The supreme uncoolness of my ride was not lost on my best buddy Jessica.
“It looks like a Kotex!” she proclaimed as soon as she saw it. “Big enough for those extra-heavy days!”
She had a voice like an alpenhorn, and I had managed to pause in front of Witherspoon Hall at rush hour.
“Dude! It’s a freakin’ maxi pad!” she added in a voice that could shatter glass, and that sealed my poor minivan’s fate. From then on, it was known as the Maxi Pad. Contrary to my father’s safety-conscious thinking, it wasn’t really a plus that the car seated seven people with dedicated seat belts, because it could carry at least double that if the riders were willing to share. Whether I liked it or not, I was an instantly popular designated bus driver. By the time I graduated, “the Maxi Pad” had mercifully shrunk to “the Max,” and “the Max” it has remained, but only because I’m used to it and no one in Las Vegas knows what it’s short for. I’d trade it in for a Jeep like David’s in a New York second, but I know it would hurt Dad’s feelings. And I have to admit that I like being able to buy bookcases and take them home without renting a truck.
Anyway, David’s Jeep was covered in a thin layer of dust, which made me wonder if he might actually get assignments in the howling desert.
“Sorry it’s dirty,” David said as he opened the passenger door and moved a plastic bag and a stack of mail to the back. “I had to cover the groundbreaking for a housing development in North Las Vegas. No pavement.”
We took the freeway south to Blue Diamond Road and arrived at the Silverado with ten minutes to spare.
“I told her I’d meet her in the coffee shop,” David said as we wove our way through the slot machines.
The coffee shop was sparsely populated, and even in the dim light it was easy to see that Victoria wasn’t there. A hostess showed us to a table near the entrance.
Before we could check the menu, Victoria materialized in front of us, enveloped in a cloud of musky-smelling perfume. She was wearing the same outfit she’d had on for The Morning Show: a purple leather miniskirt and a low-cut black leotard top. She’d clipped her hair into one of those deliberately messy up-dos, and she was carrying a zippered shoulder bag big enough to hold a body.
“Victoria McKimber,” she said, holding a scarlet-taloned hand out to me.
“Oh! Hi! I’m Copper Black,” I said, “and this is—”
“You must be David,” Victoria said. “Thanks for coming down here to meet me. I came directly from the airport.”
“The pleasure’s mine,” David said. “Please, have a seat.”
“Thanks,” Victoria said, but she didn’t sit down. Plunking her huge shoulder bag on the table, she rummaged through it and extracted a glasses case. Then she pulled out a package of batteries, a gold cigarette case, a disposable lighter, a notebook, two pens, and a small tape recorder.
I couldn’t help staring as she unpacked. She was so … constructed. Not one square inch of her was accidental, and there were many square inches. She was a lot taller than I’d expected, taller than me, taller than David even. I glanced down and saw that her stiletto heels had something to do with it, but even flat-footed she had to be nearly six feet.
“I hope you won’t mind if I record our conversation,” Victoria said as she sat down. “My lawyer’s advice.”
“Not at all,” David said, “as long as you don’t mind if I do the same.”
Victoria laughed, and her laugh struck me as being just as calculated as her appearance. Slightly breathy, intentionally sexy. “Of course not,” she said as she snapped batteries into her tape recorder.
Just then, the waitress came back. We all ordered coffee, and David started asking questions.
This wasn’t the first time I’d seen David in action. He had invited me to an air show at Nellis Air Force Base when I first started working at The Light, and in the last few months I’d tagged along to a motorcycle rally in Laughlin, a bomb scare at a high school, a tour of a gypsum mine, and the opening of a new fire station on the Las Vegas Strip. But as I listened to him talk to Victoria, I realized that this was the first real one-on-one interview I’d watched him do, and he was good. Better than Kathie Pitchford, even. In three minutes, Victoria had repeated everything she’d said on TV, and David was probing deeper.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Forty-seven,” she said. “A prime number.”
