Blimpo: The Third Circle of Heck (11 page)

Is Marlo Fauster a Hideous Troll?
A
Statusphere
Quiz!

1. Marlo needs plastic surgery.
   

   1. True
      

   2. Modern science is not currently skilled enough to deal with the problem that is her.
      

2. Marlo avoids mirrors because:
   

   1. Her vision is 20/20 and her face is nasty/nasty.
      

   2. She can’t afford to replace them all.
      

3. Marlo’s butt is so big that:
   

   1. They still can’t find the last chair she sat on.
      

   2. She’s actually taller when she sits down.
      

4. No matter how much Marlo diets, exercises, or uses makeup:
   

   1. It just doesn’t take.
      

   2. It’s like putting whipped cream and chocolate jimmies on a pile of dog poop.
      

5. Marlo is to popular as:
   

   1. Fish are to skydiving.
      

   2. Egypt is to ice hockey.
      

Marlo’s hands squeezed the LCD page until it crinkled in little puckers of refracted light. Next to the quiz in the magazine’s video sidebar, Marlo’s image stared back at her: contorted, blemished, puffy, and growing homelier with every question. But she couldn’t take her eyes off herself. It was more like the magazine was reading
her
than the other way around.

What could anyone possibly see in me?
she wondered.
Suddenly, like a life preserver thrown into a lake of self-pity, a name floated to the surface of her mind. Zane Covington! The cool, moody boy she had met in Rapacia who had not only helped Milton evade capture when the Grabbit’s ceremony went south, but also saved him from becoming a solid-gold, Milton-shaped statue at the freaky gilding grip of King Midas. Marlo could almost see Zane’s deep brown eyes now: admiring eyes that saw something in Marlo that she couldn’t see in herself.

She felt around the pocket of her vintage waistcoat and slipped out the note that Zane had written her before she was sent down here to begin her Infernship program.

M
, the note began. Marlo could feel a bubble of excitement float up from her toes to her chest, where it mingled with the strangely pleasant nausea that spilled out from the pit of her stomach.

U R 2
-
Kool.
Z

Sure, it wasn’t exactly poetry—not like
I wish I had enough magic dust to sprinkle away your problems, all except the problem of me
, from “Dust2Dust” by the Funeral Petz—but to Marlo, this glorified text message was packed tight with sentiment. Just clutching the note
helped to loosen the doubt that gripped Marlo’s bones. It made her feel as if her heart were leaping through hoops of fire. As if—

“Hey, new girl, or whatever your name is.”

Marlo’s knees slammed into the underside of her desk. Standing above Marlo was a thin brunette with highlights, glowering down at her with a look that could freeze boiling salsa.

“I’m here to see
Madame Pompadour,”
the girl said. Marlo noticed that, despite the girl’s cozy-as-a-crutch-made-of-icicles demeanor, she was scared. Even her solid-gold grenade-pin earrings quivered.

“The name’s Tara,” Marlo replied. “Tara Yurfaceov.”

“She’s expecting you,” Farzana interjected, having suddenly materialized by Marlo’s side.

I’ll have to tie a bell around that girl
, Marlo thought as Farzana hurried the girl into Madame’s office. Just before Madame Pompadour’s imposing door closed behind the girl, one of her earrings fell to the carpet, holding the door slightly ajar.

Farzana returned to her desk and picked up the phone.

“Who was that?” Marlo asked.

“B-Beulah Heard,” Farzana replied as she dialed a number. “She was the d-devil’s latest Girl Friday the Thirteenth. You know …
what we’re all training to b-be
. But he goes through them like p-potato chips. They’re
never quite right. And Madame P-Pompadour is going to have a hissy fit about it!”

Farzana swiveled her chair away from Marlo and began whispering into her phone.

“I’m c-calling about my application …”

A thought crossed Marlo’s mind—crafty and fleeting like a possum darting across a freeway in the dead of night. The phrase “know thine enemy” popped into her head. And, even though she wasn’t completely sure what “thine” meant, Marlo knew that if you wanted to get the best of someone—say, Madame Pompadour—then you had better do
your
best to know everything about them.

Marlo padded across the carpet, carefully, so as not to distract Farzana from one of her totally-not-work-related phone calls. She pressed her palms against Madame Pompadour’s door and gently pushed it open, as close to “barely open” as possible. Marlo scrunched one eye shut and peered into the office with the other.

