The music was lively, and the dance had a lot of hand clapping, foot stomping, and skirt shaking to chase the llamas around the square, or at least the two-headed llama joker. He, she, or they really looked like two llamas when his/her middle was obscured by the dancing nats. Howard wondered how s/he went to the bathroom and hoped it did not involve a catheter.
Howard purchased a fruit cup and munched on pineapple and honeydew spears and pieces of an exotic pink fruit called “mamey.” It tasted sort of pumpkin-cherry-peach flavored, but not really. Like all good fruits, it tasted mostly like itself. Howard ended up buying one of the football-size beige fruits and peeling it with his nails, which were black and sharp and much straighter than his teeth. The mamey had a big pit like an avocado that he tossed in the trash along with the plastic cup full of rinds. More butterflies fluttered around the bin, sipping the spilled nectar with their long tongues, still seeming to regard him with their wingspot eyes.
The next dance was more traditionally Incan: the Camiles, the dance of the witch doctors. The pan-pipe-fingered dryad blew a skirling tune on her finger flutes, and the witch doctors twirled around in vicuña ponchos and straw hats decorated with bows, their knapsacks swinging precariously. They unslung them from their backs, making a great show of pulling open the drawstrings and dispensing their wares. Then they ran about the square, rattling gourd maracas, attempting to peddle bundles of herbs, dubious-looking folk charms, and more gourds to those watching, especially to all the jokers present.
Howard didn’t know what the gourd cocktails were, but they reeked of licorice, and not the good strawberry type. He watched the jaguar-spotted butterfly-stick juggler purchase one with suspiciously loud and quick haggling for a local, giving over all the tips in his hat. Then he drank the brew. One by one his spots disappeared, his fur receded, his claws retracted, his fangs shrank, and even his stubby tail withdrew into his body, leaving a handsome young nat of mestizo heritage.
“I am cured!” the former joker cried. “¡Estoy curado! ¡Estou curado!” The Peruvian accent was thick, but Howard recognized Spanish and what he guessed was Brazilian Portuguese. While he didn’t know the words, they were easy enough to guess from context.
He shook his head and sighed. Howard had seen jokers cured of the wild card before. There were a lot of possible reactions. Crying was common. Fainting likewise. Freaking out over body parts you no longer had or never had before happened a lot too. But a shape-shifting ace made a great shill for miraculous wild card cures, and many joker tourists bought them. Nothing happened except that one woman with scabby weeping sores and hair that writhed like wire worms had her locks calm down slightly. She began to cry, talking quickly to her companions in Portuguese and repeatedly touching one scabrous hand to her breasts.
Howard supposed the placebo effect was good for something. He ignored the witch doctors’ repeated entreaties to buy their snake oil or whatever licorice-scented potion was in their gourds. Instead, he purchased another fruit cup and listened as the band started a new tune.
“Howard, isn’t it?” inquired a voice.
“What?” Howard looked down. Coming up to just about his navel was a woman with lustrous raven hair, oversized designer sunglasses, and a rich charcoal alpaca cloak worn like moth wings over a blue watered-silk sundress. One shapely but well muscled white leg stuck out below, poised in a dancer’s attitude as she craned her neck up at him, exposing an equally pale throat and a tantalizing glimpse of two small, pert breasts.
Though it appeared high quality, given Howard’s vantage point and experience in Jokertown, he could still spot a wig. He mentally stripped it and the cloak away. “Fantasy,” he concluded.
“Shhh,” she shushed conspiratorially, one coquettish red nail to her lips. “I’m incognito.” She pulled down her sunglasses, looking at him over the top, exposing eyes a brilliant and vivid heliotrope. “Just call me Asta, okay?”
“Didn’t you have b—”
“Takisian Lilac,” she answered. “All the rage. I adore colored contacts.” She pushed her sunglasses back up. “Did you see that Haitian woman? I’ll have to get some in Temptress Red too—though I believe hers are natural.”
Howard tipped down his own sunglasses. “Same here.”
Asta’s scarlet lips pursed in a perfect moue. “I don’t know why you hide them. They’re your most striking feature.” She glanced sideways at his crotch. “One of your most striking features, anyway.”
