Limo

Chapter 3 of Microcosmia

Microcosmia

Chapter Three

Limo

Littleroth, Bryant, and Thyme navigated the Grand Hall, stamped resolutely across the Ballroom, and executed a no-nonsense parade rest on the Foyer steps. Cristian, for once the mansion’s dominant presence, took his final walk under the Ballroom’s gaping glass dome in an oblique shower of rose, his sneakers squeaking on the polished cedar floor.

He walked with affected slowness, halting two steps down to gaze pensively through the Sunroom’s segmented glass face. Under the live oak’s broad umbrella squatted the candy-striped carousel where he’d sat, rain or shine, as Karl’s shy attentive pupil. The carousel’s conical roof was of buffed copper. Its raised circular floor simulated a chessboard, utilizing contrasting squares of bleached Chinese ash and polished Burmese teak. No horses remained on the structure. A glass-enclosed library, a tall central gas lamp, and two steel folding chairs made up the floor plan. In the distance could be seen one length of the estate’s wrought-iron fence. There were no walls, nor any trace of shrubbery; nothing to obscure a fraction of the eternal Pacific.

He stood casually, his hands folded on the small of his back, and waited. A child’s scream was followed by a quick double smack. A Resident’s son kicked a Regular’s daughter. The little girl shrieked and the crowd dissolved.

Cristian turned.

Uncle Goggle and Aunt Jabber peeled apart, allowing the bruised loveliness of Megan to slither through. She swayed hypnotically, wringing her pretty white hands and hyperventilating. Then she was all over him; clinging, smothering. Handling. Meg was Mommy again.

“Oh I know it, sweetheart! I know it, know it, know it … I can see it in your dear blue eyes. You poor, poor, innocent thing.” She dragged him down the steps, pulling his face right into her chilly white bosom. “It’s all better now, baby.” Megan closed her eyes and hummed in his ear, nibbling the lobe.

“Congratulations,” she breathed, “to the richest and sexiest young man in America.”

Cristian grasped her shoulders and gently pushed her away. He looked around the room, said frostily, “Okay. The party’s over. As of right now you’re all off the Vane payroll.”

The Foyer’s interior became the conical guts of a kaleidoscope, the Sunroom’s face a segmented screen. The crowd blew apart. When the room came to rest the Residents were all lopsided; out of focus, out of options. Faces sought others in slow motion.

As the rooted centerpiece, Megan had not spun along. But her color had changed. Her face had run the entire range of blue, only the cheekbones and chin showing white. Something wild peeked from behind her eyes, retreated.

Cristian backpedaled up the steps, placing John’s blood and Honey’s reps in direct opposition to the crowd. Lumped in with the others, Megan went scarlet. This was a woman new to Cristian. His eyes flickered as her voice climbed an emotional ladder, stomping on rungs all the way:

“What the hell are you talking about? This isn’t about money. It’s about family.” She stood with one arm akimbo, a forefinger directed at the Big Bedroom like the finger of Death. But, unlike Death, Meg’s expression was defiant, as though a resuscitating charge crackled from that finger, penetrated the door, and shimmered around the departed. After so many years of urging John into the grave, Megan was realizing that, without him, she was utterly alone.

“That … man, who clung so bravely to this world, would have been outraged! How dare you speak of money in the midst of all this grief? Are you on drugs? Have you lost your mind? I think you owe us all an apology here. No, damn it, I think we should demand an apology!” The maternal charade was over. This performance was for the house.

“It’s a family of ghouls,” Cristian said through his teeth. “Don’t tell me this isn’t about money; you buzzards have been measuring my father’s pulse for almost thirty years.” He descended the steps with forced casualness, kicking a bright yellow beach ball across the Foyer. “That’s all history now. You won’t get a deed, you won’t get a dollar.

“Control over father’s holdings will be maintained by the Honey Foundation. The only difference is, I’m its new chief executive officer, and as such have final say over all transactions of moment. Meaning my word on this estate is final.”

Anodized chains rattled on one side of the room. Jayce pushed through his crowd until he was right in Cristian’s face, cocked his head, and whispered, “Cut the crap, Crissy.” Without looking away, he motioned his nearest partners nearer. “Can’t you see you’re spooking the happy campers?”

But it was Richard who broke the pack, smiling pleasantly while swirling the cubes hard against his glass. “C’mon, Honey. This is hardly the time for levity.”

Cristian held Jayce’s stare as long as he could. “It’s no joke, Dick. Father willed me the whole ball of wax. That means his properties and worldly possessions, along with every notarized item in his art collection. His stocks and bonds and futures, his holdings both foreign and domestic, the exclusive use of his personal name in each and every enterprise … in sum, everything.”

He raised his hands and retreated a step.

“As you are all rabidly aware, it was Father’s wish that the disposition of his estate wait until the very last moment. As you’re also aware, several documents were drawn up relating specifically to that last-minute decision.

“Each of these documents contained a different configuration, describing various holdings for potential heirs; both for individuals and for groups. His signature on any one legally voided the others. Several of these documents were quite complex, involving some very creative provisions and cross checks. By making certain all potential recipients were legally bound to these conditions, Father was guaranteeing that no party or parties would piss away his hard-earned fortune on mindless, gluttonous frenzies.” He sneered as he looked round the room. “Imagine him thinking that.

“As you all know, there were also a few relatively simple documents, pertaining solely to three brutally-determined lampreys who’ve spent the last twenty-odd years convincing a sick and senile old man that they loved him dearly. These wills left all that was his to the aforementioned unmentionables.

“There were, additionally, two documents transferring everything Father possessed to either his manservant, Karl Günfel, or to his only genuine son, Yours Truly.

“Karl did the unthinkable. He tore up his personal will before my father’s dying eyes and told him he loved him.” Cristian looked out through the Sunroom, addressing the carousel. “John Beregard Vane has signed over the entirety of his estate to me. That miserable little ceremony, hardly a quarter hour cold, was witnessed by Littleroth, Bryant, and Thyme, along with Father’s lifelong physician Dr. Steinbaum, by his man Karl, and, of course, by me. The signing was recorded every which way.

“You are all more than welcome--indeed, you’re enthusiastically invited--to view this document prior to your being genially ushered from this estate by myself, or, myself failing, by whatever amount of purchasable muscle will see the job through.”

“Wait a minute.” Richard punched Cristian’s chest with his drink-fist. “What’s all this crap about stuff taking place behind closed doors? Don’t play with us, a*****e.”

Jayce threw all his weight against Cristian. He and Richard physically moved him back up the steps, slamming him side to side. “What do you mean, ‘off the payroll,’ prick? Since when is anybody on your ‘payroll’?”

“Call it a fact or a figure of speech.” Cristian steadied himself against the top step. “You are now both on my property, and that’s all that matters, legally speaking. If you don’t, of your own volition, remove yourselves, I will have Security forcibly remove your selves for you.”

“I,” Richard gnashed, “want to see this evidence of a ‘will’ brought before a court of law. You orchestrated the whole affair, worm, and it won’t stand.”

Jayce looked one to the other, bristling at the phrase court of law. He backed off gradually, appearing to deliberate, before making a great show of signaling the Foyer barman. When he looked back his eyes had softened. “I suppose the cocktail onions are still on the house?”

“Help yourself.”

