The Caryatids

"You are thirsty, but you don't want to drink this," Biserka told her, yawning. "It would put you out flat on your ass!" Biserka rolled her neck on her shoulders, and massaged the back of her own skull.

"So, as I told you: the graveyards. I know that sounds weird to you: my dear lively sister Biserka, in the graveyards? But graveyards are blackspots! People don't wire the graveyards, because there are no paying customers in there, and they don't imagine that the locals would get up and leave. So there's an imagination gap in a graveyard."

Biserka giggled, and enjoyed another sip from her thermos. "Because I can work fine in graveyards! They never scare me! I love them! Because they're a huge blind spot for everybody stupider than me. For people like you. Huh? So, you know, who else is in there in graveyards? Besides me. Well, your people are in there, that's who. Every famous old family has famous dead people. Like Svetlana, Bratislava, Kosara! Half of us are dead already and we don't even have real graves!"

Biserka wiped her mouth on her black ninja sleeve. She had a tattoo on her right wrist, a homemade tattoo, the kind of artwork people did in jail cells while afflicted by long lengths of time. "So, me and my friend the funny backhoe are working in this blackspot, and up comes this gentleman here: the former governor of California. Your husband's dad."

Biserka waited a patient moment. "All right: don't get so excited. I wasn't the one who shot him. He won't get any deader now. When we're done with our family business, I'll leave him somewhere-with a beeper on him. You can come fetch him and bury him back into the ground. You can hush it all up. The Montgomery-Montalban Family hushes up so many matters and hides so many troubles already."

Biserka rubbed her nose. Someone had broken it, years ago. "So: I don't hold you for ransom. I mean, yes, I stole some things by pretending to be you, but that was just to be funny. That was so easy, yes, it's boring me. No: I don't want you as my hostage. I want your people to help me with my project! My very personal project that I have! My project is about a crazy woman in orbit. And not your crazy woman in orbit, stupid! Not your old fat actress! No, our mother. Yelisaveta Mihajlovic. The warlord's black widow, guns and narcotics and software...Mother abandoned us, but she did some things well!"

Biserka stared out the hearse window at a passing high-rise; it had a giant ape climbing on it, but that was only a projection. "But: two crazy women up in orbit? How could you do that, Radmila? Two? That's too much. It's annoying me! It's disgusting me! It's just not right! That's too many women who are trying to fit into the same outer space! It reminds me that Yelisaveta is still up there, flying over our heads every day, and I don't like the way that makes me feel!"

Biserka scraped mud from the edge of her rubber boot. "I knew that you married big money. Fine, I married some money once. A bedful of money is nice! But you married people with orbital launch capacity ! Wow! That means we can reach our mother, Radmila! We can put one bucket of sand, or some bolts and nuts, into Mama's orbit. Bang! Boom! One moment, no warning, Mama's dead in her flying coffin! And when that happens, then I give you this coffin back. "

Biserka looked out the window of the hearse at the towers along Figueroa, then back at Radmila again. "You're not happy with my brilliant, genius plan?"

Radmila shook her head. Her heart was crushed within her. She had never felt such shame.

"You're not happy? But imagine how much better we both feel when that old woman falls from heaven in small burning pieces! I know some people in China who have space rockets. They could help us."

Biserka snuffled as lights flashed over her face. "Look at you, feeling so sorry for yourself...A billion people died in Asia from the climate crisis. A billion. And I helped them to die. While you never looked. Because everyone was supposed to look at you, Radmila! Black skies and starving mobs and empty rivers, and the world is supposed to watch you. And worship you! Because you might take your clothes off! Or something. You're a dress-up doll made from plastic."

Biserka shook her head in wonderment, then shrugged. "So you deserve to die, Radmila, but...first things first! First I drop you in a bar in Norwalk-tied up like this, in your underwear. You hop right in there, you call home, tell them you got drunk. You had a bad casting-couch date with your big-shot producer, whatever, I don't care. You handle that. But if you screw me over-and I know that you want to, because, wow wow wow! I'd certainly do that to you-well, I'm going to kill. Not you. Someone else. Not you-because you're too necessary to my plans. And not the governor here, because he got shot already."