In Room 441, where a gladiator sits, fanned by gold-toothed attendants and smelling of freshly picked olives, his communicator sounds, interrupting the private string quartet’s performance. It’s the same contrat received by the lounging tattooed mobsters in the Tenth Floor’s tepid pool, arguing about seniority, nude and hungover. And the assassin disembarking his chartered fishing vessel, the aquacraft’s middling cargo of bream yet to be gutted, as well as the chittering, cocktail-sharing assassins who review the contract’s terms as they share manicures in the Sixth Floor’s lounge, whispering in shrill tones, pining for further pomegranate purée bellinis.
Smiles eke across mouths and maws before acceptances are filed by all parties, digital signatures of block-chained commitment securing much-needed loans and cash infusions for all visiting professionals hired.
The Punta del Muso, during its hundreds years of existence, lodges an average of twelve such contrats per cycle. Thirty-six contracts per cycle during times of unruliness—fights usually characterized by personal arguments or ancient family vendettas coming to roost at inopportune moments. The highest number of consecutive sub-contract signatories is pegged to ages ago, immediately after The Flush, where just north of nine hundred visitors and tourists were compensated to prevent a hostile takeover from the neighboring Department of La Salle, the whole bloody affair remembered as Le Massacre de la Sant-Dévote.
But those were the archaic times.
Greed ruled before the technology à présent. Closed-door dealings were crassly beset in public against the better judgement of newly minted gangsters-cum-governors. The families have since reconciled, united in the comforting culture of kick-backs, where violence is eschewed in favor of business, to the pleasure of the galaxy’s visiting criminals.
And so, as a warning, the memory of the event ubiquitous, as evidenced through commemoration à la mosaic, one set by the locally-born Supra-Impressionist artist Loise Noleau III, Duchesse du Douzième Étage, caked on the Casino’s First Floor men’s restroom wall. It reaches nearly a story in height. Triangular tesserae, kiln-fired into deep reds and dark blues, explode like grenade shrapnel across the piece between imported seashells. Important generals, once gangsters, hold hands in benediction. They’re bathed in aureole, the nine worthies, a triad of triads in bespoke suits dutifully defending their territory.
The accompanying scroll beneath proclaims for all Fontvieillians, visitors, civilians, whomever taking a leak:
DON’T MESS UP A GOOD THING
---
Yet the One-Armed Man’s hook collides with the Underboss’s plush flesh.
Venturi tortoiseshell sunglasses cut streaks in the side of his balding head, splattering blood like a caught fish’s lips. Before the Underboss and his toupée hit the ground, he’s already unconscious, stepped over by Fez, who plunges towards you, polished white teeth bared beneath bushy beard, arm wound up for a punch.
He’s slow. Built top-heavy, brim of his Fez reaching a quarter-meter above your forehead. Picture-perfect gluttony matched to your inebriation. Unarmed, you notice, making you flinch, your fight-or-flight pausing for further information to be presented.
This isn’t a gladiator, some seasoned fighter from the pits. Nor is he high society, the hoi oligoi of hard-drinking cats with mewling conspiracies and papier-mache petulance. His steps are uneven, meandering as they approach, as if he regrets the punch thrown only moments earlier by his One-Armed companion, as if he’s reluctant to fight at all.
Recognizing a weakness, you stand tall for the first time in your life. Arms wide at the shoulders, you invite attack as a certain mare might do, preparing for Fez’s tackle that enters into your stomach. Out-of-style suit on out-of-style suit, he lifts you from the marble flooring and into the air, momentum from his laborious sprint towards you.
Luckily, the soft green padding of a baccarat table cushions your fall. Your shoulders crack against chips, scattering unaware players. Drinks spill, stems splitting on the floor as gamblers are ripped from the Casino’s trance, banking away from the fight, hollering with the confused commotion only found in public violence.
But there’s no soft landing for Ø.
Not for her, as she side-steps the errant swing of a One-Armed Man’s hook-hand. It’s ivory set, whistling through the air, blunted at its tip, but still able to pierce thinner skin. Her hip collides with a poker table’s marble exterior, bruising beneath her pelt.
