Virtual Virgin Page 0,6
If I could only lose my obsession with this phantom skank, Lilith, in my mirror, life might be almost perfect. I closed my eyes, rerunning the top five horizontal moments of the past week’s getaway, leaving out the rotting zombies on speed and the weather witches riding lightning bolts.
“Do we feel pretty?” a snarky voice asked.
I had to decide whether I was hearing my internal secret pal since grade school, Irma, or if I was talking back to myself in the mirror again.
Sure enough, my reflected lips were moving.
“Great to be here in Vegas again,” Lilith said, stretching her bare arms overhead to show off a clingy tank top with silver studs spelling “Vegas Sucks” above a large skull-and-crossbones strategically placed to frame our boobs.
“Goth is so over,” I told her.
Lilith loves to flaunt her Bad Girl tastes when she isn’t dolling herself up in exactly what I’m wearing at the moment, which is low-rise seventies bell-bottom jeans and a midriff-baring top with ruffled sleeves to the elbow. Ay caramba. Olé. I’m a vintage girl.
“You must be meeting Ric later,” she said. “He goes for the belly-dancer exposure.”
“Vegas is hot,” I answered demurely.
“So is Ric,” Lilith answered. “I should pay his mirror a visit.”
“Can you? Without me there?”
“Argh. You there? No way. I’m a doer, not a viewer.”
“Then, what are you doing here?”
“Checking out the old wardrobe to see if you’re wearing anything worth stealing. It’s my favorite hobby.”
The feeling was not mutual. I was tiring of these two-way mirror conversations with myself, of always seeing Lilith on the other side of something. She’s haunted me in mirrors since I saw her being autopsied on CSI V one TV night last spring.
I did come to Las Vegas to find her, but I’d expected a physical being or a tombstone, not a will-o’-the-wisp on silvered glass.
“Lilah . . . Ric does know about me, right?” she asked.
“Yes.” I made my answer short and sharp.
Ric had only found out about my secret mirror-shadow days ago. With all the follow-up on the literal fallout before we left Wichita, we hadn’t discussed several revelations that could affect our separate lives, and maybe our love life. I particularly was carrying my usual invisible knapsack of guilt.
“Where is Wonder Rod-boy?” Lilith prodded.
I debated whether or not to tell her I’d sent him off to see the wizard, Christophe, aka Snow, the Inferno Hotel’s albino rock-star owner, to view a movie. That would be hard to explain. You had to have been there.
WE’D MADE IT back from Wichita and I was dropping Ric off at his house for the night before ferrying Quicksilver and me back to the Enchanted Cottage on the Hector Nightwine estate.
“You should call on Snow first thing tomorrow,” I told Ric, “and get him to show you the Metropolis film that features your new virtual girlfriend.”
“You’re not jealous of an old-time movie CinSim that’s more a metal costume than flesh?”
“No. Might as well be jealous of Robby the Robot.”
“Tomorrow morning? Christophe’s Inferno Hotel penthouse? Without you to referee?” Ric had asked.
“Right,” I’d said. “He owes us, and besides, Snow’s such a film nut he’ll gladly sit through all almost-three hours of the restored version with you. Metropolis is his prize acquisition. I’d be excess baggage.”
Irma had hastened to jump in. And “baggage” is exactly what Snow would call you after your latest joint adventure—or should I say “assignation”?—in one of his domains in Wichita.
“What will you do?” Ric asked before I could forget myself and tell Irma aloud that it was an accident, not an assignation.
“I, ah, have some unfinished business from Wichita to settle.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m taking your shrink foster-mama’s advice and facing some of my own demons without even having to leave the Enchanted Cottage.”
“So, after a night without you, tomorrow morning I’m indentured to view an almost-three-hour-long silent film from 1927.” Ric sighed.
“There’s a stirring, newly recorded symphonic sound track.”
“Watching it with Christophe is not my idea of a film date.” He never used the nickname I did: Snow.
“I know, but Snow’s the only one in the world who owns the long-lost, utterly complete version of the film. You’ll be amazed by how scary-relevant that Holy Grail of filmdom called Metropolis is to our lives and times,” I said in farewell.
“I hope there’s popcorn,” Ric grumbled.
“And you’ll see the Silver Zombie again, offscreen and in person.”
“Not a draw, Delilah. She freaks me out. I’m not the Immortality Mob or a CinSim collector like Christophe and Hector Nightwine. I don’t want the