The Leveller (10 page)

I'm stunned. Maybe Diego Salvador isn't such a bad guy after all. “And here I thought the MEEP was just one big money grab . . . no offense.”

“Actually, my father spends a lot of his profits from the gaming side of the MEEP on private medical research. When you think about all the diseases and disabilities out there . . . virtual reality could relieve the suffering of millions, maybe billions of people on this planet.”

Wyn is more animated than I've ever seen him, now that
he's warmed to his topic. And I have to admit, I'm pretty blown away by this news—the idea that the MEEP can be more than just a virtual rec center for bored teens.

“I mean, think of all the educational opportunities out there, especially once the multiplayer capabilities are released to the public,” he continues. “Imagine the virtual museums that historians could create. Teachers could take their students on field trips to ancient Egypt or Machu Picchu during the height of the Incan empire . . . professors could lecture inside the Parthenon in Athens or the Colosseum in Rome.”

“English majors could drink daiquiris with Ernest Hemingway in Havana,” I chime in, remembering my new friends at the Floridita.

“Exactly,” he says, laughing. “MeaParadisus can be so much more than a gaming platform. It could change the world as we know it, use our brains in ways that will enhance life and broaden our knowledge.”

I get up from my bench and go sit next to him. “That's truly incredible, Wyn,” I say, taking his hand, and I mean it.

I hold my breath for a minute, hoping he doesn't pull away. I can't blame him if he does; I've had my claws out ever since I got here.

He looks down at my hand and squeezes it, then smiles at me. “You're pretty incredible yourself, Nixy Bauer.”

I can't help it.

I melt into those chocolate eyes like marshmallows in cocoa.

I know, I know.

I need to get out of here.

THE TROPICANA IS HOPPING. HUNDREDS OF MEEPLE ARE DINING,
dancing, gambling, and mingling in the various rooms of the enormous nightclub. Wyn is giving me the full tour, and I'm truly amazed at how much work he's put into this place. The men are all in trim suits and tuxedos, hair slicked back and shoes just as shiny, but it's the women who truly stand out in their glamorous evening gowns, jewels, and beauty shop updos. I've put on my wench dress for the occasion. I stick out like a sore thumb, but the Meeple don't notice, and Wyn seems to like it because he keeps, shall we say,
not meeting my eyes.

The meadow-green aproned dress
is
cut pretty low and the laced bodice makes me look curvier than usual.

“Stop it!” I say, laughing as he pretends to sneak a peek at
my cleavage. “For all you know, these are just enhancements.”

That startles him.

“I . . . I've never thought about your avatar being enhanced. Is it?”

He looks more than a little perplexed by the notion that the real me might look different. “Does it matter?” I say, teasing him, but only a little.

“No, of course not,” he says, his voice earnest. “In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, if I met you in real life, I probably couldn't handle it. I'd faint or hyperventilate. Because I'm suave like that. Truly, I hope you
are
enhanced, for the sake of all humanity.”

“Good answer,” I say, grinning like a fool. I can't help it. He's kind of perfect right now. Except for the sexy cigarette girl coming toward us, her eyes glued to Wyn, her big red lips smiling seductively.

She's wearing little more than a gold-sequined, strapless bathing suit, matching high heels that make her bronzed legs look a mile long, and some heavy-duty cleavage that takes mine right out of the race.

“Wyn,
amorcito
!” she says, turning her tray of cigarettes to the side so she can lean over and kiss Wyn on both cheeks.

Wyn looks over at me with a grin and I narrow my eyes at him.

“Nixy, meet Guadalupe,” he says, looking more amused than he should be.

“Call me Lupe,” she says, smiling at me. “Nice to meet you,
princesa
. Care for a cigarillo? On the house for a pretty girl like you.”

“No thanks, Loopy,” I say, looking pointedly at Wyn. He rewards me with a small laugh.

“How about a nice Cuban fatty then,” Lupe says, picking up a huge cigar, “to put a little hair on your chest,
princesa
.”

My mouth drops open and Wyn cracks up.

“I don't think so,” I say, placing a hand over my chest, as if to protect it from Lupe's cigar voodoo.

“I know, I give you a
Romeo y Julieta
,” says Lupe, handing me a smaller, single wrapped cigar and a box of matches. “You young lovers can take turns puffing on it,” she says with a sly look at me and a wink at Wyn.

“
Gracias
, Lupe,” Wyn says, “we'll do that.”

“
Hasta la vista
, babydolls!” Lupe calls out with another flirty wink, then turns on her heel and walks away, her hips moving back and forth like a metronome.

