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  “Play on my better instincts, will you? Very well. Have the lad up, but the dog must remain on the ground floor. I find him ungovernable.”

  “So do I,” I said with a smile, rising. “I’m sure Godfrey will install us comfortably in your viewing palace.”

  Hector’s smile grew sly as his chins dimpled against his brocade cravat. “You will adore it.”

  I smiled back. On this, we spoke the same language. Sometimes I forgot he was a really lonely man, or whatever, and that was why I cut him slack.

  Chapter Fifteen

  RIC WATCHED GODFREY don an apron with aplomb and remove a platter of roast beef from the massive stainless steel refrigerator-freezer unit. A CinSim maid also clad in black with white cap, cuffs, and apron began making cold cuts for Quicksilver and a welcome sandwich for him.

  Delilah needed a food break too. With all the morning’s excitement extending into afternoon, they’d been too busy to eat. Or too in love. Ric’s stroll on the Inferno’s wild side had stoked his desire for Delilah and now that the hang-up against lying on her back had been exorcised, they had a lot more exploring to do.

  Ric returned his mind to Nightwine’s kitchen and found himself grinning like a Halloween pumpkin.

  “Please sit down,” Godfrey invited, pulling out a stool at the central island. “The master has ordered a viewing supper later for you and Miss Street. I’m told the film is almost as long as three hours of network prime time.”

  “Don’t you find this role demeaning, Godfrey?” Ric asked as he sat.

  “Why should I, dear boy? I’m a successful businessman with a social conscience for the devastated unemployed of my Depression times and now, yours. I played along with being mistaken for a homeless man and took a butler job because the family involved needed serious emotional and financial help.”

  “And you ‘help’ here too?”

  “Indeed. The master is housebound.”

  “Some house.” Ric eyed the huge, high-ceilinged kitchen gleaming with the stainless steel of innumerable gadgets.

  “I do enjoy the surroundings.”

  “So you feel some sense of loyalty to your ‘owner’?”

  “Certainly. Loyalty has always been my greatest virtue. The self who underlies this incarnation got my ex-wife the lead female role in my namesake film because I recommended her for the job. And together we made screwball film history. An amusing sort of immortality, isn’t it?”

  “Carole Lombard was once your wife?”

  “I see our Miss Street has been explaining my role to you. She was also my wife again, in the film, although Miss Street is quite right that the character bulldozed me into marriage at the end. Don’t get yourself corralled in such a sneaky fashion, my lad.”

  Ric waved off that notion. “Do you miss . . . Miss Lombard? Would you want her on these premises?”

  “Not necessary, although Miss Street was instrumental in getting my . . . er, cousin at the Inferno his screen wife and even the dog.”

  “Delilah got Snow to buy Nora Charles and Asta for Nick’s sake?”

  “Indeed. Miss Street could get Christophe of the Inferno to do a great many more things for her, should she stoop to flattering his ego. He is not a hopelessly bad individual,” Godfrey mused while swiping a dishcloth over Quicksilver’s already bare and washed plate. “More misguided than anything. Next to Miss Street and the master, no one in Las Vegas is as considerate of CinSims as he. We do not forget our friends.”

  “Are you familiar with the film Delilah and I will be seeing?”

  “Metropolis? Of course. It came out only a few years before my best work.”

  “Godfrey, you seem much more self-aware than most CinSims.”

  “I am supposed to be the perfect gentleman’s gentleman.”

  “Yes, but you know where your other . . . incarnations . . . are located in Las Vegas, and even recognize the actor beneath the character.”

  “We are not stupid, Mr. Montoya, just limited somewhat in our memories, and certainly in our movements, through no fault of our own. My master’s love of film requires I discuss them with him and I’ve learned what many less advantageously placed CinSims may never access. Why all the personal questions, Mr. Montoya?”

  “I was forced as a child to raise so many zombie ‘canvases’ that may have been used for CinSims.”

  “Well, you have a special talent, then.”

  “But now I’ve raised a CinSim directly from the screen and it . . . she . . . seems horribly dependent on me.”

  “Ah. Which version of the stunning actress Brigitte Helm are you referring to?”

  “I don’t know. The form is the silver metal robot zombie.”

