"Thanks, I'll see what I have."
"Brush is showing the end of January, come and see it."
"I will."
"Come and sit next to me," Lucy ordered Vermillion before he got away again, and to Semy, about to sit beside her when Vermillion went first to fetch their drinks, "Not here, this place is reserved."
"Merry Christmas!" said Vermillion returning, joining her on the sofa.
"Merry Christmas!" she said. It felt like Christmas for the first time tonight, she thought.
"How is the recital coming?"
"Fine, I guess. It's hard to tell."
"Have you asked Hal to play?"
"Not yet. I sort of hate to ask Figente, and I couldn't ask Hal first."
"I'll ask Figente, if you like."
"You would? That would be wonderful."
"Who is that woman talking to Simone?"
"Mrs. Cornwallis. She reminds me of a game I had when I was little. You roll sago balls into the gums of a grinning face—teeth. The last one is the hardest to get in."
The image delighted Vermillion. So that was the Mrs. Cornwallis of whom Simone had spoken and urged him to meet as someone influential. His first glance had recorded her indelibly in his memory. A Mine. Tussaud horror figure from which suspended a maggotful bag of breasts, like some obscene Egyptian witch-goddess, her colors the death hues of Egyptian tombs. Toadstool pallor, and robed and coifed in dried blood. A short sharp falcon beak, divided from its receding chin by a livid scratch. Fly's eyes seeing in all directions. Scavenger oyster eyes, bulging with the excrements they fed on. A knobby skeleton, with flesh decomposed to accommodate the leech forms of an evil being. Paint the skeleton and build on it, layer by layer, to the flat crested death's head grinning.
"She looks like Horus," he said.
"Who?"
"Horus, an Egyptian falcon god."
"Well, I wouldn't know about that, but her name Horta is just right."
