With a groan I sat up, wished I hadn’t and looked around. Lounge chairs lay scattered everywhere, some on their sides. In a few that were upright I spotted a troll, an ogre and two dwarves. Each of them was completely naked. In the middle of it all was a swimming pool … from the party.
The party.
Fuzzy images flashed through my memory, bouncing around so fast I couldn’t focus on any of them clearly. The King, in all his dwarfish majesty … shots of something fiercely alcoholic … the King clapping me on the back … a tall human female on his arm—a brunette beauty in a red dress. Trips back to the PD table … oftentimes led by that same brunette. And every time she was there, I remember her goading me on and the pixie looking scared. It was a mad calliope of images and sensations … none of which made much sense.
I leaned forward, trying to remember more details from the party, and something sharp poked into my hip. Looking down, I realized that all I had on was red underwear—women’s underwear. Once I got over my surprise, I realized that a business card was tucked into the waistband. I slid the card out and saw the image of a pixie, dead center, with a chain on her tiny little ankle that led to a copturier number in the lower left-hand corner.
Copturiers were a new invention that had made courier pigeons obsolete. Made from brass and clockwork, they were roughly the same size as a pigeon. You put a message or small object inside and then filled its tiny reservoir with water. Once you punched in the number, all you had to do was hit the activator switch. Fan blades on top spun like crazy, and the little gizmo would fly off, bound for whatever destination indicated by the number.
So who had given me the card? I massaged my temples, trying to remember.
The brunette. The dealer.
I remembered her giving me the card. She would always be just one copturier away. I also remembered her introducing me to one of the human females in red underwear and boots … a blonde. I remembered the blonde and me dancing by the pool … and then….
I groaned and covered my face with my hands as I remembered putting on a porn-show by the side of the pool, with the blonde.
At least I knew where the underwear came from.
“Are you okay?” It was a delicate voice from behind me. Sweet. Almost childlike. The sound of it made some of the pain in my head fade away. I turned around in the lounge chair.
And fell in love.
Wendy was sunlight filtering through storm clouds. She was starshine on the blackest night. Sweet as honey. Kind as a grandmother. Brown hair, green eyes and a smile that melted hearts like butter. She wasn’t gorgeous. She wasn’t plain. She was that perfect in-between that good men—smart men—spend the rest of their lives with. She was … everything. My best friend, my biggest fan, my staunchest supporter … I could do no wrong in her eyes.
Even back then I knew I didn’t deserve her.
She quit as a maid at that big house, and we were married practically overnight. We set out in earnest making babies. We travelled whenever my schedule permitted, and when I was home we did everything together, everything except the PD. She never touched the golden stuff. I suppose she figured that one of us had to be lucid. Or maybe she wasn’t interested in feeling like a god.
Instead of doing PD, she raised our daughters, conceived and born back to back. I can’t really take any credit for my children. I loved them all, but the truth is I rarely saw them. I was too busy being a movie star … and throwing parties.
Lots of parties.
The more movies I made, the more parties I threw. The more parties I threw, the more friends I had. The friends got me auditions, and the auditions got me movies.
Money rolled in, more than I ever imagined. Wendy and I ended up buying that big house … where it all began … and that house—that palace—became our own little kingdom.
Days rarely went by that I didn’t take a hit. Then days when I didn’t take two. Then three. I always threw parties at least as extravagant as that first one. I spared no expense. And the PD was as easy to lay my hands on as it was to send a copturier.
To the brunette.
Back then I knew her as Stella. Stella Davincourt. She was my source, my pipeline into feeling like a god. I would send a note saying how much I needed, and we would exchange paper bags on my front porch—hers full of gold dust and mine full of gold coin. After a while, I didn’t even need to call. It became the Thursday delivery. And then bi-weekly. On and on.
At the time, it all seemed like a small price to pay for being a god … or feeling like one, anyway. It didn’t take long for Stella to start showing up with first one troll bodyguard and then another. Then it was a stretched, steam-powered carriage gilded in gold, with a brutish driver and the other trolls along for the ride. Bigger and bigger she got.
So did the trolls.
About that time rumors started to surface in the PD community that she was the only source left in the kingdom. Rumor also had it that the other dealers had mysteriously left town, without a word, never to be heard from again. I didn’t think much about it at the time. And nobody said a word. We all just kept taking delivery. From Stella. Happy as fairies dancing around her particular tree.
It was also about that time when Wendy split our little kingdom in two, one side for the family, and one side for the PD. The stuff was always there. In piles. On my half. I guess you could say that I had two lovers, and Wendy was smart enough to keep my other lover the hell away from our daughters.
The parties continued.
More and more money went from my coffers into Stella’s. I introduced her to damn near everyone in the movie business. I guess most of the industry was on the hook by then … because of those parties.
It was also at those parties where Stella spent her public time with the King. I never did find out how they had first met … or even what they saw in each other. We all knew he was married. We also knew he was getting a little side-action … from Stella. Nobody said a word about that either.
