Double, Double

The hard part had turned out to be the fresh mugwart, because there wasn’t any in Las Vegas. Fresh anything was always hard in the desert, unless it was sage. But there weren’t too many magical potions that called for tumbleweeds, so fresh things always required, at the very least, tracking down a supplier with a greenhouse. It got expensive.

Lilith had found a supplier, a graduate student who looked like a leftover from the counter-culture Sixties, but believed in Wicca and grew all sorts of interesting things in a back corner of the university greenhouse. She’d come up with any number of herbs and rare cuttings as Lilith read them off her ingredient list, and without batting an eye or asking questions. But, when asked for mugwart, she shook her head.

“It won’t grow in the desert,” she explained. “Not under controlled conditions, not under any conditions. Mugwart grows alongside creekbeds. It needs mud and damp. And the light’s wrong here– you know that kind of green, leafy light you get in places where there’s lots of foliage? When the sun shines through the leaves and everything feels damp...” she stared off at a private vision, and Lilith nodded briskly.

“I get it. Where can I get some, though? There must be someone on the West Coast. There are creeks in California.”

Her expert looked doubtful. “I don’t know if they’re right. You know, the light is really different in different parts of the country. East Coast light is heavier, more muggy, you know? West Coast is lighter, brighter. Some plants don’t make the transition. Like nightshade, it needs–”

Lilith never learned what nightshade needed. It wasn’t called for in her recipe, so she didn’t stay to listen. She returned to her online searching, and eventually turned up a grower in L.A. who promised her as much mugwart as she desired. She flew there and back again one afternoon, the precious plant well-swaddled with damp rags in her lap, crossing her fingers that it was right and would do the trick. At least she hadn’t had to pick it at midnight under a full moon, she thought gratefully.

After that, the recipe was not hard. The spoken spell was a challenge, since it was in Basque, a language reputedly unlearnable by non-natives. She thought she might have hit a roadblock there, till she stumbled on a small collection of Basque Shakespeare and Jane Austen readings on cassette for the blind. By painstakingly comparing those original texts with her spell, she managed to create a phonetic translation. She never did figure exactly out what she was saying, but she hoped that wouldn’t matter. She refused to waste time wondering what a bunch of sheepherders in the upper Pyranees were doing making up spells like the one she wanted.

What she was trying to get, or create, was a champion to fight Zem for her. She needed something big. Something powerful. And something, if possible, as ancient as he was.

Or at least, some reasonable facsimile.

The incantation was to be said three times while she boiled the potion, which she did in a mutter, banishing thoughts of Macbeth’s three witches from her mind. She peered long and hard into her iron pot when she finished reciting, wondering if she’d done it right and if all the ingredients were sufficiently dissolved. With this spell as with many others, timing was of the essence.

She decided that if she couldn’t actually see any recognizable bits of mugwart or lemon peel floating around in the dark muck, it was probably ready. Besides, she should be able to count on the Winter Solstice to energize the spell and make up for some shortcomings, shouldn’t she?

She grabbed the pot with her heaviest oven mitts and headed for her car.

The potion had to be used hot. She supposed that really, she ought to have mixed it up on site, a yard or two from her subject. But that was obviously impossible. The modern world, not to mention the hospitality industry, was certainly not ready for a Gypsy witch stirring a caldron on a clear Tuesday in December.

She sped down the freeway, passing every car till she hit the last exit. Then she careened around three left turns, nearly overturning the pot in her passenger seat, and screeched into valet parking at the Nile.

She grabbed her mitts and the caldron and hurried out, managing to toss a ten to the pimply-faced youth who took her keys.

“Won’t be here long. Just don’t bother me,” she said sweetly.

He was young enough to be dazzled by her smile, or else new enough at his job to be impressed by the ten. In either case, he just stood there watching after her and didn’t say a word.

The incantation had to be repeated backwards while she poured the potion over each of the statue’s four feet. She’d made a special trip here yesterday to reconfirm that there were, in fact, four complete paws, that the wall of the hotel didn’t swallow the back two. She’d had some bad moments when she’d thought of that.

The inflections were even harder, speaking backward, and Lilith struggled to get through them smoothly. She finished the first paw, screwed up the second irretrievably, went back and started over, and noticed as she repeated her steps that the whole parking staff was gathering in a little knot to stare at her.

Just get through the spell, she told herself, and you won’t have to worry about them.

She only hoped her accent was good enough to make the incantation work. Whatever spirits or earthly forces actually listened to these things would have to pay pretty close attention to get every nuance. She stumbled as she came around to the fourth and final leg, and poured the very last of her now-cooling potion on its toes. And when she was finished, she straightened and looked up, studied the legs and the belly of the thing, which were the only parts she could see, and suddenly, without warning, she knew.

She knew before she saw the movement, before she even felt the ground shudder underneath her as the thing shifted its weight. She knew without doubt.

The actual performance was wildly impressive, of course. Boy, if Cheryl could just see me now! Lilith thought. But no one could see her. The valet parkers had scattered, she noticed. And even the car noise from the Strip seemed to have abated. No one was around to scream or point or wonder.

Somehow, in this most populous and busy place on earth, Lilith found herself, now, utterly alone. Alone, except for the gigantic form she’d brought to life, the statue she’d awakened, the monolithic being she’d succeeded in energizing magically.

When the ground stopped shaking, Lilith looked up at the thing she’d wrought and felt impressed, and awe-struck, and proud, and excited. But mostly, she felt very, very small.

The Sphinx looked down at her. “Shall we go?” it invited.

NEXT POST: ROUNDUP (Monday 3/15)

Fly Me to the... Moon?

Magnolia looked up at Errol and just registered his look of extreme shock and confusion before a blast of wind hit the back of her head. Her vision swirled, the world spun, and stretched and warped itself like a cheesy, twenty-year-old special effect in a B movie, and she fell on all fours the sidewalk.

Surely, she thought, this isn’t absolutely necessary.

“Zem!” she gurgled, “What are you–”

"Come," she heard Zem's voice intone.

She pressed her palms down and tried to glower at the empty air. Around her, three steps away, her untouched posse shifted uncertainly a step or two back. They were beginning to get used to the little eccentricities that following the mayor of Las Vegas these days entailed. Miraculous comings and goings, disembodied voices, occasional and intermittent farm animals had become parts of their employment expectations. But a private tornado was new.

“Errol–” she faltered.

There was a chuckle, a sound vibrating through the air and threatening to shatter it. Amused, yes, but so strong, so powerful, the world itself shied away in self-preservation. “Oh yes,” she heard, “him too.”

And then there was a thrust, or a grab and a pull, and Magnolia felt she was forced out of her body. She entered a realm of darkness, with speeding streaks of color ripping by. There was a feel of things tearing and crashing together, making and unmaking themselves on a huge scale. Scary. Unpredictable.

My body, she cried out in her own brain. I was just getting used to it!

Again, sounds of disembodied merriment.

“We’ll need these, too,” she heard, or felt, or somehow perceived. And just as the last veil fell and she was cut off from the real, ordinary world altogether, she knew her posse was rounded up, collected, and pulled through to where she was. They followed along like the tail of a kite, bouncing off the darkness, as Zem tugged her and Errol and them all along.

Holy shit, she tried to say. She thought she might have heard another chuckle from Zem, but in this state of things, who knew?

They went.

NEXT POST: DOUBLE, DOUBLE (Friday 3/12)

Hero Delivery

When Rachel woke up, there was a handsome prince staring down at her.

“Oh god,” she moaned.

