangerous.

She concentrated. She could almost catch it, see the force that she’d been feeling, pin it down like a name she’d half-forgotten...

“Ah.” He pulled his hands away, sat back, and beamed at her. The beam came more from his eyes than his quirked lips. The air trembled around him. “You’re wonderful.”

She sat back, too. She found herself breathing harder than normal. “You’re satisfied? I didn’t tell you much,” she said.

“No. But you said the right things.”

“Nothing that surprised you.”

“I’m not here looking for surprises. I came to Las Vegas looking for...” he considered, rolling thoughts around on his tongue before swallowing one and speaking, “fulfillment. And you’ve told me what I wanted to hear. You’ve confirmed the future.”

“Have I?” she asked drily. “Would you like to explain it to me? I seem to have failed in this reading.”

He laughed. Ebulliently, almost musically. But low. A kettle drum sharing a joke with the thunder.

“If I can do it over dinner, perhaps,” he suggested. “As you pointed out, I’m hungry.”

She folded her arms, cocked her head to consider him with her gaze narrowed. “More like insatiable,” she corrected. “Hm, dinner...” she mused. “Is that a good idea? With a stranger?”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“I meant for me. I think I might be walking into the lion’s den if I accept.”

“In the lion’s den, at least you get a good look at the lions,” he grinned. Which was true. She’d already thought of that.

“You’re twice my age, you know,” she said, considering.

His lips began to spread into a grin. “Much more than that, my dear.” It was a wolf grin, a Great White Shark grin.

She raised an eyebrow. “I’m not quite as young as I look.”

His teeth sparkled at her. “Oh, neither am I, my dear. Neither am I.”

It was a grin to take down that Rottweiler without so much as a whimper.

NEXT UP: VENUS RISING (Friday 8/14)

Too Straight To Be Chic

“Well, that was embarrassing,” Rachel said to Testy Lesbiana.

“Why?” Testy demanded. “The girls said you looked great!”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

They sat in the Grand Hotel employee cafeteria, three floors down from the Extravaganza! Theatre, deep in the bowels of the great, towering building before the first show Saturday night. Rachel’s plate was full of blue meatloaf and brown Jello, and she stabbed at lettuce leaves that were too tired to resist the fork.

“I spent so much time buying all-new makeup,” she lamented. “As if having the perfect shade of blush would have made a difference today.”

“Now, honey, stop beating yourself up about it. Everybody knew Cynthia had that part sewn up before any of the rest of you even went on stage.”

“Now you tell me!”

“You knew that as well as I did.”

“Yeah, I suppose so. But, Testy... I am feeling so goddamn old these days.”

“Look who you’re talking to.”

That afternoon, backstage at Extravaganza!, there had been an in-house audition. Although all the dancers were signed to six month, meant-to-be-ironclad contracts, sometimes fate intervened and performers left in the middle of the term. This had happened most recently when one principal girl got pregnant and disappeared amid a flurry of pink and blue be-ribboned presents and expectant showgirl jokes. Management, in the person of Miss Honoré Jerques, Extrav!’s infamous and ancient company manager, had decided to promote from within rather than scour the city for another lead-worthy girl.

“There were only five of us there, anyway. That should have been a clue. Everybody else was smart enough to know it was a waste of time.”

“Don’t be so sure. They probably just didn’t think they could compete. You, for one, are pretty damn impressive, Rachel.”

Rachel rolled her eyes again. “Yeah, I’m fantastic. Enough for ‘Orrible Honoré to stop the whole group twice just to give me a million corrections. I swear, that woman lies awake nights trying to figure out new ways to embarrass me.” She took a savage bite from her fork. It could have been either salad or beef, there was no good way to tell.

“Well, she’s a demon in human flesh, that’s been proved scientifically. No real human could smoke that much and not spontaneously combust. Don’t let her get to you, gorgeous. You know that’s why she does it. She just likes to keep you all in your place. Underneath her industrial-strength heels where she can grind you down at her leisure.” Testy dabbed a crumb of meat loaf from her lips with her exquisitely folded paper napkin. Rachel watched and said nothing. The drag queen always managed to look as if she were sharing tea with royalty along the banks of the Thames, even if she were really just scarfing mystery-meat from a plastic tray in the dingy fluorescent light of the Grand Hotel’s employee cafeteria.

“Yeah... whatever you said,” Rachel told her, and stabbed at the brown mass on her plate again.

“What else happened? This can’t be about not getting a part that you knew Honoré’s favorite Princess Cynthia was all lined up for, anyway.”

“Oh, Test, I guess I’m just living in denial. I really did think I might get the job. I’ve done principal before, you know, in Paris and Tokyo and Spain... I guess I thought that counted for something. I forgot the only thing that matters here is whether that bitch in the office gets wet looking at you or not. And I obviously don’t do it for her.”