“And you’ve been selling American Beauty products since 1999?”
“November of ’98. I’m their top distributor in this region. Utah-Nevada-Arizona-New Mexico. And I’m damned if they’re going to take that away from me.”
“How do you manage it? I mean, isn’t your work at the Beavertail a full-time job?”
“Yes, when I’m there, which is usually two weeks a month. I’m due back out there Thursday, as a matter of fact, unless this American Beauty mess blows completely out of control.” She sighed a stagy sigh and patted her hair. “I have a partner, and he does all the paperwork. Richard. My husband.”
Her husband? I stared at Victoria again, and I can’t swear my mouth wasn’t open. How could a prostitute have a husband? And what kind of husband would a prostitute have?
“Yes, I’m married, honey. Twenty-three years.” Victoria patted my hand, and I looked at those talons again. So perfect, and even though her hand had a few ropy veins poking up, it was unblemished and soft.
“You had to know you’d stir up controversy,” David was saying, “as soon as they found out.”
“If I’d told them at the get-go, they would have barred me from competing while they could still get away with it,” Victoria said. “So I kept quiet until I won the first contest. Once the media knew about me, they couldn’t ban me without stirring up more controversy.” She shrugged. “So they harassed me in every other way they could think of. Followed me whenever I wasn’t at the Beavertail, dug into my past, dug into my husband’s past—”
“And your motive in all this was—?”
Victoria laughed. “You won’t believe this, but at first, it was one lousy case of Forever Young.”
“Forever Young?”
“American Beauty’s new antiwrinkle face-firming lotion. Any distributor who entered the contest and wrote a 300-word essay about how great Forever Young is would get a whole case. Twenty-four jars. Four hundred dollars retail. Richard figured there was no downside, so he sent off an entry in my name. I didn’t even know about it until his essay qualified me for the local pageant.”
“What made you go for it?” David said.
“I decided it was my chance to improve the status of working ladies. Get us some respect.”
Victoria had a lot to say on the topic of “sex workers’ rights,” and David let her ramble. At first, I wondered why he was allowing her to run the conversation, but gradually I realized that even though it seemed inefficient, it was a fabulous way to get answers to questions you’d never think to ask. As Victoria regaled us with her grand plan to elevate legal prostitutes to the level of other “personal therapists,” she also revealed that her husband had been a mechanic for Nate’s Crane until his left elbow was crushed in a construction accident. Their fifteen-year-old son, Jason, also had health problems, and their medical bills had added up to over $76,000 so far this year. There was so much more on David’s cassette when he finally clicked off his recorder that I was jealous. He had probably captured a Pulitzer-worthy story on that tape.
The whole time Victoria was talking, my mind kept traveling back to my last semester in college, when I wrote my senior thesis. What I would have given to talk to Victoria back then, while I was struggling to make my case about the motives and fates of women heroines like Cleopatra and Joan of Arc. Victoria McKimber wasn’t a real queen or a national hero, but she had all the qualities of a genuine crusader.
My heart beat faster as I wondered whether I cou
ld meet her again and interview her myself. Maybe I could give Victoria what she needed—a respectful ear—and get what I wanted, too—a brilliant article that might get picked up by a big-name magazine. I didn’t feel right about barging in on David’s interview and asking for her phone number, but maybe he would share it with me later.
My mind was still buzzing with hopes and fantasies as David wound things up. He was about to say good-bye when Victoria surprised me.
“Copper, I’m so glad I got to meet you. And I’m wondering—” She paused and shot me a look that almost qualified as shy. “Well, here’s the deal. I’m going to the New Moon Ceremony at the Sekhmet Temple tomorrow night. I’d love it if you’d join me.”
Shocked by the unexpected invitation, I was still trying to formulate an answer as Victoria went on.
“I’d invite David, too, but men aren’t allowed. They can come to the Full Moon Ceremony, but the New Moon is goddesses only.”
