Topper turned to the cabbie. “I’ll also have you know that I’m a federal agent, or at least I used to be. You move so much as a finger towards that gun under your seat, I’ll drop you before poison boy here even gets in a scratch.” She had one of her stiletto heels off in her hand, pressed into the vinyl in back of the cabbie’s seat. “That okay?”
“Allah Akbar!” the cabbie swore, turning left on Chatham Square and into Chinatown, and left again with a squeal of tires onto Confucius Place.
Conventional wisdom said it took only three minutes to get from the Village to J-Town, but Confucius said that men fearing for their lives could get there in less than two, even when all they were threatened with was stiletto heels and fountain pens. “With the grace of Allah, we are here!” They screeched to a stop in front of Club Chaos. “Do not harm me, oh most beloved of Allah!”
“Stay where you are,” Topper told the cabbie, opening her own door, and Sam did the same with his, wiping his nails clean on the headliner as he exited, leaving the cabbie with the message, in elegant sihafa script, Allah says you’re a dickweed. Actually, it was probably something more like, Allah, the compassionate and most merciful, says you’re a putrescent camel penis steeped in mint-fennel sauce, but most of Sam’s Arabic came from falafel house menus.
The cab sped off the moment the doors were shut and Topper grimaced. “Idiot,” she said, balancing flamingo-style as she replaced her shoe.
Sam didn’t know if she were referring to him or the cabbie, and didn’t ask. “Did we just commit a felony?”
“Do you actually have poisonous claws?”
“No.”
“Then no.” She shrugged. “I came closer to it, but I never actually said I had a gun, and I have friends in the Justice Department.” She walked over to him and looked up at the Club Chaos sign, the latest work of the Jokertown Redevelopment Agency. In place of the broken and blighted marquee of the long defunct Chaos Club, there now stood a fifty-foot tall neon version of the new club’s owner, veteran joker comedian, Chaos, back after many lucrative years in Vegas (and a split with his old partner, Cosmos), bringing some of the glitter and tinsel with him to mix with the city’s matching funds. He juggled spaceships and planets with his six arms, while below his feet, sporting considerably less neon, was a television van plastered with a twirling Mtv logo. A huge mass of teenage girls, most of them nats, were standing behind police barricades while a single, albeit large and brown-scaled, police officer attempted to keep them in line. The joke of it was, they were all dressed like Topper—top hats, tail coats, and more than half of them had figured out that fishnets were the way to complete the ensemble, even those who should have considered something else.
Topper stopped and did a double take. Then turned to Sam. “When did my outfit suddenly come into fashion?”
Sam felt a bit uneasy. “Um, it didn’t. I think my outfit came into fashion.”
“Come again?”
“Ever hear of The Jokertown Boys?”
She paused. “They’re a gang, right? Like the Werewolves or the Egrets?”
“Um, no.” Sam reached to the back of his portfolio and pulled out a flier done in the Bauhaus style, with blocky Bremen lettering that had required cutting his thumbnails square. He passed it to Topper and let her read it:
8 PM, Saturday, October 27th
Club Chaos!
The Jokertown Boys
CD Release Party
‘Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails’
Wear Yours and Get in Free!
Below that was a pen-and-ink portrait of the five guys in formalwear from the bar, facing right and sporting canes and white gloves, the pose something Sam had modeled after one of the old posters for Grand Hotel.
Topper looked to Sam and blinked. “You’re in the band?”
“No, I just live with them. I sang backup on a couple tracks, that’s all.” Sam pointed to illustration. “People mistake us all the time, but that’s my brother, Roger.”
“So that wasn’t you by the bar?” Topper scrutinized the flyer, then bit her lip. “You know, except for the guy with the shoulders, they look awfully nat for Jokertown.”
“Looks can be deceiving.” Sam brushed his tail in its swallow-tail sheath against Topper’s leg. “Trust me. They’re all jokers and they’re all from J-town.” He paused. “Well, Dirk there’s from the Village, and we’ve been renting the upstairs of his mom’s shop since we left the orphanage. But Village People? Don’t think so.” He looked at the van, watching a guy in a wizard hat atop it working the crowd, and realized it was Carson Daly. “Since when did they hook up with Mtv?”
