“Fuck it.”
I turn and discharge the blast into the far wall, eliminating a row of tall windows to expose late afternoon rain flicking in on the breeze from a green English country garden.
The blast startles Baroness. Her minion klutzes the silver service as the old lady bounds back seeing me re-orient on her position and return.
“Don’t even think about running,” I say to her. “You’re going to set up Mona with somewhere safe to live where she can look after Rose. Make sure she gets medical care. I have ways to check in with her that you can’t even fathom. You do this and tell me what I want and I will leave you here.”
“Alive?”
“Alive, yes. Able to walk depends on your answers.”
“Ask me anything. What is this about?”
“Atlantic City.”
Baroness drops her eyes on the guilty secret.
“Tell me,” I say.
“What do you want to know?”
“What do you think?” I bark and resist the slap. “Tell me everything.”
*
“EVERYTHING” TURNS OUT not to be as much as I might’ve hoped, but it’s a hell of a lot more than I knew before. If my brain had its own stomach it’d be throwing up at the mental gymnastics I pull trying figure this all out.
The chaos of Atlantic City somehow comes down to an underworld hire. In her capacity as a profiteer and supplier of connections, Baroness was approached by agents for an unnamed man later revealed as disgraced Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Those agents said their master wished to make an offer of resources to an organization well known to harbor enmities against the world’s greatest superpower.
“And it’s greatest polluter,” Baroness says.
“What do you mean?”
“Mikhail Khodorkovsky wanted contact with Earthsong.”
“The . . . the activist group?”
“The environmental vigilante,” Baroness says. “You know her, surely?”
I don’t let on that in fact I don’t exactly do, and the old harridan moves on.
“Earthsong wanted a show of good faith. The Russian supplied her with a nuclear submarine liberated just days earlier from the North Koreans. She made it her base of operations for the attack on Atlantic City.”
“A nuclear sub’s more than a touch ironic for a militant environmentalist, don’t you think?”
The old lady shrugs eloquently enough for us both.
“OK,” I start. “First off, I’ve never heard of any female grey called Earthsong, but the environmental terror group, what I’ve seen exactly fits their MO. If this super’s behind it, then all fine and dandy. I have to pay her a visit.”
I would say more – I’m really starting to develop a good threatening swagger in this new body – but the Baroness obviously takes her school marm role seriously and tuts me with a quick history lesson.
“Young women like you are mindless automata addicted to iPhones, it’s no wonder you don’t have a better than passing knowledge of the milieu in which you now operate,” the villainess lectures like a true toff. “It’s true Earthsong hasn’t been seen for many years. Not since . . . not since around the time of the Doomsday Man.”
I drop a shade at the connection and have to clear Holland’s throat, which gives the old woman another chance to speak.
“There were rumors they were lovers,” Baroness says.
“Please, don’t. Let’s just . . . not complicate things any further. Agreed?”
Again she shrugs.
“What’s the story with Khodorkovsky?” I say. “I’d normally stumble over a name like that. I feel like there’s something should be familiar about him.”
Baroness just stares at me, an old chicken watching the hen house door. I sniff and contemplate the connection and some spark flickers within my subterranean firmware and an image of Khodorkovsky’s name on a list with the other alternate identities of The Twelve pops onto play in the Betamax of my mind.
“Mikhail Khodorkovsky came from nowhere during the break-up of the FSU,” Baroness says slowly like an anticipated voice over.
“He angered the wrong people, especially in the KGB, which for many years was the true shadow government despite the Iron Curtain coming down. And despite Khodorkovsky’s millions – some would say billions – he crossed the wrong people and ended up in Siberia with the other dissidents. I don’t know why Yeltsin didn’t have him killed. Khodorkovsky rebuilt himself in the ice. Harder. Colder.”
“Why the fuck doesn’t he focus on revenge instead of attacking my city?”
“You haven’t met him.”
“No shit.”
“If you met Khodorkovsky, you would understand,” she says. “Some revelation came to him in his time in the gulag. It is the dark flame which powers him.”
The old villainess stops talking like she’s worried she might offend me. I motion her on.
“You didn’t explain why he’s attacked Atlantic City.”
“He hasn’t.”
“Oh. Earthsong.”
“Correct.”
“And he supplied her . . . what?”
“A great many things.”
“If you’re coy with me, I’m going to break all your ribs and then make you watch Titanic. Ko-dork didn’t supply her troops. Those crazies are true believers. The Russian wanted Earthsong for her army, right?”
“You would have to ask him yourself.”
“That explains the hipsters-in-Kevlar, I guess,” I say. “But how many bad guys in tights did Khodorkovsky pay for as well? I saw Raveness and a few others I know normally take mob money.”
“Your Atlantic City mafia isn’t paying what it once did.”
“There’s a new guy in charge,” I say, shrugging and thinking of Twilight.
“I would suggest there’s no guy in charge,” Baroness replies. “And it’s my business to know these things.”
“Professional pride aside then, you give me your view of what’s going on?”
“I only give it to you because of professional pride. I’m not afraid of your threats.”