“I think she’s awake,” the prince called out. His dark hair needed to be cut. It fell all over his perfectly guileless eyes. His chin was stubbly in a way that was not nearly artistic enough to have been deliberate, but sexier than any male model. The jaw line beneath the stubble was strong but not Dudley Dooright cartoonish, matching his brows, which were furrowed as he gazed down.

She lay perfectly still in the mud and slush. She moaned again.

“Of course she’s awake,” Testy Lesbiana’s voice approached. “She only fainted. Silly girl. Get up, Rachel, the ground’s cold and you’re all dirty.”

“Oh, thank you for pointing that out,” Rachel muttered. She thrashed around and managed to connect her two feet to the ground and her two hands to various other hands reaching out to help her. Everybody involved hauled, the ground retreated, and she stood up.

“Steady, Simba,” Testy cautioned, holding her arm firmly. "Now — Seth, Rachel. Rachel, Seth. I’m sure he’d be happy to hold you up all by himself, so I'm letting go, babydoll. And she did so, leaving Rachel to stumble again, into the strong and waiting arms of the made-to-order hero.

“Um, thanks,” she muttered.

“No problem,” he assured her. He helped her stand up straight one more time and smiled at her. His eyes crinkled at the corners.

She wanted to stare at that smile, look him in the eye and ask all sorts of things — Who are you? Where did you come from? Have we met? Why not? — but nothing came out from her lips. She looked back at Testy, instead.

“So who’s Seth?” she asked, and then flinched at the baldness of it.

“Your handsome prince,” her friend told her, just as baldly. “I’ve got to go talk to the dragon. This is what I warned you about, baby,” she said. “My friend over there...” she indicated a particularly dark patch of the lightless woods, where Rachel avoided looking, “well, I told you he wouldn’t fit in at any coffeehouse. Hell, he wouldn’t fit in any coffeehouse.” She made an attempt at laughter, but it fell flat in the gummy air. “I know, I know,” Testy added more gently. “It’s all just too much for your little showgirl mind, isn’t it? Wish I could help you with that, honey. But the truth is... well, this.” She spread her hands out to indicate the slushy park, its wet, drippy trees, the mysterious if sexy stranger who’d appeared without warning, and the shape that lurked among the trees only a dozen feet away. “I’m sorry, but here it is. This is the world, as I know it.” She shrugged.

Rachel looked down, then up again at Testy. She was afraid if she lost sight of her friend, she might find that Testy had transformed into a monster, too, or else disappeared completely and left her with this... Seth. Or... something even weirder.

“Don’t think so much, doll,” Testy soothed. “It’s better if you just go with it. Figure things out later. When you’re not in shock,” she added, and smiled and reached up to pat Rachel’s shoulder with her pudgy hand.

“I’ll stay here. You can ask me anything you want,” a voice behind her shoulder offered. She glanced back at Seth, who was watching her, and trying to look encouraging, she guessed.

“Thanks, but–”

“That’s perfect,” Testy interrupted. “Sorry doll,” she added, “but like I said, I have to confab with the lizard. Hang out here with the hero, okay? He’ll take good care of you. Hell — that’s his job!” She gave a hoot of laughter, stepped back to look Rachel, and then Seth, over for a long moment, shook her head, and smiled. “You kids have fun,” she said. And then she stumped off through the bushes, taking no time for the path.

“Have you known the wise woman long?” Seth asked.

NEXT POST: THE ONLY WAY TO FLY (Monday 3/8)

Here Be Dragons (Finally)

The park was amazingly dark, cold, and slippery.

Who could have imagined a place in Manhattan could ever be so black and inhospitable. Rachel's feet slid with every step, and she could no longer tell what was frozen ground and what was slushy mud. She wished she had a cigarette, but more for the light and warmth than the smoke.

"Testy," she whispered. Why was she whispering?

There was no sound. Her drag queen guide had gone ahead, ostensibly to make sure they were going the right way so Rachel didn't have to kill herself on this path for no reason.

There needed to be one hell of a good reason at the end of this, Rachel had decided. She slogged on.

The path led uphill, twisting and turning through trees and underbrush which Testy swore had been there since the island was bargained away from those unsuspecting Wappingers, who had clearly never heard of charging full retail.

Mixed in with the trees every now and again was an old fashioned lamppost, which sort of weakened Testy's claim, but none of them worked and Rachel could only see them if she happened to catch one silhouetted against the deep gray sky, bony as a scarecrow's skeleton looming above her. She shivered.

"Come on, Testy. Where the hell are we going?" she muttered.

The ground got steeper and she scrambled up it. The river, surely just over this rise and down a long way, could be heard louder here. Or maybe that was a lot of snow, coming in an avalanche to bury her once and for all. She couldn't decide if she'd mind that or not.

Up. Up more. Slipping and sliding, and clambering to the hilltop to find Testy standing with her fists on her hips in the dead dark.

"Testy!"

"Sh! I think he's coming. There!" Testy slung an arm out.

"What? Who's coming? Who is this friend of yours, anyway?"

"Shush, doll. No time to tell you. You'll have to figure it out for yourself now. I promise, it'll all be okay." Testy was suddenly standing right next to her, staring up at her with wide eyes. "Promise. Really."

"Okay. I guess."

"Look up."

And Testy pointed straight at the sky.

Rachel followed her finger, feeling foolish and waiting for her friend to start laughing. Probably this was all a joke, just Testy teasing her, giving her shit for following her up here like a crazed stalker.

"Higher."

Rachel looked higher. Waiting for the laughter. She'd better play along, or they'd be out here all night.

"Do you see him?"

See him? Rachel saw nothing. She reached out to grab Testy's hand, just in case her friend was thinking of sneaking away in the dark to really spook her, and kept on staring straight up.

And something brushed past the branches up there.

"No joke," Testy told her.

Rachel took a breath. No joke.

There was something large and dark up there, cruising by. It was remarkably quiet. It flapped, turned, and then broke through the trees and came down lower, snapping some branches and a small tree. It was huge, and it was heavy, and it was graceful in a black, stealthy manner. There was nothing funny about it whatsoever. It was not a joke, not in any way.

Rachel’s vision got fuzzy, and she started to see stars. The stars shifted and whirled and zoomed in at her and out again. The dark thing broke a few more branches, and she clearly felt Testy pulling on her hand to make her step back and give it more room.

It occurred to her how blank her mind was. This might all have been rehearsed, a big new production number for Extravaganza! 3 about a monster, and a maiden... there should be a boy, somewhere. A male lead — a hero. He wouldn’t save her, the monster always won in the end in Vegas, but she needed someone tall and handsome to dance with, before she got eaten or sacrificed or whatever. There would be a nice adagio number.

And then, as those thoughts ran together and whirled through her brain, the big black shape landed heavily, finally, ten feet in front of her and the stars in her vision brightened, rushed together, and exploded silently.

Rachel passed out.

NEXT POST: AUDITIONING HEROES (Friday 3/5)

Stage Managing the Revolution

“Does she know?” the Ghost asked the monolith.

“Know what?” Sphinx feigned ignorance.

“Don’t play coy with me, statue. It’s nearly time,” he answered.

Sphinx would have shifted, would have liked to be able to make some small, meaningless movement, as he saw human beings doing, to cover his discomfort. Not to mention, to give him time to think of something to say.

Life had been simpler when all he’d worried about had been how to worship the moon properly. He glanced up and saw that that deity was barely visible, not even bothering to shine down brightly, not even noticing her acolyte’s adventures.

“I believe she will be ready,” he uttered, finally.

“Good then. See that she is.”

“I—” Sphinx started to object. What could he be expecting? Was he picturing the Sphinx dressing Venus, fluffing her up, tying and fastening her, getting her ready for her big date like some kind of gigantic, stone governess?

