Busted Flush

Don’t drop the shirt! Ellen thought frantically. The earrings! If we can’t touch them, I can’t channel you! Perspective was odd and crazy, and it took Ellen a moment to realize that as a whirlwind, Simoon saw the world as a 360-degree circle, their eyes a band at the top of the cone. But Aliyah was an old hand at this, and Ellen became aware that all her things were whirling around in the funnel, a crazy Wizard of Oz swirl of haute couture and luggage, Jonathan’s joining hers as he dissolved, a cloud of green wasps taking their place in the eye. Ellen dimly remembered this trick from the “Crazy Ace Antics” bonus feature of the American Hero: Season I DVD.

Simoon whirled over the city until Ellen perceived a portion of the lakeshore where a forest was popping up like time-lapse photography. They spun down, Jonathan Hive’s wasps swarming from the zephyr’s funnel, going to where a tall young black woman in blue overalls walked scattering acorns from Johnny Appleseed pouches at her hips. Farther on, a young Hispanic woman crouched, one hand on the ground, the other clutching her necklace as the muck and silt heaved themselves out of the water. The wasps buzzed around her then up, a living green marquee, one word swarming into the next: EARTH * WITCH * TIRED * GET * SAND.

Ellen observed silently as the whirlwind scoured sandbars and silt from the lake and then the river. As the day’s work continued, Gardener and Earth Witch and Simoon raising the banks and embankments, Jonathan Hive’s wasps scouting for likely resources and scattering Gardener’s seeds. At last, light was fading and everyone was spent. Aliyah re-formed, swirling down into the skirt, spinning the funnel on into the shirt, and finally coalescing back into Ellen’s usual form . . . with both earrings in her left ear, her cameo off to the same side, and her slip hanging out. She squelched a few feet to where her shoes had landed in the muck.

“Well, I think we’ve done some good work here today.” Gardener yawned as she got up from the base of one of her huge oaks. “Let’s hope it holds.” She smiled at Aliyah. “Nice work, but we better get you some different clothes. Those aren’t made for gardening.”

Earth Witch looked troubled. “Your power . . . it’s the same as a girl I knew.”

“It is the same.” Aliyah smiled hopefully. “I’m Ali. I’m back.”

There was a long silence filled with uncomfortable glances.

“I’m not a rotted corpse!” Aliyah yelled. “I’m just in the body of some flat-chested old lady!” She then burst into tears.

Ellen let the dead girl have her cry. It had taken a lot out of her, Ellen realized, to control her wind that finely, to keep contact with the tokens that tied her to demi-life while at the same time moving mountains or at least tons and tons of sand. It probably didn’t help that Ana and Jerusha were similarly exhausted from the use of their powers.

Jonathan put his arm around her shoulder, letting Aliyah sob into his jacket as they walked. By the time she’d cried Ellen dry, the smell of river mud and greenery had changed to sweat and alcohol. Jerusha and Ana had gone. Now college students in Loyola sweatshirts and other bon vivants walked by slurping daiquiris from yard-long plastic flutes.

Bourbon Street.

Jazz music floated out of clubs and revelers wandered by in masks, gorgeous with sequins and feathers, like old newsreel footage of Jokertown before the Wild Card Pride movement. Or maybe after—Aliyah noted that one of the Loyola students had cloven hooves. Nearby, a woman with a beehive of flamingo heads peddled cups of shrimp cocktail. And next door, under a green awning marked LAGNIAPPE: THE GENTLEMEN’S CLUB WITH SOMETHING EXTRA stood two men—one man—two men. Aliyah was having a hard time figuring it out, seeing two aging bodybuilders from the waist up, but from the waist down, one grotesquely wide joker with extra-wide black wingtips. Even more disconcerting were the twins’ T-shirts, the one on the right reading JESUS SAVES! and the one on the left SHOW ME YOUR TITS!

“Good sir,” cried the Jesus freak twin, waving a Bible at Jonathan Hive, “do not go into this vile pit of depravity, this veritable Sodom! These joker Jezebels have sin in their hearts, and it would imperil your nat soul to even gaze upon them!”

“Don’t listen to Momus here,” said the other twin, who affected a goatee. “Listen to Comus. Come right in! We’ve got chicks with extra tits! We’ve got chicks with dicks!”

Oh, my God, thought Ellen as Aliyah looked at Comus and Momus. It’s Rick and Mick.

“Huh?” said Aliyah, catching the eyes of the twins.

The first paid no attention, but the second one pointed. “It is the Witch of Endor!”

Rick or Mick—the one with the goatee anyway—rolled his eyes. “Excuse my brother for being a pussy. He got beat up by a mute hooker and now he thinks he screwed a zombie.”