“I’m a little light sensitive.” Howard pushed his sunglasses back. “Something I can help you with, Asta?”
“No doubt several things,” she mused flirtatiously, “but for the moment, could I bother you for a lift? Your height is so much more substantial, and I was wanting to study the Sijilla.”
“The Sijilla?” Howard repeated.
“The dance of the doctors and lawyers,” Asta explained. “It’s one of the Spanish dances.” She gestured to the square where a new set of folk dancers were taking position and a crowd of onlookers formed a wall of shoulders that would easily block the view of someone Asta’s height.
Howard had been to concerts and had girls on his shoulders before, though it had been a while. “Golden Boy wasn’t available?”
“Jack’s almost as much of a social butterfly as I am.” Asta waved offhandedly, startling a cloud of the actual butterflies. “He decided to be elsewhere.” She dimpled. “Besides, you’re taller.”
Howard chuckled. “I am that.” He reached down and, when Asta didn’t resist, placed his hands around her waist and lifted her to his right shoulder.
“Not the most elegant lift I’ve ever gotten, but certainly the highest,” she observed amusedly. “We’ll make a danseur of you yet.”
“That would be something,” said Howard.
Fantasy watched the dancers taking position. “I fancy I might bring this Sijilla to the world’s attention.” Her legs curved tightly but expertly around Howard’s shoulder. “After all, the great Pavlova did the same with the Jarabe Tapatío.”
“Don’t think I’ve seen that.”
“Truly?” Asta rested a delicate hand on his opposite shoulder. “You’ve never seen the Mexican Hat Dance?”
“Well, yeah.…” Howard felt himself blushing, which was always embarrassing, since he blushed a darker green. “We were just in Mexico.”
“The Ballet Folklórico’s was very nice, but it’s not what it was under Hernández’s direction, and oh, there I go, being catty. I should have said it was wonderful.” She squeezed his shoulder. “You were there. It was wonderful, wasn’t it?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Good. I trust my secret’s safe with you.” Fantasy’s legs squeezed like Slither’s coils back when Howard had taken her to see the Lizard King and Destiny. “I shudder to think what would happen if I’d been that candid around Jack.…”
Howard chuckled. The Sijilla was a lot like the Mexican Hat Dance, meaning one of those Spanish dances with a lot of swishing skirts and flirtation, but instead of charros and girls in poblana dresses, the women had cross-dressed, masked and ponchoed as comical old Spanish doctors and lawyers. The men were costumed like Hispanic devils, with cloven-hoofed spats over their right feet, bird-clawed spats over their left, and leering yellow masks, like the jaundiced love children of Devil John Darlingfoot and the Chickenfoot Lady.
The music skirled and trilled as the yellow-faced devils pranced in, waggling their masks menacingly, stomping their goat hooves and chicken feet in a lurching gait. The doctors then began waving bottles of what looked like patent medicines or maybe urine specimens at them. The lawyers brandished papers that looked like lawsuits. Then, after a bit of circling and flirtation, the women began chasing the men around the plaza. Howard didn’t know what Asta thought, but from his perspective, it began to resemble nothing half so much as Sadie Hawkins Day at Jokertown High.
The guinea pig cried out something in Spanish. Asta clapped her hands in delight, explaining to Howard, “The dance comme
morates the work of the doctors at the ranchos of Qosñipata and the malaria epidemic there.”
As the doctors and lawyers chased the last of the malaria spirits away, Howard remarked, “Tachy would like this. We should…”
The words died on his lips as the men switched masks, coming back with pinched white elfin faces, manes of copper curls, and Three Musketeers’ hats complete with ostrich plumes. “Or maybe not.…”
The doctors and lawyers with their lawsuits and patent medicines were somewhat less successful dealing with the wild card virus, or at least that was the interpretation Howard came up with for the folk ballet. The Takisian devils chased all the other dancers save the joker MC from the square, the Sijilla ended, and the musicians took a set break.
Asta patted Howard’s shoulder. “Let’s keep this our little secret.”
“No trouble there.”