“I don’t have time to argue, statue,” the ghost cut off his thoughts. “I gotta go. But you make sure she’s ready.”

And he went, flickering away like an old black and white movie — which was something Sphinx had heard of, but never seen, of course. He sighed.

“Thank you,” a small voice said.

“Of course.”

“I am ready, you know,” Venus went on. “It’s coming. The big moment, when we meet Zem. I hope our champion shows up. I don’t—” she broke off. There was silence.

“Want to face him alone?” Sphinx prompted. He waited.

He might have heard a sigh, somewhere behind his massive head and crown. But no words. Venus had retreated again, or disappeared, or maybe even gone once and for all to make her way to the meeting.

Destiny, it seemed to Sphinx, was coming in for a landing in Vegas. And he was here on the outskirts. He stared up at the sky, wishing the moon would hear his complaints.

NEXT POST: HERE BE DRAGONS (FINALLY AND DEFINITELY) (Friday 2/26)

Cheryl Sees Her Future

Cheryl laid the cards out all across the table, covering its surface from edge to edge.

There were things in the aether, she felt certain, that wanted to come out. They wanted an ear, a vision, a voice. And with Lilith missing — with Lilith hardly bothering to come in, or call, even though there was finally all the business they could want! — Cheryl was the only one available. And even she recognized she was inadequate. The aether cried out, helplessly. And no one cares except me, though Cheryl. And I can’t see!

She’d never really seen a thing, she knew. Just like she’d never really carried off Totie Fields or Mama Cass onstage. She might have been the only girl in a cast of drag queens, but she was the worst impersonator in the show. She knew it, all the boys knew it, and the audiences knew it, too. They chose her numbers to go to the bathroom.

“Ah!” she cried out, banging her fist down. The cards just sat there, pretty pictures on cardboard, and didn’t say or show a thing.

“You’re working late.”

There was a man in the room with her. Zem, Lilith’s old client. And two other —

“Wha—” Cheryl started.

“You’re working very hard.”

His voice was smooth as honey. His smile was bright and warm. Lilith had said terrible things about this man. Cheryl caught her breath. All the bangles on her body chimed.

“I — I just stayed because a client wanted—” she looked at her watch. It had been two hours since her last customer had left. But he couldn’t know that. “We’re here all day,” she said, “if anybody wants us.”

“I’m sure you are,” he reassured her. “And I’m sure they do.” This is the one. He sat down. “And I want you. Would you like to help me?”

He stared at her across the table. His eyes were gray and clouded, but his gaze was unblinking. Cheryl hardly felt she was breathing, as she looked at him, caught. Frozen.

“I — what—” she gasped.

“Come with me. I have wonders to give you.”

A smile, so faint she might not have noticed it if she hadn’t already been staring, passed over his lips. Yet it was so deep, so full of meaning, she was bombarded with thoughts, with forgotten wishes, with images so fantastic she couldn’t believe they’d been born in her head.

She shivered with a thrill that traveled up from her toes through her head and jittered out her hands. She heard her rings clink against each other as her fingers twitched. She imagined the aether that Lilith saw into so calmly might feel like that. The things hidden from her, all those truths and mysteries, might shoot through her spine and electrify her if she, just once, could focus hard enough.

“All right,” she said before she thought about it.

“Good,” he told her. “Very good. You’ll be my hero. Heroine.” He grinned at his own correction.

Cheryl couldn’t catch her breath. “Me? But I — I’ve never even—”

She had no idea what she’d never even done. But his suggestion just seemed... impossible, fantastic. Something anyone who knew her would laugh at.

“Give me your hand.”

Not “believe in me”. Not even “follow me”, as Jesus said to those fishermen. The Christian god required far too much.

“Here,” Zem prompted. He laid his hand, palm up, on the table between them. Cheryl laid hers on top.

“Be strengthened,” Zem said.

And she was.

NEXT POST: MANAGING THE REVOLUTION (Monday 2/22)

The Goats Evolve

He found them together, as he’d known he would. Could they ever have existed alone?

Dan and Sam lay tangled in each other’s arms, sleeping. Zem had no idea whose bed this was, whether one’s or the other’s while the wife in question was away, or perhaps this whole house was their secret hideaway, a place they’d bought together to indulge their little whims. He didn’t care. It made things easier, to find them here. He wouldn’t have to search twice. Besides, he couldn’t conceive of speaking to either one without the other.

He looked down at them almost fondly. Useful little goats. Then he stirred the air, and took on physicality as the tiny tornado he’d inspired ran around the room, knocked cell phones and cologne bottles and alarm clocks to the floor, and woke Dan and Sam quite efficiently.

“Wha– hey! What are you–”

“Sh,” Zem cautioned. His teeth gleamed in the dark. “I’ve come to get you. I have a little job.” He winked.

If the Ruler of Olympus ever winked, history must have been too appalled to record the incident. Even now, it looked askance. But Zem winked, nonetheless, and the Boy Scout/goats got the full brunt of it.

“Wha–” the other one began. Sam, the blond. He was always the slower of the two.

“Sh!” Zem repeated, and this time the sound was sharper. But then he smiled again. “Come along,” he invited. He crooked a finger.

More very un-god-like behavior. Even Dan and Sam seemed to recognize it, and to feel alarmed. They got out of bed, hesitantly, exposed in gleaming designer underwear.

“Very nice,” Zem commented. “Come, boys,” he said. “We have places to go.” He grinned. “People to pick up.”

“Wait–” Dan objected. But Zem turned...

And took them along as, once again, he went.

NEXT POST: CHERYL SEES HER FUTURE (Monday 2/15)

Magnolia Makes Plans

Magnolia stood with her arms folded, while Errol Manoff waited silently next to her. The sky was still drizzly, the desert still bedraggled.

“What about overhead shots?” she demanded. “Can’t we get a couple helicopters?” Her long fingernails tapped against her opposite bicep, newly resurrected from a long-dismissed memory. “Or a blimp– I love those blimps they light up over stadiums. You know– you can advertise across the whole sides– they’re big, glowing billboards in the sky.”

Errol looked down on her. “I don’t think blimps can fly in the desert,” he growled. “Bad air currents.”

They were standing in the middle of the Strip, right in the middle on the island with the palm trees waving up and down in both directions. a huge construction rose before them: plywood and plaster and lots and lots of paint arching up into the air, forming a speaking platform way up top.

Three nights from now, on New Year's Eve, when the street was closed off and full of revelers, Zem would announce the New new Las Vegas.

He'd be seen, he assured them, on every television screen in ever home around the globe. They'd set up the cameras, and he would take care of the signal.

"I understand this box," he'd told her, patting the TV fondly. And, given the hours he'd spent sitting in front of it, she'd thought sourly, he no doubt did.

Errol and the others had resisted the plan a little more. They had a hard time accepting Zem's more supernatural moves still. This was magic, pure and simple, but Magnolia was growing used to that. And the boys did what she told them, eventually.

But they didn't like it. “Are you sure this is all in order?” Errol demanded again.

She shrugged. “If it’s not, there’ll be a large burnt spot on the pavement all around this thing when he throws a few lightning bolts." She laughed, suddenly. “And that’ll introduce Zem to the world as effectively as anything, won't it?”

“Maybe not with quite the image we want,” he growled sourly.

She patted him on the shoulder. “Oh, it's not like he’s some tame pussycat. He’s an elemental force, for god’s sake. He’s dangerous. News will get out pretty quickly. But no one will care. They'll want what he has even if it does kill them. Lots of them will want it more."

“And that doesn’t worry you? You don’t think, in a few years, he might get bored with this whole thing, and start crushing us all, just because he can?”

His words were uninflected, as always.

