The Caryatids

shin. Biserka stepped back, with a sour, tired expression. She then came around, leaned down, and pinched Radmila’s nose shut with her thumb and finger.

In moments Radmila had a scarlet agony in her lungs and fatal dark­ness roaring in her ears.

“You don’t do that again,” Biserka explained. She left, stooped be­hind the couch, opened a beautiful shoplifted Italian leather satchel. She removed a bloodstained parole breaker’s knife. It had the blackened chips, the melted plastic, and the stink.

She then seized a hank of Radmila’s hair and sawed loose a fistful of it. She threw the hair into Radmila’s watering eyes. “Do you want to walk for me now, or will there be more attitude?”

Radmila gusted air through her nose and shook her head.

Biserka stuck her fingers through the network of cinched wires around Radmila’s chest. She hauled her upright, with an effort. Tired, she changed her mind and shoved Radmila onto an abandoned couch, which exploded with dust.

“I have a feeling we won’t see this locale again,” Biserka said, gazing around the mold-spotted walls and the damp-collapsed ceiling. “That is such a pity, but, you know, you get a sixth sense about a blackspot. I’m a girl who has a very negative rapport with ubiquitous systems.”

Biserka’s English had an odd foreign accent. It might have been French, or Chinese, or maybe both French and Chinese.

“I travel light,” said Biserka, “so we have to leave my toys here as a nice surprise for sneaky kids. Kids these days! They love to steal, because they have so little… But professional theft is over! All the smart players traffic in revenge! Vendetta. Venganza. Rache. That’s the universal lan­guage. It’s hard to steal from people—but to steal the people… Goods are trackable, but people are stalkable.”

Biserka gazed around her derelict hideout and sighed. “All my pretty toys! Should I burn the house down? You think?”

Biserka rummaged in a handcrafted box that might once have con­tained some fine hobject. “I do want my pearls. They’re my favorites. I’ll let you carry my pearls.” Biserka sank her clawed fingers into a mass of strung pearls and pulled them out like cold spaghetti.

“I was being funny, you know, because ‘Biserka’ means ‘Pearl.’ So I tell the jewelers: ‘I’m Mila Montalban, show me all your pearls.’ And they are like: ‘Oh yes certainly Miss Montalban! Such a pleasure to see you here in person! Would you like to see the wild pearls from the years before the seacoasts rose, or would you like to see the modern cultured pearls?’ And I reply: ‘Why not see both?’”

Biserka thrust the dripping mass of pearls into Radmila’s face. “So: They bring out all these for me! Little lumpy bastards—the wild pearls from the old days! And then—they bring out these really huge gleaming supetperfect ones!” Biserka draped strands of pearls, one by one, over Radmila’s head.

“And I say to them, ‘What’s the damage?’ and they reply… what a fraud! These little stinking mean dirty ones cost a cut-off arm and one leg! And all these big white perfect round ones, pearls which didn’t even grow from mother oysters… they are so cheap!”

Biserka cinched the thick rope of pearls around Radmila’s neck. She hauled Radmila to her feet.

Then Biserka hauled her forward, tugging at the leash of jewels. “Where’s the justice? I hated them for that! I mean: People did that to the whole world, didn’t they? Such a pearl of a world, they had once! And now look at it!”

Biserka dragged her outside and down the stairs of the derelict build­ing. There was a big black hearse parked in a seaweed-strewn gravel driveway. That hearse hadn’t been there before, when Biserka had first abducted her.

Radmila tried to look around, feeling jewelry bite into her throat. Tall brown palms towered over the mansion, all of them killed by rising sea­water.

Biserka meant to force her into the black hearse. Radmila moaned.

“Pretty evening for a drive,” said Biserka.

Radmila snorted through her nose.

“You’re planning to kick me again and then try to run away,” Biserka diagnosed. She placed one flat hand against Radmila’s collarbone and pushed her. Radmila, her arms trapped behind her, reeled helplessly, stumbled, and fell.

Biserka pulled Radmila’s shoes off. She filled each shoe with a hand­ful of sharp gravel. Then she daintily tied the shoes on. “So now­—happy dancing girl—let’s see you run, hey?”

Radmila had to take four steps to reach the hearse. Those steps were like walking on sharp nails. Tears came to her eyes.

Biserka heaved her through the door of the hearse, then joined her on a velvet pew in the back. They sat together next to a huge, dirt­stained coffin.

“I could rip that tape off your lipstick,” said Biserka, studying her, “but you’d give me all kinds of lip for that. If you’re mean to me, I might lose my temper!”

The black hearse rolled silently into motion. The machine left the shoreline, humped and bumped over a broken patch of flattened woven­wire fencing.

In a matter of moments, they were in the indestructible LA freeway system, quietly cruising under the flashing lights.

“I know you’re wondering about this big dirty coffin here,” said Bis­erka, languidly kicking it with rhythmic, bongolike thuds. “Well, there’s some good news for you. The coffin is not for you. The casket has an oc­cupant already.”

Some time passed. Biserka enjoyed a chilly sip from a cocktail ther­mos. “You’re not alert anymore,” she said. “Are you ignoring me?”

Radmila turned toward her, eyes burning.

“That’s better. Good. Okay, now I’m explaining tonight’s events to you. You can’t understand all this, because you are this rich-chick blond ac­tress and you’re kind of stupid. Never mind. Because I had a long time to think about this. It’s been one of those asymmetric terror things where the enemy is very rich and has all her skyscrapers, but I always have the ini­tiative. So: You become my hostage now. Only, Radmila: I don’t want you as my hostage, because, wow! Wow, wow! I can’t stand the sight of you!”

Biserka kicked the side of the coffin harder, with her cheap black rub­ber ninja boot. “This man is my hostage. This dead gentleman in his coffin. I dug him up out of a graveyard today. What an exciting day full of action for Biserka Mihajlovicl”

Radmila looked longingly at the thermos.

“You are thirsty, but you don’t want to drink this,” Biserka told her, yawning. “It would put you out flat on your ass!” Biserka rolled her neck on her shoulders, and massaged the back of her own skull.

“So, as I told you: the graveyards. I know that sounds weird to you: my dear lively sister Biserka, in the graveyards? But graveyards are blackspots! People don’t wire the graveyards, because there are no pay­ing customers in there, and they don’t imagine that the locals would get up and leave. So there’s an imagination gap in a graveyard.”

Biserka giggled, and enjoyed another sip from her thermos. “Because I can work fine in graveyards! They never scare me! I love them! Be­cause they’re a huge blind spot for everybody stupider than me. For peo­ple like you. Huh? So, you know, who else is in there in graveyards? Besides me. Well, your people are in there, that’s who. Every famous old family has famous dead people. Like Svetlana, Bratislava, Kosara! Half of us are dead already and we don’t even have real graves!”

Biserka wiped her mouth on her black ninja sleeve. She had a tattoo on her right wrist, a homemade tattoo, the kind of artwork people did in jail cells while afflicted by long lengths of time. “So, me and my friend the funny backhoe are working in this blackspot, and up comes this gen­tleman here: the former governor of California. Your husband’s dad.”

Biserka waited a patient moment. “All right: don’t get so excited. I wasn’t the one who shot him. He won’t get any deader now. When we’re done with our family business, I’ll leave him somewhere—with a beeper on him. You can come fetch him and bury him back into the ground. You can hush it all up. The Montgomery-Montalban Family hushes up so many matters and hides so many troubles already.”

Biserka rubbed her nose. Someone had broken it, years ago. “So: I don’t hold you for ransom. I mean, yes, I