Budayeen Nights: Stories

to turn our attention to business.”

“Go ahead,” says Honey. “You shoot.”

“Yes, well…Slow, Slow Burn has been in the stores now for a little more than six months. I trust you’ve had the chance to look over the compilation of figures we sent you.”

“Yes, I see them.”

“And I suppose you’d like me to go over them with you. They’re a little difficult to understand, even after you’ve been in the business as long as I have.”

“No, okay, I understand them fine.”

The adman frowns. “That is, I know you’ve been without a business manager ever since, uh — “

Honey gives him a reassuring smile. “Ever since I kick Kit his ass for him.”

The man from the agency looks a little uncomfortable. “And since then, as I say, you’ve been without a business manager. Well, we want you to know that we value your account very highly. We’ve represented you for almost twenty years. I’ve been sent to tell you that you may continue to rely on us during these troubled months.”

“No trouble,” says Honey.

The adman opens his briefcase and takes out a report. “We’ve taken the liberty of drawing up a plan for you, a preliminary schedule of promotional opportunities for Slow, Slow Burn and a suggested scenario for your next personality module. Slow, Slow Burn is doing rather well, although, of course, it doesn’t appear to be as great a success as we hoped at first. Our consultants have made some valuable suggestions relevant to regaining the market support you enjoyed on some of your previous releases.”

Honey gives him her brightest smile. The account executive smiles back. “May I have?” she asks, holding out her slender hand for the report.

“Certainly,” says the adman. “I’ll be happy to — “

Honey rips the papers in half while she looks directly into the man’s eyes. Her smile never wavers. “I tell you what I do — if I do promotion, and when I make new moddy.”

“Miss Pilar,” says the adman unhappily, “we have some of the best market analysts in the business studying current trends in the personality module industry, and your own standing as a recording artist. While your reputation is greater now than ever, your impact at what we call point-of-sale seems to be softening somewhat. Our proposals are designed to make the best use of what our agency considers your chief strengths — “

“In twenty years,” says Honey Pilar, “I earn much money for your agency, no?”

“Why, yes, of course.”

“We call New York. We tell your boss to do it my way. Your boss is good friend. He do what I tell him, you do what he tell you.”

The man takes out a handkerchief and mops at the perspiration on his upper lip. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” he says. “We’ll simply go back and give them your views. Later, if you should find that handling your career on your own is too much for you, we can always — “

“I handle my career thirty years,” Honey says. “Husbands, managers, or no. I handle my career. I think you go now.”

The two men from New York glance at each other nervously and stand up. “As always, Miss Pilar,” says the first adman, “it’s been a pleasure.”

“You bet,” she says.

As the men are retreating from her home, the second account executive pauses to murmur something to her. This is the first time he’s actually summoned the nerve to speak. “Miss Pilar,” he says, looking down at the tiled floor, “I was wondering if I might invite you to dinner tonight.”

Honey laughs. “You Americans!” she says, truly amused. “No, Kit was American too, and next husband will be tall blond, Swedish maybe, Dutch.”

The second adman is terribly disappointed. He hurries after his colleague, not even looking back at their client. Honey watches them for a moment, then closes the door. She is still holding the ad agency’s torn report. She goes back into the house, where she can find a wastebasket.

Introduction to Marid and the Trail of Blood

This story is one I commissioned, and gave George the idea for. I had been asked to edit an anthology of stories about lady vampires, and I went to several science fiction and fantasy writers (as opposed to horror writers), to get a science fictional take on what vampires are or might be. (Another story that appeared in the same anthology was Larry Niven’s “Song of the Night People,” which expanded into The Ringworld Throne.)

This also is one of my favorite Budayeen stories, mostly because it spotlights one of my favorite characters in that world, Bill the Cab Driver. Bill is a minor character in all three of the novels: Having won the lottery, he spent all the money to have one of his lungs removed and replaced with a sac containing a lifetime supply of the most powerful hallucinogen known to the underworld, time-released into his bloodstream so that Bill can be permanently, blissfully, and devastatingly stoned for the rest of his days, a condition which doesn’t improve his cab driving any.

Bill is, in his way, a very New Orleans character — like Safiyya the Lamb Lady, who also figures in the story, and Laila who runs the moddy shop. Certainly there are enough dented fenders in New Orleans to attest to the fact that, for a long time, Louisiana had no open-container law. Maybe they still don’t. George was fascinated by the strange New Orleans street-people who wandered around the French Quarter for years.

“Trail of Blood” is also one of the few Budayeen stories in which Marid acts from an almost unselfish motive — that is, without being backed against a wall and put in peril of his own life.

Just one of those things you see on the Street on those long hot Budayeen nights.

— Barbara Hambly 

Marid and the Trail of Blood

THERE IS A SAYING: “THE BUDAYEEN HIDES FROM the light.” You can interpret that any way you like, but I’m dissolute enough to know exactly what it means. There’s a certain time of day that always makes me feel as if my blackened soul were just then under the special scrutiny of Allah in Paradise.

It happens in the gray winter mornings just at dawn, when I’ve spent the entire night drinking in some awful hellhole. When I finally decide it’s time to go home and I step outside, instead of the cloaking forgiveness of darkness, there is bright, merciless sun shining on my aching head.

It makes me feel filthy and a little sick, as if I’d been wallowing in a dismal gutter all night. I know I can get pretty goddamn wiped out, but I don’t believe I’ve ever sunk to wallowing; at least, I don’t remember it if I did. And all the merchants setting up their stalls in the souks, all the men and women rising for morning prayers, they all glare at me with that special expression: They know exactly where I’ve been. They know I’m drunk and irredeemable. They give freely of contempt that they’ve been saving for a long time for someone as depraved and worthless as me.

This is not even to mention the disapproving expression on Youssef’s face last Tuesday, when he opened the great wooden front door at home. Or my slave, Kmuzu. Both of them knew enough not to say a word out loud, but I got the full treatment from their attitudes, particularly when Kmuzu started slamming down the breakfast things