Richard smashed his glass on the steps and the Residents erupted like pigeons in the shadow of a tabby. Three security men immediately stomped over. Richard shook them off. “Gorillas! Touch me again, and I’ll not only have your jobs, I’ll have your ugly puppet heads!” The crowd broke into small circling packs. Richard shouldered his way into the Ballroom.

Cristian was trembling head-to-toe as he walked back down the steps and straight up to the small knot of Security. Their captain, with Honey from the beginning, had always treated him like a degenerate little snot. The man waited in the stance of a gunslinger, his Honey cap tilted aggressively, the pink and cream uniforms coalescing behind him.

“William, I want your guys to immediately clear this estate of all these bloodsuckers. Their claims and arguments are illegitimate. They are, as of this order, trespassers.” He snatched a framed photo from the south hearth and slung it like a Frisbee. “That means all the brats.” He slung another. “All the old goats … all the ‘in-laws’ … everybody!” Cristian raised his voice so that it scathed the house, one hand on a hip, the other pointing at the Big Bedroom in a childish impersonation of Meg.

“Allow me to clarify! Only myself, officers of Honey, and the occupants of that room, living and dead, are legally authorized on these grounds once the turds have been flushed. After that, you guys can all go home: you’re relieved. You can discuss severance with Honey. The Foundation will, in my name, guarantee compensation and placement for every man who has served this estate so well. I’ll take care of Help, indoors and out.” He stuffed his shaking hands in his pants’ pockets, looked William directly in the eyes, and lowered his voice. “Now, I want to thank all you guys personally for your invaluable service here. It’s been a real pleasure and a great privilege.”

William stared back fiercely, his men’s eyes boring into the back of his skull. Cristian blanched, turned on his heel, and raised his arms like a choirmaster.

“All right! Listen up, listen up! I want everybody totally packed and out of here by the time I get back. You are no longer residents of this estate. Mister Bryant will be handling any claims levied against the Foundation, and I’m assuming there will be many. But that famous ‘adoption party’ was a total sham, and you know it. Those wonderful signed documents attesting to your legal claims to the Vane name are about to come crashing down. You … are … all about to receive a very rude introduction to reality. So brace yourselves.

“This is now my house. And I’ve learned a great lesson here, thank you very much. To wit:

“Should I perchance someday reach my father’s advanced age and state of deterioration, I will make damned certain there are no bottom-feeders around to flatter and delude me. They say longevity is inherited. If that’s so, I’d rather die young, with drama and with dignity, than be a helpless victim of senility and the slime that feeds on it.

“Honey will accommodate you in the process of relocating. This means that moving vans will be arriving shortly, and will be providing transportation for you-and-yours within, and not exceeding, the L.A. county line.” He looked at the toys on the furniture, at the new handprints on the walls, at the clothes draped casually over vases and busts. “I want all this personal crap out of here. Understand that any articles left behind will be accessible only through Honey. Once you have all passed out that gate you will not--repeat, will not--be coming back.” He faced the Plaza to hide his shakes. An arm jerked up, pointing at the Pacific.

“William and his men will now assist you in sorting your property, and they will escort you out of this house and down that drive and onto that highway. I’m sure they will conduct themselves professionally, but they are hereby relieved of all those behavioral restraints previously imposed by the Foundation.

“You are as of this announcement no longer welcome to the assistance of Help. If you harass them in any manner whatsoever you will appear in court. They are still under the wing of Honey, and will be placed elsewhere.

“The kitchens and bars are hereby closed, as are all amenities of this house. You,” he screamed, “are evicted!”

Cristian exploded out of the Sunroom onto the drive. His hands did a quick drum roll on the limo’s roof. Simms, passed out on the front seat, nearly knocked himself back out rising. One arm embraced the wheel while he searched wildly for his glasses. “I’m up, I’m up!”

A fist crashed on the roof. “Now pay close attention here, Paris! I love you more than anyone else on the planet, man, but if you don’t get your fat a*s out of this car, immediately, I will not be responsible for my actions. I’m two seconds away from genocide.” He jackknifed his body inside and tore the keys from the ignition. As he was backing out, a wide shadow fell on the Town Car’s side.

“A pretty speech,” Littleroth wheezed. “But before you go a’jaunting, I’ve got a present for you.” He extracted an elegant pink and cream cell phone from a breast pocket and flipped it open. Inlaid jewels flashed in the sun. “Your life just got a whole lot busier, Cris.” Littleroth bowed wryly. “Mr. Vane.” He pointed out an intricate series of golden buttons beneath a liquid crystal display. “From now on you will be communicating solely through Denise. You can dial her directly by touching this lozenge-shaped button here, and she’ll link you to the various Foundation departments. Additionally, you may reach me whenever you have a legal question by sequentially touching buttons one, four, and five, followed by the asterisk. Denise will explain the screen and these ports, and how the device interfaces with the Lincoln’s computer. All incoming calls will be recorded, and you’ll have the option of recording outgoing calls. Just press the pound key and wait until you hear a triple-beep repeated twice. Then press it again. This phone has a miniature disk drive. What you record can be downloaded, the disk erased and reused. If you need help, go to the dash menu or ring up Denise.” He snapped the instrument shut.

Mr. Vane took it as if it were a loaded gun. “Right.” He slammed the phone into its dash mount, slid onto the driver’s seat, and pulled his shades from the passenger-side visor. “But I’m dead-serious about kicking out those creeps. Enough is enough. You handle it personally--bust some chops, call in uniforms if you think that’ll expedite things. Get the hell away from the car, Paris.”

Vane fought to relax, the shades’ lenses dancing with the sun. After a long minute he said curtly, “I’ll be in touch,” and placed the car in drive. He drove with both hands squeezing the wheel, watching the still round figures shrink in the rear-view mirror. It took all his willpower to follow the pretty little cobbled road clear to the gate without accelerating. Once he was out of sight he floored it, hammering his fist over and over on the dash as he deliberately thrashed the limo’s undercarriage on the road’s paved gutter. But that wasn’t good enough. He bashed fenders against tree trunks, tore up the transmission using the low gears and gas, whipped the car side to side with sudden dramatic yanks on the steering wheel. Vane ate up the whole right side in one long slow-motion swipe of birches. At the Highway gate he found himself leaning hard on the horn while repeatedly slamming a fist into the roof. He drove straight into the gate, backed up, smashed in the front end again. When Vane backed off the third collision, he left most of the limousine’s grille embedded in the horizontal bars. It was then he remembered the dash switch that electronically triggered the gate.

He bullied the beat-up pink limousine through traffic; deaf to shouts, blind to gestures, responding to blaring horns by hitting the brakes or gunning the engine. Eventually his automatic pilot took over, making adjustments broad and fine. The Town Car fell in line.

The cell phone chirruped in its mount.

Vane glared at it. It challenged him again.

He determined to follow the six-rings rule. Six rings, he’d been told, was the average time a caller would wait before concluding no one was home.

After fourteen rings the sound was eating at him like a dentist’s drill. Vane tore the phone from its mount and seriously considered hurling it out the window. He took a deep breath before flipping it open.

“Yes?”

“This is Miss Waters, Mister Vane. Are you all right? We’ve been having problems connecting.”

“I’m fine, Miss Waters. I was just stretching my legs.”

“I understand, sir. But it’s very important to keep your phone handy at all times. The information-flow can become quite heavy.”

