by R. E. Vance
“Fine. Have it your way!” I screamed out of my window as I floored my classic 1969 Plymouth Road Runner. The car jerked forward like a sprinter hearing the starter pistol, then settled for a slow but gradual increase in speed. I will say something about my old car: She may not have a fast start, but once she gets going, she has momentum. And a steel shell. Let’s not forget the steel shell. I hit the guy head on, his massive body tumbling over the car and cracking its windshield. “Crap!” I slammed on the brakes and stuck my head out the window. Astarte spiraled out on the ground. I put the car in Drive, got close to her and pulled her into the passenger side of the car. “Are you OK?” I said, looking in my rear-view mirror. He was dusting himself off, completely unhurt. I pointed at the Master Form Filler and yelled, “Go, go … GO!”
The popobawa didn’t need to be told twice. He put his van into Drive and floored it, its metal underbelly sparking as it hit an ignored speed bump.
I followed suit, flooring the Plymouth again. The wheels screeched, but the car didn’t move. I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw the hairy man lifting her back wheels off the ground. We weren’t going anywhere. “Crap,” I said. “He’s like the Terminator.”
“The Terminator?” Astarte said, looking out the back window.
“Yeah—you know, ‘I’ll be back’…” I searched the glove compartment for anything to use as a weapon. All I found were some old manuals and a screwdriver. Discarding the manuals, I leaned out the window and tossed the screwdriver at his head. The guy ducked, but in doing so he got low enough for the back wheels to touch the ground. I floored her again, and with a steel-grinding crunch she lurched forward. I looked out the rear-view mirror again and saw that he stood there with my fender in his hand. “Damn,” I said. “That was an original piece.”
Astarte stuck her hand out the window, one finger erect. “Screw you, Enkidu!” she cried out as my poor Road Runner slammed onto the onramp of the adjacent road.
Chapter 9
Family Feud: Gods Edition
We got back on the highway, following the delivery van with the big bright letters—Earthly Needs. It had one of those enlarged pictures on its side … you know, the picture of the friendly delivery guy that just braved wind, rain, sleet and snow to deliver your package like he was born to do that and nothing else. Except this van didn’t have a human on it. Rather, it was a picture of the popobawa, glowing like a firefly. The soft halo-like radiance was what passed as a smile for his species. He was handing an angel a package, and the caption said, “Delivering Your Earthly Needs.” Beneath that was a signature: Form Filler. So the little guy had been true to his word—he did change his name.
As we drove I glanced over at Astarte, who hadn’t said a word the entire ride. Instead, she sat on the passenger seat, hugging her knees to her chest. I had thought about telling her to buckle up, but the truth was, I had never seen Astarte like that before. She was always confident, sure of herself. But the Astarte that sat beside me was nervous and … What? Scared?
I wanted answers, because, well, I’d promised to help Others, and Astarte was exactly the kind of creature I swore to protect. But it was more than that. Astarte was my friend. We’d been living together for almost six years. Six tantalizing years of me resisting her temptation. Six years of her tempting me because that’s what succubi do. But those six years were more than a cat-and-mouse game of sexual urges. Truth was, the more I got to know her, the easier it was not to be tempted by her ways. Not because she became less attractive—by the GoneGods, the opposite was true. It was because we were friends. She took care of me, the latest manifestation being that she got me the Millennium Hotel rent-free. And I took care of her, too, as best I could. And now some beast of a man was in town, hurting my friend. I wouldn’t stand for that. I wanted to find out who he was and why he was after her. I wanted to put a boot to his face and make sure he never lifted a hand against her. But in order to do that, I needed Astarte to talk.
If I was being honest with myself, there was one more reason why I needed an answer from her now, and not later. The gala was tonight, and as much as I hated that being a factor in my need to know now, I couldn’t deny that money was excruciatingly tight, and The BisMark was paying me—a lot. I had already received the deposit, but it was the “after everything is done” fee that he still held over my head. I needed tonight to go well.
