The idea of living at the airport made Felicity laugh.
“Whatcha laughin’ at?”
“Flying.” She was sure that this man with two jobs was her intended anonymous husband, if she ever went that route. Who knew? Maybe he could even give her that “bittersweet quake at the core of the nut,” as she had read orgasm described by the poet Anna Akhmatova. Felicity had never experienced what she understood to be the common property of women everywhere.
“Do you have a business card?”
Security laughed. “What for?”
“In case I need my bags carried.”
Felicity was moved and amused. There was a world of people without business cards that she could always disappear into if her life, which wasn’t great shakes right now, got any worse. Here was an escape hatch, an alternative life. And because she was a modern girl she made a mental note to create a new computer file named ALT.LIFE.
Felicity thought about sex all the way back to her apartment. She concluded that there was nothing normal about it. Sex was based on a basic lie—nature tricked people into having babies by making sex pleasurable—so it was no surprise that everyone lied about it, in imitation of nature’s original deception. They lied about what they liked, who they liked, how they did it, who they did it with. For a preacher like Mullin it must have been even worse. No one really practiced what they preached. Everyone lied, but Felicity felt incapable of it, an organic defect perhaps. She was honest to a fault, doubtless the reason why she couldn’t come. You had to be a liar, she concluded, to climax in the “normal” way.
Felicity developed the film in the tiny bathroom she had turned into a darkroom. While she waited for the prints to dry, she took off the funeral clothes, particularly gratified to free her legs from the unaccustomed stockings. She stood in the small bedroom of her apartment-cum-office and studied herself in the mirror on the door. Without any doubt, long legs and large eyes were her best features. Her pubis, too, had a presence, separate somehow from her, like a little beastie in residence. Distaste for the scene she had witnessed in the parking lot did not preclude a little horniness: the image of the young whore putting her sticky finger in Mullin’s mouth had inexplicably aroused her.
Felicity swept off the bed the nine books she had been reading simultaneously, flopped down on her belly, and turned on her little laptop computer. SEARCH THE WEB, she commanded it, and then typed in TABLOIDS, SCANDAL. Immediately, the National Enquirer, World Evening News, Our Mirror, News Uncut, and History Laid Bare presented themselves for her inspection. She was quite sure that this was the way to go: she could already see photos of the millionaire televangelist, fly unzipped, white worm out, splashed over 10 million tabloid covers. She would bring about the end of a reptile. She felt slightly guilty about the money she planned to extort, but there was justice in it.
Felicity had never heard of History Laid Bare, but the name of the tabloid appealed to her. History laid bare was exactly what she would provide. She clicked on the title.
History Laid Bare: The News front the Past. It wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. Her news was more like news from the future. A future, she told herself, when all these phony TV men of the cloth will stand before Saint Peter, pointing to their little peckers. What will you have to say for yourselves, Preachers, after you are unmasked by a girl dick? They’ll be limp for eternity! Downtown to the barbecue, all of you! I should have been a poet, sighed Felicity.
She would have gone on to the National Enquirer if the menu listing the contents of History Laid Bare hadn’t caught her eye. Among the items was an intriguing heading: Make Love to People from History. She clicked on it.
After a series of stern warnings forbidding persons under twenty-one years of age to enter, an image of Alexander the Great in a very short tunic appeared. The tunic was so short that it didn’t entirely cover the perceptible nub of Alexander’s manhood. He sat sidesaddle on an elephant superimposed on a map of Asia Minor. On the right side of the screen was a vertical strip titled Temporary Avatars. Five little cartoon figures were pictured below: a fat, squat Venus of Willendorf; a naked Greek discus thrower; an armless winged Roman Victory; a Carmelite nun in a high, pointed wimple; and General Patton. Felicity chose the nun and clicked on Alexander. A word balloon appeared over his head, and Alexander asked:
ARE YOU INTERESTED IN HISTORY?
Felicity typed YES, and the word appeared above the nun’s head.
DO YOU BELIEVE THAT HISTORICAL PERSONAGES ARE STILL ALIVE TODAY? Alexander nudged the elephant and they moved closer.
The nun answered, YES.
IF YOU ANSWERED YES, WOULD YOU WANT TO MEET THEM IN THE FLESH? Felicity could now see Alexander’s finely drawn cartoon hair.