  “Actually a plastic, wood, silver-and-bronze robot zombie, I believe.”

  “That doesn’t matter! The point is her image registers as all silver on the old nitrate films used then. The point is I brought her to ‘life,’ personally. I’ve never done that with a film creation. And now she has a bizarre second life, thanks to me.”

  “It certainly will be interesting to see what she does with it.”

  “Is that up to her? Snow owns her.”

  Godfrey’s head shook from side to side in a maybe-maybe not manner. “In a way. In another way, it depends upon what we CinSims are exposed to, as I’d mentioned.”

  “You’re like children, then? You can learn and develop a sense of self?”

  “It depends on the sophistication of our underlayment, as it were. On what we’re exposed to in our environments.”

  “And if that environment is an elaborate brothel?”

  “Oh, dear. Not my style. However, all Hollywood was an elaborate brothel when it came to female actors.”

  “And Delilah isn’t catering to Hector Nightwine when she dresses up to see him?”

  “The master is a viewer, not a doer. What harm does it do to invoke his favorite things?”

  He glanced up at a callboard. “I see the office light is on. That means I should install you in the home theater. Any particular beverage you crave? Nick Charles would recommend oodles of Boodles for a three-hour film like Metropolis.”

  Ric shook his head in defeat. “Whatever you deem appropriate, Godfrey. You’re the perfect gentleman’s gentleman.”

  DELILAH WAS WAITING for him against a background of looming doors of gilt and carved wood, the pale purple of her forties frock intensifying the dramatic effect of her blue eyes and black hair.

  “I’m supposed to pay attention to a movie?” Ric asked as he came up to her.

  “I know what you guys go for in darkened movie theaters. Really, Ric, you have to pay attention to the film. This is an investigative outing.”

  “If you say so.” He pulled the huge door handle open and they walked into what resembled a gigantic vintage jukebox, uplit columns and arches of intricately carved glass in luminous colors of poison green, hot orange, vivid red, and neon purple.

  The theater house was a sea of red-velvet wave after wave of seat backs, enough to accommodate a couple hundred.

  “All this for us?” Ric asked.

  “All this is for Hector’s aesthetic sense. I guessed from your morning activities you’d rather be obligated to Hector Nightwine than Snow.”

  “I’d rather be obligated to no one.”

  She led him halfway down the center aisle. “This okay?”

  “I can snooze here as well as anywhere.”

  “Trust me. You won’t want to nap through this film. Hector’s print lacks six minutes Snow’s has, but narrative title cards will bridge any gaps.”

  “Title cards? It’s a ‘movie’ but not a ‘talkie,’ and now it’s a ‘readie’?”

  Delilah leveled those police-car blue-light-special eyes at him.

  “You’ve got to face the Silver Zombie in all of her many manifestations, Ric,” she said. “What you raised in Wichita will incredibly complicate the human and unhuman world in Vegas, and she is definitely a package deal.”

  Chapter
Sixteen

  S OMETIMES OUR BELOVED Ricardo Montoya, Irma noted, can be as stubborn as a chupacabra.

  So could I. We settled into the cushy seats, easing around the burl wood trays attached to one arm. I took advantage of the initial gawking period at the spectacular surroundings to study Ric’s profile. What had he and Godfrey discussed? I wondered.

  Godfrey and his own silver tray arrived fast on our heels.

  “Master Quicksilver is watching The Wolf Man in both forties and 2010 reboot on the servants’ quarters wide-screen TV,” he whispered to me. “The next feature is Ratatouille.”

  He set out crystal martini glasses and platters of appetizers.

  “No popcorn?” Ric asked.

  “Mr. Nightwine finds crispy foods disruptive at film showings.”

  “So what are these pale, damp-looking worms?” Ric asked.

  “Cheese curls, sir. There’s Montrachet, English cheddar, verde capra, rustico limone, and drunken goat, for those well acquainted with El Chupacabra. No crunching to interfere with the exquisite symphonic score. Pop-up drink refills are on your left. Enjoy.”

  I smothered a giggle as Godfrey retreated. “He sounded so contemporary waiter.”

  “What the hell are all these cheese varieties? Drunken goat?”