“I think that’s exactly what will happen,” Magnolia answered in a lowered voice. “Or, well, I think it might,” she amended. “Who knows? He might need us enough that he’ll be careful. But in either case...” she stopped a few steps above the sidewalk and turned, looking him in the eye, “We don’t know. We’ll never know. Until it happens, which will be too late.” She held his gaze.

“And what do you intend to do about that?” he asked levelly.

Magnolia took his elbow and linked her arm through his. “I’m so glad you asked,” she said. “As it happens, I’ve learned there’s another deity in town. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder just how many of these folks there might be, all over the world. If our current Fearless Leader doesn’t end up meeting all our needs, well...” she smiled up at Errol, “I think perhaps there could be a change in regime. With a little planning.” She crinkled her cheeks, managed to make it sound like a come-on. And, as Errol raised his eyebrows, she smiled deeper.

She didn’t mention that Vegas actually held at least one and a half more deities, besides Zem. And who knew what the future might hold for the newest, honest-to-god male-to-female demi-goddess on the planet.

Magnolia had Plans.

NEXT POST: EVOLVING GOATS (Friday 2/12)

A Tale in the Dark

“It all began a few days before we left Vegas,” Testy explained to Rachel. “I’d been bugging you to get out, remember? And then I was driving about an hour south of town one night, and I had a... well, I guess you could say a visitation.”

“A what?”

Testy Lesbiana sighed. “Somebody came and talked to me.”

“Out in the desert?” Rachel wrinkled her nose. “What were you doing?”

Testy rolled her eyes, a professional-grade, show-stopping rendition, although the ex-showgirl was busy staring at her feet and missed the performance. “Peeing, if you must know. Are you ready to listen to this story or not? And watch out for that tree root.”

Rachel tripped. “Go on.”

“I think she was waiting for me,” Testy said. “Now, just listen. You’re not going to like this, but it’s your first lesson in believing things that sound impossible. Believe me, by the time we’re through, you’re going to run into lots harder stuff than this. So this babe… she was sort of flying.”
Rachel raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

“Good. You’re listening. So she was flying, and the other thing you have to know is that she looked good. I mean, really fabulous. Blond hair all waving everywhere, not teased but big as a house, even so. And perfect skin. I mean perfect. Glowing, even.”

She’d alighted on the sand as if she were the Grand Duchess of Somewhere or Other stepping out of her diamond-encrusted carriage.

“She was wearing gold, doll — gold. I mean, who can pull that off without it looking like plain old beige and sucking all the life out of your face? Well, let me tell you, no matter how freaked out I was, I was impressed!”

“You would be, Testy.”

Testy Lesbiana did not pause. “Anyway, so she walked up to me, and without even noticing what I had on, she started talking.”

“What did you have on?”

“What? Oh — my best blue sequin dress and those pumps you liked last year at the Christmas party, the ones with the itty bitty ankle straps. And this absolutely gorgeous beaded bag I never got to use onstage in the old show. I bought it the week before we closed.”

“You wore those three-inch heels in the desert? How did you walk?”

Testy stopped. “This is what you find unbelievable?” she demanded.

Rachel tripped over another bump in the path, sighed, and ran her mittened hands randomly around her pockets. “Damn. That was my last one. Test, this is just like all those stories in the car — how you did makeovers on Martha Washington and everything. Am I supposed to take this seriously?”

Testy pulled herself up straighter. “It wasn’t Martha Washington, it was Abigail Adams. She was a fun girl. Nothing like that stick-in-the-mud Martha. Scones and whiskey every afternoon — never mind. I don’t care what you think of me or how crazy it sounds, for this moment, you have to believe. Pretend I’m a big ol’ movie that you’re watching and stop questioning. Can you do that, doll?”

“I’ll try.”

Testy nodded. “Okay then. So she says to me, ‘I need you, Testy Lesbiana’. And this is the part where it starts getting weird, doll.”

“Really?”

“Sarcasm doesn’t become you. See, she told me about some bad dude who’d showed up in Las Vegas. Trying to take the place over, push everybody else around. I know, I know, it sounds just like a film noir script, but it made sense when she said it. Maybe I was just dazzled by the glamour and the gold. I don’t know. But the bottom line is that the only person who can stand up to this bad Vegas dude is an old friend of mine, and she needed me to find him, and I always did that here, when I lived here, so… here we are.”

“And that’s it? You met some woman who was mad at her boyfriend or something, and she asked you to go across the country to get a bigger bully you happened to know, and you just said okay?”

“Uh… more or less. I don’t think it’s a boyfriend thing. I think it’s much more important. And my friend’s not exactly a bully.”

“Whoever he is. We’re going to meet up, deliver this message that he needs to go to Vegas, and then… what, Testy? What do we do then?”

“Uh. Well, that might get a little more complicated. See, I think I’ll need to go back, too. And you… well, you’ll have to decide for yourself, but there may be other circumstances that’ll make you feel differently then. Okay? So just go with it.”

“And this weird chick you met in the desert. You’re sure she wasn’t just an escapee from a mental institution? I mean, really, Testy.”

“Babe, she was flawless at two in the morning in the middle of the desert an hour out of Las Vegas. No mental patient could have done that. Besides, she knew my name, doll. She came looking for me, she knew who I was. And she knew my friend, too. She… called him by name. That’s a big deal. You’ll understand when you meet him.”

“Whatever, Testy. Can we just do this and get it over with?”

“You’re signing on for the duration? Sticking with me?”

“I guess so. I’d probably fall down and die if I tried to get back to the subway station by myself, anyway, so I’m probably stuck here.”

“That’ll work.” Testy grabbed her friend’s arm. “Don’t worry, doll, this’ll be fun. Just follow Auntie Testy. This way, and mind the bends in the path.”

Rachel sighed. “Don’t I always?”

NEXT POST: MEANWHILE, BACK AT RANCH... (Monday 2/8)

A Girl, A Park, and the Dark

There was something moving in the dark.

“Testy?” Rachel hissed. She froze in the act of grinding out the last cigarette in her pack.

No answer.

“Testy!”

“Right here, doll,” came the voice, but it was farther away than Rachel had expected.

“Oh, hell,” she muttered, and crashed on through the underbrush, trying to find her erstwhile fairy godmother.

The park had turned out to be not just dark, but frozen. Where there might have been paths in summer, the last week of December held dark ice slicks. What might have been pretty groundcover in spring, the winter had reduced the stiff, black sticks eager to tear at her boots and jeans.

“Oh, hell, Testy, where are you?”

“Waiting for you, sweetie pie, just waiting.”

She sounded as if she were reclining by a poolside.

“Testy… shit!”

“Careful, showgirl,” the drag queen cautioned.

“Thanks a lot. Will you help me? And will you tell me what’s going on?”

Rachel suddenly felt a strong grip on her forearm. “Walk this way, baby, and Auntie Testy will tell you. But you gotta stay close, because these woods are dark. I wouldn’t want you to get lost like some kind of fairy tale princess needing to be rescued. And the story’s long. And you’re not going to like it.”

“You mean I’m going to like it less than getting hauled out here in the middle of nowhere in the freezing cold in the fucking wilderness, where probably murderers and rapists are just waiting to jump on us? Because I’m loving this, Test. I’m really loving it.”

“Oh don’t worry, babydoll. New York rapists are way too smart to be out here in this cold. They’re all home in front of their fires.”

“And why aren’t we?”

“Ah. Well, that’s the thing, doll. See, my friend, the one we came here to look for way back when it was warm? I think he might be coming. He might be here tonight.”

“Here? Out here in the dark? What kind of guy is this, Testy? What. The. Hell. Is. Going. On?”