YES.
IF YOU ANSWERED YES, TYPE IN THE HISTORICAL PERSONAGES YOU WOULD MOST LIKE TO MEET.
Whoa. Was this for real? Felicity stared at the screen as if it were the mouth of a bottomless pit. Easy, now. Who do I want to meet? The question is, what do I want to know? And who do I want to get it from? She could almost smell Alexander’s elephant as it took another step forward, nearly dwarfing the nun. Felicity felt herself beginning to sweat. Well, one thing was for sure. It had to be women. Men had certainly had their say in books. If there was anything to be discovered by meeting “historical personages,” it was stuff the books didn’t talk about. Here was a chance to affirm, er, prove, test, well, figure out whether history was his story, afflicted by gender bias as the feminists claimed, and whether she was a true dyke or not. Especially if, as the site more than implied, lovemaking was part of the deal.
Felicity laughed at herself. Man, I can’t believe I’m sitting here actually believing this crap. How many masquerades have I attended? One Mardi Gras I danced with Napoleon, made out with Josephine, shared a joint with Darth Vader, and traded hats with Baron Munchausen. How is this different?
She was familiar also with the game playing and masquerading going on over the Internet. Some of the virtual chat rooms were so realistic, people felt that they were living their real lives in there. By comparison, their so-called real lives, of work and human contacts, paled to insignificance. The virtual narcotic had spread everywhere in America, but a little less in New Orleans, where what cybernauts called “meat space” still throbbed, happily. Felicity, like many of her fellow New Orleanians, was highly skeptical of virtuality.
Still, Felicity was unable to shake the feeling that this cybermasquerade was somehow different. For one thing, the real people behind the avatars were tiny. She broke down and typed in a name: JOAN OF ARC.
They were old friends, in a manner of speaking. Jeanne d’Arc was the patron saint of New Orleans. And of old Orléans. Felicity’s favorite work of public art in the city was the gold Joan atop her gold horse in front of Herod’s Casino. Felicity had served on a committee to save the statue when the gangsters who owned Herod’s tried to have Joan removed from her pedestal, on the pretext that she might upset the suckers. The committee had won, so Felicity felt that she herself had won a battle, like Joan. Besides, there was something sexy about the Maid of Orléans, and if love-making were to take place, it would certainly be a pleasure.
The next choice gave her trouble. Pursuing the somewhat sacred line she had already opened, she typed in: THE VIRGIN MARY (AKA THE MOTHER OF GOD).
She had in mind both the sad, stern Virgin in Saint Louis Cathedral and the bare-breasted Virgin with a positively mischievous look on her face in an Italian painting she’d seen at the New Orleans Museum of Art. If the Virgin really was a virgin, Felicity’s awkwardness in lovemaking would be barely noticeable. After all, she’d had some experience.
Continuing her list, Felicity typed: AMELIA EARHART.
I always wondered what happened to Amelia Earhart.
Felicity was warning up now and had little trouble coming up with the next entry. There weren’t many famous women in the dangerous business of espionage, but one had been a superstar.
MATA HARI.
But having gotten this far, Felicity experienced a pang of doubt. Maybe the sole company of women was not such a great idea. The world was made of both women and men, and there were men with a lot of woman in them, just as there were women who were part, or all, man. In her profession, she could hardly afford to harbor any bias. Furthermore (here her pang became acute), what if she wasn’t really a lesbian? What if she ended up wanting a man after all?
She scanned her skimpy American education for worthy men. Napoleon Bonaparte she knew as the emperor of New Orleans kitsch. Attila the Hun took his women on horseback while simultaneously chopping heads all around. George Washington had wooden teeth and couldn’t lie, either. George Washington Carver was the man who invented peanut butter, the most perfect food. These men were not quite right. They suffered from either heroism or ruling-class selfishness. In high school Felicity had cut a lot of history to smoke pot with Ben. After that, history’s men had become known to her only through haphazard reading. She had read, for instance, a biography of ALEXANDER HAMILTON, whose ideals and intelligence she had admired. She had even had a fantasy of being there at the duel with Aaron Burr and somehow deflecting the bullet. Like Wonder Woman.
Felicity relaxed and allowed a number of historical men she had read about to parade before her mind’s eye. One man, smiling indecently, stood apart from the rest: the young MARK TWAIN.