“I was under the impression that Karl would monitor the critical calls, and that you, Denise, would field the general ones. It’s still pretty early in the game for me to be handling big decisions, and I’ve frankly had a pretty tough day.”

“Of course, sir.” The voice was cautiously sympathetic. “We’re all deeply saddened by the loss of your father. However, your mention of Mr. Günfel leads us straight to the point of this call. He won’t be able to handle Honey’s major decisions. I’m going to have to coordinate with you.”

The phone grew slippery in Vane’s hand. “Why? What’s wrong with Karl?”

“He’s become incapacitated, the poor dear. He took your father’s passing very hard, and seems to have experienced some sort of cardiac event.”

The drilling began in Vane’s temple. “So he’ll be all right?”

“It’s very fortunate that John’s personal physician was on hand. He assured me that Mr. Günfel is resting comfortably.”

“That’s good,” Vane said hollowly. He rolled his aching eyeballs. “Look, Denise, I’m about to make an executive decision here. Whatever your salary was, it’s doubled. I know nothing of Honey’s machinery; who handles payroll, et cetera. But if there are any questions about your raise, route those questions straight to me, and I’ll personally ream the son of a b***h. Today I learned all about dealing with tapeworms.”

“Mr. Vane! I’m … I’m …”

“Along with your raise, Denise, comes a quantum leap in your duties.”

“Of course, Mr. Vane, sir.”

“Your first responsibility is to address me as Cristian, or as Cris. You can even call me ‘hey you’ if you’d like. Anything but ‘sir.’ It appears we’ll be communicating a lot from now on, so we’d might as well be solely on a first name basis.

“Additionally, Denise, you are for now basically running the show. Your title is to be commensurate with your pay raise. For the time being let’s just say you’re the acting president of Honey, and I’m the Foundation’s roving CEO. You’re taking over the station previously assigned to Karl by my father. Anyways, it’s no secret that Karl always went through you, and, to my knowledge, you’re the person in the best position to make quick decisions.” Perspiration was heavy on his brow. Vane flicked on the air conditioner, but didn’t think to raise the windows. “It’s going to take some time to get me up to speed, Denise. It was Father’s design that I obtain full control of the Vane empire, at home and abroad … but, to tell you the truth, I don’t know squat about accounting, stocks, legal proceedings, or international finance. Karl did all the inside work for Father, but he was hesitant about discussing details. He schooled me in a lot of things that are wonderful when it comes to handling abstract matters, and I’m certain that, psychologically, I’m in a much stronger position to deal with moral and ethical concerns than had he not been there for me. But as of today I’m beginning to realize he had no intention of preparing me for real-world success.”

“You really think Mr. Günfel disliked you that much?”

“No, Denise. I think he loved me that much. In his own way, I think he was setting me up for the slow explosion that’s taking place inside me right now. I think he knew I’d find myself caught between two worlds, and I think he knew that when my moment of decision came I’d make the right choice.”

“Now hold on a minute, Cristian. Things aren’t as terrible as they may seem. You’re in a rough spot, and you need some space. But let me tell you something about business, darling. It’s a lot like mathematics. If you separate your emotions from your work, and are perfectly logical and alert, your figures will always add up. Success is slow metastasis. Show up, be patient, be honest, be dispassionate. Success forces a man to grow up. So before you go exploding all over the place, I want you to do a little meditating or yoga or whatever helps you relax. Do some swimming and jogging at the Rest. Enjoy your hobbies, make your peace with your father’s memory, and delete all those horrible people who’ve been feeding off him. When you’re all better, come back to me, honey. I’ll show you all the things Mr. Günfel forgot to teach you about business. I’ll make it fun. Teacher and pupil.”

Vane massaged a temple. There was something inappropriately familiar in the woman’s tone, something that dug. “Please,” he whispered. “Don’t call me ‘Honey’.”

No reply.

“I’ll bring an apple,” he said tentatively. “Shiny and sweet.” He listened closely.

“You’re a dear.” The response was neutral. “And when you’ve got a handle on all this you can start running it any way you want. I’ll play secretary, and I’ll keep you up on the ins and the outs. You really don’t want a woman fronting the Foundation for too long, Cris. There’s what I might term a Good Old Boy network that goes back over half a century. It’s international, it’s cold as ice, and it’s deadly waters for skirts and compromisers. You might even enjoy swimming here, sweetheart, but it’s no place for a woman.”

“Thanks, Denise, but no thanks.” He wiped a hand over his face. “I’m taking everything you’ve told me seriously, and I’m banking on you all the way. I’m glad I took your call. I was this close to running over this damned phone.”

“Don’t do that, Cristian! Please! That little device is your lifeline. It’s our physical link to getting business done, professionally and personally. If you lose it, or if you blow up and run over it after all, just look up Honey in the yellow pages. Ask for me directly.”

“Okay, Denise. I feel … better. Thanks for talking me down.”

“Wait, Cristian! Don’t hang up yet. I need some info from you. Just a quickie.”

Vane controlled his breathing. “What now?” he asked quietly.

There was a hard pause. Something made him focus. He pushed the phone against his ear.

“Listen, Cris … did your father … I mean, did he ever mention a woman he had a thing for … oh, maybe some thirty years ago, before … before you were born? She would have been a light-skinned Latina, an … entertainer he met in Central America. This was way before he started seriously slipping.”

Vane thought a minute. “No bells.”

There was a longer pause. “It’s not all that important.”

“Then why bring her up?”

“Another claim jumper. That was her sob story. Some nobody out of nowhere saying she’s a lost relative of one Cristian Vane.” Waters laughed without humor. “This one takes the cake. Says she’s actually your mother, that she and your father … well, you know, were intimate at some junction in their lives when they were both desperately needy. And she says--get this--that your father paid her off when he found out she was pregnant and later took the child back across the border and tried to bring him up with a nanny, but that this nanny took over John’s failing mind in order to control the boy’s inheritance.”

Vane’s mind dissected, sincerely tried, but came up with only shadows. After a few seconds he said, “Uh-uh.”

“Anyways,” Waters gushed, “at least I can cross that one off now. I was sure you’d know if there was even a grain of truth in it.”

“Sorry,” Vane said. “Zilch.”

“Good. Because for a while there this crackpot really had me going. Every time she mentioned you it tugged at my heartstrings. I could have sworn she just loved you all to pieces. And do you know what she had to say about you, Cris?”

“No,” Vane muttered. He was becoming annoyed. “How could I?”

“She said you were way too nice a guy to go out in the world without guidance. She said the world would eat you alive. And she said she would be watching over you wherever you went, and would support you in whatever you did, because you were all that mattered. And she said she’d dreamed about you her whole adult life. Phony or not, I understood where she was coming from. She sounded like she had very strong maternal instincts.”

“Miss Waters, I’m really not in the mood for a sermon on the undying love of mothers, thank you very much. I never had one, and I think I turned out pretty okay, all things considered. A mother who loved me would have been behind me right now. Instead I get a blank space followed by some conniving imposter dressed like Dracula’s daughter. And now this. A real mother would have stuck with me all the way, supporting me. Not just physically … spiritually. And she’d be proud of me, whether I went on making billions or gave it all to charity. Miss Waters,” he said with finality, “I know all about these people. Believe it or not. I grew up with them, in a very posh cage. So you can tell this soulless, underhanded s**t just what she can do with it, okay? I don’t need her. I don’t need you. I don’t need anybody.”

