The Caryatids

The fans could never become like the stars. This body that flaunted its perfect female curves before the camera: she had created this body through an exhausting, comprehensive ordeal. Having seven children was easier, for that was the sort of thing untrained women had once done without anesthetic.

So she wasn't walking on a beach, being pretty. She was tormenting her fans with her star glamour. In some strange way, this unity in frustrated suffering was the true relationship of stars and fans.

That was why her fans loved to see her suffer. Fans knew that she deployed her charm and beauty as a weapon to tantalize, and they were spiteful about that torment and they wished her the worst. Their hatred and envy of celebrities could be lethal.

It was especially awful to "confide" to one's fans, artlessly discussing one's starry hotness, through some low-life aggregator of planetary eyeballs...Pretending to reveal her personal secrets to the fans was the worst and vilest toil in the industry.

"Exclusive star interviews." They were ancient rituals. They always made her long for death.

Yet the fans had to be fed. For the fans were forever hungry.

"Yes, my John brings truth and justice to some of the most desperate people in the world...I miss John every day. I want John to fly home to me. He promised he would break his own rules and he'll fly here in a rocket. Yes, those rumors are true. No, not that we're breaking up. That'll never happen! The rumors are true that the fire is back in our relationship! John and I had our rough spots, we had our trouble and grief, but you just can't keep us down! Just you wait and see, you're going to see some very good, very happy news from both of us..."

When the interview at last expired in its puddle of flaccid lies, she fled in a Family limo, then went to join Lionel. Lionel was kind to her, because Lionel understood these things.

Lionel was having a late lunch at a posh restaurant. The restaurant was noted for its excellent seafood, because it marched on gleaming centipede legs deep into the restive ocean and it grew all its seafood by itself. The "swordfish," for instance...that gleaming white flesh on Lionel's platter was very far from a wild, sea-native swordfish, but a DNA scan would never tell.

Lionel had matured a great deal since Toddy had (as the Family privately phrased it) "passed up." His personal upgrades had cost much more than Radmila's makeover, and since Lionel was so young and ductile, the effects on him were drastic.

Lionel had put on kilos of male muscle in his back, legs, and shoulders. His eyebrows were thicker, and blue stubble haunted his lips and chin.

Most critically, Lionel had changed his signature look. The new personal dresser had swiftly ditched his Peter Pan delinquent street-kid costumes, and made Lionel sexier, more transgressive. He looked like a bad boy in power now. He looked slicker, like the upscale version of an undercover cop.

Radmila arrived at the table, hidden in stage-ninja gear. None of the diners took much notice of her: Lionel always had his bodyguards in this restaurant. Lately he'd had a whole posse of them. The Angeleno street gangs loved Lionel. They were his biggest fans.

Glyn silently passed her a menu and a half-empty shaker of tequila. Radmila poured and drank. Alcohol was blue ruin, but she wouldn't have to look so painfully sexy again for quite a while. She was going to put on weight. John was going to get her pregnant. That was all arranged.

The older Family folks-Guillermo, Freddy, Buffy, Raph-they'd been surprisingly calm and accepting about the new Family order. In the sudden power vacuum of Toddy's absence, it was Lionel, Toddy's grandchild, who was proving the hardest to handle.

Lionel was starting to have adult ideas. His generation's take on reality was unique.

"What does that mean, 'grasp the nettle'?" Lionel demanded.

"A nettle is a weed," Glyn told him. "It stings you when you touch it."

"But why would people let plants sting them? Plants don't even have brains."

"Our Family budget is like a nettle," Glyn told him patiently. "When you stick to that budget, that hurts, but you just have to accept that."

"We're rich."

"We're not infinitely rich, and a Family star is supposed to spend his star allowance on enhancing his star potential."

"That's what I did," said Lionel. "I know that I spent money, but I'm almost eighteen."

"Lionel: You bought weapons."

"Glyn: Just listen to me for once, okay? I'm not Little Mary Montalban, the world's most adorable child star! I'm a tough guy! I'm a ghetto, barrio, Los Angeles dirty-pop, kick-your-ass, street-credibility star! We do agree on that, don't we? I'm the Family's gangster star."

"You're Dispensation. You're a spontaneous-reaction, volunteer grassroots star of our street militias. Those people aren't 'gangsters.'"

Lionel sighed and looked to Radmila. "Mila, just tell her. Please."