“You can spin your shit any which way you want, lady,” I say. “As long as you give me the fucking answers I want, I don’t have to leave you in a pool of your own bladder.”
“Bladder?”
“I meant blood,” I tell her. “Now answer me.”
“When his agents came to me, Khodorkovsky insisted on one thing in our arrangement.”
“He paid you?”
“No, he threatened me too.”
“Sucks to be you. Go on.”
“Be glad he did, otherwise I wouldn’t tell you a thing –”
“Yeah yeah. Get on with it.”
“Khodorkovsky had a pet mutant. A strange gangly boy. Not right in the head, as my mother would say. Good with computers. Mr Khodorkovsky insisted the boy be part of Earthsong’s mercenaries. The boy was part of her plan.”
“Why does Khodorkovsky want Atlantic City ruined?”
“Again, you would have to ask him yourself. He is just a man. An incredibly wealthy man.”
“One who used to be a superhero . . . in a former life.”
“Nonsense. I’ve never heard anything like that.”
I shrug, not in the mood to reciprocate.
“Where is he at?” I ask her. “And what’s Earthsong got to gain out of all this?”
“I can’t give you Khodorkovsky. Truth is, I won’t. He’ll kill me for sure, and I don’t really believe you will,” Baroness says. “Earthsong though, her I can give. I have the location of her submerged base off Atlantic City. It’s yours.”
“Cool. I’ll have that on a . . . on a thumb drive or something then.”
“What will you do with it?”
“What the fuck do I know? Do you have the frigging co-ordinates or not?”
Baroness sighs at me. “Good lord, I’ll find you a phone as well.”
“And a change of clothes,” I say. “And something to
eat. I don’t forgive you for fucking these kids up though.”
“I couldn’t put Rose out of her misery either, so I put her to work for me,” Baroness says slowly. “I do look after her. Those tubes aren’t torture or punishment. They keep her alive.”
Baroness runs me through her slow examination and will never know how close she comes to me just snapping her neck anyway. But I’m really hungry and I am not sure I could get these inflatable fucktards to make me a sandwich.
“I’ll have my servants prepare what they can,” Baroness says.
I eye her up and down in her Victorian hardware and scowl.
“And clothes too, but don’t even think about anything like that,” I tell her. “I’m a postmodern woman.”
Zephyr 22.9 “Takes One To Know One”
TAKING STOCK, I have done OK in my English jaunt. As the day turns golden brown outside, I find myself in a first floor bedroom in the stately manner the Baroness calls her own, an almost priceless colony of pastoral charm embedded within the structure of Manchester yet shielded from the everyday eyes of most of her countrymen by the slow and careful accumulation of key real estate accompanied by petty foreclosures and discreet city council motions to enclose certain otherwise useful laneways, all designed to further enhance and ensconce the Baroness’s private realm.
For now, I am a benefactor. One of her mysterious minions delivers table service of roast beef and vegetable feast, including (he tells me) foraged herbs and native mushrooms, which I pay little heed to as I attack until I’m left crouched gnawing on the bone like some Mad Max extra yessing and no-ing various clothing ensembles the other puppets parade before me. It would be hilarious if I wasn’t such a wreck. I have been healed by Moaner/Mona and the effects of whatever medication they had me on were exorcised by my inner demon, cleansing me as much as that whole episode leaves me more fragile and worn out than ever.
In the end I manage my way into black leather riding breeches and high boots, a matching vest and sweeping grey ankle-length coat. Somehow through all of this I still have my crown-like face mask, which I pin in place to frame only recently brushed hair. I almost feel restored, except for the nagging feeling I left my soul behind at some point during the past week.
Once fully dressed, it’s a short journey onto the outside landing where Baroness and a half-dozen of her creations join me. I already have the phone, which I thumb now like some relic of yesteryear with all the distraction of today’s younger crowd as the Baroness clears her throat twice to get my attention.
“I trust this puts our business at an end?”
“Pfff, you’re not out of it that easily,” I say and gesture. “I know where you are now. If you and your Gelflings want to take a shot at me, now’s the time. I’ve got places to go and people to be.”
Baroness blinks, but shakes off the opportunity as she and her minions back away. I nod and take flight, angling for London.
Time for a little family reunion.
*
I WOULD DEARLY love to stop and absorb a BBC World News special on what the outside world has figured out about my home town, but time is presumably of the essence as always. I wing my way across the country to Elisabeth’s place and crash land in her back yard at what the natives would call dinner time, which is about 4pm to you and me.
As sure as I’m totally killing it in this new outfit, Elisabeth is home, and she emerges onto the back landing in a fluster at the noise of me disentangling myself from what looks like the materials for building a hen house. A real giveaway is the three hens pecking at the ground around me, one of whom I’m just gently nudging aside with my foot and unintentionally getting airborne as Elisabeth appears.
“Who the hell are you?” she asks.
I take a deep breath and that’s long enough for my composure to falter as I drink in the cosmic ridiculousness of this moment and Cusp starts to grin and cackle fetchingly.
“Beth, you know that joke we always had about what I’d do if I got to be a woman for a day?”
“Jesus Christ Joe, what have you done now?”
