The Emperor’s entourage walked beneath an open-air pavilion, after passing through the largest valley in all of the planet Wyle. Dawn sun blasted so intensely between Romanesque columns, that the light-play made their vertical ridges glow skeletal. White penetrated every ‘pore of the rock’ it was explained by Crush, the Imperial Sun was so cruel as to play even with molecules, upset and pass through stone. Against the extreme black and white, Liyane barely made out amber-frosted treetops far into the distance, before the snowy summit of a red mountain.
What were they all waiting for?
Through the hard orange hemisphere and the horrible gold scene around the burning rock, it was eventually possible see riders coming out majestically toward them. Hooves of their mounts clicked upon black marble when they arrived. Liyane’s eyes fully adjusted, when she heard, then saw Crush lean in and snap the edge of a golden grape leaf off, in his teeth. The vine could not have grown up on the distressed rock. The flowing branch laden with fresh, dripping berries so hot-green that they burned against one’s pupils shifted in and out of reality it seemed, before Liyane saw that someone was holding it. A woman who was half deer, from the waist down to her split hooves, walked holding the fruit for her Emperor.
They passed through a final white-burning arch. Inscribed glass doors parted for the entire party.
Now, it was necessary for eyes to adjust again. Twisting golden columns, almost crystalline as reaching icicles made everything into a luxurious furnished forest. Decorated lounge rooms and other furless and fully-dressed pretentious menagerie revealed themselves on either side of a cheerful hall. Liyane recognized the bronze arms of the riders serving Crush wine and grapes of which he cared only to eat the leaves. The she-satyrs, wound at waists striped with tribal paints at the part where their humanoid selves blended into what was beastly.
Before, she’d been tempted to become a deer, as all women were who passed the years under dominion watching exotic half-deer women flit ears and peal out the news with needing eyes, dance and frolick with various rose-colored product bottles in their hands or fixed in coiled fetlocks. Now, Liyane verged on hating herself.
When the graceful women sang, their voices were all throaty, hurt ethereal chorus. She did not know the words in the Wylean language, but it surely throbbed a terrible need for the Imperial Buck, who was Tim. Tim become Crush, and he seemed complete master of their affection. It did not flatten him at all, he did not blush or flit off-smile. This was his by right.
Next, their dancing swift cream forms shrouded the man’s body. Flowing ballerina arms received cast-off garments as Crush lazily stripped himself in public, folded arms overhead into a yawn, and was re-dressed, on the move.
Liyane now hated herself more, for having peeked.
Guests came to the edge of these rooms with no walls. Couches and tables were set up around more beacon-black columns. When Crush stopped his parade at the center at the hall, they applauded the ruler of their Galaxy.
And so, at last, without the light of courtroom, the blast of the alien Wyle environment, or the shades of cell-block nightmare, it became possible to see the real Emperor San’ur Crush. Imperial posters were always drawn and the artists focused primarily on ornamentation of the ancient costumes, and sketching every point of antler to precision. The depictions were so exact that the antlers were never, in fact, colored. But she felt it left the bones-in-outline looking like a bruise against the page, or a brand against skin. Now she was left with an impression of the Loving Emperor being less than ritualized. Liyane could perceive freckles on his skin before the morning toga was swathed across his back–and she was embarrassed to have remembered so many of them, after ten years. Then, there were two polished golden eye-holes at his shoulder blades. A leather strap passed across the widest part of Crush’s back.
Even he wore a Nude Form…
Liyane, and the rest of that entourage climbed a set of carpeted stairs, then Crush turned to face the gallery of salons. Many happy forest deer come somewhere, suddenly… Liyane worried that she and the other humanoids in the room were being swarmed by true docile, head bowing, ear-flitting creatures. Together, everyone looked so worshipful and painfully ridiculous.
“Do you all love me?” Crush called out.
“Yes, great Emperor!” they echoed back. Then it garbled into many independent, drunk-ruddy pleas. One delighted set caught on, became the most forceful, “But here we are. You must show us your love. Here we are, so show us your love!”
Crush laughed paternally. Liyane’s frightened gaze wandered to where he caught his bare stomach. Yes, as before, the lower half of Crush was a different color. Gold? Going autumn red? What? He said, “Well, that’s new, isn’t it?”
Crush grasped Liyane, by the hair, pulled her down a step. “For once, we have a volunteer for my next trick. You looked on me so fondly, doe, how could I say no?”
“You promised I was free, of prisons…”
“Shh. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Winter Court, here is my latest dissident feast, this one’s a curio–a human woman who has cheated death on every single one of the Lesser Planets where she was interned. Oh, but I did find her and fish her out of our court system eventually.” to laughter, “But better than some christ’s style skill at resurrection, this female has another unusual charm.” somewhere out there, a trained drummer rolled, “Behold! Enough wounds from nude-form across her shoulders to suggest that once upon a time, she was one of the better whores intent on this court. How did–Lady Liyane–never get here?” Crush then ripped the back of her natty prison garb, for them all to see.
Liyane mouthed her hatred and endured their staring.
“So, I may feast on this one, yet, we’ll see. And another thing, over the next few weeks, you will see a runt, a homewrecker and a whore-convict all in one, restored to her original worth. Let this be a lesson for those rebels and insistent nonbelievers, even you hunters…” the drums rolled again, and the people complained at always being dragged along before his charming punchlines, what awful suspense, “Yes, Emperor San’ur Crush is a full-blooded Ungulati and can achieve real miracles. He can move mountains, he can destroy planets that don’t suit him–he can even restore onto a fallen woman… her self respect.”
Now they laughed as hell-bent and raucous as they really were, meaning all of Crush’s courtiers were, this time, honestly amused.
Liyane was released with a shove, and full Ungulates, armored deer soldiers walking on two legs, helped her back up to her feet and guided her wrists into new shackles. These were gold. Liyane glared at Crush anew–no, he was the same old half-crack, unfunny, slimy chump.
Up the stairs, the true heart of the palace opened up. It felt like they’d come to yet another planet done in warm roasted stone columns and a cerulean sky between every arch. Potted green plants were everywhere. A master-crafted, better, shining Earth.
“Crush?”
No answer.
“Nice place.”
“How fast some of us part with our scruples. And, at every single turn in our histories. Liyane, don’t be so disingenuous with me again, unless my stomach is ready for it.”
Chapters
1, OO is for Stoolpigeon :: 2, Whiteblank :: 3, Antler Face :: 4, Orange Planet
A Confession, to His Antlered Face.