A writer was definitely the kind of man she might be interested in. Finally, she typed in JULES VERNE, in whose submarine she had often traveled through the half-submerged city, with the taste of ashes in her mouth.
After she had entered all her objects of interest, Alexander the Great asked:
IF YOU COULD BE SOMEONE HISTORICAL, WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE?
She thought about the great destiny Major Notz insisted was hers, and a wave of nausea and arrogance rose simultaneously in her throat. She was quite sure that she would never fit in either the shoes or the dresses of any historical personage. The only thing she did not lack was a profound feeling of unworthiness. Even the bum stealing donations from the church was more purposeful than her. The world did not know that she existed, and it had not the slightest reason for knowing. If Jesus Christ was, let’s say, the most famous and most worthy person in the world—for the sake of argument only—then she was the absolute opposite of Jesus. However, and here Felicity allowed herself a tiny smile, there was no one in cyberspace who knew the difference. Therefore she could, if she so wished, be Jesus himself. She typed: THE MESSIAH.
Alexander said: YOU MAY NOW CREATE YOUR OWN AVATAR, USING PAINTBOX.
Felicity clicked on Paintbox and clumsily drew a creature with large breasts and a crooked nimbus over her head. She chose for her avatar a repertoire of expressions that included giving the finger, giving blessings, scratching her nimbus, slapping her hand over her mouth, frowning, and laughing with a hand between her legs. It was a pretty jolly avatar, and hardly messianic. She popped up next to the elephant, somewhere between Nineveh and Corfu.
DEAR MESSIAH, Alexander greeted her,
YOU ARE NOW READY TO MEET AND MAKE LOVE WITH JOAN OF ARC, THE VIRGIN MARY, AMELIA EARHART, MATA HARI, SAINT TERESA DE AVILA, ALEXANDER HAMILTON, MARK TWAIN, AND JULES VERNE. ENTER YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER AND EXPIRATION DATE NOW.
Felicity extracted a nearly maxed-out Visa card from her army surplus canvas bag and entered the number. An on-line address—http://history.love.messiah—appeared, accompanied by this cheerful message from Alexander:
CONGRATULATIONS!
YOU ARE NOW A MEMBER OF A SELECT GROUP OF PEOPLE WHO MEET IN ORDER TO PREPARE THE WORLD FOR A BETTER FUTURE THROUGH TRANSTEMPORAL LOVEMAKING. THIS IS A PRIVATE ENVIRONMENT WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS. YOU ARE FREE TO ENJOY YOURSELF TO THE BEST OF YOUR IMAGINATION. WHEN YOU ARE READY TO PROCEED, ENTER THIS ADDRESS AND YOU WILL FIND YOURSELF ON THE GROUNDS OF HISTORICAL EVENTS, WHERE YOU CAN MAKE LOVE WITH YOUR FAVORITE HISTORICAL PERSONAGES IN THEIR OWN BEDS, ON BATTLEFIELDS, ABOARD SHIPS, IN DESERT TENTS, OR IN SECRET CHAMBERS.
Alexander turned his elephant away and rode off into the mountains of Anatolia, which melted before him, giving way to a desert landscape of blooming cacti and cerulean blue sky.
“Damn!” said Felicity.
She saw herself putting her finger in Mata Hari’s sensual mouth—she remembered her penetrating eyes in a portrait—and became aroused. It was absurd to think that some VR porn game might succeed where the throbbing flesh of actual humans had failed. But there it was, the thin film in her crotch, calling out.
Felicity logged off temporarily and sauntered to her darkroom. The prints were good—even the child whore’s hairless snatch was graphically revealed. The detail excellent, down to the sheen of grease in Mullin’s hair.
Felicity stuffed the pictures into a manila envelope and stuck it behind the framed print of Botticelli’s Primavera hanging in the bedroom. Then she pulled on a T-shirt, got back on the bed, and pulled the warm laptop onto her naked lap, ready to make love with people from history.
The doorbell began ringing repeatedly, insistently. Felicity glanced at the clock radio—11:45 P.M. A little late for business. And she was on the verge of meeting Joan of Arc. She pulled on a pair of jeans and reluctantly put Joan on hold.