She looks at me for a long moment – long enough that it turns awkward as she looks me in the eye again and shrugs, faced screwed up in a clear conflict between irritation and sheepish amusement. Her earlier panic’s gone and replaced by something unique, like the manifestation of a rare and as yet unclassified new emotion. Her Irish complexion disintegrates in the weakening light.
“Jesus, Joe,” she says and falters too. “What do you want me to say? Yes, you’re gorgeous. She’s gorgeous, Joe. Holy shit. Who is she? Christ, is this meant to make me jealous, because it sure feels like it.”
“Believe it or not Beth, if it’s only just this once in your life, this isn’t all about you, OK?”
“Still an asshole, Joe. Holy shit.”
“You couldn’t believe it about any of my other predicaments, as Zephyr, you know, so . . . believe you me, this one most certainly wasn’t designed just to cause you more inconvenience, ‘K?”
“Listen to the sassy tone on you.”
“Wiseass.”
“OK, I’m finally attracted to you again.”
“Don’t tease,” I say, finding it hard to be mirthful with this woman who is the mother of my children and yet forsaked me and our wedding vows, and almost understandably so, given nearly two decades with me. Maybe she just got out, unlike Holland and Loren and the others who never stood a chance.
“I need to use your phone and your PC if you’ve got one here,” I say.
“There’s practically one in every room,” Elisabeth says. “Come in. I’m not even going to try and explain this to my husband. You’re just an old friend of Joe’s, OK?”
“Sure.”
“What’s your name?”
“Cusp,” I say softly. “But her name was Holland.”
*
I RANSACK BETH’S kitchen while scolding her on behalf of her adopted country, which really should have ridden to its ally’s rescue way before now. Elisabeth hisses something at me about not being so fucking parochial as she details the bread riots and the looting and the bombings on the London Underground and the CBD under lockdown and Parliament infiltrated by Zionist suicide bombers, which in general has kept the UK pretty much with its hands full while also riding the global economic tsunami of shit following the world’s biggest megalopolis going dark.
At least the Limeys have the power on. I fire up her shitty Toshiba laptop, which has the misfortune of running Windows 8, which means having to suffer programs of its once-elegant task bar now remodeled as completely non-functioning “apps” riddled by rampant software conflicts, 1990s-style lag between accessories opening otherwise representing a massive step backwards for home computing. After the device finally decides to unfreeze and its boot-up is complete, I hone in on the internet connection and start devouring news feeds while eating cereal and checking through numbers on my new phone.
“God damn it,” I snap mostly to myself, though Beth sticks her head out of the adjacent kitchen, dark curls falling around her shoulders – and I note the first touch of grey in those strands. I divert my attention like a child caught snooping and swallow carefully and meet her sympathetic eyes and remind myself that perhaps enough time has passed for her to feel companionly towards me, but I don’t yet share the desire to resume our mutual delusion. And she seems to note this. She holds a sheaf of folded pages she offers me like a peace offering, uncertainty in her gaze.
The handwriting is mine, but they are words I cannot remember penning. Not in any right state of mind, anyway. I hold the sheets limply with a hand that is not mine, like some actualization of a metaphor in which I really am one removed from the original hand of that angry script. Blinking in the absence of knowing what else to say, I refold the papers and toss them gently onto the sideboard in this gingerbread cottage existence my once love has built for herself half a world away from me.
“I know people here who could help, but I don’t know how to
contact them,” I say.
“And the person who hijacked your body probably has your little black book.”
“I don’t have a little black book,” I tell her. “It’s called a Blackberry.”
But Elisabeth’s not listening. She returns to her kitchen with a noise I take for yet more ongoing amusement at my predicament and the questions about karma which have brought me here. I have flashbacks to those early days when I injured myself and her immediate response was laughter. Sympathy always seemed lost on her.
“I still have my ways,” I say after a moment and return to devouring cereal, eyes on drone news footage of my ravaged homeland which freezes on a green Kevlar-clad gunman aiming a rocket at the camera.
“They’re trying to destroy civilization,” I think more than actually say aloud.
Elisabeth is humming the new Miley Cyrus/Oasis duet from that Reebok advert with Edward Furlong and Macaulay Culkin making out after adopting an African baby in a wheelchair. I contemplate what I wonder this Khodorovsky guy is doing and not for the first time hang my head in surrender to how inanimate I feel opposing him.
After an eternity in dejection, I lift Holland’s head and brush hair from her face and try to pucker up.
For now, it’s time to go clubbing.
*
THE VENUE IS the Unseelie Court, a fashionable discotheque of the ye olde variety, B-grade bricks on the door called Atlas and the Doberman guarding the golden cable to the VIP lounge. Dressed as I am, with my long legs and model looks it’s easy enough to enter the crammed nightclub, but I’m not going to play “tottie” for long. I make a beeline for the two goons, the hairy one stepping into my path.
“Hey beautiful, no can do you goin’ inside,” he says. “Whyn’t you hang a while wiv Atlas and me and we’ll see if we can get you in later?”
“I think you were better off licking each other’s balls,” I answer.
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