The half-deer Emperor possessed a ring that he would press his tongue onto, during breaks in the Court’s proceedings. Liyane was being spoken to, her crimes explained, her bruised hand placed upon, then let drop from the imperial codex. But all she really knew was that this man, with antlers enjoyed tasting his jewelry. Liyane’s pupils dilated in the citrus light as she scrutinized the gold band, which was slick. Fine hairs on Emperor Crush’s married finger lifted up, only now drying that the pace was returning to the trial. A finger next to. Next to his married finger. Alongside the drooled upon ring.
Up from a web of red shadows the antlers stained over his eyes and face, it was Tim staring at her. A cornered, thorned animal, peering through a thicket.
“What truth will you tell? The judge just asked you for it.” Tim, or Emperor San’ur Crush said. He raised a hand, to stop the proceedings. Unhappy whispering, ridicule softened in the room. This all became quiet as an orange leaf drifting through the rich mist, beyond the air-locked windows. “Won’t you answer me, at least? You look as if we know or care about each other.”
“This is Wyle.” Liyane inhaled.
“Yes, you are here with me. On my planet. It is the capitol of the whole galactic empire. Do you understand?”
No, Tim, you’re from Earth. “…Yes.” I’ve met your parents, the bedroom with the vintage 90s posters and old water stains at the top of the walls. You hated that the roof would leak, and plaster would fall. You swore, cussed, that you would get out, by any means.
He walked over. No hooves, no tail. A man with antlers, in a white robe. There weren’t sleeves, but large cut outs along the sides. He leaned forward a certain way, as he did now, and the cloth opened to hips flushed, painted, tattooed? He was gold. Was it fur? What was it? But real human fingers splayed and pressed onto the wooden rail now between them. The ring again. The wet finger, not the married one. Stupid for noticing it. What in hell is wrong with you! One fracture in the ring’s sandy jewel. “It’s salt.”
“Is it?”
“And, the court will observe, also, that Ms. Harcourt is coherent enough to comment on fashion… so yes, she should be able to answer the question. Judge Kaeril, ask it again.”
The judge must have spoken another time. He had large, black eyes set in a wide face. Liyane grimaced, felt how the muscles tugged at her throat, her chest and shoulders, made an ache in her back too and in her thighs the way she had been sitting. The way she had been crouching for months. A deer man, with a salt-lick ring? He couldn’t keep himself from it. Was this good? Was this unhandsome? It needed to be disgusting. But it wasn’t. It was Tim.
“Liyane Harcourt!”
Now, red-scarred Liyane in gray rags gripped the railing. Judge Kaeril had a black robe and tufted ears also. Then, all the other faces in the room that were marked with fur, or round ears, trotters where fingers should be. A woman in silken purple gown, sitting in the back, flitted split in her skirt away from two crossed, bowed hindlegs.
“Will we have to transfer you again, madam? To someplace else where they beat dissidents harder!”
Tim smiled. There were other hard-looking people waiting in the room with their barristers. Nobody dared challenge the emperor suddenly disrupting things.
Liyane did not know why seeing Tim like this, made her release, “Years ago… I was arrested, at a protest. There were a lot of us in the University square, but it didn’t go the way we thought. We weren’t released right away. Because, these were deer police. They found out I was close to… the leader Jeremie Dutch, and our strategist.”
“Go on. Say his name, please.” Emperor Crush, as he looked from this angle, glaring out at window, antlers pointed in profile.
“Timothy Erols. Timothy Erols, Junior.” Liyane scraped, under one thumbnail. “I was studying biotech. They were going to put me in prison, but if I helped to catch them…”
“Your friends, do you mean?” His antlers did not move, when he spoke, however the human features of his face contorted.
“… But that wasn’t enough. I mean…” she focused on another rigid, cracked fingernail, “I couldn’t just sell them out, like that.”
“But the record states that you did, in fact, sell out your friends. What motivated you in the end, Liyane? Golga, I should say. What was your answer again? Say it louder.”
“A Nude Form. I didn’t want to look… the way that I felt, had been born. Anymore. And a better life, a chance to start over. My heart wasn’t really ever in the movement—”
“Am I supposed to be happy to hear it?”
“They released me, but I was wearing a wire. When they figured our location, I guess… the deer followed. Tim and Jeremie ran, and I wanted to go with them, I should have, maybe I should have!”
“Too late for that.” Tim passed his hand through the air again, when Judge Kaeril would have followed up with his own questions. “What’s the last of it?”
“I tasered one of my friends… Timothy. I didn’t want to, that is what the police gave me, for protection. My finger slipped.”
“Your finger did not slip. Was it that one, right there? Let me see it. Give it to me and see what I do to it now—”
“My Emperor,” the judge at last intervened, “How shall she be sentenced, for conspiring with the hunter rebels? The court is eager to satisfy your wish. With so many other cases today.”
Crush answered, “Tim was so fried he ended up in treatment while he was in custody, because he wasn’t any use quieted. Jeremie was tortured and then killed on television. Correct? We’ll know whether you’re lying.”
“I… yes. For a long time, Jeremie was, but…” then, Liyane wondered whose side she was still on. Why should she confess Jeremie’s existence to the deer? Or did he deserve it, for selling her out, nude form and all for more WhiteBlank? “Well, everyone saw him go. Timothy later escaped, and for years, he stalked me. The Witness Protection Protocol didn’t help. Not at all.”
“Until Timothy Errils was murdered.”
“I… I don’t know?”
“Yes you do, Ms. Harcourt. I’m telling you. Timothy, your old friend, lover—you left out that part—stalker, whatever, was killed years ago. By the ones who loved him most. Alright then, High Judge, her story corroborates the record of his. So this is finally shut. Liyane, you’re free to go.”
Liyane shook, while they removed her handcuffs. “I don’t even… why is this happening to me? I was passed from prison to prison… just to check my story?!”
The judge banged his gavel for order.
“Yes, we needed your story, but you also just received my pardon. The hunters are beat, I said, or weren’t you listening? We cleaned out their chief bunker on Earth. Other loose ends now need to be tied up, and I’m seeing to the more interesting stories, personally. Are you confessing to some other guilt now, Liyane Harcourt? Have you committed more crimes against my empire that earn you going back to any number of dungeons you were passed through?”
Crush’s councilors, all half or quarter deer began to assemble around him, to process out. The judge crumpled then began to eat the court record, at the Emperor’s gesture, and shuffled the next set of papers.