So here I was, stuck between wanting to help my friend and wanting to help myself. Both meant asking the same questions, but only one of them needed to be asked now, before the gala. “Who was that hairy man?” I said. Sometimes I hate myself.
“WildMan,” she said absently.
“Wild what?”
“He is the WildMan,” she moaned, as if that explained everything.
“OK, fine. Again with my question: Who is the WildMan?”
“Who do you think?” she shot back, angry to be taken out of whatever memory she was replaying in her head.
“A former lover?” I said.
She rolled the pendant between her fingers. “I guess you could call him that …” Her voice trailed off.
“And?”
“And what, Jean-Luc? You want to know what he was doing at the dock? You want to know if he is going to crash the party, and you want to know how dangerous he really is, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That pretty much sums it up.”
“OK—here are your answers. I don’t know what he was doing at the dock. He’s not going to crash the party, and he is very, very dangerous.”
I believed her on two of those points. “How do you know he’s not going to barge into the hotel and beat the crap out of you again? I might not be there to save you again.”
“Firstly—oh, please, I saved you. Secondly—he won’t enter my home. If he wants to attack me, he will draw me out.”
“How do you know?”
Astarte straightened up, a bit of her confidence returning. Then, drawing an electrifying finger along my cheek and down my neck, she said, “Trust me, lover. It is an Other thing.” She was back.
I’d heard that before—Others with their rituals and rules. Protocols that made up the social contract of Heaven and Hell. But the problem was that Heaven and Hell were no more, and although Others still held on to their old ways, it was only a matter of time before some of them realized that they didn’t need to. Not anymore, at least. But saying that to an Other who believed without a doubt that the old ways still protected her was akin to convincing a wall to be a door. You needed time and a sledgehammer to get it to open.
“Fine,” I said, pulling away from her touch, “but if he crashes the party, it’s on you.”
“Sure thing, lover,” she said, sitting back in her seat. “So … what’s for dinner?” She nodded at the delivery van in front of us.
“I don’t know what you are eating, but as for the party goers, some kind of special fish from somewhere far away. O-something, I can’t remember—”
“Urfa?” Astarte said, her voice surprised.
“Yeah. That’s right. Where is Urfa, anyway?”
“Somewhere very, very far away,” she said in a distant voice of her own.
↔
We pulled up to the back entrance of the Millennium Hotel just before eleven-thirty. Stewart and four stone gargoyles immediately started unpacking the van.
I went to the back and watched the gargoyles airlift coolers bigger than them, lightly flapping their wings as they did so. I don’t care how special gargoyles are, they shouldn’t be able to fly. Not with all that weight. They were either burning a bit of time or they fell under the same rule as a bumblebee—as in, if a bumblebee knew it shouldn’t be able to fly, it wouldn’t. I wasn’t about to tell these mythical creatures that stone can’t levitate. One particularly large gargoyle picked up two coolers at once, lifting them with unnatural ease. He had a long slash across his face, made by some sword that hit him during some ancient battle. Judging by the rest of ScarFace’s carvings, I guesse
d he was made around the time the French were building Notre-Dame.
I walked up to Stewart, who stood like a statue, evidently surveying the procession. “Excuse me, Stewart,” I said. The diamond gargoyle turned his head slightly downwards. “I think we have a problem.”
“Are the fish in the containers?” he asked.
“Yes, but … ahh, fish?”
“Yes, live fish for the feast.”
“I guess so, I didn’t look inside. But that’s not why I’m here. We might have a problem.”
“The fish are here. There is no problem.” His head twisted up again as the gargoyles went inside.
“Yes, Stewart, we do. The human issue that you had me deal with … turns out, he wasn’t human, not in the technical sense. But whatever he was, he wasn’t happy with us bringing the fish here.” Stewart did not move. “Ahhh, Stew, did you hear me?”
