Gambit looked around. The waiting room was small, with chairs like one would find in a doctor’s office, complete with magazines to read. Most appeared to be copies of Score, and a few, curiously, were slightly scorched. Opposite the coat closet was yet another door, marked “Office,” the bottom half solid and the top half glassed-in, with a notice reading “Please place your Kaiser Card in the Slot.”
“You don’t really have to do that,” Dabbler confided. “Not on this tour, anyway.” He led his guests through the door into the Office, which they found to resemble that of a private secretary. Dolly was stationed there presently, seated before a computer at which she was tapping cheerily away, still naked. She gave them a wave as they passed on back to another room, this one with a door marked “Dabbler.”
“This is my work room,” Dabbler said.
“Wow,” said Meiou. “Look at all the neat stuff! I can’t believe you’re letting us see all this!”
“Sure, why not? Unlike some people, I don’t mind showing folks where I live.”
Phantomness looked from one to the other, suspecting there was some sort of subtext here, but Dabbler had turned away to answer a question from the curious Gambit about the rendering software on his computer. “What was that all about?” Phantomness whispered to Meiou.
“I’m sure I have no idea,” mumbled the Bunny, looking distinctly sheepish for a rabbit. “Um, this is some place, huh?”
It was indeed some place. The room was large and disorganized, really a combination work room, library, music room and art studio. Dabbler had numerous interests, it seemed. A flock of small mechanical birds was flitting about up above, seemingly sipping nectar from a series of floating luminous blobs like you see in lava lamps. The wall to the right was lined with bookshelves, before which sat an armchair and chairside table with reading lamp. To the left were the computer and work area, a small lab with a vacuum chamber for the testing and analysis of Barsoomian rays, a music stand and instruments, a collection of medical paraphernalia, sports and exercise equipment, a TV set with an eclectic assortment of videos in Urdu, a tickertape machine, a ham radio, an incubator containing a large golden egg, a Gridley Wave sending and receiving unit, and various easels.
One easel bore a huge, surreal painting featuring an angelic bovine suspended above a field full of copulating Native Americans. Red Gambit squinted at the bottom of the picture, which bore a scrollwork across which several words were limned: Custer’s Last Words. “I think I heard this joke once,” she said.
“What about this one?” asked Phantomness, regarding another large canvas. It combined elements of both Leonardo da Vinci’s and Salvador Dali’s versions of the Last Supper, only with Superheroes and Avatars.
“Hey, lemme see!” cried Meiou excitedly, crowding in next to her. “This looks familiar!” He recognized Wonder Woman in the place of Jesus, Chronos in the Judas role, D.J. Woohoo, Lizzie Fruitbat, Serifan, Macro, and other well-remembered faces from a time and place he would have preferred to forget. “Not bad,” he said to Dabbler. “You’ve captured Diana to a T, though it’s kinda funny seeing her in the central spot. And that awful, dirty lightning-streaked sky is just like I remember it. Whatcha call this?”
“‘The Lost Super,’” Dabbler said proudly.
Meiou groaned. “Got it. I shoulda known....”
Meanwhile, his companions were looking over a half dozen huge blocks of sculpture-grade marble in various states of completion. One was a nearly finished statue of a large nude woman with improbably large breasts. Oddly, it resembled Dabbler in all but gender (and accessories). Another, partially roughed out, appeared to be Dolly in the role of Venus emerging from the foam, while a third looked like it might eventually take the shape of a girl with a surfboard—Gidget, no doubt. The remainder were not yet susceptible to interpretation.
Beyond the statues was an area where several pairs of boots were tacked up along the wall, some with arrows through them. More arrows, plus the bow, lay discarded on the floor. A couple quarter-staves were leaning in a corner. Then the room ended in another doorway, which led into a small but ornately appointed restroom, with yet another door on the other side.
This door led them back into the corridor through which the visitors had first passed from the bedroom into the living room. They were at one end of it; it extended to their left for some distance, while to their right was a closed, locked and dusty door marked “Emergency Exit.”
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Thu Mar 09 01:28:45 2006
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