“Okay,” Waters whispered. “Okay. Just relax, Cristian. Enjoy your drive. I promise not to call you unless it’s important.”

Vane crammed the phone in its mount and switched on the radio. With soulless Muzak in his ears, he took the 10 inland, got off on La Brea, and passively headed north. He had no idea where he was, no idea where he was going, no idea what to do when he got there. He only knew he had to keep moving.

But inevitably he did stop, halfway into an intersection on a dark unfamiliar street.

To a casual observer Vane might have been a dead man, sitting slumped behind a wheel with the engine humming and the transmission in PARK, his bloodless face running red, amber, and green. Drivers honked repeatedly, screamed obscenities, sped around him. The cell phone rang insistently, but it was as numbing as Muzak.

A glockenspiel chimed in his left ear: “hel- ^lo- _o”? The voice tried again, louder. “Hell--low--oh? Hey-ey-ey-ey-ey-ey … MISTER! Are you, like, okay?”

Vane rolled his head until he came nose-to-nose with a skinny girl in her mid-teens. He closed one eye and squinted with the other: fine brown hair crackling in spears of neon, flat nose pushed to the side, tiny teeth way too perfect to be real. Three eyelid piercings, two tongue studs, a row of bunched hoops hanging from one sagging lobe. Some weird things done with makeup; a deliberate Halloween mask for a face. But most disturbing was the deep blue liner under her eyes. Old memories stirred his pain.

She was posed inquisitively; one palm on the limousine’s roof, the other displayed like a waitress with an imaginary tray. “Well, y’know, you can’t just like sit here. You’re blocking traffic, man.” The girl looked around nervously. “Are you frying, mister, or what?” She peered cross-eyed through the windshield, leaned back, lightly shook his shoulder. Vane heaved a sigh.

“Oh, thank goodness! It’s alive. Alive!” She flapped her hands. “Look, man, you’ve just got to get me out of here. There’re all these like super-grungy guys who’ve been following me, and I’m like totally freaking out. So can I get in? I mean, can we just go? Oh, pretty, pretty, pretty-please?”

There was a light clopping to his right. A splash of cool night air. The voice popped into his other ear. “Dude, it’s like what’re you doing, anyway? Taking this thing to the great queer body shop in the sky?” A door slammed. The smell of cheap perfume hit his nostrils. Plastic nails danced up his wheel hand and tapped on the gearshift. “It’s like this long bar,” the voice said. “You have to move it over, from the little P to the little D. Then the car goes forward.”

He raised his head and her eyes sparkled. Tiny teeth flashed between heavily painted lips. Vane grinned back. “No wonder I wasn’t going anywhere.” He took a long peek in the rear-view mirror. “What’d you say about being followed?”

The girl jumped all over the car’s accessories, punching buttons and spinning knobs. “Wow, man! Who do you drive for, anyway?” She pecked the console’s computer keyboard with rainbow-glitter nails, saying, “Dear Mom. It’s like, wow. I mean, I’m being kidnapped by this handsome limousine driver. His name’s …” She paused in her play-typing.

“Cristian.”

“… Christian, but I just call him Limo, ’cause Christian makes him sound like some kind of geeky holy roller or something. He drives this great big thrashed-out pink car for Elton John and George Hamilton, with a gay bar in the back and everything. He may have kidnapped me, mom, but I stole his heart. We’re up in Hollywood on Cahuenga, and we’re gonna go pick up some, like, major movie stars and party heavy all night. So don’t wait up. Love, Prissy.”

“Prissy?”

She stuck out her tongue. “Priscilla. What is it with parents, anyway?” She jammed her plastic sequined pumps against the glove box. One heel was loose. Prissy wiggled down her butt and got comfortable, the short red dress sliding up her skinny white legs. A second later she was all over the place; bouncing up and down, yanking on the visor’s vanity mirror, opening and closing the glove box, corkscrewing her torso to work the radio. “Yuk! What are you listening to, anyway? No wonder you’re so spaced out.” She looked him over while poking the seek button, her mouth turned down. “Can’t your boss afford one of those cute limo driver hats?” Prissy found a rock station and broke into an awkward little dance with her upper body. Vane had to laugh. She looked daggers for a second, then laughed right back.

He put the car in gear and squared his shoulders. “So where do you live?”

“It’s not far. A few more blocks, up on the right.” Following her directions, Vane pulled the big pink car into a hotel’s parking lot.

“You live in a hotel?”

She stared sarcastically and showed him her palm. “C’mon, man. Are we tripping here, or what?”

Vane drew a blank. He slowly pulled out his wallet and exposed the bills.

Prissy took a fifty and a twenty. “That’s just for now. Wait here.” She stepped out and sashayed up to the office, enormous purse slung over scrawny shoulder.

Vane turned down the radio and zoned out. He was just starting the car when that same small voice popped back in his head. “Okay, let’s go. But put up the windows and make sure everything’s locked tight. Even so, I told the manager to keep an eye on this boat.” She rubbed her thumb against the first two fingers meaningfully. “And I told him you’d be remembrandt in the allet-way, if you get my drift.”

Vane touched the dash switch that armored the vehicle. Windows hissed shut, doors locked in conjunction, red lights winked on latches and dash. Remembering the cell phone, he plucked it free and stuck it in his right rear pocket. Vane double-checked the locks before following Prissy into room seventeen. It was as he’d expected: bed, dresser, television, bathroom. He sat on the bed. Prissy closed the door and hung her purse on the knob.

“I can’t ever get the porno channel, but there’s plenty of magazines in the dresser if you need ’em.” She kicked off her shoes, unbuttoned her blouse, and stepped out of her skirt. The bony body looked deathly pale in the room’s dirty yellow light. Vane glanced at the old scars and fresh scabs.

“How old are you?” he asked quietly.

She peeled off her panties. “I like to keep the bra on.”

“I’m not surprised.”

The girl fumed: foal on fire. “Look, mister. You’ve already paid, so you’d might as well get what you paid for.”

“Fifteen? Fourteen?”

“Jesus!” Prissy stomped to her purse, tore out a California identification card, and gave it a fling. She sat hard as he bent to retrieve it, a scabby hand on his thigh.

Vane tilted the card to catch the light. It appeared genuine. One Priscilla Ellen Hartley would be nineteen come the sixth of February.

“Why is ID always so important? Why ruin the illusion?”

“Men are funny like that,” he muttered. “For some reason the thought of spending a healthy chunk of your life in state prison tends to sour the experience.”

She unzipped his fly and reached in. “Is that what soured it for you?”

Vane fell back on the bed. Depression enveloped him like fog.

“It’s okay,” Prissy whispered, releasing the catch on his trousers. She pulled off his shirt and sneakers, expertly slid down his pants and shorts.

Vane drifted along in that fog; without meaning, without mooring. After a while he thought he heard his voice say, “No, it’s not. It’s never okay.” He was so far gone he didn’t realize she’d been busy for over a minute.

The goofy face popped back into view. Prissy pulled herself up using his knees for support, yawned, and reclined on an elbow. “I can get the manager to find the porno channel if you want.”

“Forget it.”

The room died. After a while she said, “What’s killing you, man?”

“I don’t know. Things change.” He clasped his hands behind his head. “I lost my father today. That could be part of it.”

