The Things We Bury - Part 2: No Big Apocalypse [Completed]

Chapter 2: Unlikely Keys (Parts 4 & 5 of 7)

The photographers swarmed the area behind the velvet ropes the same way flies used to buzz at the screen of the porch door in mid-August, when Barbara Gracie was young. They teemed over each other, fighting for position. A noisy, disgusting mess of life, bouncing futilely off of a barrier for so long they had forgotten that they once wanted to get out.

She struggled not to squint at the flashbulbs and to keep an even pace despite the partial blindness. Barbara had lots of practice from those days at the courthouse. Just like then, she refused to let these parasites see any effect on her face—they and their actions were as inconsequential as house flies.

The photographers had been there every day of the trial, as though they expected her to undergo some metamorphosis and emerge a different woman. But she never changed. Even her access to wardrobe had been limited by the state, giving little variation to her appearance. The papers could have used the photos from the first day over and over and achieved the same result with a lot less effort. But despite the monotony, the paparazzi's enthusiasm never waned.

They were just as enthusiastic tonight, even though they were firing off their camera's blind to the identity of their target. The cameramen were merely hedging their bets that the woman in the immaculate black dress with her hair done up in a diamond clasp might prove to be someone famous.

The tract of plush carpeting led from the busy vaulted corridor of the mega-casino into Devastation.

Devastation was the place to be seen until the next trend setting restaurant opened in Vegas and made it passé. When that day came, the celebrities and the wealthy would abandon it and leave it to the tourist like picked over carrion.

The hostess at the door was dressed in veils held in place by golden chains as though she had just stepped out of some garish production of Salomé. Her face was made up like a runway model. The bright lipstick, thick eyeshadow, and outlandish fake eyelashes were almost certainly intended to be seductive, but it ended up looking clownish. When Barbara gave her name, the girl in her harem clothes curtsied and told her that her date was already seated.

There was a moment of disorientation as two turbaned footmen held open a pair of massive golden doors, revealing a wasteland. Sand swept across the floor and piled up like dunes against ruined buildings, crumbling columns, and grotesque statues. Barbara was taken along a torch lit path lined with carved figures of ancient gods that never were. There was the fanged skeleton with four arms and a set of wings; the woman with six breasts, goat legs, and a lizard head; the robed man with a sword in his talons and a head that resembled a starfish; and on and on they went, each one the product of a deranged imagination.

Beyond the statues a show was taking place in a ring skirted by tables. Brightly dressed acrobats danced and jumped frantically to the relentless beating of a kettle drum. But the diners seemed oblivious to their antics as they slurped oysters and poured drinks from frost covered bottles of vodka. 

Instead of taking Barbara to one of the tables by the performance, the hostess led her up a staircase built into the side of a collapsed pyramid. At the top there was a platform with square desert tents looking down on the festivities below. She was directed to one, which had red and white vertical stripes like a circus big top. With three sides draped in fabric, it was completely private from the rest of the restaurant.

Inside, Walt sat there on the silk cushions stroking his blond beard like a sultan. "Ah my dear, you look lovely." After greeting Barbara, he turned his smile to the hostess and inspected her like a hungry wolf gazing at a jackrabbit. His eyes seemed to peel back her barely-there outfit and she shrank under the gaze. With her eyes cast down, it was as though the illusion of her slave-girl costume had been made real.