Zeitgeist (30 page)

Starlitz sat down. Somehow his clothing had stained the silk divan.

“She didn’t even say hi to me,” Zeta said, her sunburnt face crumpling. “And she signed my arm once, and everything. She is such a star! I
loved
her.”

A loud military tramping came down a swirling flight of stairs.

“Jesus, you’re a pair of sad sacks.”

Starlitz looked up, twitching. The American One had landed. She wore a blue beret, a spangled leopard halter top, and ultrabaggy chemical-warfare drawstring pants.

“American One!” Zeta blurted, overcome with joy. “Dad, look! We’re saved!”

“Hi, kid,” said the American One. “Leggy, what are you doing here?”

“Waitin’ on the Man,” Starlitz muttered.

“Get up,” she ordered. The American One stuck out a sinewy coffee-colored hand, put a handcuff pincer-grip around his wrist, and yanked him from the divan. “Before you talk to Ozbey,
we
gotta talk. Seriously. Time for a high-level diplomatic conferral, homeboy.”

The American One herded Starlitz up the stairs. Zeta tagged behind. The three of them stepped through a shuttered door into the sunlight of a second-story palace balcony. Starlitz felt his jet-lagged pupils shrink in pain. He gripped the ornate wooden edge of the railing and gazed over the peacock-blue Bosphorus, a noble body of water with a slight irremovable sheen of spilled crude.

The American One absorbed a fresh deep breath and tucked a hair extension under the leather rim of her beret. “I bet you feel a lot better now, right?”

“Yeah, no, maybe. Thanks, American One.”

“It’s
Betsy
, remember?” she said. “Betsy Ross.” Mrs. Ross plucked a Marlboro from the red cardboard pack tucked in her drawstring waist. She tore off the cigarette’s filter, lit the stump, and leaned over the balcony. As an afterthought she held out the pack to Zeta. “Want one, kid?”

“Uh, no, thanks!” said Zeta, beaming with pride at the offer.

With a negligent backswing of her gym-toned leg, Mrs. Ross kicked the rose-colored palace wall. “This joint sure ain’t our usual crap G-7 road hotel. I mean, all that classy glassware, and tile, and the crystal chandeliers and stuff.… This place fuckin’ does your head in.”

“Yeah, it does.” Starlitz understood the overpowering spell of the palace, now that he was standing outside the building’s paralyzing semiotic grip.

“This is the most beautiful building I ever saw. Ever. It’s another world in there, it is fantastic. I thought Grace-land was high class, before I saw this place. Boy, what a cheap hick I used to be.” Mrs. Ross puffed at her ruptured cigarette, lids narrowing beneath their vivid sheen of cobra-green eye shadow. “Some very heavy shit goes down inside there, though. You don’t wanna see the basement of this place. It’s haunted.”

A Glastron speedboat approached the yali, its catenary bow cresting the water.

“This place is, like, Gonca’s little harem, man. We G-7 chicks are like just passin’ through here, but Gonca hangs out here, it’s home for her, they’re lettin’ her redecorate all the bedrooms with shit she buys down at the Covered Bazaar. Y’know something? Gonca’s
special
. Compared to her, we suck.”

“Well …” Starlitz hedged.

“Don’t bullshit me, man. We suck. We do. I know it. That’s like our job. We make a career of it. Those Moslem hillbillies on the road, they can’t imagine how good we are at that. We suck in ways that are, like, totally beyond their understanding. We fuckin’ break them and bury them with how bad we suck. That’s what I understand about the pop business now. I never got that part before, but now I really get it.” Mrs. Ross turned to stare at him, her eyes like the lambent flames from two Kuwaiti oilfields. “It’s a genius fuckin’ scam, man. It’s a world beater. I’m all for it.”

Starlitz said nothing.

“Not that you’re any prize, either, man. You’re in this shit right up to your neck. You stink of it to high heaven.”

Zeta, who had been listening with jaw-dropped astonishment to the solemn pronouncements of adults, flinched in anguish at this attack. She fled to the far end of the balcony, where she pretended great interest as the speedboat tied up at the dock below them.

Mrs. Ross edged nearer to Starlitz, lowering her voice. “But you know what? You
get it
. I
knew
you got it, the first time I saw you. I said to myself, Betsy, I said, this bad mofo here is your ticket out of the barracks, girl. You should listen to the recruiter here.
Be all you can be
. Know what I’m saying?”

“Absolutely, babe.” Starlitz felt obscurely proud.