Liyane got down from the witness stand. Limped up the aisle, by leaning on one row of chairs cast in orange day-light and then another. People watched her. Liyane kept turning her back, to watch Tim, who wanted to be called Crush. She knew that the door was open, but she also knew how Tim was. She would never be, really this close. Right at the threshold, Liyane took the gilded doorknob in hand and held on, squeezed sweating palm over it.
“WhiteBlank. I think I smell it. Doesn’t anyone else? Someone, go search her.”
Liyane shuddered and cried. She knelt, then screamed, while the deer police went into her drab prisoner’s garb, restrained her, and pulled free a packet of pearlescent crumbles that oozed green when one squeezed. They pronounced her criminal again, in possession.
Red antler shadows crossed over Liyane again. Liyane lashed out of tantrum to cower, folded arms across the back of her neck, so she couldn’t look at him.
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry. It almost looked as if, you’d been completely forgiven.” To the judge, “What’s the sentence, usually, for someone in possession of this much WhiteBlank?”
“Years, maybe. Well, not human years. Ungulate years, going round a red star. So that’s effectively a life sentence for an Earthling.” The pop of a pen cap, and Judge Kaeril began to write it down.
“But it’s always less, for a noble, as we have important imperial business to get back to, make such great contributions to the galaxy. It’s too bad that you aren’t one of those, or at least a friend, sponsored by some powerful ungulate.”
Liyane showed teeth.
Her old friend, the antlered Timothy knelt down. “You will beg me.”
Liyane rubbed her eyes of tears, and these were tugged into cuffs next. She began to approach the witness stand ushered by deer guard, and then the wrought-iron doors back down into the dungeon again… wild! No. Convulsions. “Crush! Emperor Crush, please!”
Crush crunched down into the salt stone of his ring, sucked on the piece between his back teeth and cheek like passing ice cubes from refreshment through one’s mouth on a hot day. “Sorry for the break in proceedings, High Judge. It seems this woman was always mine to play with afterall… Bring my newest ward, then! Set a place by my seat, something amusing another infamous pet of Emperor San’ur Crush would like.”
People in the courtroom chorused laughter. Crush said that he wanted more salt. And good drink.
But first, more salt.
Chapters
1, OO is for Stoolpigeon :: 2, Whiteblank :: 3, Antler Face :: 4, Orange Planet
Champagne, Treachery and a little WhiteBlank
“You know,” Jeremie snarled–or no, never that. Not on my baby. My baby love was definitely smiling, just gently off, when he said, “I didn’t realize how close you and Tim still were. Only a couple of days ago, I was running for my life to an evacuation port, because the Hunter Alliance had been ousted from the Ruminati. It happened at our very own opening session. This is a new year, I could still taste the champagne on my tongue from that… oh you wouldn’t believe the Victory Brunch of the Allies. Remember, I always dreamed of it, but it was Norton said to call it that, do you remember him too? But, as all the star-streaked galaxy flew by us on that flight from Wyle, I was stuck thinking… Who set us up? Who knew exactly which arms to twist votes out of in the Hunter’s Alliance and surround the place with turned guard so fast?
“Then we got back to base here in DC, and I saw the new campaign posters all over the streets. Each one roared in bold about how we Hunters hadn’t worked hard to restore anything at all, and that this last surviving Imperial Ungulati with his new ‘repentant’ senators were going to enforce order. Feast on all dissidents… But it was Tim’s face I wanted to rip down from every Metro stop or bike stand. Not some half-deer’s. Then again, if Tim hadn’t bothered to change his face, not even now, then I would have noticed him years before, sneaking among our ranks. But why would he even go so far in the first place? I would have welcomed Tim back, I prayed for him all these years, he must have known I would. Ohhhh… I can’t think. It’s been snowing on and on, for weeks because of the posters. Posters, then snow. What ever happened to us, Golga?”
How could Commander Jeremie Dutch of the 1st Region’s Interplanetary Hunter Alliance not know?
“Or no. No, I would have definitely wanted to see Tim’s cheating face because… While I was waiting for the others to regroup and reboot, the very thought of lying, scheming little bitches returned another wonderful memory. You had to still be alive, somewhere. You, Golga.”
Jeremy got nearer, pulses of white breath parted to show the real distraught face and form of a man who always felt so soothing and right, somehow regal in nature, however life roughed him up. Jeremie wasn’t supposed to didn’t flinch or erupt. He brooded, then stood to act. This new sparkling anger didn’t fit him. “Golga. We’re frozen and at our end with Emperor Crush–Tim’s siege, and I need you to help me understand… Three days ago, you were sitting up late in your apartment mangling this thing, right?” Jeremie held up what was now a gunmetal cuff with wires torn out of it.
The pink paint-stripped, pried apart edges weren’t dripping blood, but something close. That rose red stuff-of-life all biotech was immersed in behind its metal housing became a gelatin at some temperatures, like raw salmon flesh. Now that Free Me’s innards weren’t being kept at proper conditions, it dripped against the laws of physics and clotted on the cold floor, where Liyane craned her neck to watch. Only reminiscent of blood, Biotech Blood was meant to alarm the human instinct to safeguard complex and delicate technology most people used but couldn’t understand. Light passed through what was something more like battery acid, as if it were a jewel.
In case studies Liyane remembered by wrote, a negligible percentage of people, usually those with distressed childhoods, or other terrible trauma were drawn to covet the robotic blood, play with it, as Jeremie had been doing. He now slammed abused Free Me on the steel table next to her exposed thigh and placed, regretting his temper, a stained screwdriver next to it. His hands were dripping with Bio Blood.
“So, this is a child’s toy, Golga? Hunting rifles are outlawed, but you rigged an old deer hunting game from before Invasion, to target and shoot real deer, anything with the DNA. This is clever, I admit that, just like your old work. Perfect for today’s deer police. I see that you used your thesis work after all, though none of us got our chance to graduate. How do I modify this so that when the Ungulates come back, it actually works?”
Liyane tried to speak, but only a frozen shudder passed over blistered lips. Why? Cold and discomfort whited any more focused thought than memories of textbooks.
“You must know something about its matrix, no Hunter engineer can untangle it… And it can’t be that difficult either. Golga–Liyane, whatever, and don’t you dare lie to me… You kept sharp somehow, when the WPP records say you were working as a kindergarten teacher for eight years. You must have some idea, anything?”