Testy chuckled. “Honey, I’ve been crossing paths with ‘Orrible Honoré since the first trading post got set up in this valley, and I don’t think anybody does it for her. At least, not in about, oh, fifty-some years or so.” She waggled her eyebrows comically. Testy’s round, bald head, sloped, inconsequential shoulders, and decisive paunch all backed up the waggle. Rachel couldn’t tell just exactly what it was meant to suggest, but she laughed anyway. “That’s better. Now, tell Auntie Testy what else happened.”

Rachel shrugged. “Nothing, really.”

“Tell. If it’s gossip, you know I’ll hear eventually, and then won’t you feel terrible for not having been the one to clue me in? Come on, girl, spill it.

Rachel shrugged. Her meat loaf and salad had converged on her plate till she could no longer tell any difference, and she turned to a pathetic brownie, huddling under a scoop of ice cream and looking chilly. “It was just at the mall today. When I was buying makeup. There were these two girls there, and I guess they sort of shocked me.”

“You were shocked? That doesn’t seem likely. What were they doing, performing full-on sex acts for a quarter?”

“No, they were just sitting there. As if that would shock me, anyway. I lived in Hong Kong, you know. But these girls, I mean, they were chic, Test. They had on these little black leather skirts, and their hair was really cute and short–”

“And they were wearing makeup in shades like ‘plum’ and ‘aubergine’ instead of boring old red and pink?” Testy interrupted. “Yeah, I got the picture. So what did they do to shock you? You could have just asked them where they bought their lipstick if that was such a big deal.”

Rachel shook her head. “It wasn’t that. Although I wish we could wear something less retro on stage sometimes. But it was just... well, they were going through their bags and showing each other the stuff they’d bought, and then one of them reached over and kissed the other one. Full on, lips and tongues and everything. I mean, it lasted for awhile. And I thought, well, that’s it. If I’m not gay I’m never going to be in fashion anymore. I’m finished. I felt like a dinosaur. I might as well have been standing there in pink hair curlers and a house dress.”

“Let me promise you, it wasn’t that bad,” Testy said.

“Oh yes, it was. You don’t know.” Rachel slumped. Her red hair against the lurid purple banquette put Testy in mind of certain ill-advised cartoon sequences she’d seen once when unaccustomedly up early on a Saturday morning. “I want a cigarette,” Rachel added.

“Oh yeah, that’ll fix things. Go work on killing yourself before the lesbians and Honoré do it for you.”

“Get off my back, Testy. I need something to distract me. I’m depressed. Come on, come for a walk with me outside. You won’t even smell my smoke that way.”

“Not a chance,” Testy shook her head, smiling fondly. “I have mending to do if you’re going to look half-decent onstage tonight. And Heddy needs to have that new Finale backpack re-padded. Poor girl got dents in her shoulders last night.”

“I don’t know how you can tell what she needs, Testy. I’ve worked with her for five years now and I still can’t understand a word she says. How can somebody live in the U.S. for so long and still have such a thick accent?”

“Oh, a good dresser has ways to understand what her girls need, babydoll. I even understand you, and that’s no mean feat, believe me.”

Rachel started dropped utensils back onto her tray with loud thunks and clanks. “I’m easy, Testy. I just want eternal youth and employment. What’s so hard about that?”

Testy hooted with laughter. “Oh, be careful what you ask for, girl! You never know who might be listening!” She cackled loudly as the dealers and porters and maids all turned around to watch.

“Testy, maybe I am a lesbian,” Rachel said as they got up together and carried their trays to the kitchen. “I think I love you.”

“I love you, too, doll,” Testy told her. “Now get over all this drama, go suck on your cancer stick, and come back and be gorgeous for second show.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ma’am?! That’s ‘Miss’ to you, young woman!”

The two threw their arms around each other, Testy’s coming up only to Rachel’s waist, and rolled out of the cafeteria.

NEXT UP: THE GYPSY TELLS ALL (Monday 8/10)

An Evening's Entertainment

One of the perks of being a performer in Vegas, Rachel had always thought, was that it made you feel “in” whenever you went to other people’s shows, when you got to skip past the line at the theatre and get seated right away, and when you knew people onstage, and when you got to hang out with them afterward.

She was starstruck by her own career, sometimes. Still. That fact convinced her she still belonged here. It wasn’t time to get out yet.

For the show and the dancers she was watching at this moment, getting-out time was very near, though. Rachel sat in the cabaret of the Desert Oasis Hotel, site of celebrations and Vegas glories in the past but these days pretty tired and threadbare, and mostly empty. And condemned. The Oasis was slated to come down in less than a month. These dancers in front of her would be the last to ever grace its historic cabaret stage, where Deano and Frank had once sported, where the underage Liza used to sneak in while her mother played the main room, where girls and boys had sweated themselves into a stupor for the edification and enjoyment of uncounted slavering hordes over the years.

The thus accidentally historic production was called Sin-o-matic, and it attempted to resurrect the glory days of Vegas by saluting the glory days of Hollywood, only with lots fewer clothes and, to be honest, wit than any Classic Hollywood producer would have approved. So far, there’d been a silent movie number, a monster movie number, and a water ballet extravaganza that made use of an ancient, 18 inch-deep rain trough at the front of the stage. The trough hadn’t been opened for a generation, and, given the alkaline stench that filled the room when the dancers stepped in and paraded through it, Rachel wondered whether its water had been changed in that time. This might have been the same stuff seen by the Rat Pack, a truly icky thought.

