"Yo, hike your skirt up just a tad."
"Let's see a little more leg!"
Cynthia did not know whether to bolt or to slug one of them. They obviously had temporarily forgotten what she was supposed to be famous for.
Longstreet was beside her, whispering reassuringly. "Don't let them get to you. Just smile and take it. It'll soon be over."
The photographers were relentless.
"Hey, baby, how about a shot with the gun?"
"Yeah. What about the gun?"
Cynthia had expected Longstreet to rescue her when the demands for the gun started. To her amazement and considerable distaste, one of his assistants produced a standard-issue Remington Controller, just like the one that she had used on the two cops. She took it gingerly, took a deep breath, and brandished it. After a few moments, she looked from Longstreet to the photographers and back again.
"Is this thing loaded?"
Longstreet put on a show of cracking up for the audience, although something in his eyes warned her that he was the one who did the jokes.
Finally it was over. The press was leaving and busboys were clearing away the debris. Cynthia flopped into a chair, relieved that the show was over for the day. But Longstreet seemed to have other ideas.
"So, are you ready to have some fun?"
Cynthia had taken off one of her high heels and was massaging her right foot. She looked up in surprise. "Fun?"
"All work and no play. We have a couple of parties to go to."
"I thought that this was the party."
"This was business. The rest of the night is pleasure."
Cynthia frowned. "I don't know. I feel kind of beat."
"There are a lot of people waiting to meet you. You're the woman of the moment, after all."
Cynthia sighed. "So I'm still on duty? "
Longstreet lit a cigarette and handed her a glass of slightly flat champagne. "Not turning into a bolshevik prima donna already, are we?"
Cynthia looked down at her uniform. It had been instant-tailored for her. Figure hugging and made of Italian silk, it had nothing in common with her regular drab outfit except the insignia. At first, she had been amused by the idea of playing the wide-eyed innocent from inside this deacon killer-vamp creation. The costume had certainly helped her stand up to Emily, and when the taping was finished, Vern had become exceedingly friendly. After the TV show and the press bash, however, the outfit was beginning to wilt, and she was even starting to fear for its computer-stitched instant seams.
"Couldn't I go home and take a shower and change or something?"
Longstreet smiled. "It's all been taken care of."
"It has?"
Longstreet pointed. "You see that thing that over there looks like a minor but is, in fact, a door?"
"Yes."
"So if you go through it, you'll find that you have a private bath and dressing room. A hot bath is waiting, and your clothes have been laid out."
Cynthia had known that the officers of the PR section were different from the rest of the deacons, but she was only starting to discover just how different. Longstreet himself summed it up completely and set the pattern for his handpicked underlings. With his patent-leather hair, effeminate gestures, and voice like a castrato W.C. Fields, he would have been called gay back in the old days, but no one was gay anymore – he was simply creative. His mannerisms became more extravagant now that they were alone and the show was over, but Cynthia did not let that fool her. She was also starting to realize that he was a master of his craft. His life probably depended on that.
Another uniform was laid out for her in the bathroom. Where the last one had been form fitting, the new one was a second skin of black satin. The perfunctory tunic was so low cut that it revealed more cleavage than she had shown since she had been a teenage bounce dancer in the summer of '96.
"I'm not sure about this outfit."
"Selling the deacons with sex bothers you?"
"Getting arrested bothers me."
"You can't be arrested. You're with deacons."
"But this? I look like a hooker."
"Give me a break, Cynthia dear. I know the corn-fed, prude act is a crock."
"What do you mean?"
"I've been watching you. You're taking to an audience like a glutton to punishment. There's always an audience for sex. Think about it. Everyone is fascinated by sex. They're even more fascinated now that they don't do it anymore. Besides, you won't exactly be playing to the great, dull, proletariat of Jesus this time. No Vern and Emily where we're going, stalwart in the service of the Lord as they may be. I said that we were going to have fun."
Fun according to Longstreet turned out to be a frenetic, roller-coaster tour of the thin ice; high society that existed many floors above the yahoos howling for God, the spiritual cripples staring into the lights of their Jesus Waves, and the dark, miserable, strife-torn streets. Ground-level reality never penetrated their steel and crystal towers. It never got past the private security forces with their Uzis and electric clubs. Cynthia entered a Manhattan that was the last remnant of old-fashioned American hedonism. She was suddenly surrounded by people who still played and glittered against the shimmering skyline as if Cole Porter, Andy Warhol, and Sable Lydon had never been gone.
"Of course, there aren't as many of them as there were in the old days," Longstreet told her. "Most of them relocated to Rome or Brazilia when we took over. These are the rump, of the rich. The real diehards, so to speak. You might even call them an endangered species."
The night started at Der Blaue Engel, a private nightclub off Central Park West that, behind a blank basement facade, was a loving re-creation of a cabaret in Nazi Berlin. The singer dredged up Marlene Dietrich, the strippers were elaborately bizarre, and even the waiters and waitresses were like something out of Salon Kitty. The emcee was an elderly exquisite in a velvet tuxedo who loosed a stream of consciousness that was pure venom, sedition, and heresy.
"… so Larry Faithful dies and goes to heaven."
There was a ripple of applause. The exquisite looked at the audience curiously.
"And what are you people so pleased about? That he made it to heaven, or merely that he died?"
The drummer hit a rimshot. The crowd guffawed, and the exquisite started again.
"So anyway, Larry Faithful dies and goes to heaven and St. Peter comes out and he's wearing high heels and a dress…"
Longstreet leaned close to Cynthia. "The moment he stops being adorable, he'll be in Joshua."
Cynthia had felt profoundly uncomfortable in the first place. There was the stupid outfit that exposed her as if she were some 1950s movie starlet out on display. There was also the desperate blatantness. If Longstreet was correct in his advanced cynicism, this endangered species thrilled to the danger. Why else had these last lonely jetsetters not taken the final jet out? There was a sprinkling of deacon dress gray among the suits and evening dresses. Despite Longstreet's apparent lack of concern, the place made her extremely nervous. There had to be a limit somewhere around the point that cynicism blurred into recklessness.
"Are those real deacons or just people masquerading as deacons?"
"Probably both. Does it really matter when you come down to it?"
Cynthia had shaken her head and ordered two martinis in quick succession. The alcohol had not made the place seem any less insane, but it had afforded her a certain level of detachment. The question of why anyone would want to fool around with Nazi-era decadence when there was a real live concentration camp just across the river in New Jersey became a little more academic.
"How do they get away with this stuff?"
"Probably because they think they don't care."
"Yes, but why do they have to play at I Am a Camera?"