Welcome to LAST TAB, home of whatever I'm working on at the moment.

Fallings Palace is an unpublished short story. I'm using it to smooth out some rough spots in my work-in-progress novel, Princess Lane. This is the effect I'm after: Like the good looks of Killian Rhodes (the existentialist con artist/philanthropist in Summerland), I want the reader to realize something's going on that is only pleasant at first. Then, it hits you.

What hits you? In Princess Lane, it's the question, WHAT IF THIS WERE REAL? The New Pragmatism. Edna Fallings' chain of "palaces". Robert.

I want the reader to ask herself, "... would I do it?..."


Fallings Palace

The place was full of zombies. Shambling, shuffling people, spellbound into glassy-eyed fascination by the multimillion-dollar ambiance. Sam bit into her macaroon and watched them. You had to look really hard to spot anyone under fifty. No surprise here. The women she worked with told her not to come during the day. She hadn't told them that it wasn't the casino part she was interested in.
You could walk for hours here – that's what the women she worked with said – but it was hard to get lost. There were kiosks everywhere with lit maps and "you are here" arrows. They showed that the layout was a big circle linked by a shopping and dining concourse to another big circle. Round and round you go. And round and round.
She'd never been here before; the other casino resort was closer. That one booked great shows, but in her opinion it had about as much atmosphere as a shopping-club big box store. Not the case here. The decorators had started out with a nature theme, obviously, but the theme seemed to have taken off under its own power and morphed into Postmodern Prehistoric. It was sort of beautiful, despite everything. Hard to believe that less than twenty years ago, it had been an abandoned mill in a tiny New England burg no one had ever heard of.
Really good macaroon. Sam wiped the remnants on a paper napkin, crumpled it, and dropped it into a waste bin under the coffee station. With her half-full coffee cup, she stepped down from the "sidewalk cafe" onto the pedestrian concourse. She let her thoughts propel her around the circle.
It was her birthday. A significant one. The years had gone by fast. All those years of working full time – plus the kids, in their twenties now. She'd seen seagulls at the beach, fully-grown brownish juveniles, that reminded her of them. Squawking so you could hear them a mile away, running after a gull with adult feathers. Mom, you gotta help. Until payday, I've got a car payment and a phone payment due and I only have enough to pay one or the other. Until payday, loan me some money, Mom, please?
When payday came, sometimes – often – they'd have to be reminded. Sam grew weary of being taken for granted, providing free room and board, while her kids (cluelessly? who knew?) blew through their paychecks, drove new cars, and bought the latest iWhatevers-plus-megabucks-contracts.
She decided that it was time to downsize. Time to leave the nest, my darling fully-grown brownish seagulls. She sold the house.
The bathroom mirror in her new apartment attested to the great job her stylist had done. She didn't look twenty years younger, but she no longer resembled that photo of her mother. "I can do a dark beige-blonde. It'll be good with your hair's texture." And it was. The baby-fineness that had been a curse when her hair was brown, then gray-brown, made a seamless transition. No one at work seemed to notice the color, they just said she looked rested or something. What'd you do, sleep all weekend?
And now here she was. Vacation week. Happy birthday to me. Seeing a sign that said Restrooms, Sam crossed to the other side of the walkway, dodging a cigarette-puffing woman in a motorized chair-scooter. She went in and stood at one of the sinks in a long line of sinks set before a mirrored wall. Her reflection was wearing jeans, a white layering knit, black French terry zip jacket. Sleeves pushed up. No wedding ring, long divorced. Green eyes, lashes lightly touched with mascara, her best feature, everyone said. Everyone female, that is. Men? It'd been so long since that last relationship, that now? In her age range? They all seemed to be looking for either really young women, or for their mothers. There seemed to be a lot of them here today. Not that she'd come hoping to meet someone, but, she thought idly, this probably ranked even lower than some of the online dating sites she'd tried.
She went back out onto the casino floor, sat down at a slot machine at the end of a bank of machines that was fairly empty, and slid in a twenty-dollar bill. She pushed a button and zoned out while the machine's computer graphics whirled and flashed. She was still trying to work up the nerve to do what she came here to do.
A man sat down to play the machine next to hers. She chanced a quick look. Slight build. Gray hair. He caught her looking and launched into a monolog about some stream-of-consciousness folksy stuff she could not force herself to focus on. She pushed the cash-out button, said, "good luck" to the man (but not with me) and melted back into the crowd.
Suddenly, as if it were a message directed at Sam herself, there was that song, over the sound system. Who loves you? Who's gonna help you through make it through the night?... Edna Fallings' theme. Ever since the advent of the New Pragmatism, that song seemed to be everywhere. What Women Want. Edna's slogan. Well, we'll see, won't we?
She looked around for a Fallings kiosk; found one next to one of the map kiosks. An embedded videocam observed her as she began entering data into a Fallings Palace application. First Name? Samhraidh (It's Irish. It means "summer".) Sam’s parents were not Irish. Her mother named her after a heroine in a romance novel. Her father, who wanted a son, had to settle for a kid named Sam.
