Zephyr VI

by Warren Hately

  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.

  The hairy muscleman’s eyes widen, but I lift my hand and fill it with power, the doormen backing away from the sunspot like primitive men before an apparition from beyond, though they have no particular fear of me per se. It’s club policy not to piss off the masks. As Zephyr, I would have my own room here, but this is enough as I curtsy and then sashay through, the stoic-looking Atlas scooping the chain aside for me.

  The entry is through a velvet darkness flavored by dry ice and recycled air, a kind of grandmotherly vaginal walkway into the diminished black atrium within a single level amphitheater, a few ground lights and more than a few hidden ultraviolets to throw an ethereal glow across proceedings. Apart from a dozen-strong selection of London’s finest gold-digging hoes, only a few British supers are partying in full costume, Shade among them. She moves with an athlete’s grace, bumping and grinding with another black girl and a Finnish chick white enough to be damned near translucent. I cut in on her escapades by putting my hand on her ass.

  “We need to talk,” I say to her.

  “I came here to dance.”

  “With all this chaos going on in the world?”

  Shade shrugs and looks at me sideways. I am still a stranger to her.

  “London’s burning and I don’t care.”

  I nod and can’t really fault her on that one.

  “I’m a friend of Zephyr’s,” I say. “He said I could ask you for a favor.”

  “You’re one of Zephyr’s hoes?”

  “Hey, takes one to know one,” I say and definitely commit to trying to not ever let Shade know this was really me.

  Shade growls low in her chest – a noise at once threatening and sexy. The fact it carries above the choreographed aural rape bleeding from the speakers at this moment also attests to Shade’s gravity as I suddenly remember the first time we met and the ensuing swathe of destruction.

  History’s got a habit of repeating.

  *

  SHADE BACKHANDS ME almost dismissively, but her eyes flare wide as I stand unmoved, catching the offending wrist as the slap echoes in the static-charged space between us. Shade twists, again under-estimating Cusp’s strength as she snarls to force the issue. Her other hand grabs my wrist as she grapples me, unafraid of elbowing me in the cheek as she pulls herself free of my penitentiary grasp. I seize her by the back of the head, thousand-dollar haircut ravaged as I pull her ear back beside my gritted teeth.

  “I said we need to talk,” I hiss at her. “Now’s not the time or place for this shit.”

  “Get your fucking hands off me,” Shade glowers.

  I do so, but add also, “Are you going to behave yourself? I’m not one of these floozies.”

  Shade makes a little performance of dusting herself off. The models and the other girls hide at the far side of the dance floor, presumably thinking Gorilla Man, X-Ray and Mistress Bizarre will protect them. Not the case. Those m
asks back away as well, leaving Shade and I literally center stage.

  “Your accent gives you away. You from Atlantic City?”

  “There’s been an orchestrated attack,” I say to her. “I came here to get information on who’s behind it all.”

  “Bitch, what are you pulling my hair for?”

  “You think Atlantic City’s a natural calamity? This is a man-made disaster,” I say to her. “It’s an engineered disaster, Shade. They got control of the whole city. All its systems. They had the heroes arrested or deputized so they all came down with the Hitler Youth.”

  “You sound delusional,” Shade says with staged disdain. “How do you know Zephyr and why’d he tell you to come to me?”

  “I guess he thought you’d be doing something to make a difference.”

  “It’s the fall of Rome,” Shade says. “England’s dream is ending. Good riddance.”

  “This is only a mild panic. Everything will be under control in a few days –”

  “If Atlantic City weren’t a charred wreck,” Shade snaps back at me. “The world’s biggest economy got snuffed out like a light. The globe’s off its fucking axis, girl. What’s your name?”

  “Cusp.”

  “I can see why he likes you.”

  “He said much the same thing to me about you,” I lie sweetly.

  It works. Shade gives a slight grin and lowers her gaze.

  “OK sugar, you’re OK with me. Let’s go some place quiet and have a drink and you can fill me in on your problems.”

  “You’re not trying to seduce me, are you?”

  “I don’t know. Do you want me to?”

  “I really don’t think this is the right time.”

  My transformation is nearly complete, because next thing I know Shade and I are fucking in a nearby hotel room and then it’s mid-morning.

  *

  “OK, SO WHAT’S what?” Shade asks blearily as she sits up and lights a joint, haggard yet beautiful in the unpleasant morning light.

  I guess she never got her place on the docks repaired after the last little fracas accompanying one of my sleepovers, because the hotel suite has a lived-in feel, with stacks of books and various other indicators of interest around the room. I pick up the closest tome and read its entrancing title about quantum field dynamics and shrug.