  “Delicious, I bet. I don’t see any evident insect legs, so I think it’s safe to snarf and sip.”

  I leaned back in the reclining seat and aimed my eyes at the huge black screen set between swaths of red velvet curtains.

  “I’m glad we’re not seeing this in Snow’s penthouse,” Ric said.

  “I doubt it would be as pretentious.”

  “Did you ever notice the blood-bruise in the hollow of his lily-white throat?” Ric leaned close to whisper. “It seems new since Wichita.”

  “Ah, didn’t notice it, really.”

  “That’s a relief. No decent chica should. It was half-concealed by his rock-god black-leather collar. Some long-stemmed skank tried to suck the soul out of him. I bet she was a looker.”

  I cleared my throat.

  Throat? Irma admonished me. What a Freudian slip. You ever going to ’fess up to laying that mark on the dude?

  “Groupies are throwing themselves at Snow all of the time,” I said, loud enough to drown out Irma in my own mind, desperately wishing for a program for the upcoming film that I could flip through to hide my lying-by-omission eyes.

  And so are we, thanks to you. Irma was being merciless.

  If I couldn’t get me and Irma to understand why I’d ever thought taunting Snow with an irresistible turn-on was payback for my being in his total sexual thrall for the duration of what had seemed an endless Brimstone Kiss, I’d never convince Ric.

  The BK had probably lasted a minute and forty-five seconds, one one-hundredth of the time the new, restored version of Metropolis would unreel. It had only seemed like a lifetime, as watching this early silent film would no doubt seem to Ric.

  “This will be primitive,” I warned. “The makeup was garish and the acting is broad, yet oddly intense despite it. Especially between the men. There’s a father-son struggle and a romantic triangle involving a dead woman named Hel. One L.”

  “The usual melodrama. Any action?”

  “Lord, yes. A towering city of the future, an underground city of enslaved zombielike workers, a heartless CEO, an angelic young girl savior who’s turned into an emotionless robot, and a false double of herself to destroy the workers. Then there are riots, a flood, statues of the Seven Deadly Sins coming to life, and luxurious depravity at a nightclub.”

  “Sounds way too much like Vegas today.”

  “Look, Ric.” I punched up an Albino Vampire martini that lifted from the wide arm-tray like a ballerina on a music box, sans cheap melody. “I sat through Night of the Living Dead for you outdoors in Dolly’s front seat, in a hokey restored drive-in off a deserted state highway in Kansas. You need to see Metropolis to understand the creature you raised from the film Snow located and obtained back in Wichita. She’s got a silver-metal crush on you and the demon drug lord who held you prisoner as a child wanted her really bad. But we’ve got her.”

  “Snow owns her, and the film.”

  “Snow needs us to control her, as only you can, and to decipher her role in this wacky mob-run supernatural hierarchy . . .”

  “As only you can,” he finished. “Okay. I’ll watch this ancient and endless art-house flick. But I need necking and petting privileges.”

  I looked around. I had to admit the cushy seats and the dark empty theater was making me, um, pliable, way more pliable than any metal woman.

  Ric took advantage of my silent okay to push away the hair on my nape and engage in his favorite turn-on, and now mine, a clinging, stinging kiss turned passion bruise. I was nervous about how close our ritual was to welcoming a vampire intimacy. Still, I’d become hooked on this shadowy secrecy, on hiding the visible proof of our passion, on the danger of edging near where vampires and vamp tramps went for sex and blood. Maybe I’d been a naive fool all my earlier life to fight the darker side of love.

  His lips released. I felt a faint bloody rawness on the hot surface, glossing his lips as they moved along my skin. It wasn’t a bite, merely sexy suction. He softly nuzzled his way onto the public side of my neck, lips lingering at the hollow of my white-skinned throat.

  “You’d look hot with my mark here.”

  Matching hickeys with Snow? I felt a shudder of guilt and anxiety. I think not.

  My fingertips shushed his lips. “Really. We need to watch this film. Self-defense.”

  “It’s full dark and we’re alone in a major luxe environment. And you just taste so good.” He grinned. “All right. I’ll satisfy myself with these gourmet cheese curls. Jeez! Hector Nightwine is one of a kind, taking the popcorn out of the pop culture.”