There came a squeal from the line of girls and a louder one as he made the mistake of looking, and Sam came to a sudden grim realization: Once again, his fraternal resemblance had carried too far.
“It’s Roger!” screamed a girl in a domino mask, and her screams were picked up by the next teenybopper in line, and the next, like a chorus of howler monkeys at the zoo: “Roger!” “Roger!” “Roger, we love you!” The crowd pressed forward and the barricade overturned, the girls trampling the scaled police officer in their mad rush.
It wasn’t the Jokertown Riots, or the Wild Hunt from the Rox War, but it was the closest thing Sam had ever experienced to either. Screaming girls. Clawing girls. A huge slavering hound’s muzzle thrust in his face. “I’m not Roger, I’m his brother!” Sam protested, but the clawing and screaming and tearing at his clothes continued until Topper and the scaled police officer, who’d somehow crawled under the crowd, linked arms before him and held them back, bellowing things about the NYPD and federal agents.
Then autograph books were waved in his face past them. This, at least, was something he could deal with. Roger, he signed, and Roger!!!, and To my dearest fan, and then he was confronted by part of the hunger and madness of the Rox War made flesh, the drooling, panting muzzle of one of the Gabriel hounds, white fangs glistening, fierce and sharp. Except the hound had bows in its hair and was holding an autograph book, and Sam realized he was looking at a joker fangirl with the head of an afghan. He signed all five band members’ names in her book simultaneously, one with each digit: Roger, Jim, Alec, Dirk and Paul, each signature in the respective hand, then did a second line with their wild card manes: Ravenstone, Grimcrack, Alicorn, Atlas and Pretty Paulie, with extra hearts and smiley faces.
Then Topper was shoved aside by sheer bulk. “Sign my breasts!” screamed an obese nat girl who’d exceeded the recommended weight allowance of her halter top.
Sam did not want to scratch her—not that her fellow autograph-seekers had any such reservations when it came to him—but it was not as if these girls were jokerphobic anyway, so he flexed the toes of his left foot, letting his nails piss ink into his Doc Marten, then slipped his tail out of its sheath, dunked it into the impromptu inkwell, and whipped it up and around and through the flourishes of Japanese brushwork. Roger he wrote on the right breast and Ravenstone on the left.
“I’m going to have it tattooed in!” the girl squealed.
Her fellow fanatics howled for more, surging through the gap, then one grabbed his tail and two others grabbed his arms, wrestling him for his sketchbook, and a fourth clawed for his face, snatching off his hat. Then she gasped in shock. “His eyes are blue!” she screamed. “Both of them! And where are his cute little horns?”
“Where’s the raven?” demanded another.
“Wait a second,” said the girl behind him, “since when does Ravenstone have a tail? And wouldn’t it be a devil tail? This is a lion’s tail? What sort of rip is this?”
“I read about him in TeenBeat!” screamed a slightly more knowledgeable fangirl. “That’s Roger’s brother, Swish!”
“That’s Swash!” Sam roared, snatching his hat back and jamming it on, wresting away his sketchbook, and jerking his tail free. The crowd fell back, the scaled police officer shouting for the girls to get their butts behind the barricade. Sam lashed his tail, splashing drops of ink, and
stomped forward, his coat torn, his left boot squishy, his hatjammed down around his ears. He hoped Roger had brought spare socks.
Topper scanned the crowd as they walked past. “Any sign of Bondage Babe?” Even with the stiletto heels, she wasn’t tall enough to see more than the teenyboppers just behind the barricades.
“You mean Fetish Girl?” Sam wasn’t much taller than Topper himself. “Not that I can see. Not that that means much.” He shepherded Topper around the side of the building, past a few more autograph seekers, drying off his tail by painting the Chinese characters for Luck, Joy and Get-a-Life on the proffered books.
“You think she’s inside with the band?”
Sam just shrugged, going up the steps to the stage door. There was a bouncer who blocked it, via the simple expedient of being the same size and shape. “Passes?” he asked in a dull monotone.
Topper took off her hat and started to reach inside, then stopped and looked to Sam.
“Check the doorlist. Sam Washburn and . . .” He glanced to Topper. He didn’t even know her real name.
