Inside Straight

She had the face of a cat and her skin was blanketed with silken fur mottled like an orange tabby, but the body was very much a young woman’s. The name she’d given Michael was Petit Chaton—little kitten—and she was French, not Italian, having followed the band from Paris. She was beautiful, even in sleep. Michael could swear she was purring as she slept curled under the covers. He slid his several arms from under her, stroking her face gently with his top hand: yes, she was purring; he could feel the vibration in his fingers. He slipped out of bed and, naked, padded into the other room of the suite. The clock said five A.M. local time, but Michael’s internal clock was blurred by travel and he wasn’t sleepy at all. He picked up the remote and turned on the television set, tapping the mute button, since he knew about a half-dozen words of Italian. The channel was still set to the news where he’d left it, and Egypt evidently remained the big story, as it had been for a few days now. He watched the images flickering by: jokers with heads that he vaguely recognized as those of Egyptian gods; jerky, confusing footage of a battle; bodies strewn across a sand-rippled landscape; and …

Curveball.…Kate.

Michael sat up abruptly, entirely awake now. The camera panned away and he cursed doubly, since fucking Captain Cruller was standing next to her, looking like he hadn’t slept in a week, the scarab that had possessed him sitting under the skin of his forehead like the world’s largest pimple. Fortune was talking to someone off-camera. Michael fumbled for the mute button, but he couldn’t hear Fortune over the Italian translation. The camera panned back again, showing Kate, Ana, Lohengrin, Holy Roller, Fat Chick, Hardhat, Toolbelt, Simoon, and Bugsy all clustered around Fortune, with desert in the background and what looked like a dam structure in the middle distance. Michael watched only Kate. She was solemn, her face dirty with a streak that might be dried blood along one cheek. She looked like she would collapse the moment the camera was turned off, as if it were only force of will keeping her upright. They all looked the same way. And Kate was standing right alongside Fortune. He saw her fingers link with his as the camera panned back.

Light shifted in the room as the program went to a split screen, with a commentator speaking on the left while on the right was promo footage of King Cobalt from American Hero. “… King Cobalt morto. …” the commentator intoned, and the last word jumped out at him. Morto. He could figure that one out. Michael suddenly knew why King Cobalt’s picture was on the screen.

He felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach.

The scene switched abruptly to a reporter interviewing a crocodile-headed ace who looked like he’d just stepped from a mural in a pharaoh’s tomb, standing outside one of the restored temples.

Another shift, and a new reporter was placing a microphone in front of the fierce scowl of the Righteous Djinn, the former strong right arm of the Nur and now the primary weapon in the new Caliph’s arsenal. He glared into the camera as it focused on him, and Michael found himself scowling back.

“Fuck,” he said aloud.

“If you would like.” The answer came in French-accented English. Chaton was leaning sleepily against the doorway to the bedroom, illuminated by the shifting light of the television. Her belly was cloaked in soft orange, her tail curled lazily around a knee, the end of it flicking restlessly. “But you left our bed.”

“Can’t sleep,” Michael told her.

A shrug and a smile. “Bon. Then—”

“Not right now. Go back to sleep. I’ll be in later.”

Her gaze drifted over to the television. “The problems in Egypt? That is bothering you? You know them, oui? From American Hero ?”

He didn’t answer. With his middle left hand, he tapped at one of the tympanic membranes on his chest—a low, steady dhoomp-dhoomp-dhoomp that reverberated through the room and his body. The sound was somehow comforting. Chaton finally shrugged and padded back into the bedroom. A few minutes later he heard her purr-snore again.

“Michael, you’re a great guy,” Kate had said with her soft, quiet voice, not long after they’d met. “But I don’t think I’m ready for this.” He started to protest, but she cut him off with a smile. “Maybe when this whole thing is over. When we’re not so distracted.”

But it would never be over. The cameras would always be there for both of them, no matter where they were or what they did. And Fortune…goddamn John Fortune had somehow managed to say the right things that she wanted to hear. Kate saw Michael as the lightweight, the entertainer, the womanizer.