Asta laughed, a sound at once artless and practiced, and she slipped from his shoulder, sliding down his arm like it was a fireman’s pole. She landed on her feet, resting one hand against him for support.
She took it away quickly. “Oh my,” she said, realizing where she’d had it, “that was forward of me.”
Howard shrugged, looking down at her. “Happens.”
“Let me make it up by buying you lunch. Do you like street food?”
Howard grinned. “I’ll try anything once.”
“My motto as well.” Asta looked to his crotch, then to his face, then back again. “Wait here!” She skipped away. “Back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail!”
Butterflies trailed after her, evidently as enchanted as Howard. By the time Asta got back with the food, Howard had a raging boner, but not from her dancing. He waited on the edge of the fountain, which had survived a few hundred years and could withstand several hundred pounds of joker.
“They have some wonderful delicacies.” Asta balanced the brown paper sacks and a couple cups with the practiced ease of a waitress. “This is mostly for you, but I assume you won’t mind if I pick.” She perched next to him, delicate and fairylike, folding the paper bags into neat placemats on the edge of the fountain. “Pepián de cuy,” she said, opening the first container. “Guinea pig with peanut sauce.” She opened the second box, revealing a pile of savory-looking meat skewers on a bed of grain. “And grilled llama with quinoa pilaf. I’ve never tried either.”
“I’ve had quinoa,” Howard admitted. “They’ve got it in The Cosmic Pumpkin’s health food section.”
“An adventurous man,” Asta said admiringly. “I like that.” She offered him a cup. “Here’s something I doubt they have at The Cosmic Pumpkin.” She grinned. “Completely herbal and organic, I promise.”
The cup, like almost all cups, was too small in relation to Howard’s hand. He had to hold it with his fingertips. The tea was a pleasant greenish yellow and had a couple large leaves floating in it about the same color as his skin. He took a sip. It was bittersweet yet pleasant, and sweeter than green tea—what people would be calling an herbal tea these days, but what Grandma Mueller had called a tisane.
“It’s coca leaf.” Asta smiled impishly and took a sip from her own cup. “It’s what they drink here in the Andes.”
“Coca leaf?” Howard lowered his cup and looked at the leaves. “Isn’t that what cocaine comes from?”
“Not the only place, but the usual one.” Asta laughed. “The tea is made with the sweet leaves. The bitter ones have more cocaine, but the sweet are what the Andeans prefer for chewing and drinking.” She waved to the tea stand.
Howard saw a couple native girls dressed in white flamenco-style dresses with more of the same green leaves embroidered around the hems and necklines. Baskets on the counter held heaps of the leaves, both dry and fresh. The Styrofoam and tinsel candy canes at the corners of the stand looked almost incongruous.
“They say the coca bush sprang up where a wanton woman was torn in two by her jealous lovers.” Asta smiled. “She became Cocamama, the Incan spirit of health and happiness, goddess of the coca plant.” She took another sip of her tea. “They also say that men are not supposed to chew her leaves before they’ve satisfied a woman in bed.” She winked at him. “I think we can bend that rule just this once.”
Howard shifted uncomfortably. “You like folklore?”
“A professional weakness,” she confessed. “I love dance, and all the best ballets are based on folktales.” She looked down at the pile of grilled llama. “I was in my second year at Julliard when my card turned.” She selected a skewer. “We were rehearsing Giselle.” She began to nibble the meat delicately but suggestively. “I was dancing as one of the wilis.”
“The willies?”