Prissy dipped a thumb and forefinger into her bra and pulled out a small zippered pouch. From this she extracted a sloppily rolled cigarette and disposable lighter. “I always come prepared.” She lit, hit, and passed the joint. It was a new experience for Vane, so he copied the girl’s actions; drawing deeply, holding in the smoke as long as he could.

That tiny voice said, “I’ll need some money. I’m going for two dimes.”

“Sorry,” Vane mumbled. “I don’t have any change.”

The girl laughed and picked up his trousers. “You’re cute.” She fished out his wallet, removed a twenty, and stuffed the wallet back in his pants pocket. “Hold onto this for me.” Prissy gave him her little pouch and kissed his cheek. She already seemed to have matured five years since their meeting. “I’ll be right back.” She pulled on her skirt and blouse and, barefoot, stepped outside and softly closed the door.

Brand new impressions seeped into Vane’s fog. Something was playing with the tension in his neck and shoulders, something was tightening and loosening his eardrums.

Odd.

The ceiling light was throbbing with his pulse, the room breathing right along with him. Vane stared up at that fly-specked bulb for years, too drained to react. Finally the bed rocked again, and a slender hand pried the pouch from his fingers. He sat up.

Prissy took a tiny glass pipe from the pouch, pulled a white chunk about the size of a hearing aid battery from one of two miniature Ziploc plastic bags, carefully placed the little chunk in the pipe’s steel bowl, and flicked her Bic. She closed her eyes and rocked gently while drawing, then lovingly handed the pipe and lighter to Vane. Again playing copycat, he sucked slowly until the rock had expired. Prissy plucked the pipe from his fingers and continued to draw, turning the bowl under the flame to get every molecule of residue.

Vane’s lips were numb, his loins liquid. His brain relaxed and sharpened, relaxed and sharpened. He laid back. Prissy pulled off her blouse and slid out of her skirt. Her lips found his. Her tongue rolled over his chin and down his body, fluttering like a wet butterfly. The butterfly rolled back up. Vane brushed her moist hair from his face, wiped the dew out of his eyes.

“You’ve been driving too long, Limo. You need to learn how to cool.” Prissy sat up, swaying languidly. She found her pouch and second little Ziploc bag, helped him to a sitting position. Vane was allowed to hit the pipe first this time. He fell back as she killed the bowl.

The bed rocked. Prissy picked up the television’s remote control unit and a sudden voice blared, “--contacted Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasa--” She muted the sound, stepped to the wall plate and switched off the overhead light. The room was now lit only by deep reds and blues. The bed rocked again.

The scrawny body smacked into his. “Let go, Limo!” Vane let his head roll, felt her hot breath wash against his lips. He half-parted his lids. Prissy’s eyes were closed, her lips preening. As the shadows played over her face, the flesh round her eyes appeared to bruise and heal, bruise and heal. Her lips became a pair of writhing purple leeches; pursing, pouting, reaching for his throat like the sweet undead.

Not since he was a teenager had Vane felt his body come alive. His tingling fingers clenched and unclenched, his hands found her breasts. The drowned face rolled back up. Fingers came wet in his hair, pulled his lips to a breast, slowly drew his face deeper.

The similarity to Megan was maddening. Vane fought to break away, but she bit hard on his lower lip, climbed on top, and guided him in. The room was a pounding, squeezing cube. Vane’s brain went fuzzy, contracted, released. It all happened very fast. When the jack blew out of the box he was left empty and cold, anchored but adrift. Slowly the fog lifted.

Prissy flopped off and rubbed his sweaty belly. He heard her voice in a dream, “Thanks, Limo. That was sweet.” She walked her fingers up and down his chest. “You’ve deflowered me, baby. I’ve never had a trick get off while calling me ‘mommy’ before. It was kind of cool.”

Vane’s head rolled on the pillow. His expression was frightening. “Shut up.”

Prissy shivered, her eyes gleaming between the half-closed lids. She looped her arms around his neck and smiled cozily, flattered by a sweetheart. The phrase shut up came as the emotional equivalent of I love you. “Yes master,” she whispered huskily. “Yes, Daddy.”

“I mean it,” Vane said. “You’re playing with forces you couldn’t possibly understand.” He sat up on the bed, hauling her up with him. She nibbled on his earlobe. He pulled away.

“Give me another twenty,” Prissy said, clinging. “You’ll cheer up fast enough. Or make it thirty. I can score right in this hotel if the money’s right.”

“Forget it. I can’t think as it is.”

She pushed him away with disgust, cussed him up and down, and two seconds later was hanging all over him again. Vane couldn’t peel her off for the life of him. They leaned against each other quietly, using flesh for emotional support. The televised images, blowing around the room, made grim shadow puppets of their heads. Vane was experiencing an exaggerated sense of the sordid, unaccustomed as he was to the sticky underbelly of society. All he wanted was a long scalding shower.

“Why do you live like this?” he wondered aloud. “Why don’t you find a decent guy and settle down?”

Prissy laughed harshly. “Like you, Limo? Don’t judge me, man. And don’t give me any of that holier-than-thou crap about finding a ‘nice guy’.” She pulled away. “I know all about men, probably more than you do. There are no ‘nice guys.’ A man is either horny or he’s not. If he is, then all his ‘niceness’ is a load of BS. He’ll say and do anything to get what he wants. And if he isn’t horny, then what good is he? You think I want to listen to him b***h and whine about how there aren’t any ‘good girls?’ You think I want to listen to him snivel about what a great guy he is, and about how the s**t who left him didn’t appreciate how he busted his a*s, day in and day out, for her, baby, only for her?” She swung her legs off the bed. “In my line of work I hear more bullcrap than a bartender. I’ve heard it all. Mostly it’s the daughter thing, dig? Like, I’ll be laying there with some freak who’s paying top dollar to get off on a chick just because she reminds him of his daughter, and then this bozo’s gonna lecture me about how I should be a ‘good girl,’ and go back to daddy.” She looked like she wanted to heave.

Vane hunched gloomily. He’d been preparing to tell the girl precisely this. “Everybody,” he fumbled, “needs a father. Someone who can guide you. In decisions. In love. Someone with experience.”

Prissy squeezed his hands. Her eyes were dancing. “Let me tell you about fathers, Limo. Let me tell you about men.” She hooked a foot under his leg and stared at the ceiling. Backlit strangely, Prissy became a wise, caring tutor, a mother figure poised naked on a grave. And bruised, so very bruised. Her head fell forward and her eyes reached into his.

“There have been two loves in my life, Limo.

“The first was my father.

“Daddy was an alcoholic with a bad streak. I mean bad. He used to kick the crap out of my mother, every single blessed night of the year; twice on birthdays and holidays. He worked at the foundry in our little town in Paso County, New Mexico, and each morning he brought a thermos filled with Jack Daniels to the job. That’s what the other workers called him. They called him Jack: Jackie D. Somehow or other he managed to bluff his way through work every day. Eventually even his friends despised him; first for the way he had to get his paws on anything female, second for the way he went ballistic on anybody who objected. The heavier the tension got at work, the heavier it got at home. Then one day he got fired for breaking the foreman’s jaw. I remember seeing mama, swollen and bleeding, crying and spitting out teeth. I remember her falling on me to protect me, screaming in my little face while Daddy kicked her in the head and spine. I must have been--what--maybe thirteen, maybe fourteen, and I remember seeing his bleary eyes sort of shining, and his mouth twisting as he looked down at me.

