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)