“I’m not sayin’ G-7 is a good act, Leggy. It’s a shit act. But you know what? I’m new at the pop biz, so I had to pay some dues, and a shit job like G-7 was just what I needed. Now I can sing. I mean, I’m never gonna be Mahalia
Jackson, but I get the drill. I know what a chord is. I know what key to use. It’s not all that hard.”

Starlitz nodded. She was right. Great music was hard. Music that wasn’t all that musical wasn’t really all that hard.

Her voice vibrated with passion. She looked like she was about to burst out of her clothes, maybe right out of her skin. “Leggy, I need to be bigger than this. A big star for the whole wide world. Super big. Huge. I want to be a monster.”

“You know what that means, right, Betsy?”

“Yeah, it probably means I die young, fat, hooked, and stupid. But let me tell you something. I’ve been around the block with G-7. I just got off a pop tour through half of fuckin’ Islam. I’ve seen these solemn sons of bitches in their Ayatollah beards. I went eyeball to eyeball with them. I know what they mean. They are fuckin’ medieval. They’re a bunch of friggin’ tribal morons. There’s not room enough in the world for me and them. If I’m gonna be all I can be, those fuckin’ losers have got to shut up shop and go.”

She tossed her cigarette into the Bosphorus. “It’s not half enough just to nuke ’em—they’ve got to
lose everything they believe
. I know they hate me. There’s nothing they hate worse than an uppity bitch. Bein’ an uppity bitch, I got myself one truly effective attack—I strip down to my scanties and
sit on their face
. Just put my butt-naked ass right into their satellite TV screen, man. Just straddle their big, beardy, Koran-quotin’ lips. That scares the shit out of ’em. They’re brave, they can give a shit about air strikes from Russia or NATO, but this”—she slapped her left buttock—“this is the one thing they know they can’t survive.”

“Betsy, you ever heard of a national-security pitch called ‘Clash of Civilizations’?”

“I don’t read much.” She scowled. “So are you gonna help me out with my culture war here, or am I gonna have to settle your fucking hash too?”

“Yeah, no, maybe. I’m definitely with your basic story line. It’s way next-century.”

“Listen: I’m telling you this, ’cause I want you to know where I’m comin’ from. I am comin’ down hard on every channel. I am raining down out the sky,
everywhere
. This isn’t quite my time just yet, but I am what’s next. After Y2K the Whore of Babylon is on her fuckin’ way, Jack. And I don’t come to bring peace. Because I am a bombshell.”

Starlitz nodded helpfully. “What’s your career game plan, exactly?”

“Well, step one is to ditch Ozbey Effendi in there. I mean, Mehmetcik is a cool guy and all, he has great dope connections, his security guys take no shit from anybody, I admire all that. He’s super polite to me since I fucked his uncle the minister. But I need some solo career space here.”

“Betsy, you need a manager, a publicist, an accountant, and a lawyer. And somewhere down the list you need some hit music.”

“I got this DJ kid in Britain,” she said reluctantly, “he wrote me a love song.”

“DJ Dead White Eurocentric?”

She laughed. “Yeah. Him. Little Limey knob-twiddler.… I had a couple days off after Kyrgyzstan, so I flew over to his studio and I kinda introduced myself to him, and I kind of, uhm … well, I blew him. Okay? Dumb little fuck wants to
marry
me now. But he’s a good musician, though, right? The guy’s got a lame-ass stage name, but he can chart dance hits.”

“Yep. You can pick ’em. That guy is a studio wizard. He could turn you into a monster.”

“That’s good. That’s just great. I knew you would know about stuff like that.” Mrs. Ross scratched her armpit languidly. “I don’t think Mehmetcik’s gonna fuss too much if I take a powder from his rockin’ little regional scene here. I mean, I get his picture all right. The French One snorted horse, so he got himself a French Arab girl.
The Italian One had herself a nasty accident, so he got this Italian Albanian refugee.…”

“Go with the flow, babe.” Starlitz plucked a fountain pen from his jacket, ignoring the fact that airplane cabin pressure had caused it to hemorrhage ink down his shirt. “It so happens that I got the perfect promo guy for you. Big network guy. Super photographer. Name is Tim.”

“Tim what?”

“Tim from ECHELON.”

“How come people in this business never have real names?” Betsy accepted the phone number on a crumpled bank slip.

Attracted by a sudden bustle below, Starlitz peered over the balcony railing. The crew of the speedboat were unloading its contents. They were overseen by Mehmet Ozbey, who had arrived on the dock in spotless deck shoes, white duck trousers, and a double-breasted blue yachting blazer.

