Chapter 10

Way too early the hotel phone awoke me. Helena grumbled for the both of us, making me chuckle. Even as an angel, she enjoyed a lengthy, undisturbed sleep. I had asked her about that, and she had told me it probably had something to do with her pregnancy. "Like my sister angels and Nick, I never really needed to sleep all that much before."

"Hello?" I said sleepily into the phone.

The voice I heard sounded way too awake as Lindy chirped, "Get your lazy but oh so cute butt out of bed and in the shower. I'll give you twenty minutes to meet us in the lobby. Do you happen to know where Eva is?"

I looked at the blonde beauty smiling, naked, resting her head in her hand.

"She's here, as if you didn't know."

"I figured, but she didn't say. See you guys soon."

Leaving Helena asleep in our bed, Eva and I quietly exited the bedroom. We showered together. Her horniness must have continued from the night before because, after giving me her usual deep throat head, I fucked her from behind, somehow holding her slippery hips as her torso draped low, while still managing to rub her clit rather abusively, until we reached climaxes, mine occurring near the end of hers. We still kept the shower relatively short since the fuck had been remarkably quick, and dried separately and dressed swiftly and arrived pretty much at the allotted time.

All but one of the people in the lobby I expected. "What are you doing here?" I asked my high school best friend.

Eva answered for him. "He saw Lindy and Miwa dance together and was mesmerized. I told him about Lindy's choreography and about the rehearsal this morning. What got him to come join us was..."

"Me dancing," I chuckled.

"I just had to see that," Bob shrugged, a wry smile on his face.

"You texted me that you were heading home," I said.

"I shamed him into staying," Eva grinned.

"Let me guess," I smirked. "The infamous implication of resembling female genitalia."

Eva chuckled. "I don't think he worried about that. He was on the fence about leaving. Mostly it had to do with a lack of dance partner."

Bob nodded. "I was having fun. I felt relaxed and not desperate when choosing a partner amongst strangers. I could take rejection. Ended up I didn't even need to worry about that. Women seem sensitive to the desperate, and I'm certainly not anymore. Thing was, I found a lovely French girl to dance with for a while, and we'd sit and chat. She spoke English pretty well and was bright. I had a feeling she saw me as a fun fling. And if my heart hadn't become completely taken, I'm certain the feeling would have been mutual. I even imagined her in bed, a not unpleasant image, and Michiko finding us there and joining us. A question hung on my tongue to ask her if she liked women. Instead I told her I was engaged. I realized I didn't want anyone else but Michiko. Eva and even Sheila had been distraction enough. The woman's disappointment surprised me. I noticed she looked at my fingers and found no engagement ring. She rushed off and disappeared into the crowd. I guess I fucked up her plans. After that, well, I just didn't have the heart to find some other stranger to dance with."

"But he could dance with a friend," Eva winked.

"Yeah," Bob smiled.

During the conversation, we had walked from the lobby and entered a crêperie next door. After eating the rolled up pancakes and finishing the coffee, a limo awaited us outside. The chauffeur looked regal and French.

I gave Eva my expression, surprised and suspicious.

"Yes," she told me, leaning against me and whispering. "Simon's."

We drove for a while, ending up on the outskirts of Paris in a place of large houses and chateaus. Perhaps the largest of all rested further back from the others, with a gate that opened for us. The house looked both austere and embellished, with flourishes at the attic roof and columns at the entrance, but otherwise flat and gray. It had to be at least two centuries old.

"Welcome to the Pereire Chateau," said the chauffeur with a deep voice and heavy French accent, the only words he ever spoke.

"The Jewesses," I said.

Eva nodded, telling me as we exited the limousine, "This is where the Double Q rehearse. In fact it is where they stay. The basement has studios, including a really great dance studio. The Pereire women have a fondness for the arts, especially music and dance."

"How did they survive the holocaust?" Lindy asked quietly.

"Money, influence and a way of staying in the shadows," Eva shrugged.

"Friends of your namesake?" I guessed.

"Something like that," Eva replied.

The large white door opened and a group of familiar women poured out, Helen and her four clones. One darted into my arms, the darkest of them both in hair and skin. After we kissed I asked her, "Where are the servants?"

"It's too early for them," she said. "Come on."