There’s never any soft landing for her enemies, either, as the One-Armed Man knows.
He remembers the descent towards Salaam’s oases. Slow. Gravity tore at the Jazan, her exterior buckling and cracking like pistachio shells under fingernails, oxygen igniting in lower decks and popping like champagne, atmosphere cooking the bridge as him and the other survivors braced for impact on the sandy surface below.
As he shuffled away from the Jazan’s wreckage, only a third of the vessel surviving, her nuclear engines sputtering and imploding, burning nearby dunes to glass, he didn’t mind the compound-fractures. Nor the concussions. Or what was left of his mangled left arm, cracked ulna exposed in the desert sun, forearm and digits pulverized to mangled organic matter, cooked by the flaming metal, leaving him sobbing with pain, his footsteps dragging through the sand, making banking, arcing, crimson-stained paths like khatt islami calligraphy.
If anything, he was grateful.
It’s why he’s abstained from drinking and gambling for the remainder of his short life. For real this time, Alhamdulillah. The second chance at life has changed the One-Armed Man. He’s lost what was once a characteristic scowl, his newfound expressive emotions too joyful to be contained any longer.
And during these years, as one of the Yassidi Waqf’s minor chieftains, he’s never expected anything. No backbiting or scheming, clan politicking and arrogance kept to a manageable minimum. He’s been temperate with emotion and wise with action, just like the Prophet, as all righteous men should strive to be.
But now, that mare’s back.
She’s not plastered atop a smoking digital screen, shooting daggers through holographic receivers, silently fluttering with static above the oasis planet as round after round of hyper-sped projectile craters against the Jazan’s brittle hull, severing life support, vaporizing below-deck galley slaves into smithereens. Nor is the mare digital, her wanted ads burnt into his memory, embedded at the base of his skull along with tungsten shrapnel, her list of crimes paired with portraits of a bloodshot eyes and scowling face, mind spezie-shredded, the One-Armed Man’s nightmarish survival but a single line on a galactic rap-sheet claiming lives to upwards of hundreds or thousands.
Ø’s real.
Most importantly, as the unconscious Underboss can attest, within punching distance.
Moreover, she’s flat-footed. Out of place and garish, with manicured hooves and styled curly mane. Soft, done up in her custom-fitted dress of artsy crimson handprints. An advertisement for a murderer. The mare’s a living, breathing, alcoholic reminder of blood debts left forgotten in default.
Ones once written off by a particularly pent-up One-Armed Man.
Ø’s realization comes in the form of a confused growl that escapes her coral lips. Dutchie, Charlie, they must’ve gotten the targets wrong. Your clowns aren’t Cimraan clan footsoldiers, her allies from long ago, just one side of the kaleidoscopic insurgency where she began her privateering career.
No, they’re the opposition. Vengeful ghosts from her mercenary days. The khat-chewing targets she took joy in spacing, who, like all factions with a vested desire for survival, hold grudges, even towards hired help like privateers.
“Who cares?” Ø can hear Dutchie’s dismissal, mewling from behind new Chamonix X-I sunglasses, half-drowned in bitter quinquina, feline arms contorting, joints popping above her head, plastered, beneath the mid-afternoon sun, seafoam bubbling at the yacht’s edge with a maw reeking of blue-packaged cigarettes, “they all look the same.”
The mare keeps her distance, shuffling backwards into a trot, digits gripping the ruffled fabric hiding her thighs.
The mare keeps her distance. She lingers under the One-Armed Man’s spotlight, staring him down. While your struggle with Fez, turns animalistic, the both of you scratching and yowling, Ø’s hand fishes into her dress, returning with her Narragansett.
It’s a bluff, she knows.
And down the barrel of her six-shooter, her adversary’s face contorts, eyes pursing, teeth dragging across lips. Yet, he doesn’t flinch. He’s sober like her, calculating the odds. Of probability of a loaded firearm breaching the Casino’s sanctuary, of the willingness of the mare to pull the trigger, to perforate him with nuclear-tipped shrapnel and catch herself a one-way black-bagging once security arrives.