“Hm. Yeah, I can see how that might sound odd. Okay, here goes. Can you see the path now?”

“Sort of. Don’t get too far away. Where are we going?”

“Up. Now what you need to know is, I met someone just a week or so before we left Vegas. Before I pried you off the Extrav! Stage and saved your gorgeous ass from that snake pit.”

“Testy…”

“Sorry, sorry. Okay, you know how I used to go out driving, sometimes? Hoot and holler and get away from all the pressures of you girls throwing sewing at me?”

“Yeah. I remember that.”

“Okay. Well, I met this babe out there this one night…”

NEXT POST: TESTY'S STORY (Friday 2/5)

Odd Couple #2

The rain was drying up, its last few drops squeezing themselves away from the skeletal cloud which had held them.

“I’ve been wondering when you’d notice me,” the Ghost of Bugsy said to Zem. He smiled to find himself face-to-face, finally, with this personage who crackled at his edges, whose borders were only roughly reliable, who was there, not see-through, not wavering, but who seemed less than solid. “I’m surprised it took you this long,” he grinned.

Zem took the Ghost in, considering his natty shoes, his hat, his slim dark suit in between. His smile. They were neck and neck in the smile sweepstakes. The Ghost’s pearly-whites were sharklike, promising more rows behind, multiple line-ups of teeth, each one more serrated, sharper than the one before. “I can’t use you,” Zem muttered.

The Ghost laughed out loud. “No, you can’t! Is that what you were looking for? Another slave to do your bidding? Sorry, Charlie, not this guy.”

Zem looked him up and down again. “What are you?” he asked.

The Ghost spread his pinstriped arms wide. “I am Mr. Las Vegas, chum,” he said. “You should have checked with me before you put the deposit down on this place. I think people have been selling you things they didn’t own.” His teeth glinted as the light along the Strip brightened. The chasers and neon sprang up, eager to fill the space, no longer weighed down by the heavy torrent.

Zem rolled his eyes, spraying what little rain was left in all directions. The Ghost ducked, good-naturedly.

“I don’t need you,” Zem said. “Be prepared to sink back down into the earth as people forget you.”

The Ghost chuckled. “Oh, I don’t think so,” he winked.

“I am unstoppable,” Zem said. He might have been commenting on the time, pointing out with a yawn that the rain was letting up and there still might be time to hit a show, or go out for a late dinner. “I command nature, itself.”

The Ghost winked again. “In case you hadn’t noticed, this town doesn’t care much about nature,” he said. It was a joshing confidence, an open secret shared with a rube before the big swindle was pulled. He almost leaned over to elbow Zem in the ribs.

Zem did not deign to step back to avoid him. “Nevertheless. I have business,” he concluded. “Go your way. Do what you want. This city is mine, now, and I’m going to do–” for one moment, his look grew cloudy, as he focused on something invisible, “wonderful things with it.” He narrowed his gaze, fastened his black eye-absences back on the Ghost. “I think that’s all we have to talk about,” he said.

The Ghost quirked his lips in a show of consideration. He shrugged. “I guess so,” he agreed. “Good luck with what you’re looking for,” he added.

Zem laughed at that, out loud and booming. The trees nearby flinched, and a wind picked up to eject the last few raindrops. “I don’t need luck,” he laughed. “There’s no luck in Vegas anyway. You should know that. Better than anybody.”

Bugsy shrugged again, and turned to go. “It’s all a game, buddy,” he said. “And even if the house wins, we show the customers a good time first.”

“The house still wins. Even the customers know that.”

Again, that same shrug. “Then why are you here?” Bugsy asked. He took one step away. “See ya,” he called, and strolled back down the Strip. He started whistling.

“Because I’m the new house,” Zem yelled at him. He imagined crushing this obnoxious interloper. He pictured himself rising up, then swooping down, a cross between Leda’s swan lover and something darker, nastier, made more of talons than feathers. He felt the shapes of whirlwind, of storm flit through his mind and fingers. He’d love to throttle that self-satisfied throat—

He looked again. The Ghost was gone.

No hero there. Zem turned, restless, and let himself dissolve, sink back into the other world that underlay the physical. He sent his senses out.

In the old days, heroes had been easy. Zem cast his senses out through the city. Just one foolhardy soul, he thought. He caught a glimmer. Ah.

And then, as he flowed toward it, tasting it, another thought struck him.

Or two.

His grin caused ripples in the aether like the heated air shimmying out from a go-go dancer’s bared body. Heroes and monsters, both, he thought.

He flowed in a new direction, rushed in an unhurried way. He leapt blocks, miles, and reached his goal in the flick of a wink, in less time that it took for the Big Bad Wolf’s drool to descend from his snout onto Little Red Riding Hood’s forehead. He’d round up his forces one by one, mold them to fit his needs, array them for the final battle.

Everything I need, already waiting, he marveled.

It was good, so good, he reflected, to be a god.

NEXT POST: LITTLE RED SMOKING HOOD AND HER FAIRY GOD-DRAG-QUEEN (Friday 1/29)

Rachel Goes Uptown

Upper Manhattan lay like a stage set just waiting for its big production. An avant garde version of The Nutcracker, perhaps, or something else fantastical and Russian. The snow lay on the ground and along the bare branches and in the gutters as if it had been sifted there. The dark branches on each tree were illuminated; shadows and curves that had been invisible before were shown to their best advantage. God, in his office of Most Holy Decorator, had come down and made Manhattan over.

Rachel stood at the edge of a baseball field in the northernmost reaches of the island of Manhattan and looked across the diamond to the mysterious foothills and forest at the edge of her vision. Between the fog and the dark, those hills were playing peek-a-boo, coyly slipping a leg out and then covering it up again, hinting of deep dark mysteries and pleasures that they wouldn’t show her.

She took a deep drag on her cigarette. The New York winter had taught her a new set of skills: how to smoke while wearing mittens. She could now pop a cigarette out of its pack, light it up, and manipulate it in and out of her mouth without ever exposing any more than her lips to the cold.

“’Orrible Honoré would be proud,” she muttered, and the thought of sharing anything with her former boss disquieted her so much she pulled the burning stick out and stamped it into the ground. Her heavy snow boots, slick with slush and flat as an elephant’s hoof, which Testy claimed were better suited to hiking across Siberia than strolling up and down Broadway, squashed the cigarette all the way into the mud beneath the snow.

“This is the most uptown you can get and not fall in the river,” Testy had told her. “This is where New York got started. Right over there is a the tree where those Indians sold the whole place for thirty shekels, or whatever it was.”

“I think that’s another story.”

And then they'd gone back downtown, and Rachel had never been up this far north again. But tonight, when Belle had repeated Testy’s message, she’d remembered this scene as if it had happened yesterday, for some reason, and now she stood here and looked out over the ball fields with the mist running the bases and the apartment buildings silent to her left and right, and she’d felt certain, somehow, that Testy was up here.

Somewhere. It was a big park.

What in God’s name was the drag queen doing wandering around a dark and abandoned wilderness in the middle of a wet and foggy night? Or any night?

“Although all the rapists and murderers are probably Downtown in their nice, warm apartments,” she said to herself. What self-respecting criminal would stay out on a night like this?

Rachel gave a heavy sigh, pulled out her pack of cigarettes again, successfully performed her mitten trick without lighting her face on fire, and struck out across the field and into the dark.

NEXT POST: ODD COUPLE #2 (Monday 1/25)

Odd Couple #1

“Sphinx!”

