Beth Dewdrop finished her second circuit of the Off-Central Park reservoir and staggered over to a park bench, sweaty and blown after her 7-½ mile run. After several long swigs from her water bottle, she leaned back on the bench and let her thoughts run free. Her planned visit to the Parodiopolis Museum of Modernist Art no longer had any interest. In fact, all of her plans seemed trivial. Something great, meaningful, intense was moving in the shadows of her mind, something that could transcend the drudgery of her graduate program at the University of Southern North Dakota (at Hoople) and make a different woman of her. Leaning her golden-curled head back as far as it would go, Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop gazed at the passing clouds and let her soul rise toward the infinite.
And then, light as cotton candy and as intensely sweet, it came to her. Her great-uncle’s papers were a mere diversion, a feint. But hidden among them was a key, clear only if one weren’t looking for it, to at least one of his achievements. All she had to do was grasp it – and obtain a lot more money to turn the lock and make it a reality. Inspired, Beth lifted her aching body from the bench and headed for her hotel, almost skipping in her excitement. If money was all she required, there were plenty of places around Parodiopolis to get it. All she needed was some hired help.
Two hours later, Beth alighted from a taxi and stared at the elegant, Art-Deco themed building in the center of Parodiopolis’ crowded Mangatown. As if Art Deco in the midst of Oriental-themed temples and Ginza-bar knockoffs were not strange enough, the building was entirely pink. Salmon-colored doors contrasted with powder-puff pink walls; purple-rose windows complemented a dusty sunset-colored roof. Shaking her head, Beth Dewdrop stepped up to the door, ignoring the burly guards on each side, and entered.
“I’m Beth Dewdrop. I’m here to have lunch with Ms. Masamune,” she explained to the receptionist.
After consulting her computer monitor, the black-haired young woman snapped, “Ms. Masamune has no appointment with you, Ms. Dewdrop. Please leave, before I have to ask my associates to assist you.” She motioned to four tall, bulky men in dark suits, each missing half of the small finger of his left hand. They silently surrounded the unexpected visitor.
This was not going as planned, Beth realized. To her own surprise, though, instead of asking for a break or meekly leaving the building, she upped the stakes. “Do you think Akiko Masamune entrusts you with all of her meetings? Why else would she have an open appointment at lunch today? Bring me to her at once, before I mention your insolence to her.”
The receptionist directed a keen stare to Beth, who returned it almost with non-chalance. Rattled enough to doubt her own instincts, the receptionist rang the Yakuza ruler’s personal assistant, while the goons backed off slightly, in a show of respect. To the mild surprise of the receptionist and sheer shock for Beth, the girl rose from her chair and bowed to their unexpected guest. “A thousand pardons, Ms. Dewdrop, you are expected for lunch. Please accept my profound apologies, and my finger is yours, should you require it.”
“No need,” replied Beth in a grand manner. “Your trivial discourtesy was in your employer’s service, and is forgotten. Perhaps though, you can arrange for a more appropriate escort for me than these guards?”
“Immediately, Ms. Dewdrop,” the receptionist simpered, and a Japanese young woman in a white kimono with a pink obi appeared and made her bow to Beth. She inclined her head a trifle, and then followed the young woman to a sitting room decorated in white and blue. Against it, the riot of pink clothing that Akiko Masamune wore was even more noticeable.
“Ms. Masamune,” Beth began.
“Oh, don’t be so formal,” came Akiko Masamune’s reply. “You’d think I was some sort of bank manager or something. Call me Akiko, would you? And sit down here next to me. Standing is no way to meet a new friend, after all.”
“Thank you, Akiko. And you should certainly call me Beth. Although my full name is Elizabeth Dewdrop, and I’m not even from Parodiopolis.”
“Yes, yes, I know all about you, Beth. It was so sweet of you to come to see me, a total stranger. I would never have done that myself, you know.”
