The Infinite Matrix | Michael Swanwick & Francisco Goya | The Sleep Of

Reason 39

11.28.02

the sleep of reason

by Michael Swanwick

with illustrations by

Francisco JosÉ de Goya y Lucientes

Click image to enlarge

Digital image © copyright

Davison Art Center,

Wesleyan University

DAC permission required

for any other use.

39. [Plate 17]

Elena By Herself

With Grace gone, Elena was forced to make do by herself. Grace had been

the best employee a rapacious woman could hope for ? an emotional,

vulnerable wreck. One who, with the best intentions in the world,

destroyed lives without even knowing how she'd done it. Now Elena had to

rethink her methodology.

The first thing Elena did was to sell the whorehouse. She was weary of

the fast-food approach to male ruination. She wanted to get back to

boutique seduction.

And, holy guacamole, was her comeback a success! Men showered her with

flowers, fur coats, Maseratis, jet-copters, summer homes in Acapulco, and

pied-a-terres in Paris. In return for which she showered them with scorn,

neglect, infidelity and indifference. After which they killed themselves

with gas, guns, poison, leaps from the tops of bridges and buildings,

drink and dissolution, desperate acts of crime, and public confessions of

acts best left unmentioned. They died like flies.

A woman with the right attitude and million-dollar legs can have anything

she wants.

Somehow, it wasn't enough. Waiting with her local procuress for a major

industrialist or powerful politician to walk in on her while she was

examining the seams of her stockings (boys like eye-candy best when it's

stolen), Elena would be overcome by melancholic thoughts.

It wasn't the sex that she missed (Elena had sex with women at least

twice a week; guys

hate it when they catch their mistress sleeping with their wife), but the

camaraderie. The girl-talk, the whispered confidences, the giggly

trashing of men and their pretensions.

She sighed.

At which moment, somebody whose name you would recognize in a flash would

walk in and be entranced by that glimpse of perfect flesh that Elena with

horrified modesty would hide away from his eyes, blushing and yet ?

somehow the famous man would know ? not altogether unhappy that he had

been the one to blunder in upon her.

In a world-famous restaurant later that night, Elena would stir cream

into her coffee in a way that caused her to expose rather a lot of

cleavage. The Great Man would offer her some trinket ? diamonds,

emeralds, her own platinum card ? just to elicit a gasp from those ruby

lips. Both would anticipate an evening to remember.

Still, even in the midst of the hunt, even as Elena began the

degradation, even as a man who had never knelt to God learned what it was

like to kneel before a woman, blubbering like a baby? Elena couldn't

forget Grace.

It had been fun, having a pal.

Meanwhile, in a dismaying part of town, Grace was miserable, suffering,

and sunk in self-pity. The bills were due, she'd been beaten again, and

her boyfriend had just chucked her out of the apartment so he could bed

down some floozy he'd met in a bar.

She gave Elena not a thought.

[ Previous ] [ Next ]

===========================================================================

This is the 39th of 80 stories by Michael Swanwick written to accompany

Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos. For a listing of the most recently

available stories, go to The Sleep of Reason.

The Infinite Matrix's founding sponsor is Matrix NetSystems,

the Internet's oldest and most experienced

independent performance analysts.

Hosted by SFF.Net.

-->