Inspiring Magnolia

The boy scouts had gotten into trouble again, so Magnolia led them on their matching leashes through the casino of the Vegas Spire. Their baas and shufflings got laughs from the crowd, and elicited pets and cooings, but Magnolia forged on, making her way to the special elevator that led only to the roof, and sparing only the barest of smiles and nods to anyone who made eye contact.

She had no posse today, only a pair of guards who had been instructed, in no uncertain terms, to keep their distance. They’d remain here, in the casino, while she went about her private business.

She had a date with Zem this afternoon. Or, at least, she planned to speak with Zem, to confront him. This would be their most important conference yet, which he had no idea was coming. It would determine all future relations, not to mention who would run this city, who would serve him, and what would happen to her.

The whole world, if it had known what she was planning, should have been fixed on Magnolia’s passage through the Spire, goats in tow, that afternoon.

She didn’t have as much time as she would have liked. Her schedule was booked tight, these days. She zipped from meeting to meeting, hotel to hotel, with an hour or two at City Hall whenever she could fit it in. The bureaucrats and staff there would descend on her, waving papers and clipboards. Her personal assistant, Peter, had been seen to cry last week as she disappeared after only a few minutes’ visit, having answered not one of his questions.

But the New Las Vegas was happening fast, so she had no time to waste. Today, when Dan and Sam had transformed in the middle of a screaming match at Bombay with Errol Manoff and Jim Bubo and three other casino heads, everybody had just rolled their eyes. Magnolia had checked her watch, observed the rest of the table restacking notes and discussing when to reconvene, and headed out as soon as possible. She’d never have taken the goats along if Errol hadn’t insisted.

And she would have dropped them off at their own office if she’d had time. But she only had an hour. Then she’d promised Peter she’d come back, for the whole afternoon, to sign things and make mayoral decisions. These damn Boy Scouts would have to come along for the ride.

She couldn’t leave them in the car, where they would inevitably destroy the upholstery and stink up the place. So here they were, slowing her down as she marched through tourists and slot machines. The elevator operator looked down his nose at them.

“Mayor,” he acknowledged.

“I’m going up,” she announced. “And they’re going with me. Sorry– I’ll try to keep the damage to a minimum.”

He hesitated, but then nodded and pulled aside the ornate gate and ushered her and her charges inside. “Have a good trip,” he invited.

Magnolia snorted.

Zem’s Hall of Audience had been finished for a month– the very first of Zem’s “attractions” to debut. The small cosmetic augmentations to the Spire’s roof had gone quickly once workmen had been hired– a more difficult task than usual, given the particular requirements of the job. In the end, the “mile-high crew” had bonded like survivors of a natural disaster. They’d probably be holding reunions till they were all dead, Magnolia thought.

There’d been a wild party after it was done, but Magnolia had merely put in an appearance and then run back downstairs, where the wind did not whip napkins and whole serving trays down to their destruction far below. The place gave her the creeps, for all that it was her idea. Zem, of course, loved it. He’d stayed up there, often right by the edge staring down at his developing realm, from mid-afternoon till sunrise the next day– or so she’d been told. The waiters were asleep on their feet by the time he left, tying themselves to anything handy to keep from stumbling off the edge in the dark.

And now Zem’s New Vegas was initiated, and the god’s ear was available to anyone who took the long ride. Of course, after January 1st, getting into this elevator would be much more difficult than merely walking up and stepping in. The regular elevators to the Spire’s peak, the ones that carried countless tourists up the its top floor restaurants, bars, and observation decks, cost $20. This private ride would cost nothing, but only those who’d proved their worth beyond all doubt would be allowed.

For the moment, though, the Lift to Destiny was just an anonymous door watched over by a man in a suit at a lectern. It might have led to a private penthouse, or the hotel’s steakhouse.

Magnolia drummed her fingers and pulled the hem of her skirt out of a goat’s mouth. She wasn’t sure what she’d do with them at the top. She wasn’t sure if they understood human speech when they were in this state, but she didn’t want them close enough to hear, in case they did. “Stupid goats,” she told them. They looked up at her, and one of them– she thought it was probably Sam, who always seemed the more recalcitrant even in this form– reached out to chew her skirt again. She flicked his face. “Away,” she said.

The elevator ride took five minutes. Zem had specified a slow, shaky ride– he didn’t want his petitioners striding into his presence too cockily. There was a boom as it reached its goal, and then a shifting, and a twist, and finally, several seconds later, the doors opened.

The wind was the first thing one noticed. Magnolia felt it hit her full in the face. The goats’ hair blew back, and they baa-ed in complaint and shook their snouts.