She led the way for the rest of us, me pulled along, and not to the grand entrance, but to a back one. It proved a long hike around the huge building. We passed a solarium and a greenhouse and even a large marble pool at the back, decorated ostentatiously and with an amusing embrace of the pagan with water nymphs and a large Neptune, also in marble. Walking across a vast patio that must have hosted hundreds of parties, we finally arrived at an incongruously modest entrance. The screen door and the mud room we passed through reminded me of many houses in my home town, a comparison I had never thought possible.

"So we're the servants," I said.

Consuela giggled. "In a way."

Just past the mudroom, she opened a door that revealed steps leading downward. We followed her down and through a heavily padded door, across a hallway and into a room lined with acoustic tiles where mirrors didn't cover the walls.

"They must value their quiet," I said.

"Use to be a dungeon," Consuela responded with less tongue in cheek than I might hope. "Better sounds become muffled, although some of Angie's music sounds similar sometime. Supposed to be the dungeon remain somewhere here. Maybe we use it?" she giggled.

The thought made me shiver and harden simultaneously. Harden?

"I go," she said, and darted with her half-sisters across the shiny wooden floor disappearing through a door. Only then did I notice Helen hadn't accompanied us.

"Of course," I muttered to myself.

"What?" asked Lindy.

"I noticed Helen hadn't come with us. It seems we're lowly servants."

Lindy chuckled. "Fuck her." She looked at the large dance space. "This place is pretty awesome."

"You don't feel intimidated?"

"You mean being in Simon's realm?"

I nodded.

"Surprisingly not."

"Me neither," I replied.

"Hey! Hey!" she shouted. "Wow, the acoustics are incredible. These must be special tiles."

"I wonder if Angelique designed them," I said.

"Probably," Lindy chuckled. "Let's loosen up."

I noticed Vance, Miwa and Eva had already begun doing just that. So I stretched my quads and hamstrings just as I had been taught. Meanwhile the half-sisters brought out various stringed and wind and electronic instruments, along with a kettle drum, setting up against the back wall at the center of the space.

"Too bad Sam and Barnaby aren't here," I said to Lindy stretching beside me.

"They could only join us for a week," Lindy said. "They'll be rehearsing with us starting Sunday."

"Cool," I said. "What are we working on?"

"Short pieces, no longer than ten minutes."

"For the encores," I said a little nervously.

Lindy chuckled. "Unh-hunh. Two to be precise, one for Friday and one for Saturday. Sunday we'll be working on a longer piece for Barnaby and Samantha."

"You commissioned music from Angelique."

"I think of it more as a collaboration. Speaking of which, do you think Helena might have her poetry with her?"

"She always has notebooks," I said.

"Good. Have her come to rehearsal on Saturday."

"I'm sure she'd be there anyway. You're going to put something together for Sam and Barny?"

"I know it sounds like not much time, but it's going to be like an improvisation."

"Cool," I said.

And speaking of cool, the first piece we worked on definitely was. Angelique and Lindy called it "Cloudburst," and it resembled one. It started with what sounded like sparse rain drops but soon became a deluge of sound which eventually lessened until the piece ended as it began. The kettle drum revealed its purpose, with rumbles of thunder or an occasional single loud impact which followed the bright flash of a strobe light that Angelique must have somehow programmed. The flash, which I could see in the mirrors, caused a brief frozen tableau of dancers. Yeah, really cool.

Despite the short piece, rehearsal proved exhausting. In order to make those tableaus interesting, Lindy had us fling ourselves around the space. It had to be the most violent of movements I had ever seen her choreograph, with that signature gestural movement she embraced writ very large. We jumped and tumbled, embraced the rain and shirked from it, opened ourselves completely with limbs spread wide as we jumped and closed ourselves as we cowered into fetal positions. It had acrobatics to it as well, as we tumbled inches away from each other, collisions barely avoided. In rehearsal they weren't, mostly because of me and my clumsiness.

"You sure you want me for this?" I asked after another collision.

"Do not fire him," I heard from one of the musicians. "He is the sexy in it." Guess who.