Where were her clothes? What was he going to do? Liyane saw that she was surrounded by metal odds and ends, silver utensils, machine parts. “Look at me, Golga. They didn’t send the deer police after you. We checked before we got snowed in. The Ruminati had nothing to do with your salvation, this time. The new Emperor San’ur Crush sent his special Unglate Ops after you. After your treacherous ass!” he sparked, for no reason at all. “When we went into the police station, get your records out of the damned imperial system, my Hunters were dealing with the freaking SOU, Golga!”
He spoke at times, as if they were still in the old skip-and-smoke hunting group together. At others, they were friends and lovers verging on a tenuous reunion after hurt. The human brain just didn’t fizzle that way, because of the cold? “I knew you were in witness protection, but the SOU was looking after you? So then, you do still talk to Tim, you and the Emperor are connected. Was it you, like I was thinking… on the ship… Was it you setting me up again on Wyle, before the Ruminati? Do you know that, right now, the man who loved you most of all, and your old friends can’t get out of this bunker for food or potable water? We’re left with… surviving on… Not even off this damned planet? We can’t go anywhere. We’re stuck here on Earth beneath a blizzard now because Emperor San’ur Crush, now knows where the other senators have fled! Because of you!”
“I love you too, Jeremie. Oh my baby… I never ever stopped.” and that cracked and hurt at the corners of Liyane’s blue lips. “Reboot? Matrices? You were gone, then… What… happened to you?”
Jeremie leaned elbows on the edge of the work table and covered his eyes. “No. This isn’t right. I came back from the dead, for this shit?!”
Better luck next rebellion, spaghetti legs.
Jeremie raged at the broken piece of Free Me, stabbed it with the screwdriver a few times, and then smashed it on the ground. “…I still can’t get it to shut up, either.”
Liyane shivered with smile, tested his lips with one patient, frost-white finger, kissed him. So warm, at last.
He returned, “I should not have let you do that…” But then Jeremie let Liyane do it again.
Why did he smell so strongly of biotech blood? All over him. Like the last time she had seen him. How long ago had that been… Jeremie’s warm torso speared through by twelve-points, blood smear as his chest was forced up, let down the glass again. His death cracked the camera lens for even more dramatic effect… On a fine, Falcene biotech television screen. Rose at the flat frame edges… One could smell the crushed snow and copper blood, as if truly there… Beyond, was a floor-length square of winter’s light coming from the window. Neighbors outside pushed up their fine apartment windows and threw turquoise streamers down into the streets of Falcinetya City.
Liyane remembered that she changed channel to a cooking show rather than react, but that filled the apartment with roasted garlic and it made her hungry. Ignore it. Tighten laces of the Nude Form, is it a little better? The buy-all-day channel smelled like the gentle parfum of a fancy downtown department store. Maybe plump here or tug down a bit more, tighten there… No. Not enough. “Turn screen off.”
My lovely, as you wish. And then, the television extinguished.
On that day, Liyane breathed and renewed a focused admiration of her own naked silhouette in the mirror. Tightened laces up to a blue ribbon sewn through platinum eyeholes in her shoulder blades. Things were going to be alright. New body, new money, on the right side of the empire now. Life was already getting better. Liyane further willed it, and the lights thanked her for igniting them. A hopeful rose red mood light made the apartment smell like the hollow romantic burn of a candle. Liyane forced her need still more, and the wool curtains drifted together, to shutter out a Falcene celebration of justice, through use of excessive broadcast violence. Now, take a bow, little woman: the last conceited act of your life.
Liyane awakened again, tossed head and hair back to find her knees bent and dragging on the silver floor. The sharp pain made her gasp, flatten tongue against the roof of her dry mouth, but she couldn’t hear her own screaming. And there would always be a terrified part of her that couldn’t stand it if the Nude Form bruised in places.
Above the quake and roar of fire-bombs, rifle blasts, and the steel sides of the Hunter Underground shaking, Liyane could hear the crack of hooves tramping in a constant gait larger than her desperate race to keep from ruining her good body. They had her arms and she was being dragged.
One gray furred face turned beneath its helmet with holes for antlers. Wet nose was licked, “Make sure Emperor San’ur Crush knows the Hunters stripped her and sold it. How many lifetimes worth, do you think?”
Liyane hanged head low again. Her legs burned with the effort, her feet pumping calf muscles that were raw, oozed, bled a harder red than anything inside of Free Me. Quick, panicked pulses of breath. Where was it? What happened to it? How could he…? It had been her only thing, the one they’d promised that made any sense, the one reason she could stand to go through any of it these long eight years!
Jeremie, ‘my baby’, and all her old Hunter rebel friends in need, had been ripping the Nude Form from Liyane’s flesh in that cold, cold room. Now that the pain was bringing her red, slick, analytical and back alive, Liyane recognized the sharp tang of WhiteBlank in her mouth. Years ago, it was a drug only the galactic mob had the power to trade in. Effects: numbness to cold and pain, enchanting hallucinations. And, in the long term: borderline personalities, severe memory loss.
“Let us hope beauty is not what the great Crush wanted her for.” said the other half-deer soldier. It flicked its white spade tail as these half-animals always did on mention of their Emperor, to signal a worse danger coming.
Chapters
1, OO is for Stoolpigeon :: 2, Whiteblank :: 3, Antler Face :: 4, Orange Planet
Liyane Harcourt relaxed hold on the trigger when she saw what Timothy had already done to himself. She relaxed hold of her sense, while molten spray offended the safety, and the shade-blade whirled round her wrist. The pink-and-black bow limbs revolved fast to catch every stray projectile. Liyane took shivering hand to curl fingers against warm collarbone. And the stitches there, smooth as silt. Like tasting her ribbons in a worry, as a girl. Weapon above knobbed wrist joint passed through her, generous.
Congratulations, you have marked a no-point buck! Better luck next time, spaghetti legs.
Only natural, to slam the bright pink plastic torc against the wall and shut it up. Rapport of firebomb outside. Quake. Now, Emperor Sanur Crush was standing directly over her, and he said:
‘The loving Emperor will feast on all dissidents.’
And Timothy still had the horns of the Ungulati though she’d shot his printed face full of holes.
A breath to listen, then Liyane got the whirling pastel device out in front of her again and ran for up the chill corridor.
The place was still clean from the night crew, and even smelled so crisp, like the snow outside. No. That is ash, burning, ending. Ungulates always made places smell like this. Liyane readied, then slammed her shoulder into a stuck door a few times, then slipped against it and fell backward. The door drifted open a beat later, when she tried the knob.
Wak, wak, waaaaaak!