Sphinx had watched Bugsy approach. It had been impressive, an act worthy of the top spot in any of the big shows, if only it could have been fit on a stage. He’d walked through the Strip traffic, cutting diagonally across the eight lanes of bumper-to-bumper cars, trucks, and buses. Somehow, he’d never been hit, or run through, or whatever would have happened if he and a vehicle had arrived at the same spot of pavement at the same moment. He'd moved through an unpredictable string of clear spaces that danced around the busy lanes, Fred Astaire tripping lightly through a succession of spotlights on a shiny black floor. He reached Sphinx and stepped up onto the sidewalk, where the pedestrians just happened, like the cars, not to need to be precisely where he was at that second.

“Impressive,” the monolith murmured.

“What?” he preened, then continued. “I need to talk to you.”

“Speak,” Sphinx invited.

“Where is Venus?”

“Venus?”

The ghost sighed heavily, showily. “Yes, Venus. I know she comes to you. I know she trusts you. I can’t believe I’m the first person to ask. Where is she?

“You are not a person at all,” Sphinx corrected. “As far as I understand you, you are an embodied legend, a marketing device made manifest.”

“More manifest every day. Where is she? What do you know?”

His tone wasn’t strident, but it was insistent.

Clearly the ghost wasn't going away without an answer. “She came to me,” Sphinx started slowly.

“Yes? When she disappeared from that show?”

Sphinx did the thing he did to indicate nodding. “Yes. She was upset. This Zem—”

Bugsy snorted. “Cheap s.o.b.”

Sphinx paused. He wasn’t sure what Bugsy’s relationship to the newly resident god was. “Zem,” he repeated slowly, “had upset her. He had plans for her that... didn’t please her.”

“I know all this,” Bugsy waved a hand in annoyance. “I want to know where she is now.”

“She is in hiding.”

“Do you know where?”

Sphinx paused. If he’d had the equipment, he might have licked his lips. “I do,” he said slowly. He couldn’t lie. It would displease the Moon.

“Where is she?”

Sphinx looked at his visitor. The ghost, the image, the Legend of Bugsy. Bugsy himself, not Benjamin but Bugsy, the name and idea his original, human progenitor had despised. “I will not tell you,” Sphinx responded. Bugsy made a fist, grimaced, raised it and brought it down upon the railing surrounding his marsh. A few tall grasses seemed to bend as if with wind. A tourist or two stepped farther from him.

“Why not?”

“She so wishes it,” Sphinx took refuge in formality.

Venus had not, specifically, asked Sphinx to keep her whereabouts secret from this Bugsy character. But she’d said she needed sanctuary, solitude, Sphinx’s protection. Surely, that included absolute secrecy? Sphinx watched inexpressably as Bugsy grappled with his answer.

“How soon will she come back?” he asked finally.

“That is up to her. But—” Sphinx relented, “I think it will be soon. Or, not long, perhaps.”

“Soon or not long. That’s your answer?”

“That is an answer. An acceptable response to your question,” he said.

“It’s not acceptable to me.”

“Still,” Sphinx said, as if they were having a quiet philosophical discussion, “it is acceptable. It is as close to my meaning as I can come, I believe.”

Bugsy looked down at the sidewalk, stared in disgust at its cracked and bleached face between his natty shoes. “You are infuriating, Statue.”

“That is not my purpose,” Sphinx allowed, “But it may be my refuge, for now. And hers. Let her have her refuge, Las Vegas Legend. We beings which are halfway between real and unreal must stick together.”

“...if Zem is going to go down in flames, you mean.”

“Whether he is or not. We must agree, or at the very least not oppose each other. There are few of us, and the world is large and varied.”

“And most of it is pointing right here right now.”

Sphinx would have bobbed his head, half a nod, half a bow. “This does seem to be so.”

“You’ll let me know when she’s ready.”

It was not really a question. It was also not — quite — a command.

“As she requests,” he more or less agreed.

“That’ll do, I guess.”

And then a gold-tone limo declaring Totally! Nude!! Showgirls!!! glided by, and the ghost or legend of Bugsy Siegel, with one last look over his shoulder at Sphinx, grabbed onto the flickering, shadowy light it put out and caught a ride around a corner out of sight.

“Thank you, Sphinx,” the goddess sighed.

“Certainly. Although I thought you liked him. You said he was charming.”

“He is. But I can’t be seen now.”

Sphinx, regarding the usual midnight crowd of admirers and camera snappers, observed drily, “That’s obvious. How long do you mean to keep things that way?”

“Till the end comes. Till Zem has to fight.”

Sphinx pondered that. He wished that he could look into Venus’ eyes.

But she was on his back and he stared forever out across the Strip.

“What will the end be?” he queried.

“I wish I knew,” Venus sighed, and Sphinx heard her retreating, stepping back toward the monumental hind-quarters where she would withdraw and stay silent for hours or days on end, vanished and waiting.

Sphinx wished, not for the first or last time, that she’d wait to disappear till they were both finished with the conversation. Venus, he ruminated, had misapprehended the question, and so he was left in the dark in the middle of a mass of complications and goings-on of which he understood practically nothing. His own goddess, whom it might have seemed logical to ask for guidance, was new this week, and therefore utterly unavailable. And even if she had been full, and lying bloated in the sky for Sphinx to see, she was notoriously unhelpful about answering questions.

Maybe that was the hallmark of divinity, Sphinx thought.

NEXT POST: RACHEL HEADS UPTOWN (Friday 1/22)

Zem Zips

Zem zipped, exultant, through Las Vegas. He laughed out loud as he went, driving off the rain and making it scatter.

It would be hard to say just how he traveled. He felt as light as he had ten months earlier when he walked through McCarren International Airport, arriving in town after all the millennia alone and in darkness.

But this time, he wasn’t walking.

He wasn’t flying, either, as he’d done in the jet coming here, or as a bird more times than he could count in earlier years (Leda, for one, had never again looked a swan straight in the eye again,.) And he wasn’t riding in a cab driven by a talkative driver, or past all the hordes of tourists on the Strip in Magnolia’s hot and sticky limo.

He was... going. He swung among the elements. He burst through the rain as if it were a bead curtain, and left it swinging and tangling its strands into knots as he passed. He crushed a path in the desert air, soaking up the sluicing rain as greedily as a sponge left over from whichever aeon had seen this desert valley filled with an inland sea. The dark made way for him, and the jiggling neon and chaser light waves broke apart to go around. The night bowed submissively out of his way and he laughed at it, reveling in his own aggression.

He laughed.

This was worthy existence. Human beings had no clue.

A hero. He’d come out here to find a hero, someone gullible enough to jump at the chance to serve him, but also strong and able enough to be useful. It wasn’t just about finding Venus, as he’d screamed at Magnolia. That was only the beginning.

Champions had been so easy, in the old days. They practically lined up, begged for opportunities to risk their lives. You couldn’t help but have an army of heroes attending you, if you were a god in ancient times. But now... He sighed. A tiny crackle of light escaped and shot like a spent ember across the sidewalk into an ornamental fountain and sizzled there. The water from the fountain splashed and played with itself, too stupid to know it wasn’t the main attraction while this storm was on.

Zem turned, and raindrops sprayed away from him. They bounced off him, leaping out in all directions. Obedient minions, raindrops. He smiled. He prepared to go again. But which way? Where should he begin the hunt—

He paused. He squinted, more or less. He saw, far down the Strip to the south, another figure sluicing rain. Not a human. A ghostly shape, only given substance by the water sheeting through the air. An absence, so to speak, within the elements.

He stared harder. He might as well give the figure a try. Who knew what he might find, on the one rainy night of the year in Las Vegas, as the Age of Humanity wound down? History was in the making. Maybe this meeting would be historic.

He went with increasing speed.

