by R. E. Vance
“Yeah. That’s right. Where is Urfa, anyway?”
“Somewhere very, very far away,” she said in a distant voice of her own.
↔
We pulled up to the back entrance of the Millennium Hotel just before eleven-thirty. Stewart and four stone gargoyles immediately started unpacking the van.
I went to the back and watched the gargoyles airlift coolers bigger than them, lightly flapping their wings as they did so. I don’t care how special gargoyles are, they shouldn’t be able to fly. Not with all that weight. They were either burning a bit of time or they fell under the same rule as a bumblebee—as in, if a bumblebee knew it shouldn’t be able to fly, it wouldn’t. I wasn’t about to tell these mythical creatures that stone can’t levitate. One particularly large gargoyle picked up two coolers at once, lifting them with unnatural ease. He had a long slash across his face, made by some sword that hit him during some ancient battle. Judging by the rest of ScarFace’s carvings, I guessed he was made around the time the French were building Notre-Dame.
I walked up to Stewart, who stood like a statue, evidently surveying the procession. “Excuse me, Stewart,” I said. The diamond gargoyle turned his head slightly downwards. “I think we have a problem.”
“Are the fish in the containers?” he asked.
“Yes, but … ahh, fish?”
“Yes, live fish for the feast.”
“I guess so, I didn’t look inside. But that’s not why I’m here. We might have a problem.”
“The fish are here. There is no problem.” His head twisted up again as the gargoyles went inside.
“Yes, Stewart, we do. The human issue that you had me deal with … turns out, he wasn’t human, not in the technical sense. But whatever he was, he wasn’t happy with us bringing the fish here.” Stewart did not move. “Ahhh, Stew, did you hear me?”
“I did,” he said, not blinking, not moving, nothing. “Oh, yes,” Stewart said with an uncharacteristic intonation, which is to say, not completely flat. “I forget that humans need facial cues when speaking.” He moved his eyebrows, expressing mild curiosity.
“Great. I’m glad you heard me. What are we going to do about this … problem?”
“I fail to see what the problem is.”
“He might try to crash the party.”
“Crash?”
“Ruin. Ruin the party.”
“He will not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because his time has passed and he cannot hurt us,” he said, as if that explained everything. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to attend to the final preparations.” And with that the diamond gargoyle went inside.
I followed him. He needed to understand that the WildMan was a problem. But before I could say another word, Stewart lifted a hand and two sentry gargoyle statues that I didn’t even notice perched on the wall became animated and closed the back door behind us. Now it made sense why Stewart wasn’t worried—not only did The BisMark bring his own staff, he had security, too.
Fine—if he wasn’t worried, then I wouldn’t be either. It was their party, after all. What did I care, as long as I got paid? Whoever this WildMan was, he wasn’t going to be a problem tonight. He was, however, still a problem. He attacked my friend, and I wasn’t about to let that go.
I was thinking about how I was going to get Astarte to open up and tell me who that guy was when I was stopped cold … no, that’s not right … I was stopped hot by the shimmering beauty that strolled down the service stairwell and toward me.
“Hi there!” Medusa—holy crap … She was early. “I was looking all over for you. I made the mistake of walking in there.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “I’ve never been shooed away by a gargoyle before.” She strolled down the stairs in a beautiful red dress, silk shawl, high heels and a shiny gold necklace. Her snakes were wrapped in gold and silver chains that ended at their heads in crowns of jade and sapphire stones. She wasn’t just stunning. She was perfection.
And that was who I had to let down easy.
Hellelujah!
↔
Medusa followed me to my room, which, to be honest, had I not come in late and wetter than a fish in a monsoon and colder than a naked lizard in the Arctic, I would have protested. But I did not have the upper hand on that one and, well, Medusa could be quite insistent.
My room was a large bedroom and a small living room with a kitchenette and an ensuite bathroom. Impersonal hotel artwork that I couldn’t bother to take down hung on the walls, giving the room an “I’m not here for long” feel. Sturdy “built for wear and tear” hotel furniture sat unimpressively around the room.
