Putting on a tux was difficult enough for Korben, who had quit the military because he hated dressing up (among other reasons).
It was even more difficult with one hand, which was all he had free. With the other he held the phone away from his ear while he tried to placate his mother.
“listen, Ma! I’ve only got a few days’ vacation, and I don’t want to spend them on the phone,” BRRRAAANNNGG!
“Hang on, Ma. It’s the door. No! I told you! I didn’t bring anybody!”
Korben opened the door of his suite. And saw the most beautiful girl in the galaxy.
“Apipoulai!” Leeloo said with a smile, brushing past him into the suite.
Korben closed the door behind her. “Listen, Ma, I’ll call you back…”
He hung up the phone.
“You’re very cute in your costume,” Leeloo said. She found her suitcase on her bed where the bellhop had left it, and pulled out a bright frock.
She laid the dress on the bed and started taking off her clothes.
Korben reddened and turned his back.
“Leeloo, wait a minute! I’m a kind of old-fashioned guy, you know. I’m not saying no—I would love to say yes. But we only met this morning…”
“You know,” Leeloo said, ignoring his embarrassment, “women normally change clothing five times more than men.”
“Oh yeah?” Korben asked. “You get that off the screen?”
“Yes,” said Leeloo. “You can turn around.” Korben.
What he saw was only a little more—or less—than what he had both feared and hoped to see.
Leeloo was more beautiful than ever in a short, sharp smock.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“With you,” Leeloo said. “I’m going to see the Diva sing.”
Korben was reeling. He had never wanted to feel this way about a woman again. Especially now, when he needed to keep his wits about him. He had to find a way to keep her out of danger.
He sat down heavily on the side of the bed.
Leeloo looked down at her dress—what little there was of it—then back at Korben. “What’s the matter? Did I do something wrong?”
“No, not at all,” said Korben. “I mean, just the opposite. You’re… you’re beautiful!”
Leeloo’s face lit up. “Thank you.”
Korben shook his head resolutely, then reached into his back pocket. “I have something for you,” he said.
Leeloo stood on her tiptoes excitedly. “Gift? For me?”
Korben pulled out a single stainless steel bracelet. “It will go perfectly with your dress.”
Leeloo held out her hand. “What do you call it?” she asked, as Korben slipped it over her slim and perfect wrist—and snapped it shut.
“A laser handcuff,” he said.
He pressed a button on the side of the cuff, and a laser beam shot from the floor to the ceiling, trapping Leeloo where she stood.
“Army issue, latest model. I’m sorry, Leeloo, but I told you, I have to work in peace.”
“You!” she hissed. “You’re nothing but a…”
“I know exactly the word you’re looking for,” Said Korben. “It’s not in the dictionary you studied. I won’t be long.”
He pulled on his tuxedo jacket, just then the door burst open and Loc Rhod rushed in.
“Hey, Stud, we gotta hustle outta here!!”
He saw Leeloo, twisting in her low-cut dress, her hand pinioned above her head by the laser beam.
Loc Rhod smiled.
“Korben, my man, what’s happening here?? Who’s the chick?? What’s the gig?? We free forming here?? Getting funky with this monkey?? Can I get in on this??”Loc Rhod sidled up to the furious Leeloo. He was just reaching for her shapely—When Korben grabbed him by the collar and lifted him off the floor.
“Later,” said Korben, tossing Lod Rhod out the door.
He followed, locking the door carefully behind him.
22
A FEW HUNDRED LIGHT YEARS AWAY, THANKS TO THE MAGIC OF FTL technology, President Lindberg and his staff of scientists and generals were listening in on the galaxy’s “most happening” radio show.
The President sat at his desk.
The generals were arrayed behind him.
The scientists behind them.
Two speakers emerged from the presidential desktop.
“It’s now five P.M. Central Galactic Time, time join Loc Rhod and Korben Dallas, the lucky winner of the Gemini Croquettes contest… Live from Fhloston Paradise!”
Imagine Madison Square Garden, the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower and Albert Hall ail wrapped up in me, then hung with gilt and glitter and filled with low-cut gowns and high-topped shoes.
Now triple that, and you have some idea of the magnificence of the Fhloston Paradise Concert Hall.
Korben and Loc Rhod entered side by side. Korben was scanning the crowd, alert for danger. Loc Rhod was, as usual, talking, this time into a floating “skeeter-mike” that followed him like a mosquito, hovering near his fast-moving mouth.
“This is probably the most beautiful concert hall in the universe!!” the DJ said. “A perfect replica of an old opera house… but who cares!!” He and Korben passed between rows of gilt seats, all filled with elegantly dressed vacationers and culture-vultures, all (variously) wearing unisex tuxedos, faux-fur robes, jeweled g-strings and voluminous gowns.
“To my left, a row of former ministers, more sinister than minister!! To my right a few generals practicing how to sleep!! And there’s Baby Ray, star of stage and screen!!”
With a brief nod of recognition from Loc Rhod, they passed an aging actor whose face was locked in a stiff grin from too many tucks and lifts.
“Ray’s drowning in a sea of nymphets!!” said Loc Rhod, “but he’s not going to get much out of this concert…”
Ray was bending his ear down toward a girl asking for his autograph. “To who?”
“…since he’s stone deaf!! And over there is Roy Von Bacon, the king of laserball and the best paid player in the league!!”
Loc Rhod reached out to quickly slap hands with an enormous fat man, then sashayed on down the aisle, with Korben following.
“And here we have the Emperor Kodar Japohet, whose daughter Aachen…”
Loc Rhod gave the high sign to a white-haired man wearing a rhinestone-trimmed I’M THE EMPEROR, WHO ARE YOU? T-shirt.
“…is still in my bed!! ‘I love to sing,’ she recently confessed to me. And now un pin de champagne!!”
Loc Rhod grabbed two long-stemmed glasses off a tray held by a handsome, godlike waiter. He handed one to Korben and moved on down the aisle, still babbling into his skeeter-mike.
The waiter handed off the last two glasses of champagne on his tray, then edged through the crowd.
He opened a service door and entered a room filled with “waiters.”
Away from the crowd, he relaxed, and his shape-shifting face resolved into the froglike visage of a Mangalore.
Another Mangalore was passing out ZF1 laser rifles.
Akanit, the “waiter” leader; opened the door a crack.
Outside, in the concert hall, the lights were going down.
The first strains of music were coming up.
Akanit smiled a hideous Mangalore smile.
“It’s showtime!”
Several decks above the concert hall, in Korben’s stateroom, Leeloo was struggling to get free of the laser cuff that held her pinned between ceiling and floor.
Suddenly her sensitive ears picked up a strain of unearthly music.
She tilted her head to one side and smiled in spite of herself.
The music was… perfect!
The concert was beginning.
Korben sat beside Loc Rhod in VIP seats on the second row.
The Diva Plavalaguna walked onstage in the dim light.