The narrow fiberglass hull of the speedboat was packed with a seemingly endless cargo of white calfskin valises. The valises were all the same shape and size, and they were coming out of the boat with smooth, industrial, machinelike regularity. There were dozens of valises, every one with the unique shoulder-wrenching heft of tightly packed cash. How on earth had Ozbey gotten so many white calfskin valises? Maybe he owned the factory.

“If I split tonight,” said Betsy cagily, “can you cover for me?”

“Yeah. I’m up for that.”

“See you around, then.”

Mrs. Ross tossed her glossy mane and turned to go. Zeta hurried over, face tight with anxiety. “Hey, wait! Don’t leave!”

Mrs. Ross hitched her pants. “Huh? Why not?”

“Because you’re from G-7! G-7 is like my favorite band, my favorite band in the whole world!”

Mrs. Ross looked at her with amused pity. “Okay, kid. I get the picture. So what do you want from me? My
autograph?” She patted her leopard-dotted torso. “I got no pen on me. Tell you what. I’ll give you my favorite push-up bra.”

“I just want …” Half panicked with star worship, Zeta’s eyes filled with tears. “You’re the star! I just want you to be the star for me! Tell me what it’s all about!”

Betsy paused with her leopard top half-lifted. “What
what
is all about?” she said guardedly, skinning her top back down. “What
pop music’
s all about?”

“Yeah! Sure! Okay! That’ll do!”

“Okay.” She nodded. “Stand close to me and I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you the one big secret. I’ll tell you the one thing we pop stars ever say that really, really matters.” Betsy leaned down, tall, shining eyed, and impossibly confident, and kissed Zeta on the forehead.
“You don’t have to be like your parents.
”

Then she kicked her way through the doors and strode off, with never a glance back.

“Wow.” Zeta was stunned.

Starlitz scratched his head. “Honey, that’s not really that big a revelation.”

“It is to me,” Zeta said. “Nobody ever told
me
that before.” Zeta began to cry with joy, tears streaking the corners of her gappy smile. “I’m so happy that somebody finally told me.”

STARLITZ WANDERED THE UPPER FLOOR OF THE YALI until he located another G-7 girl. She happened to be the German One, who was sitting alone in a former harem boudoir, watching Deutsche Welt satellite coverage of the Balkan War, and nervously gnawing at her lacquered nails. The German One was wearing a Turkish bathrobe and her blond hair was in curlers. She had a sliced apple and half a salad.

“Betsy’s walking out,” Starlitz announced. “Looks like I’ve lost us another American One.”

“Oh, you, you,” grumbled the German One, her bloodshot blue eyes riveted to the screen. “What does
one girl matter now, when there are thousands of war refugees in Europe, children and poor people thrown from their homes, with no place to sleep.” The German One was both grave and jittery. “Every one of those dirty loafers wants to take the first bus to Berlin! I hope Joschka Fischer can handle this terrible crisis, that big Green hippie.”

Starlitz put his hands on his daughter’s quaking shoulders. “Where is Mrs. Dinsmore?”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Dinsmore. Tamara. Tamara the G-7 Chaperone.”

“Oh, her,” said the German One, nodding absently. “We had to leave her in Azerbaijan. She had bad problems there with her passport.”

Starlitz swallowed this dire news with gloom, but without much surprise. “Listen, German One, the kid here is all worn out. Can you keep her company a little while? I need a word downstairs with Mr. Ozbey.”

The German One looked at Zeta indifferently. “Okay. If she stops crying. I hate it when they cry.”

“Are you the German One?” Zeta ventured bravely.

“
Ja. Ich bin
. So far.”

“You’re the
original
German One! I have your plastic action figure! I have your platform shoes and your lollipop! I think I even know your real name.”

The German One perked up. She patted the side of the sofa. “Okay. Sit here. Would you like a nice lamb salad?”

Starlitz left.

The palace lost most of its tenacious grip on his soul, if he just marched resolutely through it with his eyes half shut. The place was unbelievably lovely. It would be fatally easy to stick around in the palace for quite a while, maybe for several languid, corrupt Ottoman centuries.

He heard Ozbey’s voice, barking reassuringly into a telephone. Starlitz knocked at the door. Ozbey shouted a welcome in Turkish.

Starlitz stepped inside. Ozbey hung up the phone at once, slapping it down as if a vital state secret might escape through the earpiece.

“Good to see you, Mehmetcik.”

“What a sight you are,” said Ozbey thoughtfully, looking him up and down. Ozbey’s new office was truly spectacular. The place had framed Ottoman decrees inscribed by left-handed craftsman-calligraphers. Hand-smithed copper banquet plates. A wall-mounted collection of curved Janissary daggers.