Hero, of course, knew something was up. Hero always knew. Maybe she saw the way I watched her Face when there was an event and we all had to do the public thing.
Meanwhile I could see the way that Hero’s Face looked at my Face. There was no way this was going to end well. So I gave up on raw eggs and virtue and love. Fell right back into the old life, the high life, the good, sweet, sour, rotten old life. Was it much of a life? It had its moments.
“Oh, shit,” Hero says. “I think I’ve made a terrible mistake. Help me, . Help me, please?”
She drops the snake. I step hard on its head. Nobody here is having a good night.
“You have to give me the code,” I say. “Give me the code and I’ll go get help.”
She bends over and pukes stale champagne on my shoes. There are two drops of blood on her arm. “It hurts,” she says. “It hurts really bad!”
“Give me the code, Hero.”
She cries for a while, and then she stops. She won’t say anything. She just sits and rocks. I stroke her hair, and ask her for the code. When she doesn’t give it to me, I go over and start trying numbers. I try her birthday, then mine. I try a lot of numbers. None of them work.
—
I chased the same route every day for that month. Down through the woods at the back of the main guesthouse, into the Valley of the Girls just as the sun was coming up. That’s how you ought to see the pyramids, you know. With the sun coming up. I liked to take a piss at the foot of Alicia’s pyramid. Later on I told Alicia I pissed on her pyramid. “Marking your territory, ?” she said. She ran her fingers through my hair.
—
I don’t love Alicia. I don’t hate Alicia. Her Face has this plush, red mouth. Once I put a finger up against her lips, just to see how they felt. You’re not supposed to mess with people’s Faces, but everybody I know does it. What’s the Face going to do? Quit?
But Alicia has better legs. Longer, rounder, the kind you want to die between. I wish she were here right now. The sun is up, but it isn’t going to shine on me for a long time. We’re down here in the cold, and Hero isn’t speaking to me.
What is it with rich girls and pyramids, anyway?
—
In hieroglyphs, you put the names of the important people, kings and queens and gods, in a cartouche. Like this.
Stevie
Preeti
Nishi
Hero
Alicia
Liberty
Vyvienne
Yumiko
—
“Were you really going to do it?” Hero wants to know. This is before the snake, before I know what she’s up to.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Why?”
“Why not?” I say. “Lots of reasons. ‘Why’ is kind of a dumb question, isn’t it? I mean, why did God make me so pretty? Why size four jeans?”
There’s a walk-in closet in the burial chamber. I went through it looking for something useful. Anything useful. Silk shawls, crushed velvet dresses, black jeans in the wrong size. A stereo system loaded with the kind of music rich goth girls listen to. Extra pillows. Sterling silver. Perfumes, makeup. A mummified cat. Noodles. I remember when Noodles died. We were eight. They were already laying the foundations of Hero’s pyramid. The Olds called in the embalmers.
We helped with the natron. I had nightmares for a week.
Hero says, “They’re for the afterlife, okay?”
“You’re not going to be fat in the afterlife?” At this point, I still don’t know Hero’s plan, but I’m starting to worry. Hero has a taste for the epic. I suppose it runs in the family.
“My Ba is skinny,” Hero says. “Unlike yours, . You may be skinny on the outside, but you have a fat-ass heart. Anubis will judge you. Ammit will devour you.”
She sounds so serious. I should laugh. You try laughing when you’re down in the dark, in your sister’s secret burial chamber — not the decoy one where everybody hangs out and drinks, where once — oh, God, how sweet is that memory still — you and your sister’s Face did it on the memorial stone — under three hundred thousand limestone blocks, down at the bottom of a shaft behind a door in an antechamber that maybe somebody, in a couple of hundred years, will stumble into.
—
What kind of afterlife do you get to have as a mummy? If you’re Hero, I guess you believe your Ba and Ka will reunite in the afterlife. Hero thinks she’s going to be an Akh, an immortal. She and the rest of them go around stockpiling everything they think they need to have an excellent afterlife. The Olds indulge them. The girls plan for the afterlife. The boys play sports, collect race cars or twentieth-century space shuttles, scheme to get laid. I specialize in the latter.
The girls have ushabti made of themselves, give them to each other at the pyramid dedication ceremonies, the sweet sixteen parties. They collect shabti of their favorite singers, actors, whatever. They read The Book of the Dead. In the meantime, their pyramids are where we go to have a good time. When I commissioned the artist who makes my ushabti, I had her make two different kinds. One is for people I don’t know well. The other shabti is for the girls I’ve slept with. I modeled for that one in the nude. If I’m going to hang out with these girls in the afterlife, I want to have all my working parts.
Me, I’ve done some reading, too. What happens once you’re a mummy? Grave robbers dig you up. Sometimes they grind you up and sell you as medicine, fertilizer, pigment. People used to have these mummy parties. Invite their friends over. Unwrap a mummy. See what’s inside.
Maybe nobody ever finds you. Maybe you end up in a display case in a museum. Maybe your curse kills lots of people. I know which one I’m hoping for.
—
“ ,” Yumiko said, “I don’t want this thing to be boring. Fireworks and Faces, celebrities promoting their new thing.”
This was earlier.
Once Yumiko and I did it in Angela’s pyramid, right in front of a false door. Another time she punched me in the side of the face because she caught me and Preeti in bed. Gave me a cauliflower ear.
Yumiko’s pyramid isn’t quite as big as Stevie’s, or even Preeti’s pyramid. But it’s on higher ground. From up on top, you can see down to the ocean.
“So what do you want me to do?” I asked her.
“Just do something,” Yumiko said.
I had an idea right away.
—
“Let me out, Hero.”
We came down here with a bottle of champagne. Hero asked me to open it. By the time I had the cork out, she’d shut the door. No handle. Just a keypad.
“Eventually you’re going to have to let me out, Hero.”
“Do you remember the watermelon game?” Hero says. She’s lying on a divan. We’re reminiscing about the good old times. I think. We were going to have a serious talk. Only it turned out it wasn’t about what I thought it was about. It wasn’t about the movie I’d made. The erotic film. It was about the other thing.
“It’s really cold down here,” I say. “I’m going to catch a cold.”
“Tough,” Hero says.
I pace a bit. “The watermelon game. With Vyvienne’s unicorn?” Vyvienne’s mother is twice as rich as God. Vyvienne’s pyramid is three times the size of Hero’s. She kisses like a fish, fucks like a fiend, and her hobby is breeding chimeras. Most of the estates around here have a real problem with unicorns now, thanks to Vyvienne. They’re territorial. You don’t mess with them in mating season.
Anyway, I came up with this variation on French bullfighting, Taureau Piscine, except with unicorns. You got a point every time you and the unicorn were in the swimming pool together. We did Licorne Pasteque, too. Brought out a side table and a couple of chairs and set them up on the lawn. Cut up the watermelon and took turns. You can eat the watermelon, but only while you’re sitting at the table. Meanwhile the unicorn is getting more and more pissed off that you’re in its territory.