And she’s a good shot, he’s learned from their last meeting at orbit.
But for all rationality that floods the One-Armed Man’s mind, it’s beaten back. Fanned, blown away like a sandstorm. Howling against his ears, outside thoughts drowned out, years of calm disrupted, the phantom pain beginning at his shoulder becoming unbearable. It’s an insatiable sort of mania, one Ø knows too well, his body yearning for some sort of violence-induced release that bubbles from his heels, ending at the top of his bald head.
It’s a feeling she recognizes.
“Sonuva,” she spits.
Her left arm whips. She pitches the Naragansett. It’s a fastball. The One-Armed Man ducks, the six-shooter’s arc ending at a geriatric widow of a successful arms’ dealer, beak cracking in two, knocking the old bird to the ground.
She’s got distance, but no weapon, and rather than make a stand, she decides to split. Spitting and swearing, immobilized in her satin and puresilk costume, she dodges the jeering onlookers. It’s a maze of well-to-do, knocking over sparkling wines and charming colognes, bouncing between coattails.
But there’s only so much real estate.
It’s a wooden railing that stops her escape short. Sanded mahogany, posts carved into contorting short-hair caryatids. Below her, down a half-story, is the partitioned-off area for the high rollers and their private crap games.
Below, the men smoke hand-rolled cigars in pinstripe suits, emulating the gangsters of old, partaking in the Fontvieillian traditions purposefully shed by the local gentry. Smoke billows from their lips as they squat shooting dice, hands on bony knees, shooting in the sunken recesses of perfectly lain concrete corners as the ancien régime had once done before The Flush. Today, while enemies offworld, beset against one another in poisonous organized crime, they lavish themselves in Fontvieille’s generous truce.
For some, such gambling is pilgrimage, touching forgotten old country roots, dice acting as carefully thrown indulgences in return for ancient wisdom and humility of long-forgotten wise guys. For others, beneath their smoke-stained fedora brims, pocketing chips worth a fortune, it’s a killing.
But above, with Ø, their wives lounge.
Some with bloodshot eyes, other faces youthful and pouting, kept around out of necessity, Fontvieille’s attendants unable to accompany the adulterous husbands on the Casino floor. They venomously chitter, bragging of gifts from their criminal spouses, mentioning through sides of mouths business that, should they be accosted by law enforcement, they will claim to know nothing of. Between fistfuls of liquor and aerosolized opiates they glare at Ø, with her out-of-season outfit, hair too long, probably out of cash already.
They snort with contempt as they look her up-and-down, hooves to bloodied dress to scarred face, judging subconsciously whether she’d be a threat to their own marriages made out of businesslike necessity.
But under their contemptful gazes, looking to avoid further errant hook swings, Ø heaves herself onto the railing. Planting her flanks against the wood, she spins, dropping backwards nearly half-a-story. She lands and rolls, crêpe fabrics ripping under duress, scraping shoulder to hoof, splattering atop a game in progress, dice lodged in her ruffled dress. She shakes them loose as she stands, kicking them aside, wiping stinging, cut hands against her dress.
“Whoa!” a gangster sneers. “What’s the big idea? We’re playing, here!”
Crapshooters pause. They stand with indignation, pushing back hats, gripping priceless bespoke jackets over their shoulders, suspenders vintage, looted from graves or handed-down from boss to underboss through centuries of organized crime. Cigars and cigarettes never leave their lips as they chastise, throwing up hands in pitiful orans, chuffing in disjointed chorus, “such disrespect!”
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“The balls on this broad!” a fat one gesticulates towards piles of crumpled bills, “interruptin’ one of the Casino’s most sacred traditions. You know how much dough I had on that throw? Why, I oughta…”
“Toots,” another snarls, greasy hair and bulging eyes, “you’re costin’ us a lot of money right now, you know that?”
Ø’s unconcerned with mewling staffage. Following not far behind is the One-Armed Man. He points down to her, over the railing of the square pit, before pulling at his hook. His appendage purposely detaches, clattering along the marble tiling.
