Tallgrass nodded, so Ben pulled four water-spotted lowball glasses and a half-empty bottle of whiskey from a desk drawer. I couldn't imagine which "Vegas bigwig" would negotiate in person in these modest circumstances. Or for what. Except maybe Hector.
"You seem in a better mood, Ben," Tallgrass noted, sipping the amber alcohol.
"Yup. Drink up. I got the special features Emerald City needed to open. At an unbelievably good price, which is lucky, because construction overrun costs were killing me and the backers. Really, I kinda think I took the guy, Las Vegas or not."
"What kind of construction overruns, Mr. Hassard?" Ric asked, setting down his homely glass after a polite sip.
"Oh, the usual." He waved away Ric's question to eye Tallgrass. "Leonard, I overreacted on the phone with you earlier. Things aren't that bad. We just have to open fast to start recouping investment, and now the last, best pieces are in place. Wanta see?"
Tallgrass sat there with his black pupils lost in his most skeptical scout squint, but Ben pressed a button on his desktop intercom.
"Geraldine, send in the CinSims." He winked at us. "We never had any of these in Kansas before. This is the jackpot, trust me. Fresh from the download."
Mystified, Ric and I exchanged a glance. I deigned to drink some cheap whiskey neat. Ugh. Tepid, strong as rubbing alcohol, and throat-stinging. I'd never met a spirit that needed a cocktail recipe more.
Let's see ... we were at Emerald City. How about ... an Old Scarecrow Old-fashioned?
Quicksilver's claws scrambled as he rushed to his feet behind me.
I heard what sounded like a high-pitched crosscut saw belaboring a twig. Quick growled warning.
I turned to see a small creature with enough spiked hair to serve as a toupee for a male American Idol contestant dance down the middle of the painted yellow brick road into the office. I bent to pat the dog.
"Toto," a light, worried voice called, "stay away from that witch!"
I straightened and jumped back just as a sextet of black-and-white CinSims trouped in, fresh from the film and the farm. I knew them instantly, even though they were bathed in a soft yellow light.
The original black-and-white film of the movie's prologue was later "colored" to make it sepia-toned. That was a "fan fact" most people wouldn't know. Only characters filmed on the silver nitrate of black-and-white film could be bonded with zombie bodies to create the signature Vegas Cinema Simulacrums, familiarly known as CinSims. So Ben's Vegas CinSim-supplying bigwig was a vintage film expert. Who? Smelling more and more like Hector.
I must say my hackles rose to match Quicksilver's. Was nothing sacred from exploitation, even the sepia-colored prologue to The Wizard of Oz?
Dorothy Gale, with her earnest face and curled - not braided - pigtails, was still calling her little terrier, but frowning at someone behind me.
I turned, and nearly jumped out of my plaits and navy pumps to see the scowling Almira Gulch, as thin and mean as a barbed-wire hangman's noose, chasing the agile little dog around my intervening body.
I bent to scoop up Toto, so the dog could "arf" and snap at the squinty-eyed woman's face. Like my own Achilles, Toto was a spot-on judge of character.
Dorothy's Auntie Em, sweet and worried, came up behind her niece, along with kindly Uncle Henry and the trio of fedora-hatted oddball farmworkers, Hunk, Hickory, and Zeke.
Oh, had the descriptive connotations of the word "hunk" changed since 1939. The prologue's Hunk became the sweet-natured but weak-kneed Scarecrow searching for a brain in Oz. The carnival huckster who'd doubled as the wizard himself, Professor Marvel, brought up the rear.
"Look at them CinSims go!" Ben Hassard crowed. "I feel like the brave little tailor. 'Eight at one blow.'"
I reluctantly handed a warm, soft, wriggling Toto back to Dorothy Gale, a bit unnerved. I'd never seriously touched a CinSim, and couldn't believe they felt so ... lifelike.
Ric and Tallgrass edged nearer to inspect the flock of CinSims while Almira Gulch kept a vindictive eye on Toto in Dorothy's arms and Quicksilver shadowed her every move.
These CinSims reminded me of Ric's Zobos, disoriented and not in touch with their surroundings, interacting only with themselves. They hadn't had enough exposure to the paying public yet. The Vegas CinSims I knew were firmly themselves and adapted to their fates. These newly hatched celluloid "chicks" made me feel sorry for them ... except for Almira Gulch.