"You are an ace. A warrior."
"You may be a warrior, Mein Herr. I turn into bugs."
"Many, many, many bugs," said Lohengrin. "Too many for anyone to kill them all, nein? Why do you have this power, do you think?"
"There was this virus. Maybe you heard about it. There were aliens and a guy with a blimp and some dude called Jetboy. The guy with the blimp might have been German, come to think of it, but I won't hold that against you. I try to be well-mannered. I haven't mentioned Hitler once in all the time I've known you."
"God," said Klaus. "God made the world. All the worlds. The aliens, the germs, he made them, too. Jetboy."
"I think the press made Jetboy."
Lohengrin ignored that, which was too bad. Jonathan thought it was a pretty good line. "God wanted us to have these powers. You and me. He puts a sword into my hand and armors me in ghost steel, and he turns you into flies."
"Wasps. Hello? Flies are gross."
"Jonathan, my friend, why would God have given us these powers, except to protect the weak and innocent?"
"Oh please. Do I look like a caped crusader? Are you my plucky sidekick? God did it to fuck with our heads. Or to win a bet with Satan. He did it for the same reason he gives kids leukemia. How should I know? He's God; he doesn't explain this stuff to me. Did you miss the part where I was saying how we could get killed?"
"Who will help these people, if not us?"
"The United Nations. The secretary-general's flying into Cairo. Not Kofi Annan, the new one. He was on the TV in the bar when you were up in the suite screwing what's her name. Lilly of the Valley."
"Lili Marlene. We were making love. She was beautiful, Jonathan. Perhaps God sent her as well."
"Him or the night manager. Ask what escort service he used, you can ring her up again. I promise you, you're not going to bump into her in Egypt. Hey, what say we check out the Excalibur? I hear they have jousting. You'd like that, I bet."
"Jonathan, Isis said that people are dying."
Jonathan put down his drink and focused on the great muscle-bound lunk at his side.
"People are always dying somewhere in the world," he said. "When they're not dying in Cairo, they're dying in Timbuktu, Kalamazoo, Hoboken, Hohoswinegrunt, or some other goddamned place."
"Hohenschwangau, but no one died there. I saved them. With this." Lohengrin stood up, a broadsword appearing in his hand, white, shimmering, its edge a razor. He brought it down hard, shearing through the steel and mica table in one sudden, savage cut. Coasters, coconuts, and paper umbrellas flew everywhere.
"Great," Jonathan said, "that's a good argument. Beat up the furniture."
The waitressa blonde woman in her midthirties with an expression that could stun rats at twenty yardscame up to them.
"You can put it on the room," Jonathan said.
She nodded in a way that assured them both that she would, while simultaneously informing them that they had had their last alcohol for the evening. All without speaking. She was very talented that way.
"How about a cup of coffee?" Jonathan asked.
She nodded again, turned, and walked away.
"We are men," Lohengrin said. "We are blessed among men. Our actions should be guided by what is right and noble!"
"We're drunks in Vegas," Jonathan said. "Our actions should be guided by vice and alcohol."
Lohengrin shook his head. He managed to look deeply disappointed without precisely focusing his eyes.
"Do you have no dreams, Jonathan?"
"Sure," Jonathan said. "They just don't involve getting anointed by God."
"What then?" Lohengrin demanded. "What is your dream?"
"I want to be a journalist," Jonathan said.
"And what is it a journalist would do?"
The waitress reappeared with two cups of coffee. She balanced them on the remains of the table, nodded, and walked away again. Jonathan looked at the black surface, neon bar lights and the flickering blue television screens reflecting in it. What would a journalist do?
"Ah, fuck you," he sighed. "Fine. We'll go."
Posted Today 11:42 pm
EGYPT | DEPRESSED | "ROCK THE CASBAH"THE CLASH
There was a time not all that long ago when I thought poverty was not having enough cash to order a bucket of fried chicken. I may have been optimistic about that. When it comes to pure human misery, pencil in the Necropolis outside Cairo for your touristy needs.
I came here from Las Vegas, specifically the Luxor. I have moved from the fantasy of Egypt to the reality. Given the choice between drinking and playing craps with a fake Cleopatra whose tits are always just offering to fall out of her dress, and walking through the slums of Cairo, I'm not sure which I'd recommend. The fake is a beautiful dream, but there's nothing like reality for reminding you just how toxic dreams like that can be. I have gone from the city of excess to the city of desperate want. The change has left me a little nauseated.
The first day here, we started at the pyramids. They were, indeed, amazing. They're bigger than you think. Start about the size you imagine them, then up it by another half or two thirds. They're huge. You can see why the idea of them made it all the way to Vegas.
But they're also not Egypt. Egypt came when Lohengrin was moved to charity. He started handing out euros to the beggars. We were swamped so bad it took half an hour to make it the thirty feet back to the car. If a couple of the kids got stung, I can apologize and feel like shit about it, but at the time it seemed like the only option.
Imagine being in the middle of a crowd of forty, fifty, maybe a hundred shouting kids, their hands out, pushing against each other and against you. The air smelled like unwashed bodies and desperation, and there we were. Westerners with money. Aces, no less. You wouldn't think I'd have been frightened, but let me just tell you, there's something in a hungry kid's eyes that doesn't have anything to do with pathos or gratitude. At the time, I thought it was just hunger. And yeah, it scared me.
That's been the signature moment of the tripthe flat, angry eyes of hungry children. And that, boys and girls, was just tourism. It doesn't even touch on the riots.
So, yeah . . . the riots.
Things were quiet the first few days we were here. During the day we'd try to track down Fortune when we weren't taking in the sights. At night, we pretty much stayed in the little faded hotel room with its yellow wallpaper and air-conditioning that smelled vaguely like fish, watching old American sitcoms dubbed into languages I don't speak. The fifth day there was a news brief that broke in. It was local, and neither of us knew what the guy was saying, so I got online and looked it up on the CNN and Al Jazeera sites. Turned out there was a riot going on right here, near Cairo.
A little background: After the Caliph got himself assassinated in Baghdad, the leaders of the Ikhlas al-Din called for retribution on the killers. And, hey, cool by me, I say.
Someone offed the president, I'd be happy to see them strung up, and I didn't even vote for the guy. "Root out the terrorists and the people who shelter them." That was the slogan. Again, I'm all for it.
On paper at least.
The thing is, how do you know who the bad guys are? If a Muslim kills the president, does that make all Muslims bad guys? If a joker organization kills the Caliph, does that mean all jokers are guilty? If the Twisted Fists are a bunch of joker terrorists and the Living Gods are also jokers, does that make them allies?
The answer is, apparently, yes.
Through the night, other riots bloomed all through the Middle East. Alexandria, Port Said, Damietta. The temples of what they were calling the Old Religion burned. There was some particularly ugly footage of Hathor being pulled from her temple by the horns. The talking heads on CNN and Al Jazeera both talked about these being "spontaneous outbreaks." Kamal Faraq Aziz, the local Ikhlas al-Din strongmanadded "of righteous wrath," but the basic sentiment was the same. The fans of the Caliph were mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.