This time, Liyane grimaced dry lips. She faced a two-way mirror beyond her old interrogation table. Yes, this time a dramatic heroine was needed, to smash through it. Liyane took a chair, raised it over her head, fantastic tailored breasts heaving and all, and then the wooden legs rebounded against the dark glass so that they both fell over.
A mirror is not an acceptable target, smartypants. Try Free Me’s pretty princess game. In the land of Happy Sunshine Foreverland, Princess Angelica must stop the evil witch from using a flock of black geese–
“MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL, WHO’S THE UGLIEST OF THEM ALL?” Liyane stacked fists, moved them around in a circle, then shouted over the damned game.
A triumphant, You are the ugliest, Queen Evilmeana! Congratulations, you have freed your heart, the poor black geese, and saved the land of Happy Sunshine Foreverland!
One day, one beautiful day, Free Me would get dumped into a real bubbling cauldron. Then, grammar-checked with hot iron rods.
Free Me emitted a ray of black energy that caused the golden glass wall to gain racing silver hairlines, which deepened. Liyane clicked Free Mee back to the shade-blade, raised it, let it whirr and shield her from the sudden burst apart of glass shards. When it all stopped screaming, raining and cutting down, Liyane stepped through the shattered wall and found the station’s XPS7-41 server in the next room.
A crouch, a reach at the solid box and several more artful clicks of Cheery-Cherry-Pink Free Me, Girls Only Edition. Liyane focused beyond that tight bracelet when layers of life’s colors and cold peeled away. The light woman stopped needing to see the spreadsheets and their windows, became entranced by dazzling calculation and linking to here, to here, to here, and deeper, so much deeper, seduced by the thrill knowing everything at heart’s first search. It began to feel as if she were truly reaching her arm deep into the machine, following the pomegranate seed sparks of near-sentience. She would find what could make her laugh and cry. Smart thing, to take technology in a more sensual direction. That was what sold bionic circuits, in the end:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, Sustainable IS Sexy.” Was how the voiced used to throb in those commercials. It sifted back to Liyane now. Pressed gently at the corneas of her eyes during the lull of search. We need a result now. No, no. Here comes start of a newsreel of cerulean advertisements. You want to get away from the snow and travel to Bermuda, don’t you? No deer, in Bermuda, dear. Shh, machine. Stop talking to me…
The palm of Liyane’s hand had the double ‘oo’ of stoolpigeon, it was that near to firing synapses, cruel milisecond, before her rigged-up efforts were forced to reveal their worth.
“Prisoner Numeral 47-G, Golga Rothschild, alias Liyane Harcourt. You are hereby under arrest, for crimes against the Milky Way Galactic Empire…” the nasal narration of life returned.
Liyane scrambled away from the crimson server and its smooth vapor. She aimed again through the broken frame of glass, this time, pretending to see. Lasers from enemy sights moved down from her forehead to settle in every place that mattered. One point of red light indicated the woman’s heart, the second wanted a kidney through her bones, and the last pointed ready to render any species sterile.
“Please…” Liyane begged, as she looked desperately for their hooves or antlers. Liyane clicked through all the different cycles of the Free Me: a tennis racket and ball, a guitar, frying pan, skis, until the limbs of the bow flipped up and deadly on either side of her forearm and she reset the game. “It was a long time ago, and I was afraid… How was I supposed to know a stupid smoke-and-skip group would ever manage to overthrow the fucking government?!” One last snorted behest from the soldiers, for her to desist.
Liyane fired several jubilant shots in defiant stead. The shade-colored bolts soared into the air, danced their trajectory and finally spelled out ‘YOU LOSE‘ before white flickered everywhere, pain burst and her mind went stark as a page.
Free Me was a tool for punishing ignorance, and these weren’t deer at all, but bipedal Ungulates. The machine had already warned her. No posters of deer. No half-deer. Only deer. The crossbow game was for animal-hunting only. Innocents learned so much faster that way, under the old regime.
These three armored Ungulates loped over to the Human woman, licking cold snub-noses. They knelt on springy haunches, flicked white tails with at the thought of reward.
That didn’t last long. Firebomb again, rifle plumes and bullets–real ones–burst their tall antlers at the joints. When the Ungulates turned to face the Rebels, the half-animals landed on faces and in triplicate. Chests, dead center. Everyone a kill shot.
A man in a wild orange jacket got down on one of his knees. “Golga. Mother-foyer…”
“Jeremie? Did you see that Tim… how did he get…”
“Him! How did you get—?”
“…San’ur Crush, he knows that we weren’t sleeping. And those yellow eyes… quite… wide awake.”
Real Jeremie, so him after all these years, he held on and helped her to sing the rest. Rich, bloodied hands stained Free Me.
The XPS7-41 server still rose in its whirr, as the real woman bled. It breathed scented light through its fans, at every off. There never was a more self-invested moan, in creation. Which was probably why man had been moved to make it. A her. Who would stand time, weather, and blood pooling over the floor, through revolution and revolution.
One sad swipe of the satin stitch across Liyane’s breast. These pretty, and evil things. What had they all come to? People had decided this? Don’t ever, never make me choose again.
And so a machine’s callous preening swallowed Liyane’s last, reddest reminiscing.
Chapters
1, OO is for Stoolpigeon :: 2, Whiteblank :: 3, Antler Face :: 4, Orange Planet
Before we get to the finale story for this year, let’s take a moment and reflect on the madness which is Randitty’s ever-changing blog art:
Each feature story on this blog is planned with a corresponding page design. The banner, backgrounds, and even positioning of the sidebar and main wrapper change for every flight of fiction, since I think it’s far more fun for the entire reading experience to be thought of as a work of art. At present, I’m working on code that will unite blog posts with their monthly templates, so that it will possible to enjoy feature stories in their shiny, natural habitats. In the meantime, you can always view all the blog designs for previous feature stories on the new Story Artseses page.
And why all the strange slang? I’m not amused with anything that doesn’t sound DC-street-fabulous, on this blog.
Next: Jawbreak Blue takes a great big, dramatic breath (when the Redskins do something unthinkable), and then holds it for… I have no idea how long it will take, honestly. So, please don’t try holding your breath for the duration of fictional plot-tension at home, folks.
And so, the mighty Silverback Titan emerged from the frozen earth, looking for his lost pack (of paperclips). Titan missed his mate Strawberry the most. And the cub, little Pipa. The two juveniles he could leave–and Titan grated silvery metal jaw as he hopped along, enjoying the thought of finally being able to put out the irrascible twins. Joba and Boba were not his own, he sensed, but Strawberry insisted on keeping them along…
Titan had been following his pack’s scent trail for many long months. Through summer and fall, over forest trail, in street gutters, and also through an elementary school cupboard… Titan hadn’t figured that part out yet. Had Strawberry gone to hibernate someplace around people? How desperate of a situation were they in?