“Come on, you,” she jerked their leads.

Stepping out into the Hall itself was like climbing onto the roof of a 747 for a stroll at several thousand feet. Magnolia bent her knees instinctively, and braced against the air as it boomed into the elevator. The Hall stretched away before her, a barbell-shaped pavement lined with marble columns and ending in a sheer dropoff as the roof underneath sloped away. From this doorway, she could see the city through the columns, as distant as a mirage and as tiny as an architect’s model. She thought suddenly of all the mock-ups of new hotels she’d admired over the years, and grimaced sourly to think how unlike the reality they’d proved.

“This way,” she growled at the goats.

There wasn’t much to secure them to. But the elevator was flanked by two huge urns– the original flower arrangements they’d held had blown away in seconds, and rained down in shreds over the north end of the Strip– and she looped their leashes through a handle and tied them to each other.

“Now stay there,” she told them, and turned her back to stride away.

At least, that was what she meant to do. Striding down the length of the Hall, announcing herself at its furthest end, the Place of Audience between the last two pillars, where all the earth lay somewhere miles below her feet and her toes rested practically on thin air... that was her intention. But, as she’d found at that horrid party, her control over her own muscles was suddenly curtailed, and she froze on the spot.

Magnolia was afraid of heights. She’d known this about herself, discovered it on one ill-fated trip up the Eiffel Tour with a hot French boy to celebrate her first showgirl opening (at the famous Lido) and the successful beginning of her life as Magnolia, not Frank. She’d thrown up over the side onto some tourists’ heads far below, and then passed out, and done her very best to ignore and forget the evening ever since.

But her phobia had never been much of a problem since she’d returned to Vegas. There simply weren’t heights, in the flat and desert valley. She had no reason, usually, to go above the second floor. Acrophobia simply hadn’t been an issue.

But if she wanted to face Zem in this place, she’d have to find a way past her fear.

She looked back at the goats, holding still for once and watching her, and had two clear thoughts.

One: I’m never coming up here again. She had a demand for Zem, and this was her one and only chance to voice it.

And two: the Goats will laugh at me forever if I give up now. And they’d tell the story to every other executive in town, how the Mayor had pissed herself and run from the Hall. And Zem would laugh along. She stayed put.

“Okay,” she took a deep breath. “Here we go.”

She stepped over to the first column and laid her hand against it firmly. There– that felt solid, reassuring. She took another step and reached out for the next column, but she couldn’t quite reach it. “Okay, okay,” she told herself, let go and took the biggest step she could. She practically fell against the second column, and she hugged it with all her strength. She felt slightly dizzy, but she felt she’d discovered a system for getting through this. She took a breath, stared down at her feet and the stone pavement, and tried it again.

Another couple steps, another couple columns, and she was making her way down the barbell. The roof of the Spire fell away, sloping underneath her toes while this Hall stretched out into empty air, but as long as she just kept her eyes glued to the square foot she was standing in, she didn’t have to think of that. She distracted herself, as usual, with thoughts of the future. She’d bet every studio in Hollywood would be calling her to beg to shoot here, once this was revealed. Every fashion designer would want to use it for a runway, to show off his new collection.

Magnolia had no intention of cheapening Zem’s Hall by renting it out as a mere location. But imagining those toadying phone calls bought her three more columns’ worth of distance.

“Oh shit, oh shit,” she mumbled. She stared at her hands on the smooth stone. Laid there, pressing firmly, they looked so solid, so reliable. Unfortunately, she could also glimpse views of the tiny city beyond. “Oh shit. Oh shit.”

She knew she was approaching the end, where the pavement flared out again into the smaller loop of the barbell and the roof underneath fell away altogether. At the very end was the dreaded Place, the spot where a wider space gaped between the last two columns, and all of Vegas lay like a particularly avant garde Christmas village miles below. Zem would be ready and waiting there, if he could be believed, to receive petitions.

He’d better be. She had a doozy to lay on him.

She took a breath, waited an extra moment or two for the wind to die down slightly, and literally pushed herself away from the column she was holding into the middle of the Place of Audience. She had no idea where she should look, there was no safe place to fasten her eyes. But as it turned out, that didn’t matter, because she felt so dizzy and so nauseous that she couldn’t focus on anything, anyway. She saw flashes of columns, flashes of the city, flashes of the distant mountains, only visible from here because she was above the smog line.