“I’d love to go,” I replied immediately. David shot me a disapproving look, but damn! This was way more than I’d hoped for. I had no idea what a New Moon Ceremony involved, but I wasn’t going to let a chance to spend time with Victoria slip by.
“That’s great!” Victoria said with a wide smile. “If you meet me here at six tomorrow, I’m happy to drive.”
David let me have it on the way back to The Light.
“Do you know what you’ve gotten yourself into?” he asked. “Do you even know where the Sekhmet Temple is?”
I shook my head. “I don’t even know what it is.”
“Then why did you say you’d go?”
“I’m kind of fascinated by her. She’s nothing like I expected. And I would really like to know more—”
“Take your own car,” David interrupted. “Rule number one is: Stay in control. Don’t become part of the story.”
I wasn’t sure I liked David bossing me around, but I let it slide.
“So where’s the temple?” I asked.
“Indian Springs. About forty miles north on Highway 95. You go by the prison, then take a left just past Creech Air Force Base, where the Predator squadron lives.”
Chapter 3
When word got out later that day that I was planning to head into the desert with Victoria McKimber, everyone immediately began treating me like a third-grade Girl Scout. It was bad enough that David started spouting safety rules, but at least he had some experience as a journalist. It was Daniel’s response that really irked me. Daniel, a botanist studying how the distribution of mistletoe supports the theory of continental drift, knew nothing about journalism, and he had never set foot in Nevada. But that didn’t stop him from feeling perfectly entitled to micromanage me by e-mail:
Copper, it can’t be a good idea to go places with someone like her, and especially not to some weird cult site out in the desert. You worry me, babe. Please don’t go.
Sierra wasn’t nearly that polite at dinner.
“You’re insane,” she said. “Michael, talk some sense into her.”
“Sierra’s right,” he said. “This isn’t Disneyland, baby sister, and Ms. McKimber isn’t a storybook character.”
Damn, he annoys me when he puts on his big brother act. He’s only twelve years older than I am, but he’s worse than my dad. It doesn’t help that he’s also an Episcopal priest. He still had his clergyman clothes on.
“I often work with streetwalkers every day at St. Andrew’s,” he went on. “If you want to know what their lives are like, just spend some time with me there. You’re more than welcome.”
“Victoria’s not a streetwalker,” I said. “She’s an activist. She wants to improve the status of sex workers.”
It didn’t help. Sierra was still upset, and Michael kept right on expressing concern in a patronizing sort of way. Not that it mattered. I was going to the New Moon Ceremony at the Sekhmet Temple the next night, and to hell with all of them.
:: :: ::
Tuesday, December 13
Michael tried to talk me out of going to the temple again before I left for work.
“Sierra’s genuinely worried,” he said, “and so am I. You’re not in New Canaan anymore, Copper.”
“I’m not twelve, either.”
When I got to The Light, it was obvious David had been talking. Everyone in the place seemed to know my plans for the evening. It made things especially tough when I tried to eat in the lunchroom at noon.
“You don’t need pointers from an over-the-hill pro, sweetie,” Ed Bramlett said. “You should be giving her lessons. And I can’t believe you’re going out to howl at the moon with a bunch of ball-busting dykes.”
How did he keep getting away with that vulgar sexist crap? At least Norton Katz was there. He’s a dapper older guy who writes a column about celebrity sightings, and he’s amassed a large and loyal following of spies who keep him informed by phone or e-mail whenever a newsworthy person appears in a public place. If Jennifer Lopez leaves a lousy tip in this town, Norton knows within fifteen minutes.
“I met Victoria McKimber once,” Norton said. “She was representing American Beauty at a fundraiser for Door of Hope at Caesars Palace. That lady really knows how to work a room. I wasn’t there three minutes before she was chatting me up. And it got her what she wanted, too. That was the first time she made my column.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Oh, I’d have to check. Off the top of my head, I’d say two years, maybe three. I hadn’t given her a thought until I caught The Morning Show on Monday. Recognized her the minute I saw her, even with all the extra hair and—”
“Nutcracker tits,” Ed said, and that’s when I left.