It would be necessary to get to them before true winter set in, because DC winters can be mild and had been for some time before the big blizzard last year. Among paperclips it was called Clipageddon Three. The first had been a hundred years ago, when there was a tornado in DC that blew apart any manner of survival chains they had formed to hold onto trees, car antennae, or so very many government buildings.
The second devastating Clipageddon was during the formative years of the Nation’s most popular Office Supply Chain, which is having ALL KINDS OF SALES TODAY–BLACK FRIDAY, ALL YELLOW LEGAL PADS 50% OFF, STAPLES 500 FOR $1, AND PAPERCLIPS, WE’LL SHOWER YOU WITH THE HUSKS OF THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF SPIRIT-BROKEN PAPERCLIPS: MOTHERS, BABY CLIPS, WHATEVER YOU WANT, AS SOON AS YOU WALK IN OUR DOORS!!!
And so, you see how terrible it was.
As Titan recalled the old stories (mostly, they were the shiny gesticulations of his grandsire’s upper fang), the gray clouds parted over a field in Rock Creek Park and the steely silverback saw what he’d been hunting for.
Strawberry and the cub Pipa were nearby, their scents were unmistakeable. But if he did not see them, then they were upwind somewhere, perhaps very upwind, hiding out in the safety of treetops. No sign of her majestic red, oblong curve…
In the winter clearing, two full grown males stood with fangs fully unfolded and bared, each on his own hindleg (clips have but two ends, when you unfold them). Joba and Boba had grown from juveniles to full silverbacks.
 |
| A dramatic DC winter sky. So dramatic! |
Titan did not like their aggression, he approached from the side, going two-dimensional and less intimidating. They did not heed. The foolishness of youth, to approach him like this, with no respect for what he had done for them! Protecting them, raising them as his own, even if they were vastly annoying and constantly hungry, and launching onto the loose shoestrings of passerby with no regard for the safety of the family pack… and even if Titan didn’t enjoy their company… well, he was planning to confront them anyways. But not so dishonorably!
Strawberry had been right to hide. These rogue youths had cruel intent, indeed. Titan only hoped that the cub Pipa was safe, as he began to unwind and refold himself, into something that was all fang.
 |
| Titan is all fang, baby. And, some clear tape. |
There had been three Clipageddons in paperclip history. Titan intended to make sure, for Joba and Boba’s ruthlessness and complete disregard for the safety of the pack, this would feel like Clipageddon Number Four: The Blackest Friday.
Have you seen Outsourced yet?
The show isn’t just funny, it’s groundbreaking on many levels. Outsourced is opening doors, windows–and one also gets the sense that it may one day lower something of an iron-clad drawbridge for up-and-coming artists of my generation who have been hungry for more cultural diversity in the media and popular artistic genres since before Obama. In Outsourced, we finally have a program that is doing well, by doing right: making a conscious attempt at showing an authentic India in all its religious and ethnic complexities. Which, if you can imagine, is only a sliver of what the entire world, of which the United States has always been a part, truly is–a brilliant and often painfully-beautiful multicutural reality.
Consider that, for so long, having a black president on a television show was a hard and fast way to establish setting, as did actor Dennis Haysbert’s, President David Palmer on 24, or Avery Brooks’ Captain Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Both iconic roles, cast as racially distinct characters, served to help establish the sense of a future where many of humanity’s problems were already resolved, and then it was easier for these shows to focus on conveying greater moral battles to the audience. (It’s also tempting to make the connection here, that fiction, in a fantasy setting, is ruthlessly effective at managing the same thing, by leaving what is a human struggle the only familiar element in exotic universes.) And these days, we’re living in that very world where real diversity is right on our flat-screens. Freaky, huh?
Well, it’s really a more intimate, progressive future we’re living in than even that:
In an interview that appeared on online magazine Religion Dispatches just last Friday, November 11, a background actress on Outsourced, Sara Zerina Usmen, spoke eloquently about what the show has been able to gift fellow Americans:
“Outsourced is navigating uncharted waters and proving it can be done in today’s climate. American society is more than ready to discuss hot topics in comedy in good measure… In fact, I think we need shows like Outsourced. America is in an identity crisis, and trying to reconcile its past isolation with a rapidly changing global present. There’s a lot of tension in society around race, religion, and economics in recent years spiking in election seasons. If we can’t laugh about difficult things, how can we get through them?”
Sarah is also, herself, the real deal–She’s not just a unique, recurring presence on the show, as possibly the first character in a while on television to regularly wear a hijab. Sarah is a talented young director and writer working on the ground right now in Hollywood to start her film career. She’s already seen some success too, through Queens of Waban Entertainment, namely for her award-winning documentary Muslims in Love.
For that reason, I was humbled and greatly honored that Sarah Zerina Usmen mentioned me, when asked who her favorite author was:
“And my favorite authors are as of yet unpublished! I would look out for the upcoming fantasy novels of Puja B. Canta, whose vivid imagination for characters and storytelling far surpasses mine.”
Sarah is familiar with so many random stories I’ve been telling and writing over the years about talking horses, elephant men who win crowns not for their illegal mating dances but by pretending to be cursed with having to listen to a woman, Muslim princesses who enchant Christian kings through a kind of medieval political satire of their polarized policies, and interracial love triangles that reincarnate themselves from an ancient time to enforce encore apocalypses on worlds that didn’t want to discover one another–all in what only at first seem to be your regular fantasy-fiction settings. Sarah has also read the first chapter of my novel manuscript-in-progress, which is slated to complete late this year.
Likely, this won’t be the last time you see a cross-country artistic connection as intriguing as this one, between a black DC native and a South Asian-American Muslim in Hollywood. It shouldn’t be so surprising in this country. Mostly because, there are so many similar, bright and committed people already in the U.S. who have been wanting a voice too, for a long time now. As I’ve already said, the future of story-telling is here. It’s on television in Outsourced, it’s already in films like Muslims in Love–and it’s only a matter of time before the future is on your bookshelves or clogging up the mysterious innerworkings of newfangled iPads too, with shining gold, bisexual dragons from the ancient Ghananian Empire.
I’m electric that there are artists out there in my generation who are trying to open doors to diversity for all of us, especially in film, where our voices are needed. Whatever could be next?