“Have a seat,” I said, pointing to a loveseat. Taking off my jacket, I walked into the bathroom and ran it under warm water as I wiped away as much algae as I could. The result was a marginally clearer and significantly wetter jacket. I draped it over the register and cranked the heat up to full blast.
I walked into the bedroom and began searching my closet for anything to wear. I mean, anything. I didn’t have a thing to wear other than a white T-shirt. I was really counting on that jacket. Hellelujah!
“Who are these beings?” Medusa asked. I popped my head out of the bedroom and saw that she was standing at the far end of the living room, by my shelves with the 1980s toys. I had them all—Transformers, Voltron, WWF dolls, He-Man, G.I. Joes, GoBots, Smurfs … besides my coat, those toys were the only things I owned. She held a well-loved, original Generation 1 1984 Optimus Prime in her hands.
“Careful with that,” I said, “his left hand is loose.”
She looked at the blue fist and pushed it deeper into its socket. “These idols do not remind me of any of the GoneGods. Are they abstract representations?”
“Idols?” I chuckled. “No, they’re not idols, they’re toys.”
Marty hissed and stuck his head through the gate of Castle Grayskull before coming out of the turrets, where he was met by He-Man. He-Man didn’t move, partly because he was face-to-face with a snake whose head was bigger than him, but mostly because he was made out of plastic. “Toys.” Her tone was colored with confusion. “But what about this shrine? This is a place of reverence, lined up so that each can clearly be seen and can see.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I worship them … I just like them. A lot. Play with them,” I said bashfully, “but worship …”
“Would you sell them?”
“No way!” I said with an embarrassing amount of vigor.
“And they enrich your life?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And they comfort you?”
I found myself nodding. When I was a kid, PopPop was always working. Not that he neglected me, it was just that times were hard and he was a single grandfather, raising the kid his daughter died giving birth to. And even though money was tight, he always managed to get me the latest toy. I don’t know how he did it, but he did. Now that I was an adult, I spent every spare penny on completing my collection. And not just to have it sit on a shelf. I always hated those collectors who kept a Veritech fighter in its original plastic or hid an original Spock doll in a glass case. They were meant to be played with, and, damn it, a man in his late thirties can enjoy them just as much as a kid. How many sleepless nights have I spent sitting on my floor staging battles between Voltron and the Joes? Yeah, if I were honest, they did offer me some comfort. Or at least a way to distract myself when my mind was too cluttered to do anything useful like sleep.
“Then they are your new gods.”
I thought about her words for a moment. True, they comforted me, I valued them, but they did not give my life meaning or purpose, and for that reason, if nothing else, that disqualified them as my gods. “They make me happy, sure … but they don’t define who I am,” I said.
“They don’t? Then how do you define yourself?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I subscribe to Popeye’s philosophy of life: ‘I am what I am and that’s all that I
am.’ ” I threw on my best old sea-mariner accent, which basically meant pronouncing “I am” as “I yam.”
“Who is Popeye?” Medusa asked, running her hand along the shelf.
“Just a guy I knew,” I said. “Obsessed with spinach, tattoo of an anchor on his forearm.”
“Oh … sounds like an interesting fellow,” she said in a dreamy, distracted voice. “You know, when I was young and immortal, my only desire was for the humans to make a statue of me so they could visit it from time to time when in need of comfort. That was my highest aspiration.”
“And what happened?” I asked.
“I found out it was more fun to turn them into statues.”
“Really?”
Medusa let out a heartfelt laugh. “No, of course not. You know, the myth of the ugly Medusa turning people to stone is the equivalent of your modern-day tabloid.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
There was silence. “Sorry,” she said. “I thought of that joke when standing in line at the local grocery store. It was funnier in my head. But it’s partly true. I wasn’t the monster in the cave that mythology made me out to be. It was vicious lies told about me by Athena.”
