Zeitgeist (13 page)

“I don’t even want to talk about that. It’s all over, it’s yesterday.” Vanna shrugged in anguish and lit a vile, clove-flavored cigarette. “So, do you really know this Russian guy Khoklov? The guy with the private airplane?”

“I didn’t know that Khoklov had any airplane, but, yeah, I know Khoklov.”

“Khoklov flew me in today! That’s some super weird airplane that Russian dude’s got. He set us down right on the beach. He told me he couldn’t go inside this hotel, though. He said there were people in here trying to kill him.”

“Well, the band’s just now checking out of the joint,” Starlitz elided, ordering another Scotch. “We got a major gig coming up in Istanbul.”

“Yeah, the band, the band. I never hear the end of that. You, managing a girl group. Who’da thunk?” She blew a trail of herbal smoke at the bartender, who flinched away in alarm. “So, are people trying to kill you too?”

“No, not really, I’m not Russian.”

“Okay. Yeah.” Vanna sank deep into her second brandy sour, then swiveled on her stool to look him over. “So, you look to be doing pretty good for yourself now, Legs. You’re sure
dressing
better than you useta. Those are like
banker
shoes.”

“Yeah, these
are
my banker shoes, actually. Bought ’em in Zurich. You want something to eat, Vanna? The food’s really great in Cyprus. You can’t get a bad meal in this country.”

Vanna said nothing. A large wet tear appeared on her lower lid, brimmed, and ran slowly down her cheek.

Starlitz sternly commanded the barman’s attention and ordered some mezes. With any luck the casino’s
kitchens were still functional. Vanna slowly lowered her pale, disheveled head. She was drunk now, maybe badly jet-lagged. Starlitz reached out with the care of a snake charmer and placed his hand against her batik-covered shoulder blade. Solid human flesh in there. She was badly off, all right, but she was still his Vanna.

“Okay, you and me, we go way back, right?” Starlitz told her. “Ten years now?”

She looked up blearily. “More like thirteen.”

“So, okay, spill it. Level with me. Lay it right on me.”

Vanna braced herself with another sugary gulp. “Well, when the commune broke up, Judy and I had this, like, ideological discussion.…”

“A big fight.”

“Yeah, one of those, and seeing as there was this dope warrant out on Judy, she decided to split for a while to one of those places where, like, evil, global, neoliberal capitalism doesn’t have any pull.…”

“Yugoslavia?”

“No.”

“Lebanon?”

“No.”

“Paraguay? Belarus? Yemen? Chechnya?”

“Shut up! No, West Africa, stupid! West Africa, with the antimutilation campaign.”

“Oh, yeah,” nodded Starlitz. “A women’s-issues thing, I shoulda known.”

“So, Judy was out there, hanging with the sisters of color, doing some consciousness raising.… And it looked like they were going for it, you know? Until she, like, got to the genuine issue at hand down there.”

“The cops got her?”

“No, the
women
got her. Because she gave ’em a basic health lecture. She talked about female anatomy. These women were totally shocked. So they just picked up, like, broomsticks and pot ladles, and they beat the shit out of her.”

“Dang.”

“They beat her real bad, Legs. I got the U.S. embassy
to fly her back in. When the dope cops saw her in rehab, they dropped all the charges against her. She’s still in the clinic in Portland. Tryin’ to walk.” Vanna bit back a sob.

“When the hell was this?”

“Three months ago.”

“Three
months
! Why didn’t you call me?”

She looked up teary eyed. “Well, we can’t depend on you. You know that.”

Starlitz was angry. “Well, of course you can’t depend on me! But I got capital now like you wouldn’t believe! I’m running a major-league hustle here! I coulda bought you a stack of Band-Aids the size of a house.”

Vanna’s face crumpled. “Oh, don’t unload on me! I’ve had so much of that, I can’t stand any more! You don’t know what Judy’s like now. It just made her so bitter. She just can’t bend at all, it’s all one little narrow thing with her, it’s all just like one little tiny righteous fucking thing.”

“Well, with an attitude like that, she’s not gonna make it through Y2K.”

“And don’t start on me with that crap, either! I’m up to here with fucking Y2K! I read fifty megs of CERT dossiers on UNIX date bugs. I already burned my stupid Windows box.” Vanna reached unsteadily off the barstool, pulled up a knit Guatemalan shoulder bag, and produced a brand-new cell phone the size of her forearm. “Instead, I got me this k-rad Motorola Iridium.”

“Damn,” said Starlitz, gawking. “That’s the first one of those I’ve seen!”