For the first few years, the two of them never showed up together, court etiquette being what it was back then. But they certainly left together, touching the way only lovers can. Eventually, though, they started showing up together. Unashamed. Unabashed. Arm-in-arm.
That was about when the Queen got sick.
It was in all the papers, and the whole kingdom was saddened by her illness. Everyone got the blues, well, almost everyone. I was sort of out of it. The Queen was human and had been born a commoner. I guess the King had a soft spot for humans. Their wedding had been a spectacle, and the entire kingdom fell in love with the soft-spoken lady that had so enchanted our King.
As her illness progressed, songs were written and a litany of well-wishes sent to the palace. I’m sure Wendy sent more than one. She loved the Queen as much as anyone, I guess. Frankly, I was too wired most of the time to know what was going on … and too stupid to see where everything was headed.
I made one blockbuster after another, and money rolled in. The parties continued, bigger every time. Wendy had another baby. She also stopped coming to the parties. I remember feeling sad about that, torn between the love of my life and the PD. And yes, I was torn, but the PD flowed like a great, golden river … from Stella, through me, out into the film industry and beyond. I was the center of the universe, and didn’t want that to ever change.
It took a year for the Queen to die.
When she did, Wendy never said a word. She just laid the Queen’s obituary on my chest and walked away while I was passed out in a lounge chair by the pool.
The beginning of the end of my life was a headline:
CORNELIUS OVERDOSES ON SET
We were on location … a big-budget production. The whole crew had been dropped in by zeppelin smack dab in the middle of a hot, desert shithole where the character I was playing had to save a damsel in distress from steam-driven automatons. I was so high in those days that I don’t even remembe
r getting on board the zeppelin. I do remember blinding sunlight and dry air that hurt my lungs, though.
More PD made the pain go away.
On the third night of shooting, most of the cast dropped by my trailer for a party … as usual. The PD was there, and yes, in piles. I’d brought enough shit with me to kill a herd of elephants. I always did, and everyone knew it. The party got out of hand, again, as usual, and it was still hot, and still dry. I guess I wanted to make the pain go away, so I kept snorting and snorting … and snorting.
The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital bed thinking my head was going to come apart. The room was empty except for Wendy, and she held my hand like she never wanted to let go. There were no flowers from the crew, no well-wishes from the Director or Producers.
Just Wendy.
A smart dwarf would have figured out that it meant something. That it was important. I’ll never forget the look on her face. There were a thousand words on her lips, a thousand things she wanted to say to me. I could see it, even feel it.
She never said a word.
A tear traced down her cheek instead, just one tear, and we sat there in silence for a while. I finally asked about the girls, and she said they were fine. I asked about the house. It was fine too. After a while we got to talking about the little things, the stuff that always got us laughing together and loving every second of it. We talked about people and life and the kingdom. We touched on every aspect of our lives and the lives of the people around us.
We talked about everything … except the PD. We just never seemed to get around to talking about that.
I was out of the hospital the following day. Wendy went home, and I went back to the set. But nothing was the same after that. Everything was subdued, just a little less exciting, a little less full of the vigor that had carried my career up to that point. I could feel it every time the Director said Action! or Cut! The crew looked at me like I was damaged goods … just a little broken here and there around the edges.
The press crucified me for the OD, and parents’ groups made it clear they wouldn’t bring their kids to see an addict. Bad role models make lousy movie stars.
The movie tanked.
I’d like to say it was sobering … reading shitty reviews … watching tiny attendance numbers roll by. My name became a punch line. It all should have been sobering, but it wasn’t.
So, what did I do?
I decided to throw another party, this one bigger and better than all the rest. Open invitation. Party of the century. I was hoping to draw any and everyone who’d ever been involved in a movie.
I got more than I bargained for.
For starters, and for the first time ever, Stella didn’t make the delivery. She sent one of her trolls, a big bruiser with a scar down his neck and eyes that would have frightened a kraken.
The delivery did come with an apology, though. On royal stationary lettered in gold, she expressed their regrets. She even used the royal “We” a few times. She and the King had a prior engagement and there was no getting out of it. The note was tied to the bag of PD with a golden ribbon. Along with the PD she had included a beautifully carved wooden box. Inside the box was a sniffer. The sniffer.
I didn’t give a thought to why they couldn’t attend. Didn’t think once, let alone twice about her use of “We,” either. I just remember taking great care in loading the sniffer up and delighting in those first few blasts. I was a god again. Once I was good and high, I flew through the house, looking for Wendy. When I finally tracked her down, she was putting our youngest down to sleep. I showed her the sniffer, pleased as punch. Practically dancing about it. I told her that I was still in good with Stella and the King.
Wendy never said a word.
She looked at me with this sad little smile, a tear in her eye, and put her hand on my cheek. I remember getting frustrated, even angry. I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t as excited as I was. I turned my back on her and headed towards my side of the house. I had to make my little piles of PD for the party.
I never heard her pull out the suitcases.