Laughter came from everywhere, including from our audience. The Jewesses and Helen had arrived most majestically with doors of an elevator opening like a clamshell revealing Venuses. Pereire Grandmère, mère et fille all had a regal beauty. In fact they defined the combination of those two words. Even the matriarch, and yes, four generations of women, all with twenty years between them, sat there looking like family as if the male part of their geneology had little to say about their looks, still retained much of that beauty. Her back, bowed by aging, and a graying of her gently wrinkled face and her hair, reduced both the regalness and the beauty, yet it remained, the pride piercing forth from her hazel eyes defiantly.

Pride and defiance could describe all of the Jewesses, and Bob got the brunt of it, arguing about Israel and history and heritage with his liberal, passionately Hebrew, extremely intelligent American perspective.

"That was disturbing," he told me in the limo heading back to the hotel. "Those four, especially the oldest, had to have the most conservative views of any Jews I ever met. The oldest never wanted the Jewish state established, at least not in the Middle East. Her parents actually argued against it. They wanted instead to buy an island either in the Mediterranean or the Caribbean large enough to be exclusively Jewish, to establish a large colony of Jews without all the enmity of the Moslems surrounding them. Since that never happened, they insist they should just blow the shit out of Palestine and Iran and any other country threatening them. It's like they're female Jewish Hitlers wanting to rule the world or something. But what's most disturbing was some of their ideas, not the most extreme of them of course, but some, I actually agreed with. It made me want to rethink everything just to try to understand how I could agree with anything they said."

"Then you probably don't want to come back tomorrow," I said.

"I'll be there. I enjoyed watching you bumping into everyone."

"You know he got better," Lindy said, though she did chuckle with the rest of them. "I just had to remind him how much more graceful he is than he thinks he is."

"No," Bob smiled at me, "you actually surprised me. You really have a presence on the stage, and Lindy's right about your grace."

"Thanks," I said.

"Then you should bring JB and Sheila," Lindy insisted. "I want Sheila to dance in the second piece."

"Not a problem," Bob replied. "We'll actually be there."

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"The Pereire ladies invited Michiko and me to dinner, and they accepted when I asked if my friend and his girlfriend could join us."

"I thought they disturbed you?" I reminded him, very concerned.

"They did, but they also proved to be incredibly charming."

I looked at Miwa and Lindy. Lindy didn't know about Michiko and the threat of rape Simon had given her, so she showed little concern. But Miwa understood. At least she did after her face went blank. "Shit," she said.

"What's wrong?" Bob asked me.

"Just a hamstring twinge," I lied.

When we arrived at the hotel, Miwa told Bob to move from one limo to another, transferring from one eternal wanderer's minion to the other, though he didn't know that, in order to pick up his lover at Orly in style. His face lit up at the suggestion, mostly I figured because he couldn't wait to see Michiko again.

Vance wandered off as well, ever the independent man, looking for the underside of Paris.

The rest of us, even Eva, headed straight for Nick's suite. "What's going on?" asked Lindy. "You looked worried."

"You'll find out soon enough," said Miwa.

As soon as we entered his suite, joining the rest of his angels, including Helena who greeted me with a kiss and a concerned face, Nick, sitting in his usual place in his black denim outfit, asked Eva in a low, thunderous voice, "Is Simon staying with the Jewesses?"

Eva, actually bowing her head and with quiet sadness, responded, "Yes."

"Fuck," said Naomi, looking worriedly at me.

"Michiko's going to freak out," said Helena.

"Maybe not," said Betty.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Grandfather?" Betty tossed it to Nick.

"Remember, Joe, we can look however we want to to mortals."

"I thought just in age," I countered. He suddenly looked much younger, about my age. "Fuck," I said.

"He'll probably appear to be the matriarch's husband," Nick figured, reverting back to his old age appearance.

"That would probably do it," I said.

"They've probably been intimate before. I bet he sired every other one of them. But I bet his voice would disturb her," said Naomi.

"I have a feeling it will be a disturbing evening no matter what," Rosa muttered.

"So, do you think that asshole will rape Michiko, successfully this time?" I asked, nodding to Lindy when she realized the situation.

"That fucker," Lindy seethed.

"No," said Nick. "I think he's happy with her choice."

"What!" I exclaimed. "You mean Bob's a minion of Simon?"

"Not a useful one until now," said Eva.

"Fuck," I said.

"And I don't think Michiko will be all that disturbed, at least not for all that long."