“Instant global access,” Vanna announced, bravely sniffing back her tears. “It’s linked up, like, literally out of this world.”

“Yeah, that gizmo is totally not of this century. It’s got the
new
stuff!”

“Calls cost six bucks a minute!” she said proudly. “If you pay for ’em, that is. Of course, this unit’s been phreaked.”

“Well, of course.”

Starlitz stared in silent hunger at the satellite telephone. The device stank of futurity. They would probably
go broke, being so far ahead of the curve and all, but the gizmo was an utter harbinger of things to come, like discovering a fossil in reverse. Starlitz felt a powerful urge to grip the phone, caress it, perhaps bite it, but he restrained himself. Vanna was sure to take that gesture all wrong.

A platter arrived from the kitchen. This was fortunate, for Vanna was visibly weaving on her barstool. It was easy to underestimate a brandy sour; under their sugar and lime the things had the reeking kick of a Cypriot mountain goat.

“You know this Russian kid Viktor?” said Vanna, innocently spooning up a clotted salad of sheep’s brain in olive oil. “Kind of a doper rave kid?” She paused, surprised. “Mmm! This is tasty!”

“Yeah, I know Viktor.”

“Viktor’s okay, right?”

“Viktor’s on the hustle. I dunno. He’s smart. Khoklov and Viktor, they’re smarter than they look. Totally inept, but, you know, really Russian and gifted.”

Vanna chewed and swallowed. “I’ve been hangin’ with some Slavic ‘kyberpheminists.’ … They’re sure into weird shit now, the Russians. There are sisters in Petersburg who are like way-heavy theorists on the Syndicate list.”

“Russians are people. They just had one fuck of a twentieth century, that’s all.”

Vanna licked her spoon and enthusiastically munched a cabbage dolma. “Well, that Khoklov guy did me quite a favor, flyin’ me in under the radar. My documents being, like, not exactly in order and all.… But I had to leave em both with Zeta.”

“With what?”

“With Zeta. You know. Zenobia. Zenobia Boadicea Hypatia McMillen. Our daughter. Okay?”

Starlitz was thunderstruck.
“You brought the kid here?
”

“Yeah. That’s right. Our kid’s running loose in Cyprus with those Russian pals of yours. I sure hope they’re all okay.”

A rolling flash of lightning lit his mental horizon. His
world was filled with new and savage clarity. “Damn, Vanna. The kid! I never even heard her full name before. ‘Zenobia,’ I knew that part, but I never knew your slave name was ‘McMillen.’ ”

She shrugged eloquently. “It’s just legal shit. It’s on her birth papers.”

“You say her full name’s ‘Zenobia, Boadicea, Hypatia McMillen’? The State of Oregon accepted that?”

“Yeah.”

Starlitz considered this. “So what’s
your
full name, then?”

“Look, just keep calling me ‘Vanna,’ ” she told him, stubbing out her reeking clove cig so she could eat with both hands. “That’s my hacker handle, okay? Everybody always calls me ‘Vanna.’ ”

Starlitz shook his head in wonderment. “I can’t believe you finally broke down and brought the kid to meet me.”

Vanna sighed. “I just plain broke down. That’s all.”

“So she’s what, ten years old now?”

“Eleven. But don’t blame
me
for that!
I
never cared if Zeta met her father! It was
Judy
who was dead set against it. But now … Well, my coven hates me. My marriage to Judy, well, that’s all ruined. I got the dope cops down on me at home. I’m dead broke. I got huge medical bills, and no house. And I’m clinically depressed! I’m all
fat
and I’m
old
!” Vanna’s voice broke. “I’m strung out on Zoloft! I got heart fibrillations! My daughter can’t stand me! She’s having fifty-seven screamin’ kickin’ fits every day, about you and that stupid, stupid band! Zeta’s
driving me around the bend
!”

Starlitz looked up from his chickpea dip. “You’re telling me Zeta’s a G-7 fan?”

“The biggest. She’s a fanatic.” Vanna clutched her brandy glass in anguish. “I can’t handle this, Leggy. I can’t handle it, I can’t handle her, I can’t handle my life! It’s the end of the world!”

Starlitz drummed his fingers on the laminated bar. “Huh! So that’s the story, huh? Well, how about
me
, then?
You haven’t seen me in years. You think you can still handle me?”

“I dunno,” Vanna said, wheezing. “I don’t even care. You’re all I’ve got left.” She smiled tearily. “You’re my last hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Well, it’s good to see you, Vanna,” he said sincerely. “You look great.”