People started showing up, but there were a lot of new faces. They didn’t look like movie makers, though. There was more of a gritty feel to them, trolls mostly. Even through the high I could tell they’d come from someplace else. They looked over their shoulders a lot, and most of them had bodyguards. They were keen on the PD, though, and heavy into the booze. A few claimed to be agents or producers, but I’d never seen them before, and they didn’t know a damn thing about the making movies.
Quite a few of the same old faces showed up, too, but the smiles they greeted me with were strained, fake, as if they were glad to be there but not glad to see me. I didn’t let it slow me down. I hit up every person I’d worked for or with in the past, asking them what they had coming up. I needed a part. Any part. The answer was always the same. They didn’t have a thing for me. And when I walked away, the whispers sounded like surf on a rocky shoreline.
I got lost in the PD to make the sound of the ocean go away.
When I woke in the morning, Wendy was gone. This time she’d left two things on my chest, and yes, while I was passed out in that same lounge chair. The first was a note, in her delicate hand, apologizing to me for leaving. She didn’t ask for a divorce. She didn’t ask for support. She simply took the girls and hopped a zeppelin to her mother’s up north. She said she was sorry she wasn’t strong enough for me. I spent weeks trying to figure that one out.
Underneath the note was that morning’s newspaper. The headline read:
KING ELOPES WITH STELLA DAVINCOURT
At least I knew why they didn’t come to the party.
I spent a year trying to find work.
Without Wendy, the house seemed to grow larger every day, like living in a history museum, but PD made the echoes go away. I kept throwing my parties, kept asking the movie moguls if there was something out there for me.
I would have taken anything: villains, lackeys, henchmen, bit parts, cameos. I even got on my knees once, with the Director of Hoffer. All I got were those same fake smiles, anorexic excuses.
Money stopped flowing in, but it sure as hell didn’t stop flowing out. The house cost a fortune to maintain, so did the servants. And PD bought in kilos adds up fast.
It got so bad that I started selling off steam carriages, rental properties, furniture, artwork … you name it. All I cared about was the house, the parties, and the PD. They were my only ticket back to stardom. I burned through it all until there was almost nothing left but the house.
That was about when the King got sick.
I remember thinking how odd it was. The announcement about his first wife’s illness got the whole kingdom crying. For him, though, the response was quiet reserve, almost silence. As if people were afraid of something.
I was too high to give it much thought, and at the parties nobody seemed interested in talking about it. I was so wrapped up with my own troubles that I couldn’t possibly have pieced it all together, not if my life depended on it.
It took a month for the King to die.
I didn’t find out about his death until a few days the funeral, when a package of PD came wrapped in newspaper. That little package represented the last of my money. I was broke, and the thought of never seeing another terrified me. As I unwrapped my bundle of godhood, I saw the headline:
KING PASSES AWAY
I didn’t think about how sad it was. I didn’t reminisce about all the good times with the King. The only thing that occurred to me was that I had an opportunity … with the Queen. An idea formed in my head, and if she went for it, I could get back on top of the movie biz. I had the proposal scrawled and off in a copturier in a flash. She still used the same number, after all those years, and the little gizmo sailed off into the air, clattering and sputtering, headed straight for the palace.
I cancelled the party I’d sched
uled for that night, took a few snorts, and then cleaned up the place as best as I could. I’d let the staff go weeks before, so it was all on me to get ready for the Queen.
All I could do was wait and hope.
The Queen arrived two days later with an entourage three blocks long. Dark elves with silver trumpets announced her arrival. There were trolls in dark armor, holding pikes. Dark men in dark tabards rode black stallions, and in the middle of the procession was a black carriage pulled by black unicorns. Through the haze of PD, I dredged up fuzzy memories … of the royal guard being made up of dwarves … of them wearing forest green. A layer of the fuzz peeled away, and it suddenly occurred to me that the Queen had probably made a lot of changes once the King was gone.
A tall, gaunt elf with pallid skin and sunken eyes stepped off the back of the carriage and around to its side. With a flourish and a bow, he opened a pair of wide double doors.
The Queen stepped out slowly and rose to her full height with a majesty that I’d never seen in all the years I’d known Stella. In fact, there was very little of Stella Davincourt left in the woman who so easily stared down at me. The smiling, buxom brunette I remembered, the one with a flair for filling out red dresses and dancing, was gone. What was left made me think of dirges and the taut skin of the dead.
The Queen’s face was pale, rigid, and her makeup stark in contrast. There wasn’t even a glimmer of a smile, and the light that used to dance in her eyes at parties had faded completely into depths I didn’t care to explore. Her hair had been pulled back tightly against her skull, making it shine like metal, and a golden diadem set with rubies anchored it in place. Her gown was black lace, with traces of purple and white at collar, waist, and hem.
She glided towards me, purposefully, and as she did two young elves dashed from inside the carriage and ran by me.
“Walk with me,” she commanded in a low voice.
The elves got my front doors open just in time, and she seemed to float up the steps and into my house as if she owned the place. I stepped into her wake, careful not to tread on her dress, and heard the soft footfalls of several others move in behind me.
Out Through the Attic Page 5