At least being back in my cube gave me a good chance to do some research. A few clicks and I learned that the Sekhmet Temple of Goddess Spirituality was built by a woman who wanted to get pregnant. On a trip to Egypt, she promised the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet that she’d build her a temple in exchange for a little fertility magic. Sekhmet obliged within a month, granting the first of three daughters, but it wasn’t until decades later that the woman kept her end of the bargain. She eventually organized a female work crew and built a stucco-covered straw-bale sanctuary on a patch of desert not far from the Nevada Test Site.
Why anyone would ask Sekhmet for help having babies, I can’t figure out. The stories about her make her sound more like a monster than a baby-loving fertility goddess. When Ra, her Sun God father, sent her to punish human evil-doers, Sekhmet used her supernatural strength to rip the humans to shreds. The massacre was so huge and bloody that it shocked even Ra, who wasn’t exactly nonviolent himself. A quick thinker, he filled a vat the size of Lake Nasser with beer and dyed it red to look like blood. Sekhmet drank so much she passed out, and the destruction of mankind was averted. I don’t know much about Egyptian religion, but this does not strike me as appropriate behavior for a goddess of sweet motherhood.
As I walked out to the Max that evening, I suddenly remembered that “new moon” would more appropriately be called “no moon.” It was going to be as dark as deep space as soon as I left the neon radiance of Las Vegas, and not much warmer. I was glad I had grabbed my ski jacket on my way out the door.
It had come as a big surprise to me that winter is actually cold in southern Nevada. When I arrived last May, I laughed at all the chimneys, figuring they’d been built for looks by homesick New Englanders. Now that I’ve nearly broken my neck a couple of times slipping on patches of ice created by errant sprinklers, I know better. And even though the portable electric heater in my apartment is powerful enough to keep me from freezing, I’m grateful that Sierra and Michael don’t mind sharing their fireplace once in a while.
I slid behind the steering wheel, snapped on my seat belt, and fought off a sudden attack of nerves. Why had Victoria invited me? What happens at a ceremony honoring a deity of mass destruction—in the da
rk? I checked my cell phone. It was fully charged. My gas tank was full, and as I turned the key in the ignition, I made up my mind to take David’s advice. I’d be doing the driving out to Indian Springs.
I arrived at the Silverado with a minute or two to spare and waited at a table in the coffee shop. When the waitress showed up, I ordered coffee. As I sat there, I almost hoped Victoria would stand me up. I was still a little uneasy about driving into the darkness with her.
Whenever I have doubts about whether I should do something a little adventurous, I think about my Aunt Melanie. Back in the middle sixties, when she nineteen or twenty, she spent a heavily chaperoned summer in England with a group from her college.
The day before she flew home from London was a Sunday. Auntie Melanie wanted to visit St. Paul’s one last time. Another girl said she’d go with her, and the chaperones decided to let them. At the last minute, the other girl decided not to go.
“But it was my last chance,” Auntie Melanie said. “I was already dressed in my hat and gloves.”
So, breaking all the rules, she hailed a cab and went on her own. After the service, she stepped out in front of the cathedral. As she stood there hoping a taxi would appear, a young man approached her.
“He was in his twenties, and he was wearing a dark blue three-piece suit,” she said. “He bowed slightly and asked me if he could be of service. Well, my first reaction was to step away. This was exactly the reason we had chaperones—to keep us safe from men with bad intentions.” She would always chuckle at this point.
“But he kept talking politely while I kept looking around for a cab. He realized I was an American after I spoke a few words. ‘A flower of the colonies,’ he called me, and we both laughed. We chatted some more. I was about to ask directions to the Underground when he said, ‘I know this is terribly forward of me, but would you do me the honor of accompanying me to a garden party this afternoon?’”
Full Service Blonde Page 2