“Athena the goddess?”
“Yes. She was angry at me for something I did,” Medusa said from the living room as I rummaged through old boxes in my closet, looking for something to wear.
“And what was that?” I pulled out the only thing I had that might be appropriate for tonight and looked at it with a mournful groan.
“Following my heart.” I popped my head out of the bedroom to see a forlorn Medusa cradling Optimus Prime in her hand. Before I could say anything, she said, “I’m sorry. This event is hard for me. I know I tricked you into inviting me, and although this is a date, I’m not here for you. I’m here to apologize to an old, old friend whom I hurt. What is that mortal expression? ‘Bury the hatchet.’ ”
So that was it. And all this time I thought she was here for me. “Does this have to do with Poseidon again?”
Medusa looked over at me and nodded.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head, placing a finger under her right eye as she held back a tear. “Maybe afterwards. If I talk about it now, I’ll ruin my makeup.” She forced a smile, and her dimples tucked in with brave pride. “Besides, if I start crying, then my snakes will start crying, too … Do you know how hard it was to put mascara on sixty eyes? It took hours.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
“Jean, are all humans as gullible as you?” she chuckled.
“Only the good ones,” I said, popping out of my bedroom in a fresh white T-shirt tucked into blue jeans and an old vest that I once-upon-a-time wore to the prom. “Ta-da?” I said in a deflated tone.
“No jacket?”
I shook my head.
“You’re kidding me. You own only one jacket?”
I pursed my lips in self-admonishment. “Well, I have a leather jacket, and let’s not forget my fire-engine-red snow jacket, but I doubt if either is appropriate.”
“Here, give it to me,” she said, as her eyes started to glow. “I will dry it.”
“No,” I said with a little too much vigor. “No,” I repeated, calmer the second time around. “Please don’t burn time. Especially not for me.”
“But Jean—your jacket is wet, and you can’t go down there in just a T-shirt.”
“I know,” I sighed. She was right. “Come on, I have an idea.”
Lights, Camera, Spying
I knocked on Astarte’s door. From behind it I heard some shuffling, before an unsure nasal voice said, “Yes?”
Brian. “Open up,” I said. “It’s Jean.”
“Ahhh, Astarte’s not here,” Brian said, and I could actually hear him swallow.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” he said in an uncertain voice that told me he knew exactly where she was.
“Look, I need to borrow something. I’m sure Astarte will be fine with it. Please open up.”
“No.”
“Brian,” I said in a threatening tone.
I actually heard a gulp through the door. “No, she’ll get mad at me.”
“I’ll get mad at you,” I said.
“So?” he said, clearly weighing the consequences of angering a human hotelier versus a tantalizing, “make your dreams come true” succubus. I was losing.
“Come on, Brian … open up right now, or I’ll—”
“Huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your door down,” said a sultry voice with a hint of a Parisian accent. “Really, Jean, you can be quite dramatic sometimes.” Astarte sauntered past me and opened her door.
I prepared for the worst—or best, depending on your perspective. Astarte regularly hosted orgies and her room was a cornucopia of dildos, sex swings and PCP. I figured we’d be walking into a jungle of silicon, inviting throw pillows and shisha pipes lit with apple tobacco that may or may not be spiked with certain sensory-enhancing drugs. Hell, I wouldn’t have been surprised if we walked in to see a river of honey and a fountain of milk.
But we didn’t walk into the ultimate geisha den—we walked into a well-lit, cold computer lab. There were desktops, laptops, tablets and a heavy-duty camera that pointed—pointedly—at the bed. Webcams, HiDef digital cameras and just about every kind of lens you could imagine. I doubt someone could move an inch here without having every spasm, twitch or jerk being recorded.