“Oh, hell, I know I look awful, I look like hammered shit,” she muttered. “I
deserve
to look this bad. You got no idea what I’ve been through.”

Starlitz lowered his voice. “You’re just strung out, that’s all. You need a major change of pace. Just, you know … to get over the ol’ millennium hump. Reassemble your life.”

“Look, I’ve been tryin’.
Real
hard. Nothin’ helps. It always just gets worse.”

“Well, you came to a nice place. Parts of this hotel aren’t bad. I got a nice room in here. And I run a free tab.”

“Yeah?” Vanna swigged the crushed ice in the bottom of her glass.

“Yeah. So, I tell you what, Vanna. Let’s you and me go up to my room. Right now. Let’s have a roll in the hay.”

Vanna choked on her drink. She set it down with a thump. She gazed at him red eyed. “Are you out of your mind? You can’t tell me that!”

“Well, why not? C’mon.”

“I’m a lesbian!”

“I don’t think once every twelve years is gonna kill you. How long has it been since you
had
any action, anyway? At least three months, right?”

She scowled. “More like three
years
 …”

“Okay. Point made. We’re both here, we’re both drunk now, we’re in the mood, and I’ve got a room. No matter what, we’re kind of family, we got a kind of history together. Right? So let’s get it on.”

They weaved their way up to his room. With some care and difficulty they engaged in middle-aged sexual intercourse.

“Man, that was great,” Starlitz crowed, rolling off her
and blowing steam. He strolled into the bathroom and rid himself of a Turkish prophylactic.

At the gurgling flush of the hotel toilet Vanna stirred. “Gimme a cigarette,” she groaned. “Got any aspirin?”

“Got Zoloft!” he announced.

“Wow. Zoloft would be great.”

Starlitz opened the room’s bar fridge and fetched out a Turkish mineral water, plus a multicolored Baggie of mood-commanding substances. He plucked out a pill from a crowd of its brethren and brought it over.

Vanna bolted it down and thirstily chugged half the water bottle. Then she sat up wearily in the rumpled bed, crossed her cellulite-spotted legs, and tucked in her cracked heels. “Mother of God, I was plastered.”

“It’s okay. What’s the harm. It’s just us.”

“I can’t believe I did that. Why did I do that? I’ll never do that again.”

“Aw, give it another twelve years. Then make up your mind.”

“Could you put on some pants?” she said plaintively.

“Yeah, sure.”

“And a shirt. No offense.”

“Whatever.” Starlitz whistled to himself as he stepped into his boxer shorts. “I feel young again,” he announced, tunneling into his suit trousers. “I mean, too much booze, and spontaneous sex … This is really doing it for me. I feel like it’s 1977.”

Vanna looked up doubtfully. “You’re
happy
about this?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Life is great!”

“Well, if
somebody
got off, I guess that makes it worthwhile.…”

“Sure it does! Why shouldn’t it? Sex is like that all over the world.”

Vanna drank the rest of the water and put the bottle aside. “Y’know, that was totally super icky, but … maybe you’re right. I think I may have bottomed out, just now. ’Cause … y’know?
How
could it get any
worse
? I feel … like I’m all
drained
, somehow.”

“Yeah! You look swell! You’re all ethereal.”

“That’s some word,” Vanna said suspiciously. She tugged at her lower lip. “Remember that kinky threesome we had in the rubber hammock, way back when? They say that it changes your luck.… Boy, that sure changed mine.”

“Same here, I guess.”

Vanna rose, staggered into the bathroom, ran tap water. Then she glanced into a mirror and emitted a shriek. “Mother of God! What’s happened to me?”

“You’ve gone all lucid. You have an inner glow.”

“I can
see right through my own skin
! I look like a frosted lightbulb!”

“It’s this Mediterranean sunlight,” Starlitz assured her glibly. “Cyprus is the birthplace of the goddess Aphrodite. So, no matter what it is, it must be like a totally natural, beautiful, empowering, New Age thing.”

“I think I’m dying! Is this some kind of dope-booze horror? Will I puke? I better lie down.” Rubber legged with shock, Vanna collapsed into the bed. She breathed hard for a few minutes, hiding under the reeking bedclothes and stirring restlessly.

Humming to himself, Starlitz combed his hair and knotted a tie.

Then Vanna’s tangled head emerged. She spoke up again, in a new voice. “Legs?”

“Yeah?”

“I gotta tell you something about Zeta. ’Cause I’m gonna leave Zeta with you.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured,” Starlitz said equably. “I thought that had to be the story. Because that girl … Well, that little girl is the one thing I did in the twentieth century that I can’t get away from.”