“They’re going to end up on the floor,” says one of the watchers dryly.
“Have a little faith.” Proserpina smiles. “Iala will want to mess up her face a little first, and this way they can’t use their fingernails.”
“So what are their sandwich board names? Messface McRichiegirl and the Scratcher?”
Proserpina realizes, with a motionless shock, that her interlocutor is a boy–around her age, long arms draped over the scaffolding, dark shirt and suspenders blended with the shadows of the large and dusty hall.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she says.
“Neither are you,” he points out, correctly.
“Well, your newts’ eyes need rotating,” Townsend informs her.
Tabitha waits.
“And we can re-groove the brake runes, top up your dryad’s milk and crushed tanzanite.” He takes the pen from behind his ear and pokes it into the pocket of his coveralls. “Honestly, though, Ma’am, I’d just drive it until it stops and leave it there. What’s the model year?”
“1039.”
“And what’s it run on, anyway?”
“Clarified virgin’s blood,” she sighs.
Townsend opens his mouth.
“If that’s going to be a joke about gas prices I will hit you in the neck,” Tabitha informs him.
Townsend shuts it.
“Why do you wear gloves?”
“My hands get cold,” says Annamarie.
He quirks an eyebrow. “In Mississippi? In July?”
“Why do you wear yours?” she counters. “They’re stupid.”
Remy’s wounded. “They’re for tricks,” he says, wiggling his fingers: ring and middle covered, index and pinky exposed. “Otherwise you have to wrinkle your cards to palm them easily.”
“Well, exactly. Might as well shout ‘something up my sleeve!'”
“So you’d keep your eyes on my hands, neh?”
“Damn straight.”
“Which one?” he asks, and spreads them apart, and when her eyes flick left his right hand plucks a quarter from her lips.
Jude, seriously, how many chili dogs are necessary to get you born?
So your dad asked us to write you about songs that are going to matter, in the future, when you’re ten or fifteen. Besides the obvious (the ones you’ll write), Jon gave me almost all my music, so this is kind of pointless coming from me. But still: “Maybe You’re Right” by Barenaked Ladies. Our world loves its irony, but even if 2021 is a better year, we’ll need our protest singers.
Also, “Still Not a Player” by Big Pun (ft. Joe), which will teach you everything about love.
“It’s the greatest horror of the twentieth century and the fact that we’re constantly re-enacting it–at what should be beautiful and life-affirming celebrations–indicates an influence that is evil if not downright infernal,” says Cote. “Am I saying that the whole thing is a ritual set of gestures for summoning foul tormentors from the pit into our world? Maybe! Maybe I am! Now what were you saying before?”
“That it’s not technically ‘The Electric Slide,'” Ballard points out carefully. “It’s just ‘The Electric,’ and–”
“–Both of those titles are factually inaccurate,” Cote hisses, eyes narrowed with incisive certainty.
It’s been circulating under his name for fourteen hundred years before he becomes aware of its existence, tracks down the real author and confronts him with it.
“‘Sublimity?'” Longinus snaps. “REALLY?”
“Not the best translation,” Ahasuerus agrees. “I see you’ve attempted to confuse the issue of authorship.”
Longinus glances at the title page, where he’s successively written and crossed out LONGINUS DIONYSUS CASSIUS BACH AHASUERUS SUCKS. “It won’t work,” he grumbles. “Did you have to use my name?”
“They wouldn’t publish it under mine.”
“That’s no excuse!”
“Plus,” Ahasuerus grins, “payback for the thing in Athens,” and Longinus turns bright pink.
Agents Cakebaker, Deathless and Token American creep through the cathedral’s GPS shadow: Agent Goggles risks broken cover on a cafe balcony. He peers briefly through an ocular, whistles the chek-chek of a yellow-rumped warbler, and vanishes crowdwise as they double-time it toward the streetcorner.
“Ma’am?” says a hesistant man with a saucer-eyed kindergartner. “Is–is everything safe around here?”
“Perfectly safe,” says Cakebaker. “For civilians.”
“Oh. Is this, like, a Homeland Security exercise? A wargame?”
“It’s a game, all right,” says Deathless grimly, and his phone camera snaps a Nine of Hearts snagged casually in the gutter.
The Loveblind Bird lies beached on a heaving gray shore, deep in the half-flooded grotto. Strange white bats chirp and circle them as Dog Shouting prowls around the ship with a sling dangling from one hand. The Princess Leaves follows, and her lantern casts leaping shadows.
“You’re trembling,” observes Dog Shouting.
“I’m not trembling,” the princess says, but her eyes keep casting back to the cave entrance: See Me’s absence is silent and heavy between them.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” she mutters.
Dog Shouting whips a sling stone at one of the bats.
That doesn’t go well.
“You lifted another car, Edna,” sighs the extension agent.
“Only a little one.”
“We can’t keep this ‘human body is capable of extraordinary bullshit’ up forever!” He musses his combover. “Some blogger is going to put things together, and the old Women’s Auxiliary Cybernetic Corps papers will come out, and then what do we do? Put your grandkids in protective custody?”
Servos whining, Edna’s hand rotates at the wrist in three perfect circles, and she cracks her knuckles like a pneumatic three-volley salute.
“Although I suppose,” he says carefully, “they’re somewhat protected already.”
She smiles, and hands him a candy.
The all-expenses-paid trip to Detroit is more fun than Layla expected. (Well, still.) There’s actually a great theater scene; she sees an all-female Othello and doesn’t even hate it.
Afterwards she finds the cast at a bar where the waiters wear corseted jackets and set your coffee on fire. Whiskey and caffeine stretch her judgment like Silly Putty, and she ends up making out with Iago in her hotel jacuzzi. Iago’s leftover stage mascara runs in the steam.
Layla goes to the bar again, but it’s too early, and the jackets are shiny with wear at the edges.