  I didn’t tell him I hoped they were just cheese. Hector’s appetite ran to suspect foods, like white-chocolate-covered maggots.

  I sipped the Albino Vampire, leaving a lip-gloss imprint on the rim. Ric sipped his, leaving a similar but fainter version of my imprint, part my lip gloss, and not part blood, I hoped. Made me wonder about the whole history and point of lip painting. . . .

  The movie screen opened on black emblazoned with white letters.

  “Right off I can see this is going to be an action opus,” Ric commented.

  I gave him a friendly punch on the arm. “The first Star Wars movie used that pompous rolling text gimmick, remember?”

  “Hokey,” Ric grumbled, but he tilted back in his body-hugging leather seat. I did the same, feeling like tiny Dwan supported by the huge, padded leathery palm of King Kong.

  Once the starring city of Metropolis in all its corrupt futuristic glamour of the world of 2000 as imagined in 1927 took center stage, it was impossible to take your eyes off the screen. The production was German, and the prophetic scenes of skull-capped male workers marching like convicts into the “forced” labor of the mechanical age was chilling.

  Meanwhile, the white-clad, golden-blond sons of the corporate masters gamboled in Olympic-style games in an Eternal Garden—of Eden?—and were visited by gorgeous girls in evening gowns of sheer chiffon and feathers.

  Ric leaned over to rest his head on my shoulder. “How come you don’t wear any outfits from that era?”

  “The style was ‘boyishly’ chic,” I pointed out.

  “Huh?”

  “This was the first time women showed bare arms and legs. They were the major erotic zones of the era.”

  “If you say so.” Ric shook his head. “Now that you mention it, that glitter hides the fact that all those girls’ chests are flat as two-by-fours. Not my druthers.”

  “Duh.”

  “Who’s the guy in the eyeliner and riding britches who’s always swooning?”

  “That’s the hero, the evil manufacturer’s son. Both genders wore liner in these early black-and-white films to make the eyes stand out.”

  The
scene showed the young activist, Maria, crashing the Sons’ party, a raft of Dickensian orphans clustered around her. She was all sweetness and pleading light, the dialogue box reading, “These are your brothers.” Poor hero-guy was instantly smitten and set out to find her like Prince Charming with a hard-on for a glass slipper.

  Some of it was corny, some of it was prophetic, and all of the sets were stunning.

  We stared unblinking at Maria in her high-tech glass coffin as she transformed into the gleaming cyborg the mad scientist Rotwang had made . . . at Rotwang’s neon and test tube laboratory transforming the sleeping Maria. Once Maria’s essence is poured into the metal robot, it in turn becomes a human-looking false Maria who Rotwang sends out to incite the workers to self-destructive rebellion against the city’s masters.

  For the usual flimsy reasons, false Maria does a nearly nude stint as the whore of Babylon dancing for the leering moneyed class. All very symbolic but also the obligatory strip club setting we see on TV all the time today. Even Ric was mesmerized by Bad Maria’s frenzied erotic dance. Some things never get old.

  At last the workers finally realized they’d been had. Their rampage ended with burning the false and defiant Maria at the stake, where she turned back into the silver metal cyborg before the false personality finally “died.” The good Maria was freed to unite with her suitor and rebuild the leveled Metropolis as a really nice place to live and work. Finis.

  When the film ended, Ric was leaning forward on the edge of his posh chair, arms braced on his thighs, hands laced together.

  “That’s all Brigitte Helm,” I said, “from saint to seductress to saint again. Her false self sure whipped up that crowd of wimpy workers like Hitler on a tear.”

  “That’s just it,” Ric said. “This film eerily predicts what would happen in Germany ten years later when Hitler was in power. Speaking of power, I can see why Snow wants to reinvent that amazing towering Metropolis cityscape as a Vegas attraction. The dancing girls and even the Seven Deadly Sins are built in. Did he name his rock band after those creepy critters?”

  “Don’t know. Too bad the Sins’ scene is mostly lost. We see them as gray, stone figures in a churchlike setting that come to life and walk toward the viewer, with Death as their sheepherder coming last, carrying a scythe.”