ONCE THE ELEVATOR stopped, the nurses pushed out the opening doors ahead of me. Hallways led away in a half-sunburst pattern. Directly ahead were gold-sheathed double doors high and wide enough to admit King Kong.
I hoped the big ape was not the next CinSim I encountered. I was in no mood to play Fay Wray, although I was appropriately attired in my bare feet and winding sheet, with the cross-hung chains now a discreet bib necklace at my collarbones.
Even my gaudy familiar had decided to play it close to the vest.
I crossed the threshold as the nurses vanished to either side, leaving me to encounter Ms. Big alone. And she was a rarity indeed.
"Welcome to my kingdom," she said. "I am Cleopatra."
Her "throne room," though, was a lavish modern penthouse suite featuring sprawling leather-upholstered sofas and ottomans you could sink into and glass-topped coffee tables sparkling with art glass decorations from the window-wall light.
I recognized Cleo at once, and, for once, not from my long lone nights watching old movies on the group home TVs. I hadn't seen her on any film or any rerun TV channel. She was a creature of memory and the ether, like real Egyptian royalty. She was a Cleopatra for the ages.
Her tissue-sheer gown was a half-circle attached by jeweled bands at her wrists and upper arms, richly beaded in an intricate rayed design. Gold ribbons radiated from her nipples and the fork of her legs, providing such ineffective coverage the outfit would be banned in Boston to this day. An elaborate gilded headdress half-covered her thick dark hair.
Theda Bara as Cleopatra. Awesome. No footage of this silent-film queen portaying the Queen of the Nile in her first screen appearance remained to fascinate or amuse either lowly masses or sneering film critics. Someone, though, had recovered legendary lost footage to create this CinSim without peer. She was, as much as any moving being could be, even in Millennium Revelation Las Vegas, Cleopatra herself.
I moved my bare feet slowly over the icy thrill of granite floors, for she also was bare of foot, as if savoring the relief from the sandy sun-drenched climate we shared thousands of miles and many millennia apart.
"You are a traveler through the desert and have suffered much misadventure," she said. "My handmaidens will bathe and refresh you."
How could I resist this divinely corny invitation? Was I finally an extra in a vintage movie? Not a desirable corpse for a grue-drenched modern century but a guest in a desert land with an ancient code of hospitality to extend every civility as they had not been bestowed for centuries.
And then they could in good conscience kill me, of course.
But what a way to go!
THE VAMPIRE HANDMAIDENS, now attired in linen sheaths like fifties housewives (except the sheaths were see-through so they probably were Desperate Housewives), guided me through halls and chambers to a sunken pool tiled in lapis lazuli and carnelian.
I dropped the sheet like Miley Cyrus hadn't at that infamous Vanity Fair photo shoot. I wasn't worried. I was an adult and this was classy, folks! Art.
Clutching it together had helped me conceal the vial of my blood in my curled fist. Now I laid the tiny tube at the pool's edge before I waded into the limpid water and sank naked under its dubious cover. Wow. Not too hot, not too cold, but just right. A tepid, body-temp tub after all my stress. Perfect.
A wary kid who always used the gym dressing rooms, I'd suddenly shed my inhibitions with my winding sheet. Call it resurrection. Maybe being alive and in possession of all my blood had encouraged me to go with the flow.
Actually, the early-sixties Cleo had been a kind of role model of mine. You figure it: me seeing late-night reruns of the Technicolor Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra: Liz: black hair, blue eyes, white skin. Okay, they said her eyes were violet. I could get contact lenses. Right?
The fanged handmaidens fluttered at the edges of the pool, laying out clothes and jewels. Yes! I so deserved this, and besides, I thought I had the whole scene figured out. Liz wasn't the only foxy chick on the planet.
I stepped out to be wrapped in white linen like the young cowboy on the streets of Laredo, only it was fine-woven white linen as sheer as silk and was a dressing gown, not a winding sheet.
The handmaidens outlined my eyes with kohl and painted my lips red and tinted my finger and toe nails. Just like a free makeover at Macy's.
They scented me with oils and perfumes and smoothed my tangled hair with an ivory comb carved with hyenas and elephants treading on really big snakes. (That ivory kinda bothered me. I used only cruelty-free beauty products at home, what few I had.) And why weren't the elephants treading on those really lethal hyenas?
I wondered which Hollywood Egyptian outfit I'd get and nearly swooned when they produced a filmy skirt and-truly a rare early film artifact-Theda Bara's gold metal bra with coiled serpents for cups and chain strap behind the neck