Heiresses of Russ 2013 Page 13

  4.

  Once we started shooting I spent more time any day in the deadly sun with less protection than I had all that summer. One morning I stood on a rusty fire escape ladder just above a flooded street with the tide coming in and waited for Caravaggio’s signal. He and the camera crew were on the roof of the next building.

  Three times I’d climbed four stories to the roof of this burned out factory building where Astasia X99’s boyfriend was being held by alien pirates. Each time something went wrong and I had to do it again.

  Dare was angry at what I was doing but she tested the ladder herself and cleaned every rung before she’d let me go near it. After each take I got dowsed in purified water. The long T-shirt and shorts clung to me; my hair was wet and flat on my head.

  All my life pimps, militias and gangs were on the prowl. A lot of any kid’s life in this city is not getting noticed. Now I’d given that up to bring in money.

  Early that morning before the shoot we went up to the U.N. clinic in the big temporary building that’s been standing ever since I can remember in the empty space people call Times Square.

  Everyone in line was tense but nobody knew anything. Dare told the medicos what we needed. The Indian guy at the counter gave us double orders of salves, lotions, water purifier pills. “Just in case,” he said but didn’t know much either.

  I was thinking about that when someone said, “Action!” Just like before I grabbed the handrails, held my breath, shut my eyes, ducked under the water, jumped out like I’d just swum there and ran up the ladder to the roof.

  Caravaggio was slumped in a chair but he raised his head and said, “Great!” I knew what was great was me coming out of the poison muck. For my crew I was doing stuff I didn’t know I could do. Up on the roof Dare led me behind a blanket in the shade, got my clothes off, doused me in clean water and oil and put me in a robe.

  Mai Kin stood maybe thirty feet away under a metal awning surrounded by guys in protective gear. Her character, Astasia X99, gets made over and re-arranged in every installment. We watched a bunch of episodes. She has a boyfriend Anselm that she always has to rescue.

  The actor who plays Anselm spent most of his time coming on to Rock. The other boys were jealous.

  The episodes always take place in danger spots like New York. Mai Kin and company go in and shoot for a few days when it’s quiet then get out and finish the thing somewhere safe. There’s always some other guy Astasia gets involved with before going back to Anselm. But that would get shot somewhere else.

  Fighter planes streaked over the city. Mai Kin glanced up then looked at one of her handlers. His head shake was so slight as to be invisible. Looking away, I went inside him; found he was getting news every couple of minutes. The U.N. had Liberty Land and Northeast Command negotiating. Touch and go was the thought on his mind. I got out before he noticed.

  Mai Kin wore a silk robe decorated with pictures of the planets. Dare said that up close she looked old and mean and way over twenty. Mai Kin was wired like most tourists, spoke into an implant in her left hand, and shook her head at something she heard. She never spoke to me or smiled but never took her eyes off me.

  I didn’t have to get in her head to know that she hated me for looking like I did, for being alive in the same world she was. She slipped out of her robe and, wearing clothes identical to mine, walked to the spot where I’d come off the ladder onto the roof. Shooting her, Tagalong said, was like filming a robot.

  When the light was gone and shooting stopped we headed home, moved fast in the moonlight. Rock had disappeared.

  “Making it with that actor tourist—that whore,” Not said. Dare was pissed but sorry to lose him.

  Not far from our place there was on explosion up ahead. We’d heard enough of them to know this was small, a grenade, not a bomb. We sped up and I tried to scan, to find Lott and see through his eyes but I couldn’t.

  Turning the corner we saw our lair with the door and bars and locks all blown off. Smoke drifted out. “Lott!” Dare yelled.

  Regalia came out the door with a couple of her crew. She had an AK474 knock-off. The Peacekeepers would have shot her for carrying it which meant they weren’t around. She leveled it at us and said, “Drop whatever you got—weapons, money—and you won’t get hurt.”

  Dare held our gold. She stared back at Regalia and didn’t move. I went into Regalia’s head. The first thing I saw was all of us standing, eyes wide staring at her. She thought that was funny because she was about to shoot us down one by one. For her the sight of Lott’s bloody corpse was funny.

