Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(40)

Richard Bowes

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Tales That Fairies Tell


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Richard Bowes





1.


“In the old world years ago,” said the Cat, “monarchs were plentiful, Mortals and Fairies co-mingled, dragons flew and animals spoke; witches, ogres, dragons, a host of magic creatures roamed the countryside, and a cat could stare at a king.”

The Cat spoke to Julian in the midst of a mad collage of a dream.

He’d had a few of these recently and would wake up trying to grab some of the details. This one began in his stepmother’s loveless suburban kitchen in New Hope. But instead of his father and stepmother with their respective despair and hostility he saw the figure everyone in New York (the Big Arena as it was called) desired or at least wanted to be seen with at that moment.

The artist/couturier Clemenso sat naked and looked right past Julian as everybody did. Clemenso’s Crisis Fashion Show was also in the dream. Models covered head to toe in bullet-resistant fabrics filed past his fridge.

There was more. But during it all, only the Cat—better known as Puss—spoke. He sat on the lap of the infamous and beautiful Veronessa who, in turn, sat under a basketball net suspended from a gold hoop at the gym-themed Park Avenue High and delivered his little speech.

Always after these dreams Julian would awake wanting to grab and preserve details and always they evaporated at his touch.

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This time they stuck, even made a certain sense when Julian awoke in the dark. Not many hours before he had seen Puss and Veronessa in just that pose and place. Veronessa was tall, with a cloud of pale red hair. Her blog, Tales That Fairies Tell ( TTFT), was the hottest tip and scandal site in the Big Arena. It featured a running commentary on Fairy Godmothers, who had them and who didn’t.

Everyone said Puss was her pet. A few hinted it was the opposite way around. But none disputed that she wore clothes better than anyone else in the Arena and could command a spotlight. Her costume that evening at Park Avenue combined a lightweight bomb fragment-resistant jacket—its blue matched her eyes—and gray/

black city camouflage slacks.

Julian wore a class of 1958 U.S. High School gym uniform, the prescribed outfit for waiters at Park Avenue High—1958 had been last autumn’s discovery and was tired. It was easy to know what was passé but those said to have zeitgeist antenna, who could sense the next new thing, were treated as sacred prophets.

Julian was waiting on one said to possess that skill. Jack Reynard, an impresario also known as “the Fox,” was there with a party. About Reynard someone had said, “Cold whimsy is his style: he works with a chuckle and a blade between the ribs.” His current project— Macabre Dance, ballets about the famous deaths and mutilations of dancers—had the aura of a sure thing.

Julian saw no way he could be part of that scene. He was not graceful and members of Reynard’s party seemed amused by even the sight of his bare knees. So his attention was fixed on Puss.

Julian had heard stories of Veronessa bringing the Cat right into places that didn’t admit pets because she was Veronessa and he was extraordinary. So the first sighting of what seemed a plain black and gray tabby was a disappointment. Puss looked as if he owned the place. But what cat doesn’t?

In the dream Puss was much larger and stared right at Julian. In real life he hadn’t deigned to do that. Nor had he spoken.

Julian opened his eyes and immediately looked at his palm ? 132 ?

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(as everyone did on waking) to see if there were messages in his implanted feed. There were none. Julian gazed around the two-room studio on the twenty-fourth floor of a Chelsea high/low (high floor/low rent) with uncertain heat, hot water, air conditioning, and elevator service. He shared the place with a waitress/composer, a pedicab driver/dancer, and a tour guide/filmmaker. All four had come from various bankrupted suburban towns or small wrecked cities hoping to snatch a crown out of the gutter.

Lack of success and poverty had not united them. None of his roommates were close enough to Julian that he could wake any of them up and tell them his dream.

Then, suddenly, the Cat was back, ears twitching. Julian realized that what he was seeing wasn’t a dream but a kind of vision that was being sent to him somehow. Puss said, “My tale was born around fires in caves, given form before the hearth and came of age in palaces without an unscented breath of air. It has entertained sophisticated adults and small children for centuries.”