Preternatural

Letting none of his personal Angst show on his Shake-spearean-trained face, Larry nodded to Jacinto, whose English was about on a par with Larry's Spanish; the kid took the lead and walked Runny back into the dark of the stalls, and Larry did his John Wayne walk up toward the house, trying to pretend his balls weren't killing him.

Easing the jodhpurs away from his crotch, he swore he could still hear them clank. The stuntmen on his films still called him Brassballs, their ultimate compliment. If he thought he heard resentment behind it because even at his age and salary level he still badgered directors into letting him do his own stunts, Brassballs Koster pretended he didn't notice. Sometimes the pleasure came with a little pain.

#

The pain was especially bad this morning. Serena looked up from her drafting table and realized the rest of the room had disappeared. She knew the sun had come up some hours ago; she knew from the weather report that the sky was clear today. So why did the horizon end at the edge of her drafting table?

"It's going to be that bad of a day, huh?" Serena asked aloud.

From her pallet in the corner, her Doberman Penny opened one eye, determined that the question was probably rhetorical, heaved a sigh and went back to sleep.

Yes, Rain says in Serena's mind, I'm afraid so.

"I was afraid you'd say that!" Serena lit another cigarette, recramped her fingers around the Burnt Umber, and was about to touch down on the paper again, then stopped.

Her theme was Beauty and the Beast this week. Catherine Chandler's blue, blue eyes looked out at her from the sketch, her face alluring and complete, but behind her Vincent was still half-formed, a suggestion of the Beast, unfinished. The drawing had to be at the framer's before four this afternoon so she could FedEx it to the buyer in Detroit; Serena had been working on it nonstop since this time yesterday. She drew hard on the cigarette, then angled it into the ashtray so it would stay put even if she let it burn down to ashes, sipped from the open jug of cranapple juice which was the only thing her insides could tolerate this week and, uncramping her hand from around the pencil, deliberately rotated the sketch 180E so that Vincent and Catherine were looking at her upside down. Catherine continued to watch her as she worked, but her eyes were less disturbing from this angle. Serena fitted the pencil back into her claw of a hand and began to work the dark tones in Vin cent's mane.

"Rain..." she said aloud, the soft scrape of the pencil competing with Penny's snores as the only sounds in the room. "Help me out here. I don't have enough Toradol to make it to the end of the month and they won't renew my prescription until the forms go through. I don't get my nerve-blocks until next week. I've got to get this piece done today, but the pain..."

Where is the pain when you're drawing? Rain whispers seductively in her mind, a soft cold mist with glints of ice in it.

"Somewhere else," Serena admitted. "It only comes back when I stop to rest."

Then don't rest, Rain tells her: Draw!

"Yeah, well, fuck you and the horse you rode in on!" Serena said good-naturedly. Rain does not answer.

The room closed around her until it was nothing but the drafting table. Soon even the edges of the table blurred and disappeared until only the drawing was visible, and Serena had to find her cigarette or another pencil by feel, careful not to mix them up. Soon the edges of the drawing vanished and only the two faces were visible, and then only Catherine Chandler's blue, blue eyes.

#

Virid disapproves of the script so far. There's too much sex in it!

No sex in your pharaoh's life, I suppose? Amber counters, noting that Virid's doing messiahs again this week.

Sex is sacred to them, a religious experience! Virid announces airily. Lofty, poetic. No pharaoh was ever called "Brassballs"!

Bronzeballs, more likely, Amber decides. More's the pity! If they'd had a sense of humor they might have lasted longer. Besides, given what your average pharaoh got up to with his daughters, his nieces, his lesser wives' sons...

Virid is not paying attention. S/he does that when s/he's contradicted. Amber watches Virid watching the high priest Herihor, hir thoughts reverberating down the Common Mind with what might have been a sigh. How long this time will it take for Herihor to notice what's wrong with the pharaoh's ears?