The Caryatids - Bruce Sterling [66]
Performance was a spiritual act. The unfolding ensemble: that happy roar from the crowds, the rank smell of the smoke, the dust and her own sweat, the physical effort of her dancing, the pervasive rhythms … Los Angeles was a mystical city by nature. It required its sacraments.
Radmila felt herself vanish into the ambient substance of the spectacle. She could feel herself just … holding it all up. And then letting it fall: with one almighty, dust-hurling thump.
With a final bone-blasting flourish of her soundtrack, Radmila wire-walked off the top of the rollicking tripod, capered straight up the side of a building, and “vanished into thin air.”
Ascending into the heavens was something of a Family cliché. Still, when it came to live street art, the best tricks were the oldest ones.
Safely out of the public eye—if one didn’t count the flying spycams of the amateur fans, those pests, those nuisances—Radmila fled to her portable trailer.
There she powered down her spangled demolition costume, disembarked from it, dumped the wig, and sat before the darkened makeup mirror, half naked, panting for breath and chugging ice water.
She sponged off her makeup, wrapped herself in anonymous black security gear, and ventured over to Glyn’s trailer.
Glyn was still running the event’s dying spasms of street choreography, flicking her puck across an urban weave of placemarks and camera angles. “You were really on today,” Glyn told her.
“Yeah, the good people of La-La Land, they sure love those big-budget effects.”
Glyn casually peeled up a screen, deployed some police muscle, and smoothed it back again. “No, Mila. Those street crowds love you. I checked their skin responses, their pulse rates, everything. They always love to watch some big weird machine kick some ass, but without you in their picture to give them something to care about, nothing much matters to them.”
“Oh, that was just my slutty costume talking. Hot and sexy never really suits me.”
Glyn sighed. “I am waiting so hard for the day when you stop doing that.”
“Stop what?”
“When you stop putting yourself down! You were terrific out there! You were close to perfect! Why can’t you be happy about that for one minute? Stop selling yourself short all the time! I swear to God that drives me crazy.”
“I’m not perfect. Toddy would have been superperfect.”
“That is not the issue. Theodora is history. And anyway, Toddy was never as good as you think she was. Yes, she was a big popular star—so what? She was like any pop idol—she was a scared, hungry woman who needed the public to love her. And the public did love Toddy, because Toddy loved her public. She was the love-slave of those unwashed morons. She loved them more than she loved you, me, or herself.”
“I should aspire to that level of artistry.”
“Have you completely lost your mind? That is not ‘artistry’! And you could give a damn about the public, Mila. You wouldn’t care if the public all got killed! And they still connect with you. That’s the amazing part.”
Glyn scratched at her control screen. “You will never be a great actress, but you’ve got some true rapport, you’re a true pop star. You’re like the Gothic Bride of Shiva. The people here love it whenever you strut out and shake your ass and smash up our city. They know you’re very dark inside. Because you are. You’re very dark. And so are they.”
“You’re dark inside.”
“Yes, I am dark inside. So sue me.”
“All right, so what’s eating you today, Glyn? Why are you being like this? I guess it wasn’t my performance.” Radmila laughed. “You know why I aced all that? Because she wasn’t watching me. Just for once. She’s really gone! I never felt so free!”
Glyn sent a half-riotous crowd of fans stumbling down the street in a cavalcade of glowing dots. “I finally figured out what to do with myself.”
“You got any gin in here?”
“I will never marry,” Glyn told her somberly. “I will never have a child. Because I am a monster. I cannot bear to have Toddy’s children with Toddy’s spare body.”
“You got any performance drinks?