NEXT POST: STRANGE BEDFELLOWS #1 (Monday 1/18)

Miss Honoré Alone

Miss Honoré sat at her desk in the dark depths of the Extravaganza! Theater all day and night. She left only rarely to make a circuit of the dressing rooms, passing disconsolately by Venus’ door, and looking for signs that anything had changed, that there was any hope of the goddess’ return.

The magic was gone. Extrav! was dead. Who wanted to see a show with no Divine Beauty lighting up center stage? And why bother going through the motions, dancing, sweating, if you didn’t get to back up the undisputed Most Beautiful Woman In the World anymore? Honoré stayed at her desk, and smoked uncounted cigarettes, and spoke not a word as Gina mousily came and went, and then disappeared and stopped coming in altogether.

“Mother.”

She couldn't ignore that.

“Magnolia,” she acknowledged.

“Are you just going to sit here in the dark, waiting for her forever? I don’t think she’ll come back.”

“Why should you care?” Honoré released smoke that climbed lazily from her lips through the air in the afterglow of its wanton intercourse with her lungs. “That Zem of yours got what he wanted. Nice threat, making her a whore for all the world. He really must hate her.”

Magnolia shrugged. It was a move that almost awoke Honoré’s interest. It had a lilt, it had panache. But then she just released another puff of smoke like a derisive snort. “I guess you’re not really in charge anymore, are you? That god, he’s the one who snaps his fingers, and you jump.” She stubbed her cigarette out and reached for another.

Her offspring frowned at her. She almost scowled, but she was too pretty to pull it off. “How did you — what do you mean, ‘god’?” she demanded.

Miss Honoré actually laughed. The smoke trickled out in all directions, laughing along with her as it ran away. “Oh, Magnolia,” she clucked, “I know everything. Don’t you understand that? And he’s pulling your strings every second.”

“Like you and all those old crime bosses, huh, Mother? Like mother, like daughter. Right, Honoré?”

Honoré snorted, smokelessly this time, then watched sharply as Magnolia moved across the office to sit in Gina’s chair. Magnolia crossed her legs fastidiously, smoothed her skirt, and looked up.

“He’s changed you, hasn’t he?” Honoré said. She watched Magnolia’s fingers, twiddling with the hem of her skirt. She took in her hair, her lips, her breasts and body. All of her was lusher, richer than ever before, and all of her was... deeper. More tangled. Less perfect and arranged. Not so... constructed as she’d always been. “He’s made you a woman, hasn’t he?” Honoré asked. She paused in her smoking, the cigarette burning close by her cheek as she inspected her daughter.

“He treats me well,” Magnolia said. She looked down, stroked her hands one over the other, and looked up again. “And if he’s driven your Venus away, good riddance,” she added.

“Fuck you,” Honoré spat. “And get out. Go and rule the world with him. Be his slave. Till he gets tired of you and lets you whither. I’m sure that’ll be a laugh.”

Magnolia stood up. She ran her palms down her sides lightly. She might have been adjusting, smoothing her clothes, but they were already perfect. She touched her own body, faintly, and smiled. Then she focused on her mother again. “Fine. I’ll be happy to leave you in your hole, here, Honoré. Venus isn’t coming back. And you’ll shrivel up and die here, all alone, if you wait.” She walked to the door, making her exit. “Maybe that’s appropriate,” she said over her shoulder. “God knows this has been entirely your choice, all this—” she gestured vaguely out the door where the warren of dressing rooms and wardrobe work spaces and storage warehouses lay, and up at the ceiling where, two levels up, the stage hulked dark and empty, “instead of anyone to care for you, a family, the real life you could have had.”

“You have no idea what I could have had,” Honoré told her.

Magnolia gave a trill of laughter. It was one of the best tricks her new vocal chords could play. She walked out. “But I know what you haven’t got, old woman,” she said.

Behind her, in the dim, shadowed, smoke-yellowed, deep end of the pool that was her office, Miss Honoré Jerques didn’t speak. She just inhaled.

NEXT POST: ZEM ZIPS (Friday 1/15)

Sleeping Beauty Awakens

Rachel woke up to a sound of pounding and Belle's voice reeding its way through the splinters of her bedroom door to sneak into her ear and poke at her eardrum.

“Rachel! Are you dead in there? Should I call the paramedics? Do you want eggplant parmesan?”

She was sprawled across her bed, still fully dressed. Her homecoming had included a long flight swinging between storm clouds across the eastern United States while the sweaty businessman next to her had tried to pick her up, two hours waiting for her luggage before someone told her it had flown to Hawaii, and then thirty minutes outside waiting in the taxi line with the rain blowing sideways and soaking her head to toe.

Forty-five minutes later, after being treated to a cab driver yelling non-stop in an unknown tongue into his cell phone while weaving through the heavy traffic, looking at Rachel only once to demand, “Where you going? Miss? Miss?” as they crossed the Triboro Bridge, she'd dragged her suitcase upstairs to find Belle shouting at Wheel of Fortune, the cats glaring as if they’d never met her and would rather keep it that way, and Testy nowhere to be found. The tousled bed and oblivion had looked like the best offer she'd had in a long time.

But: "Rachel? Rachel!"

She shook her head to clear it, which she’d always thought was something people only did in movies. Even when she was fully conscious, a conversation with Belle could make her feel more than slightly surreal, so she wanted to be prepared. She got up and opened the door.

“I’m okay, Belle. I’m not hungry. What’s up?”

“Thank god—I thought the cats were going to have to perform CPR,” the aged Rockette told her. Rachel always marveled at the sight of Belle standing up. Not just because she so rarely did it, but also because she was only about four and a half feet tall. Either she’d shrunk or Rockettes had been a lot shorter in the old days, Rachel concluded. “La Testina’s in demand,” she continued, turning to shuffle back toward the living room. “Mrs. Carter called. Something about rhinestones, and an opera emergency. Ha! I know her type!” she announced, one hand on the living room doorway frame. “La Testina called a little while ago, while you were sleeping. Said to tell you she was going — wait, let me think of it… ‘into the land of mystery, the virgin wonderland’, if you wanted to join her. Said you’re invited. I don’t know what that means, miss,” Belle announced, raising an eyebrow and clearly prepping for her exit line, “But if that girl knows from ‘virgin’, I’m a Ziegfeld dancer without a costume. Which I guess I am. Ha!” She disappeared into the living room, but her voice carried back in her wake. “I’m ordering Italian, what’ll you have? Or else Mexican, on second thought. That new place on 103rd has great gazpacho!” A couple cats hurried past Rachel, apparently eager for cold soup to chill their tails this winter.

“No… thanks.”

Rachel had to think to remember what the virgin wonderland might be. And if she remembered correctly, it was hardly a place anyone, even Testy, would want to go in the middle of the night. She went back into the bedroom looking for one of the entertainment guides that littered the city like porn ads did Vegas. Had some club called Virgin Wonderland opened? Or was Testy really, truly trying to lure her into an unpeopled wilderness?

The drag queen was going to get an earful, in any case, if Rachel managed to find her tonight.

NEXT POST: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE GOATS? (Monday 1/11)

A Recap

All right, let’s do a little recap, shall we? It’s a new year, and the many threads or our topless tale are well tangled by now. We could probably all use a little clarity before heading down the final leg of our journey and tying them up into a neat and, no doubt, emotionally satisfying package on the level of, say, Doctor Zhivago or Pride and Prejudice or whatever other brilliant, deathless classic you’d like to mention.

Yes, that’s right, kids. We are approaching the home stretch. The final push. The last climb into the stunning climax. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s not just a spotlight or a reflection off a showgirl’s sequins. The end is approaching.