“Wowza,” I say, holding the cigar up. “Do you program all your Meeple ladies to be huge flirts, or just Loopy?”

Wyn laughs. “Just Lupe. She's Chucho's girlfriend . . . or she was Chucho's girlfriend, back in the real Havana.”

“Chucho is . . .
was
Mama Beti's older brother, I'm guessing?”

“Yep. She's told me lots of great stories about him . . . he
knew everybody who was anybody in Havana from working the bar at Floridita. So did Lupe. She used to sneak Mama Beti into the shows here at the Tropicana. Mama Beti told me that the real Lupe had kind of a, um . . . naughty sense of humor, I guess you could say.”

“She'd make a sailor blush!”

“Latin Vixen IV script, courtesy of Jill Bauer,” Wyn says, enjoying the look of horror that crosses my face.

“My
mom
wrote those lines?”

“For the most part. I just customized them a bit.”

I shake my head. I need to have a little talk with Jill when I get home.
Nice Cuban fatty? Hair on your chest?
Honestly.

Wyn offers me his elbow. “Shall we dance now,
princesa
?”

I make a face. “If you're sure about this.” I tuck the cigar and matches into the pocket of my wench apron and reluctantly take his arm.

“Trust me,” he says, then leads me through the busy casino and through a set of glass doors.

We're in an outdoor ballroom now that Wyn tells me is called
Bajo las Estrellas
cabaret, which means “Under the Stars.” And the place lives up to its name. The vast enclosure has been draped with a thousand strands of twinkly lights, making me feel like I'm in a fairy garden, only a tropical fairy garden with towering palm trees and a cigar-smoke haze. All the Meeple here look like movie stars at their candlelit tables,
while a bevy of waiters and busboys and more scantily clad cigarette girls circulate among them.

Wyn had decided earlier that our best chance of finding any human players in the MEEP would be to go to the most crowded spot in Havana. It seemed counterintuitive to me at first, but he had insisted it would be the only way to lure them out. The only times he'd ever seen them, they'd been “hiding” in a crowd of Meeple.

An enormous stage at the end of the outdoor ballroom features a ten-piece band and a female singer who reminds me of Lupe: brassy, voluptuous, and . . . what word did Wyn use? Oh yeah.
Naughty
. But wow, can she sing. Her voice weaves in and out of the instruments playing behind her, the trumpets, piano, maracas, and bongo drums all just a showcase for her resonant voice and fiery presence.

“
AZUCAR!
” she yells, and some of the Meeple hoot and whistle in response.

Wyn pulls me onto the platform dance floor. I'm still not sure I want to do this.

“Can't we just sit at one of the tables and smoke our cigar?” I say, looking around at the other dancers. They're all moving in perfect time to the fast-paced music. I know they're programmed to do so, but still I feel intimidated.

“Smoking is bad for you. Just follow my lead,” says Wyn, putting his right hand on my waist and taking my hand in his
left. I feel slightly better now that he's holding on to me. Maybe he can just push me around the dance floor like a vacuum cleaner.

“They're playing a cha-cha now, easy as walking,” he explains. “Here, watch my feet. One, two, cha-cha-cha, three, four, cha-cha-cha.”


I do my best to imitate his steps. “One, two, cha-cha-cha,” I repeat, “three, four, cha-cha . . . oops! Sorry about that.”

We shuffle around like this several times, Wyn patiently counting out the steps with me. Not that it matters. I am a complete disaster at the cha-cha.

We try a mambo next, which is even worse.

“Okay!” says Wyn, after I've stepped on his foot for the twenty-seventh time. “Let's just stick to a simple two-step from now on. One-two, one-two, one-two,” he counts.

This is more like it.

I look at the mambo-ing, salsa-ing, cha-cha-ing Meeple doing their complicated dance moves nearby. “Show-offs,” I say, as Wyn and I two-step like hillbillies around the dance floor.

“They got nothing on us,” Wyn says, putting his hands around my waist and lifting me into the air. As we twirl around I stretch my arms out like a ballerina. “Thatta girl,
princesa
!” he says, laughing at my dramatic pose.

I love hearing him laugh. I almost wish we didn't have work to do.

But now that I don't have to worry so much about my feet, I start scoping the place as we circle through the room. “I recognize Frank Sinatra,” I say. “But point out the rest of the famous people to me.”