Twenty minutes later, she was almost finished. Final question. "Why do you want to do this?"
She knew the answer but couldn't put it into words. My romantic illusions are almost gone, but I don't want them to go. I'm not ready to be the cynic I'm turning into. I haven't found what I'm looking for. So she typed this: "I want the experience. For myself." Apparently it was enough.
***
Surprisingly enough, or not surprisingly, depending upon your viewpoint, the Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out Generation was its most vocal opponent. Well then, argued their children (or, in many cases, grandchildren), how do you expect us to pay for your Social Security, your Medicare, your Medicaid? They would then argue about who was the more entitled.
Then, the older generation began to die, and what remained when their collective voice quieted was the question, Why was there any cause for debate in the first place? Much of the world was already doing it.
It was strange how the tables turned. Individuals and groups that pioneered the illegal drug, gambling, and contracted sex industries in the United States partnered with senior activist groups and right-wing religious groups to fight legalization. The three industries had, of course, been enjoying tax-free status for a long time. But, like those dependent upon prescription medicine who oppose their meds going over the counter (because their insurance covers prescription meds only), no one except them really cared. In the end, the younger generations, crippled by personal and inherited government debt, prevailed.
The Federal government, broke from too many expensive wars, too few taxpayers and too many entitlement programs, had officially stepped back from “interfering” with states’ rights years ago. So when first one state, then another, decided its rights should include “innovative” methods to supplement long-since-withdrawn Federal stipends, opposing those “innovations” at a Federal level was a good way to get yourself voted out of office. And let’s face it, privately, very few elected officials were genuinely opposed.
To legalizing contracted sex workers, anyway. Many powerful men already had their escort services on speed dial.
As far as universal casino gambling went, the only ones seriously opposed were the casino tribes.
Illegal drugs? This is what they said: If you can’t beat ’em, tax ’em. Research ’em, so their consumers are functional, like nicotine consumers. That was the approach of many elected officials. And when all of their government-funded studies determined that nicotine does not equal hard drugs – what then? As an interim fallback, they pushed to legalize the “softer” ones (like marijuana). Since it was either that or raise taxes, marijuana products eventually joined tobacco products on turnpike billboards.
Cuba had been a sort of testing ground, after it was opened back up to US travel. It soon became a new Vegas. (The old Vegas, by then, was not what it used to be, because of ever-worsening climate changes and energy costs.) It caught on in Florida where it was first given its name, The New Pragmatism. After its astounding success there, The New Pragmatism quickly took hold in every state except Vermont and Utah.
Every day, babies were born and grew up fast. Soon, it was difficult to imagine that it had ever been any other way.
***
The slip of paper that printed out of the kiosk when Sam finished told her to go to the bus terminal waiting room at the September Entrance, at 3 PM. It was 2:45; she'd have to hurry.
It was hard to believe that a palace would have a bus reception area and lobby, although everything else was changing in the neoprag ("New Pragmatism" in media twitterspeak) world, so why not? The people who had been on the bus walked over a stone curb, onto a sidewalk, toward glass doors. All around them, overhead, behind, right and left, with roads snaking through and oversized parking spaces for buses, was a mammoth structure of concrete and stone that was an amalgam of Native American and L.A. Deco. Odd, but it worked. For the casino, that is, which was where they were right now. The casino had been built first; then, Fallings was added on. Or in this case, added in. After they built the Palace, the last part of the casino had gone up around it, and completely enclosed it. No exterior of Fallings Palace existed at this location.
She followed the small crowd of bus riders, all women, through the automatic sliding doors from the lobby into a Fallings reception area. She wondered silently how the individuals she saw around her would ever fit with the understanding she thought she had about what Edna Fallings was offering. "What women want?" These women?
These women had taken various degrees of pains to disguise the sad fact that most of them would never see fifty-five again. "I can sympathize with that," she thought. "It's hard enough to meet a man who's nice, and decent looking, and intelligent and interesting when you're young. But they're in their fifties and sixties – and I swear one or two of them are older." She surveyed the older women in their individual takes on casino outfits. Hair colors never seen in nature glimmered with brassy highlights under fluorescent lighting.
A perky young woman with a clipboard appeared and said, "Welcome to Fallings Palace!" She was wearing a belted brown dress, the same shade as her precise, expert haircut. At least twice a day she greeted busloads. Her cheerful manner was about an eight-point-0 on the Hospitality Industry Richter Scale. "Before we get started," she chirped, "I just need to find out who among you have Fallings Palace discount coupons. Raise your hands please, if you have one."
Most of the women were already holding their coupons. They waved them in the air, saying, "I do!" and making clever jokes to their companions while the others hunted in their purses or claimed to have left them home.