But before you get too sad, let me assure you there’s a lot of ground to cover. And it’s fun ground. Good ground. Up and down and sideways ground, with some unexpected turns included.
So let’s see. Where do we stand now?

Well, our bad guy, Zem, once known as Zeus when he was the Ruler of Olympus and King of the Gods but now reduced to, more or less, just another shady Vegas sheister, has blown into town with a plan to make it over. His number one henchwoman-slash-high priestess, the blousy mayor of Vegas, Magnolia Conner, is running the show for him, directing its developments and orchestrating the new Desert Mecca they’re creating. She is now, because he owed her one, immortal. And just for fun she’s also a genetic woman after decades of being one only by virtue of some complex surgery and ongoing drugs. Who knew? Magnolia’s a little freaked by this turn of events, but she’s also enjoying the perky ass that comes with the deal.

The actual plan, just in case you weren’t paying attention or got confused along the way, is to turn all of Vegas into one gigantic deconstructed temple to Zem, with individual pilgrimage sites or sacrificial altars or other holy service outlets scattered among every casino in town. Visitors will come in droves, once it’s all ready and running, seeking healing or blessing or a million trillion dollars or a tip on next week’s stock prices or whatever else their greedy little brains come up with. And Zem will give them these things, if he’s feeling generous and once they’ve completed a long and arduous series of challenges.

On the other hand, those Olympian gods were never known for generosity. They were much better known for tricksterism. This should not be surprising, given that they arose out of an early civilization’s desire to understand just exactly why the natural world was so unpredictable and why life could sometimes be — not to put too fine a point on it — so shitty. So the ruler of that particularly capricious tribe is hardly your best source for reasoned judgment or mercy or a fair shake, is he? But people love a free handout, even if they know that 999 times out of 1000 the free hand is going to get burned or bitten or chopped off at the wrist rather than rewarded.

Heavy sigh. People are stupid, aren’t they?

But that’s what’s going on in Vegas, with a little sub-story about Venus, the Goddess of Love, the old thorn in Zem’s side from their Ancient Greek days. She’s been around Vegas for decades, and has tried a couple ways of driving Zem out, to no avail. Most recently, she was a showgirl — and who, I ask you, would be better suited to parading around mostly naked than the immortal Goddess of Love? Really. — but that ended (badly) when Zem and Magnolia tried to draft her as the centerpiece of a new love slave/sex shop site they’d planned. Oh well. The show she briefly starred in, Extravaganza!, is now dark and its manager, the infamous Miss Honorė Jerques (secretly Magnolia’s mother, but mostly just a world-class, iron-plated bitch) is skulking around its dark hallways chain-smoking. Sad. But pretty funny, if you ask me. More about Honorė as the story winds up.

And then, off in New York, there’s Extravaganza!’s other semi-famous showgirl, Rachel Ferguson, who allowed herself to be carried off by her one-time dresser, the simply fabulous Testy Lesbiana, drag queen extraordinaire and overall wise woman of the tale. Testy has been handed a commission by Venus (helped along by the ersatz guardian angel of Las Vegas, the ghost of Bugsy Siegel) to track down an old friend of hers, an unknown character whom the goddess believes may be the only one around able to stop Zem. Hm… is this another god, ready to surface? One of those heroes of old who do daring deeds and slay six monsters before breakfast? A new action movie actor? We don’t know yet, but all signs point to finding out soon.

There’s also been a fairy tale, but that may be completely beside the point.

And now… here we go! Fasten your seat belts, brew your coffee, and enjoy!

NEXT POST: THE BEGINNING OF THE END (Friday 1/8)

The Seer Blinks

The phone kept ringing, but Lilith had stopped answering. Ever since she and Cheryl had read the cards together, she’d been researching. The jagged puzzle pieces that had been scraping the corners of her brain all year, teasing her, had fallen into place, and the picture they made was horrifying.

There was an aetheric catastrophe coming, an otherworldly eruption; a great rumbling, spiritual juggernaut that would flatten the world as she knew it, rip its heart out and eat it for breakfast. The earthquake that would set it off — which was, even at this moment, warming up and vibrating, ready to crack open the faults and spread its destruction — was Zem, right here in Vegas.

Now, her days were filled with scouring the Internet and local libraries. There was more to learn in the arcane world, as it turned out, than even she had ever imagined. After the first few weeks, she thought she could have earned a Phd. in Supernatural Studies. After a few more, she thought she could have established a whole university.

She’d learned that, whereas Wicca had carved a nice, well-organized placed for itself on the web, druidism was nearly absent. Egyptian magic existed only in rumors. Spell databases were often mistaken for recipe files by search engines. She once spent an hour researching a two-page list of individual ingredients she’d never heard of, before she re-read the introduction and discovered she had a chocolate-kiwi mousse recipe in front of her, not a spell for calling a familiar.

The real motherlode turned out to be medieval European magic. Between the seven million midwives desperate to save their lore before they got burned at the stake, Hildegard of Bingen and all her mystical, monastic sisters, and the multi-million dollar industry of housewife witchcraft that had sprung up in the U.S. and abroad since the Sixties, there was more raw data than she could ever use or even read thoroughly. It was all free and, in fact, pressed eagerly upon her by practitioners from Maine to Baja, every one of them thrilled at the prospect of someone finding their little collection of spells and traditions useful at last.

She spent a day and a half investigating the Books of Revelation and Daniel, in case Zem turned out to be the Christian Anti-Christ. But there were no Horsemen in evidence, and the world was not experiencing more than its normal quotient of earthquakes or wars. The only dreams and visions seemed to be hers. So she checked the Bible off her list of sources.

A short treatise on supposed millennial prophecies by Nostradamus caught her attention for another morning. One verse spoke of “ancient power rising up to wreak havoc”. But when she tracked down the original text, it turned out to have farming, not world conquest, on its mind. As far as Lilith could tell, the old French monk had been seeing part of the Potato Famine, or possibly something to do with pesticides. Perhaps Nostradamus endorsed organic gardening, but as for Zem and Vegas, he was useless.

She’d begun dreaming almost immediately after that last reading. Her vision of Gwendolyn’s death in the harem, and of Tim’s and Bobby’s fates turned out to be only the preview, the teaser, the coming attractions trailer for the big visionary release to follow. It premiered on the backs of her eyelids, night after night, a truly independent film festival that refused to give her any rest.

She saw strange building projects. The construction itself wasn’t untoward — hotels in Vegas were always building something. But this city-wide project was like nothing that had come before.

She saw hordes of new visitors, all looking hopeless. Parents carried hollow-eyed children from hotel to hotel. The lame and infirm struggled. The rich and famous came to hear oracles, and received secrets that allowed them to manipulate the world’s economy. She saw whole nations disappearing off the map, their gross national products mere pin money for unscrupulous investors with a useful tip from one week in the future.

She saw doctors jumping out of buildings, hospitals shut. Drugs or treatments for any complaint more lasting than a headache disappeared from pharmacies the world over. Why bother with a doctor who might or might not have a cure when there was real healing in Nevada? Why bother researching anything when all the answers lay in Las Vegas? That the answers, or the healing, or any help whatsoever would be kept purposely inconstant didn’t matter. Healing was so much better than the long-term half-hope modern medicine could provide, any odds were worth it.

Whatever one’s needs were, they were free to be had in Southern Nevada. Someone would hit the jackpot. Why not throw everything away, and take your shot in Las Vegas? What good were life and love and hope when compared with one chance in a million, if that chance were for a sure thing?

The world gained certainty, in the visions that Lilith lived through. It had no need for further progress.

Lilith tossed and turned, and didn't sleep well.

NEXT POST: WHERE ARE WE? (Monday 1/4)