Gilded Latten Bones

41

With Kolda and the healer gone to see the Dead Man there wasn't much for me to do with Morley. And it was almost time for the ratwomen.

I decided to cultivate my atrophied social skills. But only a handful of guests remained. The healer, Kolda, and Playmate were in with the Dead Man. The rest were in Singe's office. Jon Salvation was talking up his next play. I checked the corners and under Singe's desk. Still no Winger. How did he manage?

The Dead Man's special student, Penny Dreadful, hadn't fled when I turned up. There had been enough witnesses for her to feel safe.

My, how she had grown!

You notice these things when you're male and still alive.

Morley's longtime associate Sarge was there, too. He looked lost. He looked like somebody just poisoned his kitten.

I snagged the last available chair, beckoned Sarge, indicated my willingness to share the contents of a pitcher clearly in need of refurbishing. Sarge was slumped on a chair in a corner not occupied by Saucerhead Tharpe's or Singe's office furniture. He brightened slightly and dragged his chair over.

"How is the restaurant managing without our boy?"

"We don't need no barkin' from Morley to make dat work, Garrett. We been in da racket so long da business rolls on like a mill wheel turnin'. But he's our frien', too. An' none of us know what we'll do if'n he don't make it t'ru dis."

"Belinda has probably made you crazy trying to figure out what Morley was up to when he got hurt, but. ."

"Dat's for sure. But she don't listen to what nobody tells her so she ain't never gonna get nowhere. She's one a dem people what figures out ahead a time what dey're gonna believe, den dey don't never hear nothin' dat disagrees."

I'd known Belinda longer than I liked to remember and more intimately than the world needed to know. She had huge intellectual flaws. Willful disdain of facts was never one of those. "For sure? Like how?"

"Well, you know, Morley don't got a lot a use for his et'nic roots. He's a dark elf, but, yeah? So what? He's in business in a human city an' half da people dere, dey don't know dat, can't tell dat, an' maybe don't need ta know dat if'n dey're da kind what gives a shit about dat."

I nodded. Sarge's dialect was thicker than usual but I was following him. He was saying Morley wasn't one for living in the past. "Did something change?" He had been found in that zone where greater TunFaire fades into the neighborhood known as Elf Town. Folk there, who never saw a house in their home country, live in tenements twelve to a room and insist that they'll never put the old ways and old tongue behind them.

"Sumptin' did. Maybe dat bint what his folks arranged him ta marry came ta town."

"I thought he bought his way out of that a couple years ago."

"We all t'ought dat. Maybe he just wished he did."

Jon Salvation joined us, uninvited. He planted himself in front of me, hands on his skinny little girl hips. "Garrett, you have to help me."

Story of my life. "I can't afford to invest in one of your plays. And I'm busy, here."

"I don't need investors. I have people lined up to buy into anything I put on. I stick with the Weiders because they give me artistic control. But you're the only one I can count on to make my next project a success."

I forgot Sarge and Morley briefly. Pilsuds Vilchik had presented me with a grand conundrum. No way could a street operator like me assure the success of a stage drama. Unless he wanted me to sell seats at knifepoint. Or maybe he wanted Winger kept out of his hair.

"Where is Winger?"

"Getting into mischief somewhere." He shrugged. "What I want is for you to get Tinnie to come back. She's perfect for the lead in The Faerie Queene."

"You want to cast Tinnie as a fairy? Man, that's a stretch. She is way too substantial." That wisp Furious Tide of Light was far more suitable.

"That's the point. I'm not doing fairy-tale fairies. They won't be ethereal. They'll be like elves, only from a realm at right angles to our own. Tinnie's coloring and attributes, her stature and sharp attitude, even her freckles, make her the perfect Mathilde."

"Will this go on at the World?"

"Main stage, expanded. This will be my biggest hit yet, Garrett."

"Tinnie doesn't get along with Heather Soames."

"I'll make them get along."

I liked his confidence.

He said, "Tinnie is Mathilde but I will send her packing if she behaves the way she did before. You don't need to tell her that. I'll make it clear at first rehearsal."

Interesting times were headed our way. "Look at you getting all self-confident and assertive. What happened to the Remora we knew and loathed?"

"He found his passion. Are you going to pitch Mathilde to Tinnie?"

"No."

"What? Why not?"

"I'm committed to my own passion. That will keep me here with my injured friend. If you want Tinnie, head on over to Factory Slide. Or, better, catch her at work. Go in the afternoon. She'll be sick of accounting. I can give you a letter to get you past the guards."

"If that's the way it has to be. Would you be interested in a small role? I need a banged up hulk to play the faithful old soldier. ."

"Jon, you need to come at me some other time. I was involved in an important discussion with Sarge when you horned in."

The playwright goggled. He had lost his appreciation of direct talk.

People did talk to the Remora that way, back when. They talked to Pilsuds Vilchik that way in the once upon a time. They didn't talk that way to the town's hottest celebrity today.

Sarge volunteered, "I'd make a good fait'ful old sojer what's been banged aroun' enough ta have some character."

And there was another reason Jon Salvation felt free to unleash his inner dick. People put up with it because he might cast them in a play.