Because I don't really know who the hell this edgy little man is within the Chicago hierarchy, Peez thought. He's not the head of the organization—that's Ray Rah—but what if he's second-in-command, or even third? If this visit ends like the last one, without a firm commitment of support, they're going to talk about me after I'm gone. I'd need all the allies I can muster. Might as well start with Gary. No harm in taking a leaf from Dov's slimy little book and trying to chat him up.
She glanced around for a prop to use in order to break the ice and her eye happened upon the placard with her name cartouche that Gary had dropped onto the passenger-side floor. She picked it up and studied the column of images within the red ovoid frame for a time, then said:
"Well, that's disappointing."
Gary almost jumped over the steering wheel at the sound of her voice. "What is?" he squeaked.
"How my name looks in hieroglyphics. I'd hoped it would require some of the more, well, interesting elements to render Peez Godz. You know: snakes, owls, lions, people. I can't even tell what some of these symbols are supposed to be. This one here looks like a spittoon."
She was trying to be funny. She lacked the practice, and it showed.
Gary didn't laugh. Instead he flashed her a look of such violent alarm that Peez realized she might have overestimated her ability to charm and had instead insulted a potential ally right to the marrow of his soul. She could feel any chance of winning him over slipping away, leaving the Chicago field wide open for an easy conquest by her baby brother.
Her oh-so-poised and charming baby brother. Except sometimes he didn't land on his feet, either. In all the years of their growing up, she could remember more than a score of incidents where Dov had put his foot in it up to the thigh.
But he saved himself. Every single time. How did he do it? Think, Peez, think! What did he always do to pull his worthless butt out of the meat grinder?
And she remembered. It was such a straightforward ploy, so basic, and yet proven so very effective almost every time Dov had applied it.
Peez gazed at Gary, gave him a smile, and said, "Oh my, did I say that? I don't know what I was thinking. I certainly didn't mean any disrespect for the ancient ways, it's just that— Gosh, this is so embarrassing, but you see, I always get sooo nervous when I have to talk to handsome men."
"Whuh—?" said Gary, and nearly ran the Volvo up the tailpipe of the car ahead of it.
By the time they reached Ray Rah's self-styled Temple of Seshat-by-the-Shore, Peez was amazed yet gratified to find that her brother's simple stratagem had earned her the utter devotion of Gary, the bloodthirsty penguin.
So Dov has his uses after all, she thought as her newly smitten escort raced ahead of her, carrying her suitcase, to hold the temple door open and await her pleasure.
The Temple of Seshat-by-the-Shore was housed in an old mansion with absolutely no view of Lake Michigan whatsoever. It was by-the-Shore the way Minneapolis was by- the-Sea, yet the house and its master were both so undeniably rich that no one was going to argue semantics as long as the bills got paid. Ray Rah had a bank account fat enough for him to call his self-created house of worship the Temple of Seshat-on-the-Moon if he felt like it.
As soon as Peez stepped over the threshold, she knew that she was in the presence of old money and lots of it. Behind that turn-of-the-previous-century facade was the Egyptian temple of Cecil B. DeMille's dreams, or perhaps his nightmares. The entire first floor and most of the second had been gutted to accommodate a row of lotus-crowned pillars, painted red and gold, blue and green. These led from the former vestibule into what had once been the parlor, only now it was transformed into the sanctuary of the gods. Peez walked between two rows of twelve different images as Gary led her deeper into the temple. Ibis-headed Thoth stared down jackal-headed Anubis. Set the kin-slayer snarled his eternal defiance at Horus the avenger. Ptah and Amon, Osiris and Isis, the cobra goddess Renenutet and the cow-horned goddess Hathor, all these and more besides watched over Peez's passage.
Ray Rah was waiting for her at the end of the alleyway of images, standing before a gauzy painted curtain depicting Osiris in the Underworld, sitting in judgment of the dead. The head of the Chicago group was wearing the same sort of pleated linen kilt that Gary had sported at the airport, only his was fringed with scarlet and gold. If he wore a wig, it was not visible beneath his striped Pharaonic headdress surmounted by the cobra-and- vulture uraeus. The bejeweled gold pectoral covering his shoulders and chest was so heavy that Peez wondered how much longer Ray Rah was going to be able to stay standing. He had the look of a failed high school basketball star, all stringy sinews and long bones but not a heck of a lot of useful muscle.
"Hail, Peez, whose coming is most beautiful," he intoned from atop the low flight of shallow marble steps before the curtain. He stretched out the blue and silver flail he carried in his right hand, his left being occupied by a glittering ankh rather than the pharaoh's traditional shepherd's crook. He kept shifting his grip on it, as if uncertain of exactly how he could display it to best advantage. "Behold thy coming is welcome to us. When we do rise up and when we do lie down, we bid thee—"
At that point, the knobbly fake beard attached to his chin fell off, hit the floor, bounced down the steps, and rolled almost to Peez's feet before one of the temple's ubiquitous cats pounced on it with happy murfing sounds. When Gary tried to recapture the errant beard, the cat clawed his hand and he gave up.
Ray Rah said a word that was more Anglo-Saxon than Ancient Egyptian. Then he looked at Peez and blushed.
"Sorry," he said. "That always happens. I don't usually wear the beard, you know— spirit gum and false eyelash adhesive are way too weak to hold it, and anything stronger is too darn strong for my skin—but seeing as how this was going to be our first visit from a corporate representative, I thought it might be nice to do something special. Won't you come into the inner chamber? The rest of the congregation are expecting you."
Peez dutifully followed him, wending her way around the countless cats, as he conducted her behind the painted curtain and through a little door. Some of the cats attempted to come along, but Ray Rah was having none of it.
"Shoo, O She-who-walks-in-beauty. You can't come in here, Thou-who-art-swifter- than-gazelles. Scat, Eternal-glory-of-the-Lady-Bast! Scat, I say!"
Of course the cats, being cats, shot through the door anyway, but as soon as they took one good snort of the air quality on the far side, they turned tail and raced right back out again.
Peez wished she could have joined them. The inner chamber's atmosphere was so thick with the smoke of burning incense (at least she thought that was the source of the sickly-sweet aroma) that her eyes flooded with tears and she began to cough uncontrollably.
"Can I get you something, Ms. Godz?" The faithful Gary was at her elbow, his round face barely visible through the roiling smoke. "Some water? Organic fruit nectars? A beer?"
"Whatever," Peez croaked. He vanished into the mist only to return almost immediately with a gold goblet.
"Beer," he said as she raised the cup to her lips. "We have a highly authentic microbrewery on the premises that—"
He got a faceful of microbrew when Peez spritzed out her first taste of Horus Lite. "Dear gods, what was that stuff?" she gasped.
From somewhere deep in the heart of the pungent clouds there came a giggle and someone said: "That is what we like to call an acquired taste."