“Oh, look at this guy. Now we got ‘One-Arm Willie’ showin’ up.”
“You know I got a brother with one arm like that?” another in a fedora laughs. “He lost it gardening.”
Ø’s exit is blocked. The pit’s rear is defended by a face she’s never seen. It’s a familiar doorman. Your target, the protector of Room 1-121, Libaut-brand aviator sunglasses covering two bloodshot eyes. His dirty checkered sport coat hangs on his thin sunkissed shoulders as he slinks towards the mare on behalf of his superior at the railing.
“Hey, jamook,” the portly one spits, “this your goomah?”
“Schifosa is what she is! Cost me thirty large dropping in with that ugly mug of hers.”
“Pick up your dame and split, Jack,” another pouts, “and change your shirt while you’re at it. What’re you, a bum? Smarten up.”
Ø brushes past the wiseguys. They watch as her hooves clack against the unsanded concrete. Scratches against her palms sting, providing simulations of hardship, her knees skinned as is the gambling tradition.
For most, the concrete is nostalgic. An uncaring gray dripping red with like forgotten hoodlum backgrounds. At one point, these gangsters were young. Orphans with soft skin and broken smiles or part of galaxy-spanning criminal families-turned-governments. Once, they were bright-eyed apprentices, as any career begins.
Backgrounds notwithstanding, they were children with tongues caressing plasticwood toothpicks pricking gums, lodged between spaces for lost teeth. Pickpockets and message-boys. They’d gamble for crumpled sweets or scattered credits under the semi-watchful gazes of goodfellas and goomahs of yesteryear. Adult figures, survivors of kleptocratic livelihoods, pockmarked with small arms fire and holding memories of loss and betrayal. Future templates for their wards.
So more than one made man appreciates the nostalgic sight of Ø’s street fight saunter. Gnarled, scarred faces crack smiles, nodding their heads as the mare meets the Doorman, bouncing towards his slouch. Memories of saccharine shakedowns flood old bones as bookies remember their roots, reigniting their subconscious machinations of point-shaving, their collective conclusion settling a single spread.
They think the dame’s got stones.
“Look at this kid, the one in the jacket,” the crowd chastises. “Who does he think he is? Get your hands outta your pockets already!”
“Come on girlie, put him into the dirt. All ladylike, see?”
“Hey Paulie, I got your thirty large right here, on a knockout.”
“Before the éclair patrol can show up? Sure, I’ll take that.”
The mare’s hemline flutters. Ribbon on stuffy pure-silk ruffle is taught. Her diamond chest heaves massive breaths past corset’s rim, its twisted wire framing digging into her whiskey-filled stomach. Her arms are up, squared, left hand ready to joust. She knows it’s an uneven fight.
The Doorman lurches.
It’s his clumsy haymaker. One, then another, overextending past his torso, leaning into every punch, careening over his custom-made sable loafers and drooling savory baqlawa-tasting spit. The mare bats them away, circling, her dress’s threads splitting at the forearms as her opponent’s nails scrape against her sleeves, individual fabrics fraying, intermixing with tufts of pelt like a garden’s untrimmed weeds.
It’s only the first round of punches when Ø strikes.
Fist starting low, ending high, she uppercuts the Doorman. It’s a surprise, one that audibly clacks his teeth, making him tense at the spine. By the time he can stagger, the mare’s follow-up jabs send him to the floor, left fist colliding with right eye, splitting eyelid.
It’s a knockdown on the concrete, only a single flurry needed to beat down the doorman, sending the fedora’d crowd into a chorus of, “Oh, madone!”
“Attagirl,” laughs one, “that’s her, that’s my mare right there. What a beaut.”
“Somebody pinch me, I think I’m in love.”
“Easiest thirty large in my life,” one sneers. “Pay up, Paulie.”
“How ‘bout this,” the other pokes, cigar dipping from a sunken maw as he points above the railing towards the One-Armed Man. “Double or nothin’.”
Ø’s pursuer leans into the railing. His confident grins are wiped by scowls of stress, his right arm twisting over left, affixing a new prosthetic appendage in place of his hook with a click. It’s simple, metal. Recognizable to a veteran like Ø. A bayonet, serrated, an askari’s standard issue, welded at the base forearm, and with a flick, extending to full meter’s length.