“Not that sort of willie, you naughty boy.” Asta nibbled her meat skewer again. “Or maybe so. ‘Give you the willies’? Whichever!” She laughed lightly, startling a few curious butterflies. “Wilis are spirits of jilted maidens who died before their wedding day. They haunt the forest, hoping to find a man to make dance himself to death. And I had really gotten into my role since my boyfriend had dumped me because while I was in the corps de ballet, he was soloing as Albrecht.” Asta viciously tore a chunk of llama with her small white teeth. “I wanted him to want me, I wanted him to suffer, but most of all I wanted him to stop dancing. I got my wish.” She gestured with her half-eaten skewer. “It’s been mostly good since then.” She paused for reflection before admitting with a bemused pout, “Though if I’m partnered with a danseur, he needs to be a total Kinsey Six—absolutely gay—if I expect any dancing out of him.” She glanced to Howard. “So what’s your story? Liked ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’ a bit much?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think it did much with my card.” Howard chuckled. “When I was a kid, I had warts. Really embarrassed about them. Kids picked on me and called me Mr. Toad. Then I got the virus. I got really warty, and green too, but no one picked on me after that—though Mr. Toad stuck.” He shrugged, picking out a few llama skewers. “But I’d always liked The Wind in the Willows, had a nice copy my grandma gave me for my birthday, and I liked cars too, so I decided I was going to be the first joker NASCAR driver. Helps when you’re so tough you can walk away from any crash.” Howard sampled a skewer. He decided that llama tasted halfway between beef and lamb—basically Peruvian shawarma. “Wild card had other plans. I’d just got my damn driver’s license when I got my growth spurt.” Howard tore into the skewers. “But when I got my growth spurt, I really got my growth spurt. So good-bye, Mr. Toad, hello, Troll.”
“Hello Troll,” Asta said flirtatiously. She selected a choice bit of pepián de cuy and nibbled it without comment as the band started tuning up.
Howard finished the rest. He decided that guinea pig was good and tasted like chicken, in the same way that rabbit tasted like chicken, which was basically saying it tasted like rabbit.
He then felt embarrassed as he looked at the giant white guinea pig joker. She announced that the next dance would be the Chunchos, the dance of the jungle folk.
Asta stood up next to Howard, leaning on his shoulder as he continued to sit.
Women danced across the plaza bedecked with floral wreaths like you would see at a Renaissance fair and bearing beribboned staves topped with bouquets of silk flowers. The male dancers wore feathered headdresses and comically mustachioed nat masks. They carried walking sticks, which they used to caper like a bunch of Peruvian Bo Jangles.
Then the jungle beasts came out: women in parrot-faced masks and headdresses, the feathers in many colors to match their dresses; nat men got up as bears and monkeys; and animal-like jokers behaving like animals. The werejaguar ace chased the guinea pig into the square, shifting as he did from full man to full jaguar—except he was still wearing his poncho and pants, making him look like a South American version of one of the vain tigers from The Story of Little Black Sambo, tripping over his jeans instead of turning into jaguar butter.
Then the cathedral bell began to toll thunderously, sounding the hour, nine in the
morning.
Fantasy leaned over. “Could we go somewhere more private?” she whispered in Howard’s ear as the bell tolled. “I’m being watched.”
The final bell sounded, and Howard looked around. There were a number of people watching them, mostly nats and a few jokers with cameras, stealing pictures of the giant joker like they usually did, turning away to pretend they were taking pictures of the cathedral or looking at him sheepishly when he caught them at it. That much was normal and no different for Howard than any given weekend at the Central Park Zoo.
What differed were the butterflies. Clouds still fluttered around the waste bin and the fruit vendors’ carts, or perched on the lip of the fountain’s upper basin, stealing a drink from the overflowing water. But there were a surprising number of owl butterflies and other Lepidoptera with eyelike wingspots, which they pointed at him like camera lenses.
Howard looked directly at one. A moment later, the butterfly fluttered aloft, as if it were nothing more than coincidence and his mind was playing tricks on him. But looking out of the corner of his eyes behind his sunglasses, Howard noted a number of others focused on him like a sea of photographers.
He got up and stretched, still watching the butterflies and moths. While some were focused on him, most had their false eyes turned toward Asta.
Howard had been around enough ace powers to not discount something odd as coincidence rather than ascribe it to something more sinister—especially given the hooded figure he’d glimpsed amid the kaleidoscope of butterflies over the Museo Larco. The figure that had appeared just as Fantasy arrived.
Howard then recalled the reaction of the butterflies to his cigar. While he did not think he could smoke enough to cover the entire Plaza de Armas, there were three churches nearby, and Catholics did like their incense and candles.
“Would you like to go to morning prayers?” Howard asked. “Archbishop Fitzmorris said he’d be giving a special holiday invocation, and Father Squid should be there too.”
Wild Cards IV Page 17
