Radiance

Anchises moves down the line. “Max! You old so-and-so! You had me going there on Pluto for a while, but I’ve got your number now. And that number is…a banana margarita! Am I right? Old Horace, I don’t even have to ask, do I? Pisco sour, my good man. Peru or bust.”

Horace St. John, his legs tied up with silk bows to keep the shattered bones at something like human angles, shakes Anchises’s hand. One of his ribs protrudes from his Sunday suit like a white corsage. “You’re a prince.” He winks.

“Iggy, you look gorgeous! How about a stiff Sazerac?”

Santiago Zhang blushes. His mouth bleeds freely; shards of metal spike through his lips, his severed tongue. He squeezes Anchises’s hand joyfully. “It’s my lifelong ambition to try every cocktail known to man—this’ll be number eighty-two!” His lips leave a smear of blood on the glass like lipstick.

“And last but not least: Mari, Mariana, an apricot zombie for mi corazon, my darling, my sugar, apple of my eye and bird in my hand—is it too soon for hand jokes? Well, you know I never had a proper upbringing, I can’t be expected to know these things.” The sound engineer scowls, but she can’t keep it up for long. She grins girlishly and waggles her fingers. Mould covers her hand, her arm, bores into her cheeks. Fleshy fiddleheads yo-yo out of her palm. Maximo gives a mock bow and pulls a tuppence out of Anchises’s ear to show there’s no hard feelings. His eyes hang hollow in his face, his skin ashen, sallow, slick with Plutonian influenza, which is nothing to sneeze at.

“We’ll top that off with a Death in the Afternoon for you, Anki, and a bourbon neat for me,” Cythera finishes with a twirl, her feathers and scales catching the chandelier light and tossing it back up to the painted ceiling.

“You’re incorrigible!” Erasmo hollers. Severin glimmers with silver-screen delight. “Let the nice man make it a Daisy, at least!”

“Never!” cries Cythera Brass.

The company roars laughter.

“Oy, Mr Grumpy Bear, you forgot somebody!” comes a voice like chocolate-covered starlight, sailing over the assembled host.

“Don’t you believe it for a second, missy.” Anchises snatches a final snifter from the bar and fairly hops over to the late arrival. She has always known how to make an entrance. She’s buffalo fur and dragon leather from head to toe, young as the day is short, a plunging neckline and a soaring sweep of hair, her Moroccan features severe and welcoming all at once, her smile brand new, All-American. “A sweet moonlight for my sweet moonbeam, crème de violette for my dreamy Violet, queen of the airwaves.”

Violet El-Hashem takes her due praise and her seat, scootching in between the octopus and the mongoose. She waves shyly at Calliope. Marvin curls up in her lap and begs for belly scratches.

A hush falls. Expectant, nervous silence moves like a hot potato from hand to hand. Maxine Mortimer whispers in Mary’s ear. Percy makes a face at his daughter; she giggles behind her nickelodeon hand.

Anchises quaffs his absinthe and champagne in one gulp and opens his arms extravagantly, taking everyone in: everyone, everything, his life, his past, and his future.

“Mesdames et messieurs, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, octopi and mongooses, whales and wendigos, slatterns and stick-in-the-muds! We are here to investigate the early retirement of one Severin Lamartine Unck. I won’t bore you with the facts of a case you know all too well. Every one of you has a piece of the puzzle, and tonight is the night we put it all together and—if we’re lucky and everyone plays fair—point a finger at the baddie, have a spot of cake, dance it off, and call it a night. Are you ready? Has everyone visited the necessaries? Shall we begin?”

Mary Pellam whistles through two fingers. “Go get ’em, St. John!”

Anchises’s parents clap enthusiastically. Their dead hands make no sound. “We love you, honey!” they cheer.

Marvin the Mongoose hops up from Violet’s lap, spins around three times, bites his own tail, and yelps in his trademark lisp, “I am SO EXCITED. I don’t know what’s happening, but IT IS AMAZING. I want another snakebite! Two ’nother snakebites! HOW MANY YA GOT?”

“Why, hullo!” laughs Violet, scratching him behind one animated ear. “You’re voiced by Alain Mbengue, aren’t you?”

“Sure am!” Marvin puffs out his fluffy chest.

Violet shakes his paw. “My goodness, we’re practically related!”

Cythera produces a brass gong from behind the Myrtle Lounge bar and wallops it with a hammer. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” she confesses. “Enough with the patty-cake and the chit-a-chat! Eyes forward, mouths shut!”

Anchises begins. “Very well! As I see it, there are two possible solutions to this mystery. I shall lay them both out and we shall have a vote. Acceptable? Excellent. Now, the first solution is the easiest one, Occam’s old standby: I propose that Severin is dead.”

“Well, that’s not very nice,” Calliope the Carefree Callowhale harrumphs. She speaks with the voice of the actress who played her—an unsettling experience for the lady herself, Violet El-Hashem, seated one mongoose away. The whale’s long-lashed eyes narrow. “And I resent the implication. I mind my own business; you lot ought to mind yours!”

“That is the trouble, isn’t it, Miss Calliope? We haven’t been minding our own business. In fact, we—human beings, I mean—have rather taken hold of your business and called it our own without so much as a by-your-leave, isn’t that right?”

“Damned right,” huffs the cartoon whale. “How would you like it if I came and yanked on your personal bits while you tried to have a nap and made ice cream out of whatever oozed out?”

“How dreadful!” gasped Mr Bergamot, hiding his face with his tentacles. “I do hope none of these bandits have my address!”

“I’m sure we’re all very sorry,” snaps Mariana Alfric. Flakes of jade-coloured mould fly from her lips. ?

?But we didn’t know. None of us were even alive when the Yue Lao landed on Venus. It doesn’t give you the right to go around smashing up villages and sticking your personal bits in my personal bits!” Mariana waves her tentacled hand by way of illustration. A chorus of approval echoes through the dead.

Calliope the Callowhale sniffs indignantly. “I feel we made it perfectly obvious we didn’t want to be interfered with. Would you trouble a tree for apples if the branches vaporised you instantly? I should think you’d leave it well enough alone! We ought not to be castigated for defending ourselves! Ask her!” Calliope points her animated fin at Violet El-Hashem.