And then there were monitors. Monitors that displayed every kind of fantasy I’d ever had and didn’t know I had. Orgies, sure, but other, harder stuff that made Fifty Shades of Grey seem like a children’s book. People tied upside down, right-side up and sideways. Bodies plugged into bodies as mouths curled in unsmiling joy.
The noise that greeted us was an orchestra of moans, groans and elation—homages to gods now long gone—and the ever faithful, classic exclamations of “I’m coming!”
Brian sat in the middle, wearing a headset that covered his eyes. His hands were out in the air like he was cupping something right in front of him.
I turned to Medusa, feeling my face flush with the remaining blood. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “If you want to wait outside, maybe that would be best.”
Medusa looked at the screens as though she didn’t hear me. Astarte heard me. “Don’t be such a prude, Jean,” she said, approaching Medusa. Marty met Astarte, but instead of giving her his typical hiss, he curled around her hand, his serpentine expression clearly one of familiar, old joy. “Medusa and I are old … friends. Remember?” The last word hung in the air.
Now it was Medusa’s turn to be embarrassed. “That was a long time ago,” she said quickly. She was thinking of the night she spent in Astarte’s room. I knew from Astarte that nothing happened, but Medusa didn’t know that I knew. Then, looking at me, she said, “When I was younger and in my … ahhh … experimental years,” evidently talking about an incident that happened pre-Jean, and possibly pre-Christ.
“Honey, when your experimental years are over, so are you,” Astarte said, pointing at me like she was deciding what kind of cone she wanted for her ice cream.
“What is this place?” Medusa asked. “It reminds me of the Hall of Mirrors.”
“Better. It’s the window to all knowledge. And it’s what the humans worship now.”
“Of course,” Medusa said, obviously following the conversation better than I was.
“Through these portals I will start my empire anew.”
“Empire?” I asked. Her eyes met mine, and I gave her my best “Yeah, right” look. “And how will you do that?”
“By making a … a … It Support!” Astarte turned to Brian. “What am I building?”
“Not ‘it’ support—IT Support. I. T. And you’re building a website. With a landing page!”
“Yes—a website. I shall do all this with a website.”
I rolled my eyes. “OK, Zuckerberg.” I looked over at the monitors. “Wh
at’s that?” I pointed at one of the screens.
Brian turned it off. “Nothing,” he said.
“No … turn that back on.” Brian hesitated and looked over at Astarte. I hooked my forefinger under his chin and brought his gaze up to mine. “Now!”
He gulped and flipped a switch. The screen flickered to life, and an image of the hotel lobby popped up. Others were walking in, being guided downstairs to the gala by the gargoyle ushers. “That’s happening now,” I muttered, before the realization of what was going on dawned on me. I turned to Astarte. “You put up hidden cameras in the hotel?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then how are we watching what’s going on downstairs?”
“I didn’t put up the cameras. IT Support did.”
“Because,” I barked, “you told him to!”
I turned on the human IT Support and in a guttural tone of pure rage growled, “Her, I get. As an Other, her moral compass is all over the place. But you, Brian … you know better. How many cameras?” Brian hesitated. “How many?”
“Two.”
“Two,” I repeated.
“Hundred.”
“Two hundred hidden cameras in my hotel!” There were seven floors with eleven rooms on each. There was a lobby, a kitchen, a utility room and a banquet hall. In total, eighty-one separate places. Even if some of the larger areas had a couple cameras, that still didn’t break a hundred. “Where?” I asked.
“Where?” Brian gulped. “Everywhere, really.”
“And where is everywhere, exactly?”
“All the rooms.”
“All seventy-seven guest rooms?”
Brian nodded.
“My room?” Brian nodded again. “The bathrooms?” Brian gulped before nodding.
I took a deep breath, then another one, before counting to ten and reminding myself that killing an Other—as ridiculous as she was—would get me in jail. “OK,” I said, keeping my tone as even as I could. “After the gala is over and all the guests leave, you are to take down each and every camera.”
“But Jean,” Astarte protested, “my empire needs eyes.”