  Her trigger finger twitched. I found her right arm and jerked the AK474 up. A burst went into the air.

  She tried to get control of her hands. I yanked her to the side, fired a burst at her crew. One went down screaming; the other backed off. A couple more came out the door of our lair. I turned her their way, fired again, caught one in the face. Then the gun jammed.

  I found Regalia’s heart and lungs, tried to tear them out of her body. Her eyes bulged. I moved her legs, ran her to the side of the building and made her smash her head against the wall until the brains came out. All the time she made strangled noises and danced like a headless bird. When life went out of her, I couldn’t make the body move and she fell to the ground.

  The rest of her crew had come out the door. Dare had her gun out, threatened to kill them. Hassid and Not slammed them around, took back the stuff they’d stolen. One that had been shot half crawled away. Another was dead. The boys stared at the bodies. Only Dare knew what I’d done. She made Regalia’s crew drag their dead away with them.

  We found Lott inside where the blast had killed him, wrapped his body in blankets and carried him into the park. We had a shovel and took turns digging it deep so the rats couldn’t get him. We buried the AK474 in another place.

  Dare talked a little about how much we loved him. All I could think was I didn’t want to die like that. Even Dare was kind of afraid of me.

  We huddled together in the lair, knowing we’d never stay there again. No one slept much but I sat awake on guard. Almost at dawn I started crying and Dare held me, whispering, “You saved all of us. You’re a hero.”

  5.

  The next morning Caravaggio was shooting on the waterfront. The crew and I were there because we had nowhere else to go. I looked for a chance to beg him for a place to stay. Our lair was gone. I felt older than Caravaggio, older than anyone. Rock had left us, Lott was dead and after what I saw and did the night before I half wished I was dead too.

  Nice, Not and Hassid dived for fake coins tossed by actors dressed in protective gear. The boys’ hearts weren’t in it. We were zombies. They missed the coins and Caravaggio screamed at them, screamed at Dare and me.

  Mai Kin and her handlers hadn’t shown up. Caravaggio yelled at Tagalong who couldn’t contact them. Everyone said the Peacekeepers weren’t around. On the water, scared passengers were cramming onto the ferries. Copters and planes took off from Liberty Land.

  This world of mine was tougher now than it ever had been. Tagalong got definite word that the U.N. had been withdrawn from the city. I said we had nowhere to live and asked him if we could stay at the Studio until we found a place. He just sighed and looked at Caravaggio who was yelling about traitors and ingrates.

  I stood out on the seawall and Nice stood with me, rubbed my neck. I had my arm around him for comfort. We heard jets but didn’t see them. Then over in New Jersey lights flashed like the sun on a knife blade. Next came explosions, big muffled ones. Caravaggio suddenly shut up. A moment later there was smoke over Liberty Land Stronghold, more flashes.

  “Seems like Northeast Command took them out,” someone said softly.

  We should have been looking closer to us. I saw the ferries moving fast on the river, trying to scatter before I heard the copters. Rockets exploded. The seawall slid out from under my feet. Nice got torn away from me. I flew toward a huge wave and hit the water face first.

  It was in my
eyes and nose, drowning me. I reached out for Dare, caught other minds. I felt Nice get cut in two. Someone’s legs were crushed. Water was in my mouth and nose. I sank into the filth of the river bottom. I wanted Dare to have her arms around me. Then I was rising, pulled by my hair.

  My head broke the surface. Not far away flames floated on the water. People screamed. Dare hauled me up onto solid ground, pulled the clothes off me. Hassid was there. He washed me off and I let him. They put lotion on me.

  Dare held me. She was crying. Nice was gone. They couldn’t find his body. Only when I sat up did I see the gash on Dare’s leg and knew what she risked to save me. She didn’t make a sound when Hassid cleaned and bandaged her wound.

  As if he was far away I heard Caravaggio crying, “When I first came to the city, it was half wrecked but vibrant in its death dance.” I caught images in his brain of destroyed streets with kids in costume dancing through them. A flickering figure flew into the air, caught a coin in his mouth, bounced off the water. Then there was nothing and I knew Caravaggio was dead.