"Drugs?" asked Nick.

"Probably. And a certain young Jewess's seductiveness towards the fairer sex."

"Ah. Of course. She's due to become pregnant, and not by her father. So Bob's a smart guy?" Nick asked me.

"Brilliant actually. Maybe not quite a genius, but..." Then realization struck me. "Do you think the Jewesses' demented plans will become much more appealing to Bob soon?"

"Probably," said Eva.

"Shit," I said.

"And you know these plans?" Nick asked Eva.

"Nope. Like that spy shit, it's need to know."

"If you knew, would you tell us?"

Looking at Naomi, she responded, "I'd probably have a hard time with that."

Naomi nodded.

"I think I got an inkling of it from my not quite minionized best friend," I said. "I believe some horribly arrogant decisions may be made by the powers that be in Israel, with the Jewesses' hidden backing, that will play into Simon's hands. I don't know if it will reach the level of nuking the Arab world, but something close to it."

"That ought to do it," Nick nodded sadly.

"Do what?" asked Lindy.

"Make Simon and his minions look like heroes."

"By killing millions of innocent people?"

"Yes, but we're not talking about the Jewesses. They, and even the people they destroy, being a bunch of terrorists after all, will be the enemy, the villains."

"So Simon's heroic minions are the ones that look like him," said Lindy.

"And when the dust clears," I speculated, "Simon will stand above us all, proclaiming his godlike nature and ruling the world, his angels serving as his commanders to spread his gospel everywhere."

"Not if he's headless," said Nick.

"As will you be," his daughter, my wife, muttered. "Such madness."

"Bullshit," Rosa proclaimed. "This is all utter speculation and you know it. It's the problem with spies. You get plans from the ambivalent, from Helen and mixed minions. And in turn you supply plans to them. But perhaps Simon's plans are not plans at all, but hopes and fantasies. Yes, Simon's a megalomaniac and has been for millennia. A dangerous creature to have such madness. And yes, now, he has means more than ever for achieving his dream of being a god among men, of being the god whom men have been modeled, men who look most like him being inherently superior or some bullshit like that. He can destroy whole people with a press of a button. He can send armies in devastating numbers and with devastating capabilities to do devastating things. Or he can tear apart things from within, create and destroy scapegoats to make the destroyers feel that much more superior. He can do these things; has done these things. And he plans to do more, to finally succeed where he had failed before.

"But in the end these are all just visions. And you reflect those visions back. Like a reflection within a reflection within a reflection ad infinitum, you get stuck in the illusion of it, in the depth that has no real depth. A vision coalesces, of the end, of the death of immortals, of swords sweeping simultaneously to lop off heads, of chaos in the aftermath. It's a powerful image, seductive in its power. But it's just an image. Pure speculation. Pure bullshit. You have no true vision of the future, do you Grandfather? And neither does Simon. And yet you move pieces like some sort of apocalyptic chess game. Smallish moves such as making Helena and Eva and Natasha pregnant. Much larger moves in the creation and the motivating of larger and larger populations of minions. But neither of you really knows the results of these moves, do you? Neither can be certain the fetuses gestating in you two angels or in Tash will be some kind of replacements for you, Nick, or of Simon, or even if such a result will be necessary. Neither of you can really determine what the forces of humanity may do despite whatever control you may have over a small portion of it. I mean, Hitler obviously failed in his mission, as has every megalomaniac before him, proving humans are not and can never be chess pieces. They make mistakes or become surprisingly heroic. They fall apart or gain spines. They always end up doing whatever they end up doing despite any efforts from you or Simon to do otherwise. Just as creating a complete analog of a brain has proven impossible, having any control or determination of humanity becomes defeated by its complexity. Perhaps if humans acted like bees, had hive minds, Simon could just become the queen. And in a way both of you seem to think that ridiculous concept might even be true with your opposing minions and with us angels. But even minions have a way of surprising both of you. Even angels." She addressed Eva with her last statement.

"Are you saying I should ignore Simon, not counter his moves?" asked Nick.

"Of course not," said Rosa. "He has to be watched, and his dangerous decisions have to be countered. I'm just saying this apocalyptic vision you both seem to share isn't a fait accompli. Maybe the origin story of Cane and Abel won't become a circle where both brothers kill each other."