“I did,” he said, not blinking, not moving, nothing. “Oh, yes,” Stewart said with an uncharacteristic intonation, which is to say, not completely flat. “I forget that humans need facial cues when speaking.” He moved his eyebrows, expressing mild curiosity.
“Great. I’m glad you heard me. What are we going to do about this … problem?”
“I fail to see what the problem is.”
“He might try to crash the party.”
“Crash?”
“Ruin. Ruin the party.”
“He will not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because his time has passed and he cannot hurt us,” he said, as if that explained everything. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to attend to the final preparations.” And with that the diamond gargoyle went inside.
I followed him. He needed to understand that the WildMan was a problem. But before I could say another word, Stewart lifted a hand and two sentry gargoyle statues that I didn’t even notice perched on the wall became animated and closed the back door behind us. Now it made sense why Stewart wasn’t worried—not only did The BisMark bring his own staff, he had security, too.
Fine—if he wasn’t worried, then I wouldn’t be either. It was their party, after all. What did I care, as long as I got paid? Whoever this WildMan was, he wasn’t going to be a problem tonight. He was, however, still a problem. He attacked my friend, and I wasn’t about to let that go.
I was thinking about how I was going to get Astarte to open up and tell me who that guy was when I was stopped cold … no, that’s not right … I was stopped hot by the shimmering beauty that strolled down the service stairwell and toward me.
“Hi there!” Medusa—holy crap … She was early. “I was looking all over for you. I made the mistake of walking in there.” She gestured toward the kitchen. “I’ve never been shooed away by a gargoyle before.” She strolled down the stairs in a beautiful red dress, silk shawl, high heels and a shiny gold necklace. Her snakes were wrapped in gold and silver chains that ended at their heads in crowns of jade and sapphire stones. She wasn’t just stunning. She was perfection.
And that was who I had to let down easy.
Hellelujah!
↔
Medusa followed me to my room, which, to be honest, had I not come in late and wetter than a fish in a monsoon and colder than a naked lizard in the Arctic, I would have protested. But I did not have the upper hand on that one and, well, Medusa could be quite insistent.
My room was a large bedroom and a small living room with a kitchenette and an ensuite bathroom. Impersonal hotel artwork that I couldn’t bother to take down hung on the walls, giving the room an “I’m not here for long” feel. Sturdy “built for wear and tear” hotel furniture sat unimpressively around the room.
“Have a seat,” I said, pointing to a loveseat. Taking off my jacket, I walked into the bathroom and ran it under warm water as I wiped away as much algae as I could. The result was a marginally clearer and significantly wetter jacket. I draped it over the register and cranked the heat up to full blast.
I walked into the bedroom and began searching my closet for anything to wear. I mean, anything. I didn’t have a thing to wear other than a white T-shirt. I was really counting on that jacket. Hellelujah!
“Who are these beings?” Medusa asked. I popped my head out of the bedroom and saw that she was standing at the far end of the living room, by my shelves with the 1980s toys. I had them all—Transformers, Voltron, WWF dolls, He-Man, G.I. Joes, GoBots, Smurfs … besides my coat, those toys were the only things I owned. She held a well-loved, original Generation 1 1984 Optimus Prime in her hands.
“Careful with that,” I said, “his left hand is loose.”
She looked at the blue fist and pushed it deeper into its socket. “These idols do not remind me of any of the GoneGods. Are they abstract representations?”
“Idols?” I chuckled. “No, they’re not idols, they’re toys.”
Marty hissed and stuck his head through the gate of Castle Grayskull before coming out of the turrets, where he was met by He-Man. He-Man didn’t move, partly because he was face-to-face with a snake whose head was bigger than him, but mostly because he was made out of plastic. “Toys.” Her tone was colored with confusion. “But what about this shrine? This is a place of reverence, lined up so that each can clearly be seen and can see.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I worship them … I just like them. A lot. Play with them,” I said bashfully, “but worship …”
“Would you sell them?”