“Y’see, Daddy was getting ready to teach me all about you poor, misunderstood men.

“He grabbed mama by the hair and hauled her off me. I think she was unconscious, but things were too weird at the time to tell. Then he took me by the front of my blouse and just kind of fell on me. I think his original idea was to pick me up, but he’d wore himself out thumping on mama. He rested there on me, and I was, like, gagging on his whiskey breath, and also I couldn’t breathe because he was so heavy and I was so tiny.”

Prissy’s grip on Vane’s hands became passionate. Her eyes burned in the surreal, glancing light. “And I said ‘please, Daddy.’ I said please, Limo!

“I think I must have meant no. But it was Daddy. And he wasn’t touching mama any more. He was touching me!

“And I remember seeing his fist rise above me and just kind of hover there. And I remember screaming, ‘I love you, Daddy, I love you!’ And seeing that fist, big as a Christmas ham, come slamming down.”

Prissy hugged herself, shivering. “Poor Daddy broke my nose so bad it took three surgeries to fix it. But I was young, and he was sorry, and it all came out okay.” She beamed prettily. “See?”

Vane clasped his ankles. The rock’s effects were passing. Part of him wanted to say he understood, he was sorry, but the reds and blues had done their number on his soul.

“There was so much blood,” Prissy said rapturously, “that I couldn’t see his expression. I had to see with my other senses. And they told me Daddy was real busy. His hands were all over me. He tore off my pretty blouse, and he tore down my pretty panties. He had me pinned, Limo. And he loved me real. Then, when he was done, he clenched his fists and started whaling on me again.

“And I remember waking up in his arms. He was crying, man, and he was telling me how much he loved me. There was blood all over the place; on the walls, in his moustache, on our faces. He was crying like a faucet while he told me how much he loved me, and every third breath he proved it with his fist.

“In the hospital they let me and mama share a room. We spent a lot of time holding hands between operations, talking about how life was going to get better. Daddy had busted up something in mama’s spine, and she went through these freaky trips where she’d get all spastic and foamy. The doctors would rush her out and wheel her back in, then wheel me out and whisk me back in. They gave me some new teeth and fixed a funny clot in my head. We were there, like, forever, man.

“All this time mama kept getting worse, no matter how many tubes they stuck in her. She started to drift. I made like I was all concerned and stuff, but secretly I was on a total high. I knew she was gonna die, and then there wouldn’t be anybody between me and Daddy.”

She paused to study Vane’s face in the creepy light. He stared back woodenly. The TV’s images bounced off the walls, froze with the screen, bounced some more.

“One day a Jehovah’s Witness came in and scored big time with mama. She clamped on his rap like a pit bull on a postman. He tried me too, but I wasn’t buying. I gotta hand it to those guys, though; he hung with mama like a real trooper. When they wheeled her out for the last time he was still telling her how lucky she was.

“Now there was nobody around to dump on Daddy. I laid there dreaming about the day I’d get out of that morgue--about how I’d tell Daddy that I was pregnant by him, and about how happy he’d look when he loved me real.

“But then, just when I was getting ready to be released, this social worker b***h comes in and breaks it to me. Poor Daddy’d stuck a gun in his mouth and blew his freaking brains out. So this social worker throws me in this halfway house with a bunch of total losers, like she’s doing me a favor or something. I split and was just cruising on the streets, but I got caught and thrown in juvie. The old broad bails me out. More favors. Next thing I know I’m living in this big condo in Marina del Rey with my new foster parents. It’s no mystery why they didn’t have any kids of their own. Their idea of a good time was balancing checkbooks over chai latte. I was always Poor Prissy. Sweet Prissy. They liked to show me off to their geek friends, liked to show them what great parents they were. I was out of my mind, Limo. One night I told ’em I was gonna go admire the stupid sailboats or something, but I stuck out my thumb and got a ride down Lincoln to the freeway. After a couple more rides I wound up in Hollywood, cold and hungry and pregnant. That’s when I met Jeremy.”

“Jeremy?”

Prissy hugged herself again. She closed her eyes and began gently rocking back and forth. “The second love of my life. Jeremy’s a biker-slash-philosopher. He pulled me out of the gutter and put me to work. I could make him a grand a day by going down on the daughter freaks, Limo. It was easy. All I had to do was look lost and helpless. They’d launch into these long teary raps about what wonderful fathers they were, and tell me over and over again how much I reminded them of their darling daughters. The hornier they got, the higher I jacked up the price. Jeremy schooled me on the freaks. They’re scared, he’d tell me, and they’re all tore up inside by guilt. But they’re horny as all get-out, or they wouldn’t be there.” She shrugged. “They’re guys.

“Jeremy began slapping me around after each trick to make me work harder, and the harder he hit me, the deeper I fell in love with him. When I started to show, he got super-pissed. He thought I wasn’t being up front with him on account of I didn’t tell him I’d been knocked up by Daddy. He beat me better than ever, but kept me in circulation. I learned to use makeup creatively. When the bruises got too loud I’d do my face up like a sissy punker. The johns really dug that. They wanted to punish their little girl for looking rebellious. Some of ’em could get pretty Neanderthal. But none were ever as good as Jeremy.”

Her eyes looked directly into Vane’s. “I’m not boring you?”

He closed his mouth and forced a casual shrug. “You must know by now I’m no talker.”

The girl considered this. “I guess that’s cool, when you drive a limousine for a living.” She beamed. “I’ll bet you never made a grand a day steering that big old pink hearse around.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with that kind of money.”

Prissy ran a hand along his thigh. “You could spend it on me.”

“And it would all just go to Jeremy.”

She smiled sweetly. Vane was again taken by the way she seemed to be maturing before his eyes. “One night,” she went on, “one of Jeremy’s best clients complained that little Prissy wasn’t so little after all. The guy was so mad about Jeremy’s business ethics that he said he was gonna spread the word around town that Jeremy was a scammer. Nothing my man could say or do would make that creep change his mind, so Jeremy put him down. He had to, Limo. It was either that or go out of business. And Jeremy couldn’t let that happen. He had these, like, major bills to pay: Jeremy was in way-deep with the Mexican Mafia. So he rents a van and a bunch of tools and takes this guy’s body out to the Mojave Desert. He lines the inside of the van with these heavy plastic drop cloths, gets naked and stashes his clothes up front. Then he climbs in the back with the saws and the sledge hammers and gets busy.

“He worked all that day and night. Jeremy told me he had to do an eightball of meth and a quart of Kentucky bourbon just to get through it. But after he was done he had a hundred and eighty-five pounds of primo lizard food. He poured the ex-trick down a gully, took out the drop cloths, covered them with gas, and let them burn. Now the van was good as new. He’d brought along one of those big fifty-five gallon drums, filled to the brim with soapy water. Jeremy said he sat in that drum for three hours soaking out the gore. Then he put the tools in the drum and innocently cruised out of there like some lost hippie looking for a Dead concert. Halfway home he stopped, poured out the funky water, and dried the tools and drum in the sun. While the speed was still keeping him jazzed he scrubbed out the drum, oiled and polished the tools, and even had the van detailed. When he got home I made him tell me all about it. He laid it down, then calmly reached back and slugged me in the tummy just as hard as he could.