“Oh!” one laughs, sufficiently entertained, relighting a cigar with joy.
“Here, sweetie,” another offers. He’s old, bespectacled, with two hundred years of larceny under his belt. A survivor of shakedowns and civil wars, his organs replaced and refitted so often that his enemies could call him Theseus. Elsewhere he’s the highest rung in his planetary hierarchy, his criminal consortium run with the inhuman greed and subpar efficiency of the average galactic bureaucracy.
But here on Fontvieille, thin legs straining against concrete, he leans on his cedarwood cane, tipped with decadent silver playing card motifs, which he recently looted from a shipment of weapons off Tiangong. It’s an antique, from before The Flush.
He braces himself on his knees, letting the cane clatter across the concrete.
“Big T, what’re you doin?”
“What am I doin’? What’s it look like I’m doin’?” the mobster staggers. His weak kick rolls the cane to the mare’s hooves, against her manicured keratin. “Just gonna let a lady get whacked here on these most sacred of grounds? Come on, hold me up, I wanna see this scrap.” His colleagues laugh, hoisting him by the underarms, making sure to relight the cigar at his lips, letting him chuff, “hundred large on the broad.”
“Whoa! Mont-seer Moneybags, over here,” a compatriot laughs from a whisky-stinking mouth, hoisting one side of the geriatric.
“You don’t normally gotta pay that much for some tail, do you?” another hoists.
“Yeah, I thought you’s got a wife.”
“See, that’s why he’d pay so much,” one sneers.
“A piece of tail with mug like that?” the man heaves with geriatric breaths, frame supported arm-in-arm with his temporary comrades. “That’s no girlie. Wouldn’t even be a blind man’s goomah. See, if you’re that ugly, you gotta fight to survive,” he laughs, cigar wilting in his mouthful of stolen teeth that fell off the back of a truck, “come on girlie, sic ‘im. Make me a rich man.”
The mare’s spiteful nickering is cut short by the One Armed Man’s drop. Like her, he’s clumsy in his landing. At contact with the concrete, he clatters onto all fours, his cornflower blue blazer ripping at the shoulder hem, off-crème turtleneck dirtying, unseen scrapes drawing blood at his elbows that will bleed through, ruining the neo-cashmere.
But by the time he’s up, linen pants scuffed, he’s en garde.
“There we go, now this one’s got some fight in him,” one nods, “night and day, these two guys, night and day. This’ll be a good matchup.”
“See that? That whatcha-ma-call-it he’s got? I gotta get me one a’ those.”
“Allez, already, you two lovebirds, you think we wanna stand around all day?”
The bout begins, the One-Armed Man thrusting his serrated metal appendage, aimed for the mare’s sternum. She bats away the swipe with a cane’ swing, parrying his advance, hooves clacking backwards, hustling for some sort of reprise. Wood splinters from her borrowed weapon, each of the One-Armed Man’s balestra assaults threatening to cut the hardwood cudgel in two.
Ø feints. Left, right, shoulders shimmying. The One-Armed Man overextends, opening himself up to a riposte. Reinforced wrist cord in hand, Ø whips the cane, smacking her opponent across his neck. He coughs, eyes wide, silvered heel cutting a gash across his collarbone, ripping his turtleneck’s plushy fabric and the thin black skin beneath. He’s left stumbling, fleshy hand scraping against concrete to a chorus of jeers.
But before Ø can advance, to deliver her coup de grace, two hands grip her shoulders. They’re bloodstained, ripping her backwards. It’s the doorman, bleeding from mouth and eye, refusing to go down without a fight.
The mare’s happy to deliver.
She shakes. Tail whipping, whinnying, her dress’s neckline splitting under the assault. The doorman is flung to the concrete, splattering at the feet of the wise guys.
They laugh, wolf-whistling as her cane’s shaft beats into his chest. Vertically, it careens down, once, twice, six, seven times, cracking ribs, snapping bone as the doorman’s weak protesting arms cover his already beaten head. Some gangsters double-over with joy, cachinnating, wiping away tears of drugged-out and enjoyment.