“Melissa Blackwood,” Topper supplied.
The doorman looked. “You’re on it, she’s not.”
“Let me see.” The doorman did, and Sam ran a finger down it, not very impressed. Childish roundhand, two steps from Palmer method. “Right here, in the middle.” He tapped the list, dotting the i in Melissa.
The doorman checked again and it was a testimony to his dullness or his professionalism that he just shrugged and stepped aside, crossing them off and handing them passes once Sam flashed him his driver’s license and Topper flashed some leg.
The back of Club Chaos was an old hemp house, an off-Broadway theatre unchanged since the thirties except for facelifts out front, with nothing else special about it, except for the welcome. “Hey, look everyone, it’s His Nibs!” Alec Harner, alias Alicorn, the lead guitarist, waved, easy to spot by virtue of him being something over seven feet tall, not counting the three-foot ice blond spiked Mohawk, which easily put him over ten.
Paul O’Nealy, alias Pretty Paulie, the main vocalist, swung forward on his polio crutches, the lines of his tux somewhat spoiled by the elaborate armature of head, shoulder, back, arm and leg braces necessitated by his rubberized skeleton. With a top hat covering his perpetually unruly brown hair, this and his sweet smile made him look more than a bit like Tiny Tim, posterchild for cute sick boys everywhere—despite the fact that he stood around six feet, depending on how he adjusted his braces that morning. “Sam! I thought you were stuck at Starfields till you redid those menus.”
“Change of plans. Hastet’s not going to find anyone else who can do Takisian calligraphy on short notice, and so long as I get everything there before brunch tomorrow, she won’t kill me.”
“You need to find a different job.” Jim Krakowiez, alias Gimcrack, the band’s keyboardist and tech wizard, looked concerned and not at all a joker, with black hair, intense green eyes, and a permanent five-o’-clock shadow that also made him look far older than his nineteen years. However, looks could be deceiving. Despite the male model face and the tall, toned and perfectly muscled nat body that went with it, the wild card had touched him deep inside his head, making him possibly the most gullible man in the universe, and certainly the most literal-minded. “I know Takisians take their honor seriously, but she shouldn’t kill you just because you messed up a menu. That’s not right and it wasn’t your fault anyway.” He blanched then. “Did she kill the waiter? The one who tripped?”
“No, Jim, he’s fine.” Sam patted his friend on the arm. “Hastet’s not really going to kill me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Looks like someone tried to.” Roger stood in the shadows of the proscenium, looking like a young Odin, with a patch over his left eye, and his pet raven, Lenore, on his right glove. “Sweet Joker-Jesus, Sam, what happened to you?”
Sam sighed, pulling up on his sleeve where the seam had been ripped out at the shoulder. “Some of your fans just tried to play Stretch Armstrong with me.”
“Hey, that’s my shtick!” Paul protested.
Sam ignored him, turning to his brother. “What the fuck’s going on out there?”
“It’s a long and complicated tale,” Roger began, coming forward from the shadows. “I’m not certain where to start. . . .”
“Britney Spears got food poisoning!” Alec exclaimed, then started to laugh, nearly braying. “Puked Pepsi all over Bob Dole!”
Paul giggled, then made a strangled ralphing noise, followed by a perfectly inflected, girlish, “Oops! I did it again!” The wild card had elasticized his vocal cords along with his bones, giving even more justification for his nickname, a talent for mimicry rivaled only by his vocal range. “Yeah, and she was supposed to be over at Radio City tonight doing the Halloween show for Mtv!”
Alec nodded wildly, his Mohawk bobbing like a sail. “But, puking Britney—they had to cancel.”
“And our video just trashed everyone on Total Request Live!” Paul exclaimed, bouncing up and down on his crutches.
Alec continued to nod, the motion revealing that the bowsprit of his coiffure was actually a spiraled ivory horn, hidden like the Purloined Letter just below his forelock. “And Britney said she thought Paul was cute!”
Paul grinned from ear to ear—literally. “And we were having a concert tonight anyway, so they moved the show here!”
“In a nutshell . . . yes.” Roger stroked Lenore, smoothing down her ruffled feathers and keeping a tight hold on her jesses. “Chaos told us the deal when we got back from dinner.”