Beulah stood trembling before Madame Pompadour. Despite her expensive outfit—cropped leather jacket, empire-waist dress, and leather ankle booties—it was clear that the devil’s former assistant was being dressed
down
.

“Explain that again to me, Miss Heard?” Madame Pompadour growled. “Perhaps
I’m
the one who
misheard
. It sounded as if you said that the Big Guy Downstairs relieved you of your duties after
just six days?
Considering that I spent
six months
training you, that’s hardly a worthwhile return on my investment, is it?”

Beulah’s knees knocked together like two woodpeckers kissing.

“No, ma’am …
madame!”
Beulah sputtered. “It isn’t. I mean, yes, he relieved me, and, no, it isn’t a worthwhile return on your investment. I … I don’t know what I did wrong. He was just so … so …”

Beulah wept into her hands.

“Horrible!”

Madame Pompadour batted a small ball of pink yarn back and forth on her desk.

“That’s pretty much his job. Being horrible. In fact, he holds the patent on ‘horrible.’ He just mixed ‘horrid’ with ‘terrible’ and
voila!
It’s nothing to take personally. I, on the other hand, take
everything
personally. Especially my reputation as a cultivator of first-rate Inferns.”

“But I did everything I was trained to do! He said that I lacked spunk and fire … that I was blank, uninteresting, and dim. As if! Then he compared me to a couple of weird animals I’d never heard of—a toady and a sycophant!”

Madame Pompadour made a sound that was the exact opposite of a purr. More of a
rrup
. “Did he tell you what he
was
looking for?” she grumbled.

Beulah wiped away a streak of mascara running down her cheek. “He said he wanted an assistant with sass … with vim and vinegar.”

“You mean ‘vigor.’”

“No, he specifically said ‘vinegar.’ And that he wanted someone to take under his wing.”

Madame Pompadour snorted. “That’s ridiculous,” she chided. “He hasn’t had wings for thousands of years.”

She leaned back in her chair and contemplated the tiny glass sparrows that hung from her chandelier.

“So the Big Guy Downstairs wants an assistant that reminds him of …
him?
Difficult … opinionated … exuding a distinct sense of style. But someone like
that
would be hard to mold, hard to control. It would be a delicate balancing act to get someone brash and bold enough for him to feel a connection with while
still
maintaining complete control so that I can pull the little poppet’s strings….”

Madame Pompadour looked down her delicate nose at Beulah.

“You still here? You’re yesterday’s catnip. Now hand me back your compact.”

Beulah, blubbering, placed her tortoiseshell compact case on Madame Pompadour’s desk. The madame snatched it up and flicked it open.

“You girls are my eyes down there,” she muttered. “How can I keep tabbies on the Big Guy Downstairs if he keeps removing my moles?”

Madame Pompadour rubbed a beauty mark on her chin before jabbing a series of eye-shadow palettes in a
particular sequence. The mirror flickered with images: a dreary marble lobby; a burnished bronze desk; and the occasional flash of a hulking, horned beast in a dapper, pin-striped suit. Mostly, though, the compact’s mirror was filled with images of Beulah either crying, wringing her hands, or drinking Beauty Cream.

Madame Pompadour was distracted by a doleful sniff. Beulah hovered between the desk and the door like a forlorn fly caught in a draft. Madame Pompadour tossed the compact in her bottom drawer, where it joined a colony of similar tortoiseshell surveillance devices.

“Another shuttle bus should be leaving my office for the door in fifteen seconds,” Madame Pompadour said crisply, as if each word had been starched and creased. “Make sure that you’re on it, back to Lipptor or Precocia, or wherever I made the mistake of recruiting you from.”

“SNIVEL!” Beulah sobbed as she ran for the door. “It was
Snivel
!”

Marlo bolted back to her desk just as Beulah fled the office.

The phone rang, a weird line that had never rung before—not on Marlo’s shift, anyhow—a line labeled VTV. Marlo slipped on her headpiece and punched the line.

“Hello, Madame Pompadour’s office. How may I deflect your …
of course.”