Their guffaws nearly cover the crack along the cane’s spine, wood finally splitting, half of the weapon clattering against the concrete.
“What’s the matter with you?” the shouts of anguish begin. “That’s an antique, you know that?”
Ø’s ungrateful retort is cut by the One-Armed Man’s return. Bloodied, sans-sport-coat, he rushes bayonet thrusting. She jumps, nearly rolling, bursting through the crowd of onlookers.
“Watch it!” they shriek, crawling over one another, avoiding the flinging serrated metal.
As the mare beats tracks, the One-Armed Man chasing in tow, a familiar voice rises.
“Hey, get back here!” it curses, “I got a lotta money on you!”
---
The gilded panopticon that is the Punta del Muso detects every hidden criminal offense. It analyzes each micro-crime offense in your vicinity; the stacks of chips splattered off tables, winning hands ruined in commotion, toppled decks of cards that that must be shuffled and re-shuffled to reproduce the pseudorandom probability distributions that keep the Casino winning.
But as in all situations where an authority’s answer to criminality is devoid of true discipline, bedlam spreads—with monocled alcoholics plucking deserted drinks at no cost while backs are turned, chuffing seductresses stuffing chips beneath hemlines with incriminating grins, rowdy fedora’d onlookers betting on fights not sanctioned, and therefore not fixed nor taxed.
As much as one may argue against such accusations, the incriminated lawyered-up and brabbling, they’re offenses nonetheless.
And so, Fontvieille’s panopticon reacts the way she knows, her disciplinary contracts printing like markers for credit—short-term, immediate, and predicated on multiple parties’ lack of forethought.
But as onlookers are contracted as Casino enforcers, whipping alcohol-flooded fists towards incriminated targets, tackling others over auto-bartenders’ platters, the contracts grow in number. A missed throw here, a spilled drink there, accidentally-committed micro-crimes mount. Populations for hunters, targets, and hunters-cum-targets increase an exponential whirlwind of digital paperwork and imaginary-yet-real lines of credit.
The woman behind you, a brebis, an ewe you’ve never noticed, with a gnarled face, manicured nails, custom-embroidered off-white eyepatch, and cut black bangs matching her simple dress, swings at you with a stolen baccarat paddle. Her contrat’s payment amounts to six complimentary bottles of bubbly in exchange for every major bone of yours broken.
Fresh from the Sixth Floor’s lounge, languid with cocktail doses, she misses.
She smacks the monocle of a roving alcoholic, breaking the twin flutes he double-fists, glass cutting into his cheek, creating yet another automatic contract for retribution; a disciplinary derivative that invites three more contractors into the fray with her as target, to be compensated with a comped evening at the Ninth Floor’s café.
As Fez throws a single punch, knocking the wind out of you, localized hyperinflation has begun to kick in, the asset squeeze affecting the local prices of two other Departments and threatening to temporarily prevent further immigration from off-planet due to exchange-rate unaffordability.
It’s the first punch he’s thrown. He’s winded already, sunglasses dipping from wide nose. So he grips your neck, pinning you to the table, peeling back the evergreen upholstery.
But your weak neck is too slippery, sweaty from drinking. And his hands are oily, too, nervous from watching the red-black-red roulette patterns and bleeding cash all cycle. You’ve enough leverage to grip his grimy throat with a single hand, slapping your other palm against the lenses of his sunglasses, pressing the frames into his forehead. Both your legs kick as you roll, aromatic khat leaking from his heaving lips, cologne-reeking beard caught between your fingers. Both his lenses pop from their brittle frame, revealing worried eyes.
It’s a weak display. But you’re unnoticed as you both hit the marble floor, painful yelping in duet. Around you is worse, more pitiable.
Subprime contrats have been doled out.
Aging hackers haphazardly whale on bankers’ mistresses, missing punches, dislocating thumbs, beaten in turn with purses lined with full flasks of alcohol and perfumes purchased at steep markup. Automated contracts leave squads of opera-glasses-toting octogenarians against spiked-out, blinded hitmen in exchange for comped, back-to-back showings of The Revue.