It was all a little bit much to take at once, surreal in fact, and Sam just took it in stride when a parade of thirty women, all dressed like Topper, filed by in back of the band.
“The Rockettes,” Jim explained. “Mtv said if they paid for them, they were going to use them, and they already know all the Irving Berlin numbers anyway.” Jim smiled. “We didn’t see the nutshell Roger said they came in, but I’m guessing it was a big one, kind of like the giant flying seashell Dr. Tachyon uses.”
“Oh,” said Sam. Topper just stood there in stunned silence, watching the seemingly endless display of top hats.
Alec angled his Mohawk towards her and stroked his equally long, silky and silly goatee. “You’re not a Rockette, are you?” He loomed over Sam. “Going to introduce us to your friend, Swash?”
“Uh, yeah.” Sam shook his head, realizing he’d been forgetting his manners. “Guys, this is Topper. The ace.”
“Alec,” said Alec, bending down to shake hands, “the joker.” Their size differential made them look like Teniel’s illustration of Alice and the Unicorn, except Alec was only horse-faced in the nat sense and Alice didn’t wear a top hat and fishnets. “Or ‘Alicorn,’ if you want my joker name.”
“Nice to meet you,” she said, his hand enveloping hers as they shook. “I remember seeing you at Starfields.” Sam saw her glance to Alec’s immense Mohawk-impaled top hat and immediately discount the possibility.
“People tend to do that,” Alec remarked as he straightened back up and uncricked his back. “It’s the height.”
Topper nodded. “People overlook me. Same reason.”
“That’s not true,” said Jim. “Paul kept looking at your legs. He said they looked totally hot, which kinda confuses me, ’cause in fishnets you’d expect they’d be cool.”
“Jim!” Paul exclaimed, his voice jumping three octaves. Then he looked to Topper, blushing furiously. “Pardon me while I curl up into a ball and die of embarrassment. . . .” He glanced to Jim. “No, Jim. I’m not really going to. It’s just a metaphor. People don’t really die of embarrassment.”
“Yes they do!” Jim protested. “Don’t you remember Margie? From the orphanage? Five years ago she got her period and stained her choir robe and she said, ‘Oh God, I’m so embarrassed, I’m going to die!’ Then she did die, right there next to us in the middle of church. She drew the black queen, an
d Father Squid said it was embarrassment that made her card turn, just like she said. And he had a whole sermon next Sunday about the evils of shame and how it kills jokers.” Jim’s lip began to quiver. “And I’ve seen you curl up into a ball. You can even bounce.”
Paul gave Jim a look halfway between sympathy and exasperation. “It’s okay, Jim. I’m not going to die. And shame doesn’t really kill jokers. Usually.” He paused then, taking a deep breath. “And none of us are latents anymore anyway. Even Roger’s drawn his card.”
“I haven’t,” said Jim, blinking at tears. “I’m still a completely normal. . . .”
“Jim, you’re an ace. A crazy powerful one.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Am not,” Jim insisted.
Paul let it drop, and there was an uncomfortable silence, which Roger broke with the rolling tones of a born showman: “I believe we were in the middle of introductions. If I may, allow me to introduce Jim and Paul, alias Gimcrack and Pretty Paulie. And this is my assistant, Lenore,” he said, gesturing to his raven. “While as for myself . . .” Roger held up his left hand, showed the glove’s palm then the back, then with a flourish, produced a business card from thin air.
Lenore snatched it from him, holding the card in her beak.
“Give it to the nice lady, Lenore,” Roger coaxed, holding the raven towards Topper. “Give it.”
Lenore looked at Topper, then at Roger, then defiantly took the card in one claw and began to shred it into confetti. Roger caught it in his left hand, squeezed tight, then opened it with a flourish, presenting the card to Topper, miraculously restored, if missing a corner. “For you, my good lady. The Amazing Ravenstone, at your service.”
She accepted it with a smile. “A fellow conjurer, I see.”
“But nowhere near your level of skill, I’m afraid.” He retrieved the last corner from Lenore’s beak. “I’m afraid my ace at present only extends to parlor magic. But I’m working to expand my repertoire.” He handed the torn corner to Topper. “Would that I had your skill. Or that of your grandfather.”