“No way!” I said with an embarrassing amount of vigor.
“And they enrich your life?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And they comfort you?”
I found myself nodding. When I was a kid, PopPop was always working. Not that he neglected me, it was just that times were hard and he was a single grandfather, raising the kid his daughter died giving birth to. And even though money was tight, he always managed to get me the latest toy. I don’t know how he did it, but he did. Now that I was an adult, I spent every spare penny on completing my collection. And not just to have it sit on a shelf. I always hated those collectors who kept a Veritech fighter in its original plastic or hid an original Spock doll in a glass case. They were meant to be played with, and, damn it, a man in his late thirties can enjoy them just as much as a kid. How many sleepless nights have I spent sitting on my floor staging battles between Voltron and the Joes? Yeah, if I were honest, they did offer me some comfort. Or at least a way to distract myself when my mind was too cluttered to do anything useful like sleep.
“Then they are your new gods.”
I thought about her words for a moment. True, they comforted me, I valued them, but they did not give my life meaning or purpose, and for that reason, if nothing else, that disqualified them as my gods. “They make me happy, sure … but they don’t define who I am,” I said.
“They don’t? Then how do you define yourself?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I subscribe to Popeye’s philosophy of life: ‘I am what I am and that’s all that I am.’ ” I threw on my best old sea-mariner accent, which basically meant pronouncing “I am” as “I yam.”
“Who is Popeye?” Medusa asked, running her hand along the shelf.
“Just a guy I knew,” I said. “Obsessed with spinach, tattoo of an anchor on his forearm.”
“Oh … sounds like an interesting fellow,” she said in a dreamy, distracted voice. “You know, when I was young and immortal, my only desire was for the humans to make a statue of me so they could visit it from time to time when in need of comfort. That was my highest aspiration.”
“And what happened?” I asked.
“I found out it was more fun to turn them into statues.”
“Really?”
Medusa let out a heartfelt laugh. “No, of course not. You know, the myth of the ugly Medusa turning people to stone is the equivalent of your modern-day tabloid.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
There was silence. “Sorry,” she said. “I t
hought of that joke when standing in line at the local grocery store. It was funnier in my head. But it’s partly true. I wasn’t the monster in the cave that mythology made me out to be. It was vicious lies told about me by Athena.”
“Athena the goddess?”
“Yes. She was angry at me for something I did,” Medusa said from the living room as I rummaged through old boxes in my closet, looking for something to wear.
“And what was that?” I pulled out the only thing I had that might be appropriate for tonight and looked at it with a mournful groan.
“Following my heart.” I popped my head out of the bedroom to see a forlorn Medusa cradling Optimus Prime in her hand. Before I could say anything, she said, “I’m sorry. This event is hard for me. I know I tricked you into inviting me, and although this is a date, I’m not here for you. I’m here to apologize to an old, old friend whom I hurt. What is that mortal expression? ‘Bury the hatchet.’ ”
So that was it. And all this time I thought she was here for me. “Does this have to do with Poseidon again?”
Medusa looked over at me and nodded.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head, placing a finger under her right eye as she held back a tear. “Maybe afterwards. If I talk about it now, I’ll ruin my makeup.” She forced a smile, and her dimples tucked in with brave pride. “Besides, if I start crying, then my snakes will start crying, too … Do you know how hard it was to put mascara on sixty eyes? It took hours.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
“Jean-Luc, are all humans as gullible as you?” she chuckled.
“Only the good ones,” I said, popping out of my bedroom in a fresh white T-shirt tucked into blue jeans and an old vest that I once-upon-a-time wore to the prom. “Ta-da?” I said in a deflated tone.
“No jacket?”
I shook my head.
“You’re kidding me. You own only one jacket?”
I pursed my lips in self-admonishment. “Well, I have a leather jacket, and let’s not forget my fire-engine-red snow jacket, but I doubt if either is appropriate.”