Felicity slid out the top drawer of her bedside table and took out the Beretta. She slipped it into the waist of her jeans. The cold barrel on her belly gave her gooseflesh. “Get bigger,” she whispered; “you’re not just symbolic.” She cracked the door, secured by the safety chain. Standing there looking mournful were the Pakistani and his friend. Their faces, glazed by the streetlight, were moist and fleshy like wet pears.
“Can we talk?” whined the Pakistani.
She decided they were too stupid to be dangerous, and opened the door. The tattooed bodybuilder sat down on the only chair, and the Pakistani’s eyes fastened on a framed photo of Mahatma Gandhi on her desk.
“We have a common hero!” he exclaimed, evidently pleased.
“What can I do for you gentlemen?”
“You fucking bitch!” growled the American.
“Beg your pardon?”
“What the gentleman means is, we would like the film,” explained the other. “You give it to us, we leave. No problem.”
“Let me put it this way, doll. You can give us the pictures or you’ll never want to look in the mirror again.”
“You’re such a fucking cliché.” Felicity took out her gun and pointed it at the man’s shiny forehead. “Maybe I mess up your mirror, Jack. Take off your shirt!”
The thug wasn’t particularly startled, but his partner launched into a stream of nervous chatter: “This isn’t necessary. We were only asking. The film belongs to us.”
“Take off your shirt!”
Deliberately, without taking his eyes off the gun, the one in the chair pulled the sweatshirt over his head. His torso was swarming with swastikas, hundreds of them, like a nest of spiders. They came crawling out of the hair on his chest and buried themselves in his armpits, and tattooed below each nipple in two vertical columns were the words WHITE and POWER.
“I’ll be switched!” Felicity nearly dropped the gun. “A real live Nazi!”
“I’m sure he had to do such things in prison,” the Pakistani sputtered.
“You can start with your names.” Felicity clicked off the safety.
“Bamajan.” The Pakistani instantly complied. “It means ‘announcer of God.’ A herald.”
“Harrold? Bama? From Alabama? The Crimson Tide?” The Indian’s accent was funny. But the name was weirdly familiar. Miles’s junko partner had called himself that—he must have been God’s announcer, too. That Bamajan, whom she hadn’t seen in two years, was a trumpeter, so his name fit. He was also a heroi
n dealer and a pimp. The announcer of Satan, more like it.
“You can just call me Your Worst Nightmare,” offered Mr. White Power, in his turn.
“Nice name. Look, we can do this one of two ways. I can shoot one or both of you for breaking and entering, or you can tell me your story nice and easy, and I’ll tell the cops you were just playing.”
Truth be told, Felicity had no idea what to do. She was afraid to pick up the phone and let her attention waver for even a second. The Nazi was coiled like a snake, just waiting to get to his piece. She couldn’t just hold them indefinitely. The men were silent, seeing, she imagined, right through her.
“You got swastikas on your dick, too?” Her best tough-girl voice.
The Nazi rose to his feet. “With your permission.” He undid the belt of his pants and they fell with a thunk to his feet. Felicity was sure that there was a gun in the pocket. He wasn’t wearing any underpants. The lower part of his body, including his penis, was as densely tattooed as the rest of him.
“You look like a freakin’ jigsaw puzzle!” Felicity was genuinely amazed. “Who assembled you? Hitler?”
The man made a move to pull his pants back up, but Felicity barked sharply, “No! Step away from them!”
Hitler’s jigsaw puzzle did what he was told, and Felicity ordered Bamajan to shove the trousers toward her. She felt with her foot a wallet in one pocket, a gun in the other.
“You working for Mullin?”
“We do his bidding,” answered Bamajan fiercely. “He is God’s messenger. We are God’s announcers. Gandhi was one, too. Be simple! Be simple!” He was becoming agitated.
“Okay, Announcer of God, take off your clothes!” Felicity had hit on a solution to the standoff.
The Pakistani didn’t unravel so easily. He was more layered than your average American. Under his shirt he wore a kind of teddy with laces at the back. His flowery boxers were backed up by a pair of powder blue bikini briefs. His brown skin looked like just another layer of clothing, and for a moment, Felicity actually thought that he would remove another layer. There wasn’t a hair on his body—his pubis was shaved clean, smooth as a pat of butter with a Vienna sausage stuck in it.
Messi@ Page 7