  We went to Tagalong who stood in tears as Caravaggio got lifted onto the truck. Dare and Not and Hassid were with me. Through his eyes, I saw how sad and ragged we were. Then I showed him what had happened to us and to Regalia and asked if we could stay at the Studio. Scared but impressed, he nodded.

  6.

  “He loved the chimeras,” Tagalong said a little later when we brought Caravaggio’s body home. More of them than I thought were still alive waited outside the Studio. Ursus was there and the bird woman who was in charge of the door, a pony and the cat and the man who was part fox, a cat woman, Silky the Seal, big dogs, a goat and the owl. I didn’t even know what some of the others were. They howled and moaned when they saw the corpse.

  They laid Caravaggio out in the big front room and dressed him like a king in silks and furs. Flowers appeared and candles lighted the place. A hundred and more people came from the neighborhood; a few even came from further away, risking the streets to see him one last time.

  Some brought food. The people in the kitchen cooked more.

  Tagalong gave the four of us a large enough room with futons on the floor. We piled them together lay on them, held each other and cried. Dare made plans to go next day and find Nice’s body. I didn’t want to think.

  The chimeras were chanting when I heard engines outside. Tagalong appeared and told me Depose was there with cars full of her people and wanted to come in. I understood that he wanted me to do something and this was why I was here.

  So I stood at a peep hole beside the door, watched Depose without her seeing me. “We need to confirm that Caravaggio is dead,” she told the doorkeeper bird who looked scared. “Various of his associates and backers need to know. And we need to find that film he was making. I don’t want to use force.”

  I didn’t need to go inside her to know that she was going to use force and when she got in here this place would be looted. I looked back at Caravaggio laid out and the candles and the chimeras.

  At the same time I found Depose and showed her what I was seeing. For a second she didn’t understand what had happened. Then Depose realized who was doing this and remembered what she heard that morning about me and Regalia.

  Still she hesitated so I showed her a moment of Regalia and the wall. Depose headed for her car fast and I let her know that if she wanted the film, she’d need to come alone and bring a lot of gold.

  I felt shaky when it was over but I waited for the engine sounds to fade. As I went back to our room everyone in the Studio stood and applauded and I figured we’d won our place here.

  We sat on a mattress and leaned against pillows. “Maybe you should have done her like Regalia,” Dare whispered.

  “Maybe,” I told her. “But I didn’t have all the anger and fear like I did with Regalia. And I can’t kill everyone and Depose can be bought.”

  Dare understood and put one arm around me. She cuddled Not and I held Hassid.

  That’s how we were when Tagalong came in with a camera and two women who did stuff with lights. He said he wanted to film me talking about what happened. “We need a hero,” he said. “We’ll call this real. We need to advertise you.” And I thought about Caravaggio and Jackie Boy.

  Dare told him, “Her name’s Reality Girl.

  “Great!” Tagalong said and with the camera running he asked, “Reality Girl, can you tell us how you came to be here?”

  What I remembered first was me and the crew walking down to the Waterline a week or maybe ten days ago.

  •

  Oracle Gretel

  Julia Rios

  Teeth:

  Gretel was in love with her boss. Ms. L. Thorne spoke in short, clipped sentences, and when she smiled, which was rare, it looked like the curved edge of a wicked blade.

  At night, at home, while she attempted yet again to bind her flyaway curls into something more elegant, Gretel told Hansel all about what Ms. L. Thorne had done that day, and what she had worn. Hansel twitched his ginger tail, insouciant as only siblings and house cats could be. “Oh not Missilethorn again,” he said. “I hope you didn’t let that creature distract you so much that you forgot my food.”

  “As if you need fattening,” Gretel said. “A witch will eat you if you don’t watch out.”

  “You’re the only witch I know,” was Hansel’s rumbling reply.

  “I am no witch,” Gretel said, but she was too much in the dreamy stage to be properly annoyed. She scratched him under his chin, and opened the tab on the Fancy Feast. Hansel listened while he ate, or at least, if he wasn’t listening, his mouth was too full to talk about other things.