The show was not exciting, but she knew most of the cast and had seen or worked with most of them in better productions, so she found herself thinking of those, and hearkening back to better times, and better evenings, as her current, younger coworkers hooted and hollered at the table around her and Sin-o-matic trudged through its final paces.

“That was great!” she crowed afterward to a girl named Charity. They’d learned a show in Paris together once, more than a decade ago. “Let me buy you a drink.”

“I’ll take that. And it’s a piece of crap,” Charity grimaced. “But it’s a paycheck, you know? Or it has been. I should be excited it’s ending. But it’s a job, right? I don’t know what I’m going to do next. How do you keep going? Don’t you ever get tired of the rat race?”

“You mean auditions?” Rachel waved at a bartender, who waved back but kept washing glasses. “We never used to have to wait for a drink, did we?” She forced a smile and Charity rolled her eyes.

“They suck here. Hey, butt-fuck!”

“Charity!”

“Oh, what’s anybody gonna do? Fire me? Get us some beers,” she directed the barman.

And when he had, and Rachel had paid, she joined Charity and the rest of her cast at the other end of the bar. Charity was, if she remembered rightly, almost, but not quite Rachel's age. The other dancers, all years younger and near the starts of their careers, were chattering about jobs in Japan, or discussing the relative merits of different cruise ship contracts. Or they asked her if she thought Honoré would be firing many people at Extrav!'s next contract change, opening up spots there.

She left while Charity was holding court with a tale of performing in a burning theatre – literally burning, with flames licking up from the basement – while the panicked French ballet mistress screamed at them to, “Go onstage, go onstage,” but their leading lady flung her tulle cape over her shoulder and drove home topless, on her scooter.

Rachel had been there. “Good times,” she muttered, starting her car.

Elsewhere on the Strip, Vegas' newest discoverer was continuing his explorations. The girls and the limo were long gone, and the visitor stood and considered what, in this world, passed for an institution.

The Olympus Hotel and Resort was the largest of the first wave of big luxury resorts. Thirty-five years later, that made it venerable. Originally, it, like all its competitors, had lain grandly back from the road, content to entrap from a distance, guarding its own few acres jealously, holding its visitors safely distant from its neighbors with a moat-like ring of empty desert. In recent years, all that had changed, and even the most mega of resorts had had to build out to the sidewalk, extending pseudopods like hungry amoebas to draw in the new species of tourist, who liked to hop from casino to casino, whose attention span could not be counted on to last past breakfast, and who demanded themes and outré décor and non-stop entertainment along with their coddling.

The Olympus, thus, now sported a brand new façade which towered over the sidewalk. Three stories of ersatz balustrades and stacked columns and indefensible arches added up to a temple for the biggest gods in the universe to fight over. Random, electronic harp notes fell softly through the air, managing to suggest that just inside the frosty, marble-tone doors were scores of scantily-clad slaves equipped with palm fronds and wine, eager to please each incoming tourist. The original front, lost now an eighth of a mile back and relegated to valet parking, had been low and concrete-cool in its understatement. This new face practically shouted its intentions to bilk you.

It moved, whirred, flashed, and gurgled. Archimedes at the height of his brilliance had certainly never dreamed of a construction like this, nor any of its neighbors. Just across the street, a hotel that looked like nothing so much as a steamship in drag sat cheek-by-jowl with a forty-story pinball machine about to flash tilt! In the other direction, the Taj Mahal elbowed aside Mount Fuji, which puffed out thinning, resentful smoke from its peak.

Everywhere, there were people coming and going, sorting through their money, confabbing about where to go next, how their chances looked, which casino might bring them luck or what they might do to hit the big jackpot.

And out front on the sidewalk in front of the Olympus, the town’s newest comer stood and looked the place over.

“This is good,” he said. And he stepped up to the doors. A statue of Athena towered over them, fire-eyed and looking ready to hurl her globe and scepter at any unworthy gamblers who dared approach.

“Hello, my dear. How are your sisters?” the man bobbed his head he passed under her sandals.

At Hotel Reception, the first clerk had proved unready to help him, but a few simple demands and a great wad of cash had produced a manager high enough in the pecking order to adjust rules as needed. Really, Vegas was living up to all his hopes for it.

“No luggage, sir?”

Smile. “Not yet.”

“May I have your name?”

A smile. A slightly raised eyebrow. Was this nacent hotel guest considering a “no” answer? What would have happened then?

But: “Zem. You can put me down as Zem. Z-E-M.”

“Mr. Zem, then. Thank you, sir. And will you want two keys?”

A flick from an eyebrow. “I’ll let you know.”

“Welcome to Olympus then, sir. The world capitol of luxury and indulgence.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Zem growled, and left again to explore more of this new Babylon beyond Babylon’s wildest dreams.

NEXT POST: TOO STRAIGHT TO BE CHIC (Friday 8/7)