“What?”
“The nightgown, for starters.”
“But then I’ll be naked.”
“You’re already naked, doll.”
That doesn’t really make any sense, but Zelda strips off her pistachio-green satin sleeping number. Al takes it over his arm.
“Underthings, too, sweetheart.”
“But—”
“Price of admission, cupcake! You want in or not?”
“Into what?”
Al grins. It splits his face like another scar. He gestures at her brassiere. Okay, then. Men do always want your underneath, don’t they? It’s not so odd. Zelda Fair strips down to her belly button. She doesn’t even try to cover up with her arms like that stupid Botticelli girl who thought her hair could save her.
“Slippers,” he says.
Fine.
“The ribbon in your hair and stop stalling.”
Whatever you say, Papa.
&
nbsp; Al hands it all off to some tall corpse of a fella Zelda could swear is Mr. Bayeux, the Head Concierge, but she doesn’t want to think too long on that.
“Take the third cabana on the left, kitten. I’ll be waiting in the shallow end.”
Now, probably she shoulda argued, but that man in the blueberry suit didn’t even look surprised to see her walk out of the wall, and once you’ve crawled through a magic door it pays to go with the flow, don’t you know? In for a penny and all that jazz.
Red cabana #3 has got a bathing costume for her. Black. Silver stars. A swimming cap with licks of painted blue flames dancing up all over it. When Zelda gets her kit on, she sees underneath it a little china plate from the Green Tabernacle, their own pattern, frogs and treasure boxes dancing round the rim. It’s a choice. She knows it right away. Pick one and come on in, the water’s fine.
Six red pills. A syringe like a spindle full of woolly moon juice. A matchstick with a thick blue head carved all over with little dancing wooden bodies almost too small to make out their perfect tiny dancing shoes.
Zelda looks at the dish. She thinks about Minerva. About the cave all filled in like a damn pothole.
She takes all three.
B1
Everybody knows a tree needs water to sink her roots in. The Artemisia gets her end wet in the chlorine paradise under her respectable floors. There’s beauty in that pool like chum in the sea. Nobody Zelda recognizes and the It Girl’s job description includes knowing everyone and their plus-ones. It looks like one of those flickies where all the girls swim at the same time and turn their heads at the same time and point their toes at the same time while they plunge their heads down under the water like they never needed to breathe in the first place.
Except everybody’s kissing. Kissing’s like money down below. All you want to do is get some, all anybody wants from you is more. Zelda thinks about blushing good and hard. She’s one of those girls born without the natural ability to blush. She had to learn it and Zelda learned by slapping herself whenever she saw something she shouldn’t, or felt shamed. Slapped and slapped until her blood knew what to do when the time came. She knew now was a blushing time. So many boys in the water, all perfect and hard and soft and their eyes looked so warm, so warm! Boys laying half in and half out like mermaid, like nymphs, like girls, like Zelda did all the time, lying like you do when you know you’re gonna get watched. Lying for someone’s lust to land on. And the girls, not lying at all, but hollering and smoking cigars and swigging straight from kegs the size of bedrooms, burping and roaring and telling jokes so raw they sounded like meat. Zelda thinks she’s never seen hair shine like it does down there in the pool of wisdom at the bottom of the hotel that was the whole of the world, never seen water bead so perfect on such perfect skin.
Al doesn’t indulge. He doesn’t sweat in the hot rainstorm funk of the place. The black pillars drip with water, the ceiling glitters wet as starlight. The big man puts out his hand.
“Alberich Mero,” goes the chant he’s beat out a thousand thousand times, “Huon de Bordeaux, Auboin Charlot, Oberon the Ox of Athens, but you can call me Al, everyone calls me Al, it’s easy in the mouth and as true as anything ever is.”
She knows who he is, and what she can call him. Everybody knows. Where’d you first hear the name? Beats me. It’s written on the walls, brother. Zelda’s shy. The nice thing about going to parties and not throwing them is you never have to meet the supply man. You never have to clean up after. Al smells like clover. And beer. And like the cave on the back forty where she danced for the Creepy-Crawlies way back when. But you can’t say that stuff to a man with a cut-up face and fists like Judgement Day. You just say something nice, like Zelda did, and this is what Miss Z said, she said:
“You got a lotta names, mister.”
“Sure do. I collect ’em. Some fellas like stamps, some go for moths from around the world, but me, I’m the man with the names. Pinned out nice in a case, plucked from the deepest forests this old dumb planet ever dreamed up.”