Connie Willis - The Best of Connie Willis

There was an enormous crash from the rear. Ernesto had dropped his shoulder-held video camera and was heading for the door. And this needed to be on film. But I didn’t want to miss anything while I tried to figure out how the camera worked.

I glanced over at Kildy, hoping she was taking notes, but she seemed transfixed by what was happening onstage, her forgotten mirror and lipstick still in her hands, her mouth open. I would have to risk missing a few words. I scrambled to my feet.

“Where are you going?” Kildy whispered.

“I’ve got to get this on tape.”

“We are,” she said calmly, and nodded imperceptibly at the lipstick and then the mirror, “Audio… and video.”

“I love you,” I said.

She nodded. “You’d better get those names down, just in case the police confiscate my makeup as evidence,” she said.

“His name was Chuck Venture,” Ariaura was saying. “He and I had worked together on a chain-letter scheme. His real name’s Harold Vogel, but you probably know him by the name he uses out here, Charles Fred.”

Jesus. I scribbled the names down: Harold Vogel, Chuck Venture—

“We’d worked a couple of chain-letter scams together,” Ariaura said, “so I told him I wanted him to take me to Salem and set me up in the channeling business.”

There was a clank and a thud as Ernesto made it to the door and out. It slammed shut behind him.

“Harold always did have a bad habit of writing everything down,” Ariaura said chattily. “‘You can’t blackmail me, Doreen,’ he said. ‘Wanna bet?’ I said. ‘It’s all in a safety deposit box in Dayton with instructions to open it if anything happens to me.’”

She leaned confidingly forward. “It’s not, of course. It’s in the safe in my bedroom behind the portrait of Isus. The combination’s twelve left, six right, fourteen left.” She laughed brightly. “So anyway, he taught me all about how you soften the chumps up in the seminars so they’ll tell Isus all about their love life in the private audiences and then send them copies of the videotapes—”

There were several audible gasps behind me and then the beginnings of a murmur, or possibly a growl, but Ariaura paid no attention.

“—and he introduced me to one of the orderlies at New Beginnings Rehab Center, and the deep masseuse at the Willowsage Spa for personal details Isus can use to convince them he knows all, sees all—”

The growl was becoming a roar, but it was scarcely audible over the shouts from outside and the banging on the doors, which were apparently locked from the inside.

“—and how to change my voice and expression to make it look like I’m actually channeling a spirit from beyond—”

It sounded as though the emcee and ushers had found a battering ram. The banging had become shuddering thuds.

“—although I don’t think learning all that junk about Lemuria and stuff was necessary,” Ariaura said. “I mean, it’s obvious you people will believe anything .”

She smiled beatifically at the audience, as if expecting applause, but the only sound (beside the thuds) was of cell phone keys being hit and women shouting into them. When I glanced back, everybody except Kildy had a phone clapped to their ear.

“Are there any questions?” Ariaura asked brightly.

“Yes,” I said. “Are you saying you’re the one doing the voice of Isus?”

She smiled pleasedly down at me. “Of course. There’s no such thing as channeling spirits from the Great Beyond. Other questions?” She looked past me to the other wildly waving hands. “Yes? The woman in blue?”

“How could you lie to us, you—?”

I stepped adroitly in front of her. “Are you saying Todd Phoenix is a fake, too?”

“Oh, yes,” Ariaura said. “They’re all fakes—Todd Phoenix, Joye Wildde, Randall Mars. Next question? Yes, Miss Ross?”

Kildy stepped forward, still holding the compact and lipstick. “When was the first time you met me?” she asked.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said.

“Just for the record,” she said, flashing me her radiant smile and then turning back to the stage. “Ariaura, had you ever met me before last week?”

“No,” she said. “I saw you at Ari—at my seminar, but I didn’t meet you till afterward at the office of The Jaundiced Eye , a fine magazine, by the way. I suggest you all take out subscriptions.”

“And I’m not your shill?” Kildy persisted.

“No, though I do have them,” she said. “The woman in green back there in the sixth row is one,” she said, pointing at a plump brunette. “Stand up, Lucy.”

Lucy was already scuttling to the door, and so were a thin redhead in a rainbow caftan and an impeccably tailored sixty-year-old in an Armani suit, with a large number of the audience right on their tails.

“Janine’s one, too,” Ariaura said, pointing at the redhead. “And Doris. They all help gather personal information for Isus to tell them, so it looks like he ‘knows all, sees all.’” She laughed delightedly. “Come up onstage and take a bow, girls.”

The “girls” ignored her. Doris, a pack of elderly women on her heels, pushed open the middle door and shouted, “You’ve got to stop her!”

The emcee and ushers began pushing their way through the door and toward the stage. The audience was even more determined to get out than they were to get in, but I still didn’t have much time. “Are all the psychics you named using blackmail like you?” I asked.

“Ariaura!” the emcee shouted, halfway to the stage and caught in the flood of women. “Stop talking. Anything you say can be held against you.”

“Oh, hi, Ken,” she said. “Ken’s in charge of laundering all our money. Take a bow, Ken! And you, too, Derek and Tad and Jared,” she said, indicating the ushers. “The boys pump the audience for information and feed it to me over this,” she said, holding up her sacred amulet.

She looked back at me. “I forgot what you asked.”

“Are all the pyschics you named using blackmail like you?”

“No, not all of them. Swami Vishnu Jammi uses post-hypnotic suggestion, and Nadrilene’s always used extortion.”

“What about Charles Fred? What’s his scam?”

“Invest—” Ariaura’s pin-on mike went suddenly dead. I looked back at the melee. One of the ushers was proudly holding up an unplugged cord.

“Investment fraud,” Ariaura shouted, her hands cupped around her mouth. “Chuck tells his marks their dead relations want them to invest in certain stocks. I’d suggest you—”

One of the ushers reached the stage. He grabbed Ariaura by one arm and tried to grab the other.

“—suggest you check out Metra—” Ariaura shouted, flailing at him. “Metracon, Spirilink—”

A second usher appeared, and the two of them managed to pinion her arms. “Crystalcom, Inc.,” she said, kicking out at them, “and Universis. Find out—” She aimed a kick at the groin of one of the ushers that made me flinch. “Get your paws off me.”

The emcee stepped in front of her. “That concludes Ariaura’s presentation,” he said, avoiding her kicking feet. “Thank you all for coming. Videos of—” he said, and then thought better of it, “—personally autographed copies of Ariaura’s book, Believe and— ”

“Find out who the majority stockholder is,” Ariaura shrieked, struggling. “And ask Chuck what he knows about a check forgery scam Zolita’s running in Reno.”

“— It Will Happen are on sale in the…” the emcee said, and gave up. He grabbed for Ariaura’s feet. The three of them wrestled her toward the wings.

“One last question!” I shouted, but it was too late. They already had her off the stage. “Why was the baby in the icebox?”