But no matter how quickly you and Fez scatter to your feet, he isn’t finished.
Through his mangled, lensless frames, he’s petrified. Sobered up, like you, against the realization that the situation may be spiraling beyond your capacity. Nonetheless, you go on the offense, fists raised, stealing from your mare’s memories.
His skin is soft before you reach his bones, your punches landing into cushy diaphragm. Missing, off-target in most cases, hitting against Fez’s lowest rib. Your weak wrist twangs with pain as you collide with his suit jacket’s gold buttons, cutting your knuckle against the inlaid metal Medusa motif, making your eyes water with pain.
He, too, balls fists, beating into your back, tearing into your suit. His doughy hands make contact, sure, knocking air from your lungs, making you fight the sensation to vomit, but they’re amateurish throws, too soft to make real marks. Against your fabric they barely make contact, careening off silk.
The both of you making no inroads, acting as just another disgusting display of incompetence on the Casino’s floor.
As you separate, the crowd around you careens. Bodies billow from table to table, shattering hundred-year-old hand-blown glasses, busting mahogany chairs placed there since The Flush. Auto-bartenders zip across their rails, attempting to avoid the surging fighters, disappearing behind tables, atop the bar, but in some cases finding themselves flattened by a tuxedo’d visitor currently fighting on contract.
But before you can reengage, Fez is horse-collared.
It’s a gladiator, freshly delivered from the Fourth Floor, smelling of artichoke brine. Like the shepherd’s hook, Fez is dragged backwards, off his legs, landing atop his spine with a groan. Before he can rub his mangled tailbone, he’s dogpiled by his new attacker, then stumbling onlookers. He yelps, throwing fleshy punches, avoiding errant kicks from strangers, caught in a roving free-for-all, one of many that have developed in the Casino’s commotion.
In the mass of black dresses and androgynous fashion, coat-tails and cocktails, he loses his Fez, becoming just another mangled gambler caught beneath invisible contrats.
With a hint of empathy, you’re free.
Learning from your opponent’s mistakes, you heave yourself atop a deserted bar, kicking down nearly-empty glasses, avoiding the hibernating auto-bartender. From your promontory, the bedlam is hypnotizing.
From one end of the marble floors to the other, beneath the Casino’s vaulted, chandeliered ceilings, where quadrangular frescoes show nymphs and minotaur locked in jitterbug, purloined Persephone listening to trunk music, the throngs of visitors wreak havoc. Stacks of chips disappear from view. Auto-bartenders are knocked from their tracks. It reeks of huffed cigars and stolen caviar, the natural conclusion for any vice-driven world.
You know Ø is out there somewhere.
Nestled in the corner, near the menacing golden doors of the Revue. There, in the stacks of silver menhir, slot machines stand like graveyard headstones. Within, decrepit gamblers lie perfectly still, emulating death, lingering all chthonic. But most importantly still spending, bleeding chips. Cigarettes waft between the stacks like incense, their smoke-signals drawing you closer, beckoning you to towards the Casino’s underworld.
So, you jump.
From bar to evergreen baccarat table, to the next desecrated corpse of a poker game, stepping over passed-out victims of violence. Some visitors dead, like a bearded stag at your feet, his piss-poor hand gratefully lost in the shuffle. Some others, bleeding like the drunken seductress on the nearby blackjack table, desperately need medical attention, the canine’s bloodied digits clawing at broken glass sticking from ribcage, her base needs yet to be queued up by the Casino’s automated medical systems.
But you trot, lunging over the floor-bound scuffles of talons scratching paws, ignoring the sounds of bespoke suit ripping and punches through top hat brims, all the haphazard attempts at discipline and submission doled out by a state with endless credit.
You feel the mare, you’re getting closer. She’s cold. Sweaty pelt stiffed against the metal slot machines. Shuffling at her hooves, looking forward, behind, pursued into the dense forest of buzzing lights and reflective silver. Hunted, for once.
Not to mention, sober.