  Ms. L. Thorne was cool and smooth. She always wore business suits, and kept her hair coiled neatly instead of loose and free. She did not play by anyone’s rules, but made her own and allowed others to obey them. She’d hired Gretel because in the interview Gretel had said she didn’t like sweets.

  “Good,” said Ms. L. Thorne. “I don’t want any of this office cupcake nonsense. I’m very particular about what I put in my mouth. Can you respect that?”

  “Of course,” said Gretel. She scribbled it in her dayplanner: “New job. No cupcakes.” Ms. L. Thorne regarded this with a tilted head, haughty and swanlike, but not disapproving.

  “You’ll do,” she said. Then she flashed one of those scimitar smiles, and in it Gretel saw the whole hopeless arc of her future with the company.

  Rider-Waite:

  When they were still children, such a long time ago, everything was supersaturated, thickly outlined, clear. The world was ruled by men, and women were cunning, relied on their charms. The infant mortality rate was high, and infancy lasted until puberty, usually eleven or twelve. Gretel was nine when the business with the witch happened. And with the stepmother. She ought to hate the stepmother, according to the dictates of the world, but she understood too well for hate. Children must do what they could to survive, and adults were just children in bigger skin.

  Gretel had tried and tried to be good, scrubbing, fetching, carrying, eating only the barest of the bare. The burnt ends of the bread, and a few spoons of porridge. It didn’t matter, though. It never matters when there is meat and bread enough for only two, and you are four, when your brother eats enough for three all on his own.

  “Temperance,” she cautioned, filling water jugs from the well, but Hansel didn’t heed it. He chewed the flesh of a late autumn apple and dropped the core in the dirt, so Gretel couldn’t even suck the last of the juice. He believed he’d grow into Strength, like their father, a lion of a woodcutter if ever there was one. But of course that lion was bested by a woman, harnessed with a chain of flowers. They never had a chance.

  It was a relief when she sent them away. Gretel had wasted to nearly nothing by then, and she was emotionally wasted, too, from the knowing. Every night in the fire (there was never a lack of heat in the woodcutter’s cottage), she saw the laughter of the gods, and the promise of danger and hard times to come. H
arder even than the ones at hand.

  To prove their use, the stepmother said, they must go forth and bring down a hart. Never mind the king, for how could he know? He never came this way. And if not a hart, a doe. Even a fawn would do. But food they must have, and they weren’t to return without meat enough to equal their combined weight.

  “We haven’t arrows, Mother,” said Hansel, and Gretel could hear by his wheedling tone that he actually thought it would sway her.

  “Art not the son of a woodsman?” the stepmother asked. “Canst thou not make them with twigs all ’round?”

  Hansel was not quick-witted enough to form a retort, and Gretel was too quick-witted by half, and so it was that they went out into the wild with naught but a loaf of bread. Easy enough for the stepmother to part with that when she knew they’d not trouble her more.

  Faeries:

  The Faeries will tell you what they think you need to hear. Sometimes this is the truth. Sometimes it is what you want to hear. Sometimes it is a blatant lie. You will not know the difference until later, but then you will agree that what counsel they gave was the only thing you could have borne.

  Gretel consulted the Faeries whenever she felt like consulting something. It was folly for an oracle to consult anything, of course. She couldn’t help seeing, hearing, knowing things, whatever she did. But sometimes she could almost believe the lies.

  “Will Ms. L. Thorne love me?” she asked the night after her first day of work.

  Yes, the Faeries said. Ecstasy, marriage, warmth and sun. Go to work joyfully, for you will not be disappointed.

  Gretel had seen already the knife-edged smile, but she paid it no mind. That night she gave herself over to fancy, as she knew she would for at least two weeks.

  On the armrest next to Gretel, Hansel sighed contentedly. Food and love were bountiful when Gretel fell for someone. His cat brain could remember the shape of her buoyancy, and the association with treats. It did not yet connect them with the crash of withdrawal that lay over the curve of the scimitar blade.