“Zem,” she cried out. “I’ve come to ask a boon. I’ve earned it, and it’s right that I should have it.” She could feel herself hyperventilating, but if she just concentrated on the words coming out of her mouth, she was sure she would calm down. Communicating was her great gift, when all else failed, she always knew how to talk. She’d built her whole life and all her success on that.

She’d done some studying before she made this climb. Heroic visitors to gods always began by declaring their fitness. Unless they were Christians, at least, in which case they began by groveling. She knew Zem had equal disdain for grovelers and Christians. “I was your first supporter, your first and most fervent servant.” Fervent servant? That hadn’t been in the trial versions she’d slaved over for the last few weeks. She tried to marshal her thoughts, and also to open her eyes. They seemed to have fastened closed on their own, but that was almost worse as she felt herself swaying with the raging wind, and imagined her body pitching, tumbling over the edge, on its way to splattering–

Enough of those thoughts! She cleared her throat and picked up where she’d left off. “I have redesigned this city for you,” she shouted. “I have made its leaders swear loyalty to you. I have served you well, Zem, and I have come up here, to this holy and terrible place you’ve established, to demand my reward. Yes, I said demand! Give me what I crave and I will serve you for as long as you deign to remain among the race of men!” She liked the words “crave” and “deign”. They sounded particularly heroic.

“I have come up here to speak to you about what I am, and what I am to be.”

“Then tell me,” she heard his voice.

Unholy shit! Magnolia ducked, for that voice had sounded huge, produced by a mouth that could swallow the Goodyear blimp in one gulp and want more.

“Uh,” she said.

“What do you want?” Zem’s voice rattled the colonnade. Literally. She felt the pavement shaking and one of the columns across the circle produced a tiny crack. She reached out to steady herself, then resolutely dropped her arm.

“I– I want to ask you–” she began.

She took a deep breath. She allowed her eyes to close again while she collected her wits. When she opened them, she looked at Zem. He was standing in front of her, his heels all but hanging over the drop-off, and waiting with his customary blank expression.

“What do you demand of me?” he asked. And waited to see if she’d repent the word and grovel.

He’d hardly seen her recently. She’d been busy, either bullying the construction crews and hotel bosses, or back in her office shuffling papers and strong-arming the city council. Meanwhile, he’d drifted from hotel suite to hotel suite, killing time while his new city was built.

Zem and Magnolia had never discussed what would become of her after the New Year’s announcement. She’d laid the groundwork for his future admirably. Now the time had come, it seemed, to address hers.

Zem waited.

“You owe me,” she said. “Not only that, but you own me. I can’t return to my old life, I can’t return to any life. You’ve ruined me for human existence. I’m yours now, whether that was your intention or not. And I want you to make it permanent.”

Zem considered. “You want a lifetime appointment?” He looked her over. Magnolia was over fifty, he knew, and from what he understood, humans weren’t useful workers after about seventy or so, modern medicine notwithstanding. So... twenty years? He’d be happy enough to have her for that long, he supposed. By that time he’d just be beginning his real domination of the world. It hardly seemed worth climbing up here and demanding formally.

“No,” she said. “I don’t want a lifetime appointment. I mean, I guess I do. But I want you to fix my lifetime. I want immortality. And no cheap tricks like that guy in the myths who just kept getting older forever. I don’t want to be decrepit. In fact, I want you to make me younger. I want you to make my body the best it’s ever been, make me the best I can be, physically, and make me immortal, and I’ll serve you forever.”

“Hm.”

That was a request worthy of the trek up to this rooftop and all the bells and whistles of formality. Zem turned and looked out over Vegas.

“Let me think about it,” he said, and stepped off the edge.

“No!” Magnolia yelled after him. He’d dissolved his body as he felt it start to fall, so now he turned around in the air to focus on her. He saw in her face not alarm, but outrage. She’d taken a step forward as he’d gone, and now she stood there staring through him, fear of the height washed away by indignation.

“Zem!” she yelled again. Invisibly, he studied her.

She’d not moved to help him, as he appeared to fall. She’d moved in order to demand an answer. She’d not seen him as a man in danger, but as a god who might be cheating her.

He laughed, suddenly, and the air around him shivered as in a rainstorm or a wave of heat. But the atmosphere was dry and at that elevation it was cooled by the same breezes that lifted the birds and planes aloft. Magnolia was still standing and staring.

“All right,” he said gently, and saw her relax.

She looked out toward where he hung, estimating his position pretty well, then nodded once. Then she turned and walked back up the colonnade. She congratulated herself that she only broke into a run at the end, when she was more than halfway up the Hall’s length.

NEXT POST: VENUS DISARMS 'EM (Friday 11/27)