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)