“Thank you, Akiko. It was very gracious of you to see me without an appointment, even if you knew about my family. And you have such a beautiful room here.”
The two women continued with their small talk for a while, until lunch was brought in. “Moroccan chicken and couscous with Italian salad? Not quite what I would expect, Akiko, but it looks delicious.”
“Why, thank you, Beth. I’m sure you’ll like it. Conventionality is so limiting, isn’t it?”
“You have a point there, darling.” Beth took a forkful of couscous.
“I’m so glad you feel that way, Beth. When I had my people look into what you have been doing, they found such a predictable person. Hard worker, honest, loves children, whatever. I wondered whether you would ever turn into an interesting person. And then you just walk into my office, and I said to myself, there must be something I’m missing about reliable, dull Miss Elizabeth Dewdrop. And you know, sweetness, I still haven’t figured that out. Why did you really invite yourself to lunch with me?”
Beth took a sip of wine and looked over at her hostess. “How direct of you, Akiko. Well, there’s no reason to beat around the bush. I’ve decided to do better for myself. To let the unconventional side of my nature out for a while. Unfortunately, as I think about it, that means I need a sizable sum of money.”
“And you thought I might want to help you out?”
“No, darling. The kinds of plans I have don’t allow for placing myself in debt to someone else, even someone as understanding and kind as you are. No, I not only need a lot of cash, it has to be the kind of cash without strings on it, as it were. There are plenty of places to find it around Parodiopolis; I just need a little bit of help – some muscle, as it were. And they don’t have to be attractive or intelligent or superpowered or anything like that. I just need a half-dozen henchmen who will obey me for an hour or so.”
“How interesting, darling. But I got out of the rent-a-goon business a week after I took, er, came to my present position. It’s so messy, and I can’t be sure what people will do with my minions. Not that you, of course, would try to do something embarassing, or worse, mind you.”
“Well, if you’re not interested, I suppose I could try for dinner with Mr. Flask. And I do have a distant family relationship with Count Fokker that I could call on. But it would be so much nicer to be working with someone more in tune with me, true?”
“It’s always better working with an intelligent woman, Beth. What did that woman in England say? ‘If you want to talk about something, get a man; if you want something done, get a woman’? And I’ll tell you right now, the Lynchpin’s contempt for active women is only exceeded by his insistence that nobody else can do anything in Gothametropolis York. And Count Fokker? Darling, the only thing shorter than his happy stick is his attention span. Of course, there are some freelancers out there, like Anvil Man, but they are going to insist on cash up front. Cash, sweetness, that you really don’t have.”
“You have checked me out, haven’t you? But if you know so much about me, why did you have me to lunch if you aren’t interested in what I intend to do?”
“Well, it might be that it’s so rare for an intelligent girl to want to have lunch with me. But you’re right, Beth, I am interested in your plans. You are something new and unpredictable, unlike Fokker and Flask and all those other boring men I have to deal with. But darling, you really have to level with me if you expect me to lend you any of my brutes for your little operation. And of course, there must be a financial consideration for me.”
“Of course. It would be crude, however, to get into that now, before you’ve had a chance to listen to my plans.”
“If you insist, darling. Why don’t we take our drinks and take a little stroll in my garden, out there, while you fill me in, hmm?”
And so they did.
As sunset approached, Beth Dewdrop once again stepped to the top of the Divorcees’ Drop bridge, bearing a small box. She leaned over the parapet, opening the box and shaking out fragments of her credit cards, her driver’s license and her university ID. “Goodbye, boring old Beth Dewdrop,” she murmured. “Hello, Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo, mistress of great things.”
She paused for a moment, as if listening. “There ought to be some sort of fanfare for an announcement like that,” she thought. “Or maybe I should develop some sort of evil laugh.”
Playing the part of Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo:
J. Jonah Jerkson
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE
ool-43570953.dyn.optonline.net (67.87.9.83) U.S. Network
Windows XP (0.69 points)