Here, I’m tempted to say ‘Yo Momma.’ But I don’t dare waste this rare opportunity to tell the world about another amazing development and end this article on an intellectual high note–Ah, screw it.
YO MOMMA is next.
…That was so worth it.
Chapter Seven: A Party on the Pleasant Mountain
When last we traveled with Gyra, Dansel Darrons and their Boatman Stinson, the three had just finished up a holiday at the biggest Red-And-Gold-Reserve any of them had ever seen. Their time at the Anacostia River resort and casino had also refreshed them—happily—and refunded them a bit of tangible fortune—finally—such that they could continue on their adventure through post-apocalyptic 2012 Washington, DC…
Stinson, though he’d left their boat behind (and it also did possess a gasoline engine), still went along using the lone wooden oar as his walking stick. As they hiked up out of the Columbia Heights subway station, he ignored the swell of echoing young-people’s argument, or love spat, or God knows what it could have been coming out of Dansel and Gyra:
“A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.”
“You already used that one back in Anacostia, Dansel—and what are you calling me now, a man? You’re such an ass!”
“’The soul that is within me no man can degrade.’ And so, He says to you that, yes, you are a man, and no, you can’t get on my last nerve today, Gyra…”
“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck!’ Frederick Douglass said that, also.”
And Dansel Darrons was ready with another quote from the Father Abolitionist, but old Stinson blocked their way with his oar, “He may have said that, ‘if there is no struggle, there is no progress’, but I swear to God almighty, that if the two of you don’t shut up, I’ll be strugglin’ to make progress going upside both yo’ heads with my oar.”
Stinson left them frustrated and standing far behind them, underneath the blackened glass awning that still covered the stagnated escalators down into the Columbia Heights metro (abandoned even in their legendary disrepair long, long ago!). The old gentleman was interested in seeing the Temple to Target and all the amazing sanctuary it was said to provide, still, to peoples from all around the city. He could hear the garrulous crowd, they all began to. Final mumblings of Gyra and Dansel’s ridiculous argument began to spurt and pass underneath the sound of actual shopping going on. Casual shopping. People buying things they didn’t need, people buying oils from vendors off of the streets, or t-shirts just because something nice was printed on the front. Just like the olden days, before the Near-Revolution. Gyra was finally able to stop baiting Dansel when another woman on the street complimented her dress.
Stinson read “I fought at Fort Stevens and all I got was this stupid t-shirt” printed on a blue shirt through a window. He cackled, screamed it, pumped the long oar over his head with both hands. “And there’s a guy dressed like it’s the Civil War all over again, smiling like a fool—and he’s got the highway wall raised up behind him, anyways. Do you see it?” He wiped at the edge of his mouth, yelled again, “Doesn’t anyone?!”
“I don’t like the way you get when there’s a chance that our buying things might happen…” Dansel had Gyra by the arm, and now he stopped fumbling with something inside his pocket and snatched hold of Stinson’s bony arm too. “Let us not all break our wallets again.”
People in jeans, carrying brand name purses, looking up from under shades turned and stared these three weirdos dressed much like the man in the t-shirt, squeezed their way down Irving Street.
They were also going downhill.
People will do that when they are tired, at least, that was Dansel’s excuse. “…Or, maybe I’m doing the second most responsible thing and trying to find us more free Smart Trip coupons at the next Red-And-Gold-Reserve. Are either of you paying attention? Are either of you going to help?”
Stinson dragged his boat’s oar along a silver fence, which disturbed young boys who were playing basketball in a schoolyard. It was an impressive structure still, much of the middle school had survived the near-revolution, and they had the District’s flag hoisted high ontop of the adjoining high school complex. Its flag pole was taller than the one for the American flag because, though they seemed to enjoy having both flags, they kept the District’s flag at half-mast.
Stinson stopped making noise when he saw it. “Mhrm, and they’re teaching those kids right, too.”
“Oh, my, how this neighborhood has changed…” Gyra fanned herself.
“But you’ve never set foot outside of Northeast. Not even to go away to school… you took the train from Union Station to Boston, I should wring you a neck to wring… can’t even see your neck the collar of your dress is so ridiculous.”
“But it’s what you say, when you’re in DC, and you don’t want to look like a tourist. Or, if you want to appear like somebody who did apply for and was awarded a fed-diss-pass for gettin’ beyond the highway walls—I suppose that’s also true.”
They walked into a large main street, not bothering with the traffic lights. Cars honked and swerved. People waiting for the light to change took audible breaths.
Stinson rapped something on the hood with his oar—it was almost going too fast to tell exactly what kind of vehicle. Dansel cussed and got them all to hasten safely to the other sidewalk.
“Oh, my, how proper and nice people are here, waiting for the light to cross…”
Stinson agreed, “Very few souls want to tangle with jay walking across the mighty Sixteenth Street. I mean, they still try for it, but it was too dangerous for most back even in my day.”
“Goodness–was that the real Sixteenth Street! Does it really go all the way to the White House? Can Obama see it from where he is? Should we wait for the green light when it’ll be safe, then carve up a piece of it, to take back home? Quick, go get it before Maryland decides to take its land back too…”
And these kinds of exclamations were why Stinson rarely said anything useful to the other people in his group. So then, when Gyra and Dansel began to follow a crowd further down the hill towards the next street, called Mount Pleasant, Stinson heard the drums, eyed the streamers, smelled the meat of who knows roasting, and said nothing.
This, another main street, was fenced off, and there were men sitting on horses waving people through. The loudest block party they had ever encountered was going on behind it.
“If ever I was going to sell my football tickets… it’s in there, Gyra. Or, that would also satisfy as a good place to get more subway passes for us.”
“Sir. I thought we were here to help me find a good job? That was the fortune the mystic lady told me, that’s what I thought we were all friends together doing… helping me get cured of this urban despair disease. It’s real, a family disease, and I’m going to whither and die before your eyes if you don’t start taking me more seriously.”
What of his eyes? Dansel rolled them.
One of the guards on horseback brought his horse over. The animal sort of side-stepped to the music. Or, his rider had asked it to, Gyra clearly couldn’t tell the difference, she was smiling too hard.
“Should I waste un piropo on someone like you? Maybe you’re too good for it in that dress, we don’t know. Pero… es un color brillante, y sabes otra cosa? El color más hermosa, que he visto en todo me vida, se mueve—viva—con cada respiración dulcita, sube el vestido.”
“Oh my—”
“That was disgusting.” scowled Stinson.
