Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(43)

? Tales That Fairies Tell ?

Arena she was a goddess and, like any goddess, she could bestow riches or ruin.

Daughter of billionaires, widow of the last really effective president of the United States, everyone felt safe in her presence. The bomb detection trucks and cars with armed guards outside whatever building she was in, the large people always alert and close at hand insured her protection and that of those around her.

The elite and the cameras had followed her to partly submerged Coney Island, not once or twice, but on half a dozen occasions. By the time the mobs caught on and followed, Angelica and entourage no longer found the locale exotic. Unpleasant incidents between visitors and natives followed. Suicide bombers took out the pizza parlor. When it was over Coney Island no longer had a safe zone.

By then Angelica Siddons had found other places to lunch. The most prominent was the radical new Artomat, a combination of automat and art gallery in Midtown on the West Side. The cuisine was Western Mediterranean and quite nice in its way.

But the cutting edge of the place was the rows and columns of glass windows on the walls. Each displayed an art object—a gold Scythian bracelet, an original Edward Hopper sketch, an exquisite illustrated eighteenth-century book of fairy tales.

The price of each item was displayed. One pressed an encoded palm against the window; money was deducted from one’s account.

The window popped open and the object was yours.

Across from Angelica Siddons that day at the Artomat, sat longtime acquaintance Jack Reynard with his sharp eyes and pointed face. Beside her was Clemenso, New York’s current exemplar of the artist/sex object and acclaimed originator of Crisis Fashion.

Around the table, several members of Siddons’ circle chattered on about a fan one of them had just found behind a glass window and bought, hoping to impress Angelica, at a rather healthy price. Open, the fan displayed an eighteenth century formal garden at dusk and a pair of lovers in court dress kissing. Closed, the fan was a sharp dagger.

? 138 ?

? Rick Bowes ?

It was something the Fox would love, and Reynard did seem amused. But Clemenso openly sneered at the purchase. Usually Angelica found his dark and sullen moods amusing as it would then please her to reassure him of his genius. But earlier that day she’d glanced briefly at Tales the Fairies Tell and found hints of things unamusing and even tiresome about Clemenso.

His exotic accent made little sense if it was true he came from New Jersey, and he’d be no genius if the source of his inspiration—in fact, the inventor of Crisis Fashion—was an unattractive boyfriend he kept carefully hidden (the article hinted at semi-imprisonment).

Reynard the Fox noticed Angelica’s shift in attitude even if Clemenso didn’t.

At that moment neither gossip nor the conversation around her held Angelica’s attention. She had just become aware of a certain Cat.

Puss walked toward her on his hind legs, more intense and fascinating than the photos on Tales That Fairies Tell, in his red leather boots and cavalier hat with a great white feather.

All conversation stopped. The bodyguards stepped forward.

But the Cat halted, swept off his hat and bowed so low to Angelina Simmons that his head touched his extended leg.

Enchanted, she gestured him forward. Approaching, still bowing, Puss handed her a small sketch of a young woman under a tree with a cat beside her. “A gift from my master, the new artist Julian who goes by his own name.” A quick feline glance at Clemenso, who didn’t.

“This reminds him of you and he wishes you to have it, my lady.”

“Why, it’s so . . . ” she glanced briefly at the sketch, then looked at the cat, grasped for the word.

“So honestly simple,” Puss suggested. “That is the way Julian describes his art. Perhaps ‘simplicity’ is something we should all embrace.”

Mrs. Siddons looked again at the sketch and asked, “Is the cat you?”

“Perhaps,” he replied, “and perhaps the young lady is you.”

A groan erupted from Clemenso. “This is rubbish,” he said in the unplaceable accent.

? 139 ?

? Tales That Fairies Tell ?

Puss caught Angelica Siddons’ expression and both smiled.

She had always known in some corner of her mind that Clemenso was a fraud. But she’d always assumed he was a more fascinating fraud.

“This is student work, visual scribbles,” Clemenso said. Puss shook his head and Mrs. Siddons did the same. Outright plagiarism and the financial misdeeds hinted at in TTFT article went without saying at that moment in this place. But failure to understand that one’s time was over was simply unforgiveable.