The chirpy greeter laughed and shook a finger at them. "If you forgot to bring your coupon, I have a few extras – just this once! C'mon, follow me!"
The happy group clucked after her, went through a side door, and disappeared.
Sam had stepped back, as the kiosk paper instructed, and did not follow the others. She shook her head at the brilliant simplicity of it. This tactic weeded out the ones who would've been happy at Fallings Palace before the New Pragmatism. They wanted shopping, dining, beauty treatments at the spa, slots next door and a show; then more gambling and a few drinks, without the encumbrance of their men. That is what those women wanted.
That was not what this woman wanted.
"Wait in the reception area, and you will be greeted by a Fallings representative."
She waited.
A man's voice behind her, "Excuse me." A light touch on her arm; she turned. "I'm Robert. How can I help you?" She felt a jolt of excitement. She smiled, first because the man was smiling, then because all the men in the Fallings Palace section that she was about to enter were called "Robert." This was for anonymity, and to emphasize that the world they occupied – while not a pure fantasy – was not a reality that could survive outside of this place.
She handed Robert the paper from the Fallings kiosk.
He looked at it. "Hi, Samhraidh." He actually pronounced it correctly. Samree.
Robert's age was uncertain, but he was no kid. It was apparent, however, that when he'd been a kid he'd been movie-actor handsome. Funny thing how some good-looking men only improve with age. Robert, here, was in that category.
Sam's life hadn't allowed her interaction with the Armani suit crowd, but she suspected what he was wearing might be of that genre. His eyes, deep brown; thick dark lashes. His smile. She couldn't help smiling back. And he smelled so good. Some wonderful, subtle scent. Spicy. Tall, but not too tall for her five-four. Edna thinks of everything.
Edna was a genius, this felt suddenly like a waking dream.
"Hi, Robert. Call me Sam, everyone does."
Each and every Robert was required to sign a scarily ironclad legal document swearing to secrecy. Nothing experienced here was to leave here. No comments on social networks. No gossip. No screenplays or novels. No journalistic exposes. Not even one tiny haiku.
Sam had read, of course – who hadn't? – that the nearest thing this planet had seen to Edna Fallings' small army of Roberts had been Japan's geisha society, which had its roots in the first millennium and evolved into a class of very beautiful, elegant women, steeped in tradition, highly trained in the performing arts. Arguably the most independent class of women up until modern times, they were capable businesswomen who commanded their own world, which they called the Willow World.
As geishas were sequestered inside their Willow World, so were the Roberts in the areas within Fallings Palaces reserved for them. These areas were referred to as studios, and given numbers, each one the sole residence of one man, for as long as he chose to be in Edna's employ. The studios looked as though they belonged in a palace and were divided into entertainment areas and separate, private residences. ("Entertainment" was not limited to the studios. Evenings could begin in the adjoining casino resort's restaurants, theaters, clubs and concert arenas; the option of finishing the evening in-studio afterwards hummed through the hours like an electric current.) Most private residences also served in part as classrooms, since almost every occupant spent his downtime pursuing online degrees in fields other than "actor", which was what was reported on tax forms. The IRS was not interested in job categorization semantics, only revenue, which in all cases was substantial.
Although "actor" was a superbly accurate categorization, no one minded that the Fallings experience wasn't actually reality. The women who came here had enough; reality was what drove them to Edna to help them make it through the night.
It was always a shock to the women when the softly spoken words, solicitous attitude and exactly the right physical connection (even if simply tender and soothing) from an intelligent, gorgeous, nonjudgmental, noncontrolling male human being caused first-timers to dissolve into tears. It had the effect of being blindsided by an act of kindness when someone has become accustomed to expecting cruelty, neglect or indifference.
Sam hoped she wouldn't cry. But even if she did... what would it prove? Only that she needed release. And she knew no more logical way, when you thought about it – really thought about it – than to pay for it with money, rather than with your heart or with years of your life.
He looked at her for a long moment. Not an uncomfortable moment. The look in his eyes changed. Then he said, "Come in, Sam, and be nineteen again. But with an awareness born of experience, you can keep that. Not only keep it, share it. It'll be like summer, after all you've ever known is winter.”
Yeah, the kiosk said that every Robert is skilled at conversation. And listening to what you said. And... whatever else you wanted.
But what about when this was over? It would be. What if she loved it? So many did; she had no doubt that she would too. She thought of Cinderella, after the ball, back in Stepmom's house, gownless, ragged, working her old dead-end job. Fallings was expensive; Sam could only afford it once a month at most. Then, marking days off the calendar until she could come back? Just for the chance to feel... alive?
On the other hand, think about the opposite of alive…
He offered Sam his arm and she took it. It was not certain that this was to be her Robert; but he was wonderful, and it was fun to take his arm. Their eyes met, they smiled at their shared secret, and Robert escorted Samhraidh into the Palace.

contact me at:  info@kelbaughstudios.com