Eight
There was a women's restroom adjacent to the hotel bar, around the corner from the piano player. Two of the yellow-skinned, black-haired ladies with the tipped eyes were at the basins, one washing her hands, the other fixing her hair, both of them twittering in their birdy-lingo. Neither paid any attention to thekokujin lady who went past them and to the stalls. A moment later they left her in blessed silence except for the faint music drifting down from the overhead speakers.
Mia saw how the latch worked and engaged it. She was about to sit down on the toilet seat when Susannah said:Turn it inside out.
What?
The shirt, woman. Turn it inside out, for your father's sake!
For a moment Mia didn't. She was too stunned.
The shirt was a rough-woven callum-ka, the sort of simple pullover favored by both sexes in the rice-growing country during cooler weather. It had what Odetta Holmes would have called a boatneck. No buttons, so yes, it could very easily be turned inside out, but -
Susannah, clearly impatient:Are you going to stand there commala-moon all day? Turn it inside out! And tuck it into your jeans this time.
W. . . Why?
It'll give you a different look,Susannah replied promptly, but that wasn't the reason. What she wanted was a look at herself below the waist. If her legs were Mia's then they were quite probably white legs. She was fascinated (and a little sickened) by the idea that she had become a kind of tu-tone halfbreed.
Mia paused a moment longer, fingertips rubbing the rough weave of the shirt above the worst of the bloodstains, which was over her left breast. Over her heart. Turn it inside out! In the lobby, a dozen half-baked ideas had gone through her head (using the scrimshaw turtle to fascinate the people in the shop had probably been the only one even close to workable), but simply turning the damned thing inside out hadn't been one of them. Which only showed, she supposed, how close to total panic she had been. But now. . .
Did she need Susannah for the brief time she would be in this overcrowded and disorienting city, which was so different from the quiet rooms of the castle and the quiet streets of Fedic? Just to get from here to Sixty-first Street and Lexingworth?
Lexington, said the woman trapped inside her. Lexing ton. You keep forgetting that, don't you?
Yes. Yes, she did. And there was no reason to forget such a simple thing, maybe she hadn't been to Morehouse, Morehouse or no house, but she wasn't stupid. So why -
What?she demanded suddenly. What are you smiling about?
Nothing,said the woman inside. . . but she was still smiling. Almost grinning. Mia could feel it, and she didn't like it. Upstairs in Room 1919, Susannah had been screaming at her in a mixture of terror and fury, accusing Mia of betraying the man she loved and the one she followed. Which had been true enough to make Mia ashamed. She didn't enjoy feeling that way, but she'd liked the woman inside better when she was howling and crying and totally discombobulated. The smile made her nervous. This version of the brown-skinned woman was trying to turn the tables on her; maybe thought shehad turned the tables. Which was impossible, of course, she was under the protection of the King, but. . .
Tell me why you're smiling!
Oh, it don't amount to much,Susannah said, only now she sounded like the other one, whose name was Detta. Mia did more than dislike that one. She was a little afraid of that one. It's just that there was this fella named Sigmund Freud, honeychile - honky muhfuh, but not stupid. And he said that when someone always be f'gittin sump'in, might be because that person wantto be f'gittin it.
That's stupid,Mia said coldly. Beyond the stall where she was having this mental conversation, the door opened and two more ladies came in - no, at least three and maybe four - twittering in their birdy-language and giggling in a way that made Mia clamp her teeth together. Why would I want to forget the place where they're waiting to help me have my baby?
Well, dis Freud - dis smart cigar-smoking Viennese honky muhfuh - he claim dat we got dis mindunderour mind, he call it the unconscious or subconscious or somefuckin conscious. Now I ain't claimin dere is such a thing, only dat he saydere was.
(Burn up the day,Eddie had told her, that much she was sure of, and she would do her best, only hoping that she wasn't working on getting Jake and Callahan killed by doing it. )
Ole Honky Freud,Detta went on,he say in lots of ways de subconscious or unconscious mind smarterdan de one on top. Cut through de bullshit fasterdan de one on top. An maybe yours understand what I been tellin you all along, that yo' frien Sayre nothin but a lyin rat-ass muhfuh goan steal yo baby and, I dunno, maybe cut it up in dis bowl and den feed it to the vampires like dey was dawgs an dat baby nuffin but a big-ass bowl o' Alpo or Purina Vampire Ch -
Shut up! Shut up your lying face!
Out at the basins, the birdy-women laughed so shrilly that Mia felt her eyeballs shiver and threaten to
liquefy in their sockets. She wanted to rush out and seize their heads and drive them into the mirrors, wanted to do it again and again until their blood was splashed all the way up to the ceiling and theirbrains -
Temper, temper,said the woman inside, and now it sounded like Susannah again.
She lies! That bitch LIES!
No,Susannah replied, and the conviction in that single short word was enough to send an arrow of fear into Mia's heart. She says what's on her mind, no argument there, but she doesn't lie. Go on, Mia, turn your shirt inside out.
With a final eye-watering burst of laughter, the birdy-women left the bathroom. Mia pulled the shirt off over her head, baring Susannah's breasts, which were the color of coffee with just the smallest splash of milk added in. Her nipples, which had always been as small as berries, were now much larger. Nipples craving a mouth.
There were only the faintest maroon spots on the inside of the shirt. Mia put it back on, then unbuttoned the front of her jeans so she could tuck it in. Susannah stared, fascinated, at the point just above her pubic thatch. Here her skin lightened to a color that might have been milk with the smallest splash of coffee added in. Below were the white legs of the woman she'd met on the castle allure. Susannah knew that if Mia lowered her jeans all the way, she'd see the scabbed and scratched shins she had already observed as Mia - thereal Mia - looked out over Discordia toward the red glow marking the castle of the King.
Something about this frightened Susannah terribly, and after a moment's consideration (it took no longer), the reason came to her. If Mia had only replaced those parts of her legs that Odetta Holmes had lost to the subway train when Jack Mort pushed her onto the tracks she would have been white only from the knees or so down. But herthighs were white, too, and her groin area was turning. What strange lycanthropy was this?
De body-stealin kind,Detta replied cheerfully. Pretty soon you be havin a white belly. . . white breas's. . . white neck. . . white cheeks. . .
Stop it,Susannah warned, but when had Detta Walker ever listened to her warnings? Hers or anybody's?
And den, las' of all, you have a whitebrain,girl! A Mia brain! And won't dat be fahn? Sho! You be all Mia den! Nobody give you no shit if you want to ride right up front on de bus!
Then the shirt was drawn over her hips; the jeans were again buttoned up. Mia sat down on the toilet ring that way. In front of her, scrawled on the door, was this graffito: BANGO SKANK AWAITS THE KING!
Who is this Bango Skank?Mia asked.
I have no idea.
I think. . . It was hard, but Mia forced herself. I think I owe you a word of thanks.
Susannah's response was cold and immediate. Thank me with the truth.
First tell me why you'd help me at all, after I. . .
This time Mia couldn't finish. She liked to think of herself as brave - as brave as she had to be in the service of her chap, at least - but this time she couldn't finish.
After you betrayed the man I love to men who are, when you get right down to it, footsoldiers of the Crimson King? After you decided it would be all right for them to kill mine so long as you could keep yours? Is that what you want to know?
Mia hated to hear it spoken of that way, but bore it. Had to bear it.
Yes, lady, if you like.
It was the other one who replied this time, in that voice - harsh, cawing, laughing, triumphant, and hateful - that was even worse than the shrill laughter of the birdy-women. Worse by far.
Because mah boys got away, dass why! Fucked those honkies mos' righteous! The ones dey didn't shoot all blowed to smithereens!