“In the emergency room they told me the baby had been killed instantly. Now you see why I love the man, Limo? He’s a real problem solver. The doctors also said my spleen had to go, but that I’d get along just fine without it. Did you know all the stuff you’ve got inside you that you really don’t need?” She ticked them off on the fingers of one hand. “Gall bladder, appendix, tonsils, one kidney, one lung …”

“You can lose your arms and legs, too,” Vane countered, “and life’ll still go on. But I’d rather keep what I’ve got.”

Prissy nodded cozily. “I’m hip to that, baby. I’m keeping what I’ve got too. Do you know what a good man can do with a propane torch and a pair of needle-nosed pliers?”

“Shut up, man! You’re wearing me out.”

Her eyes gleamed. “So now you’re all mad at me.”

“No, I’m not mad at you. I’m just starting to see how stupid I am to feel sorry for myself.”

“Yes you are, you totally limp loser. Mama’s boy. You’re all pissed off, you pink limo pig f****t. You’re just not man enough to deal with it.”

“Oh, for Christ’s--”

She slapped him right across the face. “Then get pissed!” The blow was not only accurately placed; it was well-timed. Vane never saw it coming. He grabbed her right wrist with his left hand, caught her left hand in his right, and shook his head. No one had ever struck him like that.

The girl kept right on throwing her arms, but his weight and upper body strength had her pinned. It was an interesting position. Sitting on the bed with her heels under her thighs and her arms gripped at ten and two o’clock, Prissy was completely helpless. All Vane had to do was lean forward and hold on. He had leverage.

She spat in his face, lurched back and forth and side to side, did everything she could to free herself. When she finally relented, smiling demurely, her voice was sweet as treacle. “Doesn’t anything make you mad, lover?”

“Not mad enough to hit a woman.”

“Not mad enough to hit a child?”

“Or a child.”

“Even if that child lied to you? Even if that child set you up?” She batted her eyelashes comically. “What if you were looking at hard time for having paid sex with a minor? And what if that minor copped your license plate number so her man could add you to his list? What if this minor had the hotel manager photograph you entering the room with her? And Limo, what if all the stuff I just told you about were parts of a big plan that goes down every night, starting on that very corner where this what-if chick got picked up by a certain limousine driver? It’s like goin’ fishing, baby; the names on Jeremy’s List could fill a small phone book. Now, think about it, honey. How many paychecks would you be willing to turn over before you got really mad? Cons don’t like new-meat molesters, Limo. Not at all. So wouldn’t it kinda bug you if some strange chick did this to you? Wouldn’t it make you just a teensy bit upset?”

Vane gripped her wrists fiercely. “Your ID says you’re of legal age.” He shook her limp arms. “My father’s company hired tons of Guatemalans. I’ve checked out green cards and I.N.S. papers. I know good California ID when I see it.”

“And so does the Mexican Mafia, darlin’. They’ve had plenty of experience creating false ID for illegals. And Jeremy makes sure his girls get the best cover possible. Like I told you, he’s a real problem solver.” She shook off his hands.

For a moment Vane saw red. When his mind cleared he found himself with one hand in her hair and one fist poised to obliterate that crooked, ready smile. Prissy was teetering on the lip of climax.

Vane unclenched his fist and pushed her away. It was not an act of passion, nor of passion controlled. The night was over. He got off the bed and picked up his trousers.

Five rainbow-painted trowels tore down his back. He turned.

“Don’t go, Limo! I need a ride, baby. Bust my a*s out of here!” She was now on all fours on the bed, her head lolling, the fine brown hair clinging to moist spots on her face and shoulders. Her eyes were black caves, her mouth a livid, groping sea anemone. A string of saliva, red and blue, hung from her lower lip. “Do me right, driver daddy. Lock me down and roll. Bash my funky face in, baby. Beat me sweet.”

“Little lady,” Vane said politely, pointing back and forth like a special education teacher demonstrating for a particularly slow student, “I don’t know you. You don’t know me. We’ve never met. You’re going to have to get your kicks, figuratively and literally, from somebody else. I’m out of here.”

Prissy collapsed on her side. She drew up her legs and thrust her hands between her knees. The tears began, gently at first. In half a minute she was a blubbering wretch.

“That won’t work either,” Vane said solidly. “I’ve endured the charade of femininity since childhood. The whole self-serving gamut: tender concern, maternal warmth, petty jealousy, and, of course … lachrymosity. As a matter of fact, crying’s the worst thing you can do to make a man care. We’re organizers. All it does is make the situation unmanageable.”

The girl began to wail.

“What’re you crying for, anyway?” he said nervously. It must have sounded like a cat was being tortured in room seventeen. “Finally you’re in the company of a man who treats you with a little respect, and you act like the world’s coming to an end. You should be happy, girl. Your whole head’s turned inside-out.”

She lunged and threw her arms around his waist. The wailing diminished to sniffles and gulps. Vane stood still, fighting the urge to put an arm around her shoulders. He let his trousers unfurl from one hand, used the other to pluck out his wallet, and let all the bills rain onto the bed. It was a flutter of mostly tens and twenties; a few fifties. Maybe four and change. “I’ve got to go. I’d like to say it’s been nice.”

Prissy snatched up the bills with one hand, still clinging with the other. “Mine?”

“On the condition you don’t give it to Jeremy.”

“If it’s mine I’m using it any way I want.” She stuffed the bills into the open body of his pants. “I’m hiring you. It’s my turn to be the trick.”

“Hiring me for what?”

“Just to be here with me. Let your boss wait. Tell him you’re at the beautician’s or something.”

Vane fell back beside her. “But no more drugs for a while. Not so long as I’m here. Deal?”

“Deal. Let’s just talk.”

They stretched out and snuggled. “Tell me,” Prissy ventured, “about the real Limo.”

Vane was silent for a minute, watching the dumb interplay of images on the screen. “Well, for starters my life is nowhere near as interesting as yours. I live in a great big house with a whole lot of people I don’t really know, and nothing much ever happens.” He was struck by the accuracy of this little revelation. “Except for today. My father died and everybody moved out.”

After a while Prissy said dully, “That’s interesting.”

Vane was catching on: the girl was less than a fireball without fresh drugs in her system. It was also becoming plain that sobriety didn’t do a hell of a lot for his own personality. “What a couple of losers.”

“Monsters,” Prissy agreed. She leaned across his chest, scooped up the television’s remote control unit, cranked up the volume and began surfing the high channels, muttering, “This room gets crappy cable.” Finally she settled on a broadcast apparently highlighting the glorious wildlife of Africa’s savannah. She curled up and nestled in his arm. Both were glad to let the set do the talking.

The announcer explained that all Africa was not the wild land of savage beauty portrayed by Hollywood. The film cut to an aerial shot of an achingly dry desert, which he described as the Danakil Depression in northeastern Ethiopia. Now a small plane’s camera, receding at around a hundred feet, exposed a crescent of smoothed hillocks. A few seconds later an even wider view revealed an immense impact crater with a very low, highly-weathered rim. The crater was partly bisected by a ridge continuous with the outer desert, giving the site a shape something like the letter Q. Only its hellish location could have kept such a tremendous natural phenomenon unknown to geologists.

The viewers were informed that an American spy satellite, monitoring suspected Eritrean troop insurgences in the unmapped Danakil, had stumbled upon this huge crater and the thousands of nomadic pastoralists calmly starving to death within. Nothing would compel these people, the Afar, to leave.