“Screepy,” Marlo mumbled as she put the call
through, some frostbitten biddy wanting to be transferred to Madame Pompadour’s “vanity,” of all places. Marlo glanced at Madame’s door: still open just a smidge, thanks to Beulah’s fallen grenade-pin earring.

I just hope her ear doesn’t explode
, Marlo pondered as she crept back to Madame Pompadour’s door.
I know that something’s going down in Kitty Town. It’s just a matter of figuring out
what.

The spade-shaped mirror behind Madame Pompadour’s desk had unfolded into a reflective confessional booth of sorts. The woman’s perfect oval face was split into three—
just more to loathe
, Marlo thought to herself—before her reflection dissolved, joined by another, similarly self-absorbed face.

“Good afternoon, Lady Lactose,” Madame Pompadour said with a wink as the reflection before her finished its preening. “Might I say that we both look
marvelous
?”

A woman with a milky complexion curled her cherry-red lips into a smile.
Who’s the ice-cream cone?
Marlo thought.

“How sweet,” cooed Lady Lactose, smoothing her creamy, soft serve–styled bouffant.

Marlo wasn’t sure what the stuck-up lady’s story was exactly, but she assumed it was a trashy read with a wicked ending. Marlo scratched her forearm. Even watching someone as milky as Lady Lactose gave Marlo an allergic reaction.

“Thanks to the miracle of VaniTV, we can discuss our little
endeavor:
perfect face to perfect face,” Madame Pompadour purred. “Firstly, the latest issue of
Statusphere
has proved to be our biggest seller to date, and this success has put a long-cherished dream of mine on the fast track—that is, to turn
Statusphere
into its own VaniTV network.”

Lady Lactose’s smile was a banana split of delight. “You’ve outdone yourself!” she cooed. “But how, exactly, would this all work?”

Madame Pompadour’s dainty paws worried apart the ball of yarn on her desk. She weaved the string into a cat’s cradle.

“It’s revolutionary, actually. Every second of our twenty-four-hour, seven-days-a-week programming will be piped through every mirror in the underworld.”

Lady Lactose gasped. Madame Pompadour chuckled.

“Yes, everything from compacts to oversized wall mirrors. It’s a way for everyone, everywhere, to get even …
closer …
to their favorite magazine.”

“This sounds like it would require a lot of energy,” Lady Lactose said coolly. “The whole point of the DREADmill experiment is to
stockpile
energy, not squander it. We need to hoard enough power so that when DREADmills are installed in every Circle of Heck, we can—when the time is right—wrest power away from the Big Guy Down—”

“Yes, yes,” Madame Pompadour said nervously.

“No need to fret yourself into a froth. The Statusphere VaniTV network wouldn’t take
away
from the DREADmills. Quite the opposite. See, much like the magazine version, VaniTV would feed off the longing, envy, and insecurity of its audience. And this power will not only make us rich, but will also keep us eternally beautiful, keeping that vexing demonization process forever at bay.”

Madame Pompadour tinkled the charms on her bracelet.

“It’s something I’ve been perfecting for quite some time,” she added. “But now it’s ready for
prime
time.”

Lady Lactose stirred her tea with her little finger, causing it to lighten.

“Forgive me for losing my cool,” she replied. “I’m just under a lot of pressure.”

Madame Pompadour licked her thin pink lips.

“Like a can of condensed milk.” She smiled. “Not to worry. It’s all cream under the bridge. We’ll both be having the last lap—I mean,
laugh
—when all this is over. At least I know
I
will …”

“What was that?”

“Nothing … just saying that I know I will be …
delighted
with how you spread VaniTV through your ever-expanding-and-in-want-of-an-elastic-waistband circle. See, I think Blimpo would be the
perfect
test audience for VaniTV. A place where self-loathing runs rampant—literally, in this case—just waiting to be tapped and—”

“Marlo!” Farzana shouted. “What are you d-d-doing?”

Marlo jumped and shut the door reflexively, though the gold grenade-pin earring kept it open a crack.

The faintest of breezes ruffled the small stack of papers sticking out of Marlo’s file, which was splayed open atop Madame Pompadour’s desk. Madame Pompadour’s faultless face clouded with suspicion. Her keen cat ears pricked at the sound of her Inferns squabbling just outside her door.

“You n-never interrupt one of M-Madame P-Pompadour’s calls!” Farzana scolded as Marlo made her way back to her desk.