As we circuit the dance floor, Wyn shows me all the custom Meeple he's programmed based on the prestigious guest list of the Tropicana, back when it was the favorite playground of the rich and famous. I recognize many of the names—Marlon Brando, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., Joan Crawford, and Elizabeth Taylor—but there are others he has to explain to me, like Edith Piaf, a French singer whose long, skinny eyebrows look like they've been applied with a Sharpie, and Rocky Marciano, a heavyweight boxer whose nose looks like it lost a fight with a bowling ball.

“See that woman over there in the long white dress with the short dark hair?” he asks, tilting his head at a corner of the room.

I look in that direction and spot her. The white satin of her dress clings to every curve of her body and her hair has been slicked against her head like a cap, with little ringlets framing her tawny face. Huge spirals of diamonds hang from her ears, as big as Christmas ornaments. She's gorgeous.

“Let me guess . . . another actress? Singer? Dancer?”

“All of the above,” he answers. “That's Josephine Baker. She was quite the sensation back in the day.”

“Who's the Rico Suave with her?” I ask, thinking the tall, dark, tuxedoed man sitting across from her is pretty sensational as well. He is drinking from a martini glass and giving Josephine a smoky look across the table.

Wyn shrugs. “No one famous, just one of the stock Meeple. Latin Lover III, I think.”

“Oooh, he sounds like fun,” I say, wondering if Jill has given him a bunch of total cheeseball lines. I certainly hope so.

We continue to wing our way around the floor, watching for anything out of the ordinary, anything human among the Meeple.

“They're probably not on the dance floor,” Wyn says. “Unless they're great dancers, this would be an easy place to give yourself away.”

“You don't say?” I tease, and he lowers me into a dip like I'm Ginger Rogers. I kick up a leg for flourish and my long wench dress slides down to my thigh.

Wyn whistles at my bare leg and wags his eyebrows at me. “That leg must be enhanced, 'cause they don't make 'em that shapely in the real world.”

“Steal that line from Latin Lover III?” I ask, as he pulls me back up.

He puts both arms around me now, like we're slow dancing, though the music is still loud and lively. We stay this way for a while, and I rest my head on his shoulder as I scan the tables
again. Wyn's right: if there are any human players here, they would most likely be seated, where their nonautomated movements won't give them away.

So far, everyone just looks happy and fabulous. Marlon Brando is smoking a cigar and eyeing a cigarette girl. Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis Jr. are chuckling together and clinking glasses. Elizabeth Taylor is whispering something in Joan Crawford's ear. Joan Crawford looks unamused. Josephine Baker is adjusting her dangling earrings in a small compact while Rico Suave taps his foot impatiently. My eyes continue their search, though I'm starting to doubt this plan is working. I'm pretty sure the only two humans in this room are me and Wyn, and honestly, that's fine by me. I'm having fun and I don't want this night to—

“They're here,” I say, jerking my head up as the realization finally dawns on me.

“Easy,” Wyn says, continuing to dance. “Don't let them know you know. Tell me where they are, but smile like you're telling me what a great dancer I am.”

“Josephine and Rico Suave,” I say through my smile. “She had on spiral earrings before, not dangly ones. And he's tapping his foot out of sync with the music.”

Wyn spins me around a bit so he can take a peek. “You're right. Ready for phase two?”

“Ready,” I say, mentally rehearsing the next part of the plan.

“Okay, but you just put on your ‘Nixy Bauer, Butt-kicker' face, which isn't going to work,” he says, tapping me playfully on the nose. “We're supposed to be crazy about each other, remember?”

Oh yeah. I plaster a smile back on my lips, and tap his nose back in return. “Sorry, sweetcakes, guess I'm better at butt-kicking than acting.”

“Don't worry, you'll get your chance,” Wyn says, “but for now just pretend you're trying to woo me with your wenchiness.”

I want to snort, but I titter instead behind a demure hand. Someone should award me an Oscar for this performance.

Wyn waits for the song to die down, then he leads me off the dance floor, right past their table. He puts his arm around me and kisses me on the cheek. “Thanks for one last dance, beautiful,” he says, loud enough for them to hear. “Now let's blast through that alt portal and get home so I can kiss you in the real world.”

I smile up at him like I'm head over heels in love with him, which isn't actually that hard, as it turns out, and we stroll out of the cabaret and into the casino. We pass the slot machines and roulette tables toward the staff door at the back of the room. About halfway through the casino, I throw my head back and pretend to laugh at something Wyn says. He picks me up and swings me around, like we're completely smitten
with each other. While I'm swinging, I take a quick glance around the room.

“They took the bait,” I whisper in his ear. “They're at the blackjack table directly behind us.”

“Right. Let's do this,” he says, then pushes through the door.

I open my inventory and equip the rappelling gun.