The voice said the area, and the crater by extension, were known to the Afar as Mamuset. He explained that this could be translated as both came and waiting. This was all the proof the voice needed: the half-dead Afar had an appointment with Jesus.

The film cut to a close shot of a nondescript desert location. The camera panned across numberless people dead and dying; desperately malnourished, parching in the sun. The next shot, also nondescript, was of relief workers passing out rations from the backs of a few dusty pickup trucks. Sagging in the distance was a large canvas Red Cross tent, the nether arm of the cross extended downward with paint to create the symbolic cross of Calvary. It was all so pathetic.

According to the announcer, a drought of unprecedented magnitude had decimated the Horn of Africa. The ensuing famine was already the worst on record, with a projected death toll in the several millions. Typhus and cholera, along with the slow but steady march of AIDS, had so weakened the pastoral population that many victims were succumbing without struggle. Taped sounds of weeping and moaning burbled over a brief clip of a little boy and his sister smothered by flies. The boy was dead, his sister clinging. Right behind this came a wide still featuring an entire family in rigor mortis, their cadavers being fought over by hyenas.

“Only on cable,” Vane muttered.

Prissy shuddered and clung tighter. “What’s going on? What … why are they showing all these suffering people?”

“It’s a religious organization,” he explained absently, “looking for subscribers. They want to bleed viewers dry, and they’re savvy enough to be as graphic as possible. You don’t break hearts with picnic scenes.”

The frozen horror was replaced by a worried-looking man posing before a large group of famine victims. He was dressed for safari.

“That guy there,” Vane continued, “is a kind of barker for the organization. It’s his job to soak the rubes by appealing to their consciences. The actual problem is very compelling, yet it takes a real performance to hold a crowd. It’s just human nature. Everybody’s a rubberneck at a pileup, but it’s the rare individual who’ll become passionately involved. The barker encourages them to stay. He plays upon their guilt, making it difficult for them to return to the workaday without feeling ashamed. Cash solves the whole problem. The contributor has done something. Now he not only sees himself as that one in a million who cares, but he can go back to chasing profit, pleasure, and status without all those damned skinny black beggars making him feel guilty.

“Scamming’s always most effective when it’s done in the name of religion, like on this program. The believer at home is caught between a real big rock and a real hard place, almost as if his conscience is staring him in the face while his deity watches over his shoulder. What’s he gonna do? Offend his God in order to save a few bucks? But I’ll guarantee you the barker and all his cameramen get first-class catering, depths of Africa or no.”

They watched the man pass his microphone like a censer over the passive black faces, all the while shaking his head and pouting. The camera zoomed wide and remained on the paltry mission while additional footage, of desert outside the crater, was superimposed.

These new images were appalling.

Whole tribes were shown wiped out by famine, bodies and personal belongings strewn amidst thatch huts. Camels and cattle lay rotting as far as the lens could capture. A new voice came over, explaining that a combination of factors had produced a situation that could impact the region for decades. Danakil, one of the hottest places on Earth, was in the grip of an exceptionally intense eleven-year cycle. No stranger to drought and famine, the region now appeared to be the focal point of an event much wider than any recorded in East Africa’s history. Kenya, Sudan, Somalia--all were being affected by rapid desertification. The Nile was shrinking visibly, while the Sahara gradually ate away its perimeter like a slowly welling pool, etching arable earth into sand. Even Saudi lands, far across the Red Sea, were slowly losing fertile ground to desert sand. Doomsayers could wail all they wanted about acid rain and the ozone layer, but the pouting man with the microphone, once again at center stage, knew that a far greater Hand was at work. The man on the mic freely admitted he wasn’t smart enough to know why his All-loving God would so cavalierly allow His precious children to suffer so. He only knew it was absolutely none of his mortal business. Two things, however, he was ready to claim with complete certainty. One was that man’s wickedness was somehow to blame, the other that the sinful viewer could immediately take the edge off at least a part of that wickedness by pulling out a credit card and dialing the toll-free number now throbbing orgasmically across the screen. He pumped the viewers to dig deeper, that these innocent babies might smile in the omniscient Eye of God. The camera zoomed onto a logy old woman holding a pair of dying infants to her burned-out teats. The infants were little pot-bellied black skeletons, mouths wide and eyes shut tight. Their tiny fists beat the stifling air in slow motion.

Vane felt Prissy’s nails digging into his chest. He turned his head to find her quietly crying. “Why,” she whined, “why doesn’t somebody do something?”

“I could change the channel.”

“Don’t joke, Limo. That won’t save those babies.”

He picked up the remote and muted the sound.

“My dear, what you just saw was a taped recording, not a live broadcast. I guarantee you those children are out of their misery by now.”

From the primal womb rose a piercing, nails-on-blackboard wail that gradually tapered to a long suffering sigh. Vane’s hair stood on end. Something in that very basic, very feminine plaint had gouged a nerve in his heart fortress. Prissy seemed to fill out as he stared, until she appeared fully opposite the scrawny, backstabbing runaway he thought he knew. At that moment Vane thought he had a lot to learn about women, when in reality he had lot to learn about testosterone. The sequence could have been the reverse--he could have encountered a mature woman and watched her morph into a teenager. Nature was hypnotizing him, stirring his hormones, trying to convert him from a procrastinator to a procreator. And now, watching agape in the crazy light, he could have sworn her lips plumped as her cheeks ran alabaster and blue. He was looking at Megan; he was looking at Mother the way she intended, as prisoner for life.

Vane slammed a fist on his thigh and swung his legs off the bed. “God damn you all! Just leave me f*****g be!”

Prissy blinked rapidly. “Dude, it’s like what’re you rapping about? Who shoved a bug up your butt, anyway?”

He stepped into his trousers, pushing the trapped bills through the legs and out onto the carpet. He let them lie.

“Limo?”

Vane turned, said, “My name’s not Limo,” and caught her hand before the intended slap could reach his face. He threw down the hand and shrugged on his shirt. “And you should know me better by now.” He watched her closely while dressing. Stepping round the bed, he found himself paused in front of the TV, mesmerized for perhaps half a minute by images of children and adults rotting in the savage African sun. There was a general look to these people; the look of worthless animals resigned to their fate. He was reminded of photographs of Jews liberated from Auschwitz and Treblinka. Staring skeletons. Faces too wasted to express gratitude or relief. The innocent Afar were freaks in a two-dimensional sideshow, exploited by an evangelical gang of trespassing profiteers. Vane, grimacing, ran down the channels until he reached a cartoon. Some kind of bear and a hound dog were bashing each other with mallets.

“This is more your speed, Priscilla.”

There was a familiar burring under the bed. Prissy showed him her tongue and leaned over the side. A moment later she resurfaced holding Vane’s cell phone.

“Wow!” she said, fascinated by the blinking pink jewels on the sculpted cream case. “It’s so pretty!”

Vane stomped over and plucked it from her hand. He flipped it open, placed it against his ear. Prissy’s jaw dropped as she watched the phone’s colored lights winking in response to the transmitted signal. In the throbbing red and blue darkness Vane looked like some kind of futuristic explorer preparing to beam up. At last he closed his eyes and winced.

“Here,” he said, handing her the phone. “It’s for you.”

He turned on his heel and drew open the door. Without another word he stepped outside and was swallowed by the night.