Dansel became uncomfortable. “Sir… she can understand you. Fair warning. Also, how much does this all cost? Is this a block party happening, along this Mount Pleasant street?”
“It’s twenty four hours, seven days a week. And, if you walk up and down the block, you will see how well this festival sustains the beautiful tenements and properties near the park… No longer the other way around.”
They couldn’t have understood, but this man, he said his name was Alfonso, tipped hat and couldn’t have been more proud.
“What are all those blue and white flags? Is Mount Pleasant ceded from the District?”
“No, we’re handing them out. Lots of people here are from El Salvador, como yo… and lots of other places. And not just Latin America. Ben, my partner over there, is Vietnamese, and then we have Haitian food down on that side, and burgers and all kinds of stuff, so whatever you want to remember about DC—or whatever you want to get away from, you’ll feel like you’re in a whole other place, definitely get your money’s worth. I recommend the coconut guy. He cuts it with a machete right in front of you, then puts a little umbrella in it. And I’m Alfonso. Y como se llama, dulcita? Quería tomar algo…”
Dansel made a face, and powered through more shifty eyes made at his friend, who happened to be a girl. “How much?”
“Three hundred, for all of you.”
“There’s no discount for Dulcy, whatever who you clearly want to chat up? Gyra, don’t offer him anything of yours until we get something knocked off the price.”
“What? But I wasn’t—”
“Tranquilla… It’s more like a hotel fee.” Alfonso swept off his hat, as his horse got bored, lashed tail and stepped backwards. He got the reigns and urged them both forward again. “It’s for the whole day and the evening, check-out is noon. But we are surviving by our cultures here, on the Pleasant Mountain. Not since a lot of the folks on that side of the street, got diss-passes and moved out beyond the highway.” he gestured vaguely, someplace even further down the hill, past the meat smoke and people in regalia gathering behind the chainlink fence. Some of them were almost nude, in what looked like Mardis Gras costumes. Far beyond all this, deep, deep, green and into the trees, were crumbling row houses covered over with vines.
Ben finished with his cigarette and looked up from where he was passing down tickets, “A lot of good people didn’t want to leave people after the near-revolution though, so they stayed and helped with this whole marketing plan…”
“Shh, Ben… you guys, this is the mystery… of an exotic urban enclave, a village in the city… the center of Latino culture in the district…it’s got nothing to do with money this time.”
“Cause all the natives here, even the angry white folks, got together after the highway walls went up in 2011, and decided we’d gentrify in the other direction…”
Alfonso swatted at his friend calling out.
Dansel showed the holographic sticker on the super bowl ticket he offered, he flipped through a book of them. “And… the Redskins are playing.”
“You’re shitting me…they made it? Out there, it’s a goddamned crazy world out there down town. Hija de—those pendejos Redskins really made it? Shit… I’m all crying and shit…”
That’s all that it took. Alfonso handed back a ticket to his friend, but before he could move, it was Alfonso, with the louder voice and larger smile, who offered Gyra a hand up first, and then he escorted the three of them personally through Mount Pleasant.
Alfonso and his horse hardly took a step before a whistle was blown—not that of a policeman, but of a drum major. All the people who had paid for the evening’s entertainment brought out cell phones, or cameras, pushed into a line against the street. Many of them had travelled far, many of them were not local at all. Many of them needed to remember, to re-connect, and there was a hungry feeling. This did not feel like folks eager to enjoy themselves. These were people waiting to gorge at a meal, desperate to have a piece of this urban joy. Some had real camera equipment set up, intending to capture it and re-sell it later. “Hey, look, those are real black people running that shop—they’re from Mount Pleasant too?!”
Ben almost inhaled his whole cigarette, in an effort to reach down from his horse and force Dansel’s pointing hand back down.
Gyra began to watch the people dance and march, heard the heartfelt songs going and said her stomach didn’t hurt so much anymore.
After hours of parade, Alfonso and Ben escorted Gyra, Dansel and Stinson to their lodging for the night. “El Hotel” was a white building with burn-marks that streaked black over white paint. When they got inside, the decor of a burned building continued, but it was accented with orange curtains gold accent above doors and at the edges of windows. This felt more like a shrine to them, it was so carefully done, than a place to keep tourists overnight. They asked what it meant, but Alfonso, nor Ben would say anything. Nobody working the bell desk or winding a vacuum cleaner chord back up in the hallway would say anything about it either.
When they arrived at the room–Dansel commented that they already had their keys and could count for themselves, Alfonso eventually asked Gyra how it was that she could understand Spanish?
“My father was a Cannoneer in the near-revolution. He made me learn it afterward. Up at Fort Stevens, there were all kinds of people working to defend the city against the National Guard and the highway walls.”
“Y porqué no me hablas?” He really leaned in, really looking at her.
She looked away, shy.
“You’re cute. But, you’d better learn it. Nobody survives in Mount Pleasant, not even DC, I think, not even in this nation–and I’m damned sure not in 2012, without it.” Then, Alfonso turned to Dansel and Stinson. “You said you want transportation down to where the National Mall is? You three are willing to pay for that sort of mirror-trick past the highway wall? Because that’s what I’m hearing you say to me.”
“Certainly. I’m going to see the superbowl, I have real tickets to get in that new stadium they have down there, and I’ll go over any man’s head who thinks he’s going to stop me.”
“Hey, calm down. I’m not going to the police, but I am saying… you do realize, you’re gonna have to swim for it.”
They were confused.
“…Unless, you want to pay my boy Jaime for a raft-ride down the Rock Creek. No pressure. Just think it over, check out is at twelve. Raft leaves at twelve-thirty… you can be soaking wet and smelly with whatever’s in that brown water these days… Or, you can stay dry, don’t mess up those suits.”
“Twelve-thirty?”
“…And, you can have Gyra back in the morning, when she’s fluent. Baby, ven.”
And then Alfonso took her, and Ben gave himself another cigarette, and Dansel’s nose touched the door when it slammed.
Stinson laughed at him.
“It’s a hideous dress. It’s still an ugly dress right? And, she’s got some serious mental problems too. Urban despair disease—the hell it is! She’s just moaning and groaning because I won’t pay attention to her, and what man would when she once threatened to kill me with her daddy’s shotgun. That Alfonso is an idiot. You’ll see. We’re gonna end up swimming down that Rock Creek without Jaime. He’s an idiot, right?”
Stinson lay down and carefully set his boat’s oar down beside him on the bed. “Es lo que viva, sube el vestido… or something. I should remember that line…”
Randitty 