The Green Fairy     The Green Fairy

 by Hope

 For Penemuel, who sparked the idea. 

 

  

 Because it was Galatoire's, they'd waited. An iron-gated pearl on the
slum side of Bourbon Street, its glass doors opened to endless, sculpted
white walls rising up to high ceilings, only occasionally interrupted by
columns and mirrors. Lex barely noticed the tuxedoed waiters sweeping past
as he held Liz's chair for her. She thanked him, and after a half an hour
in line outside, they exchanged amused glances when their waiter appeared
before Lex had finished spreading the linen napkin in his lap. 

 "Escargots bordelaise," she said, her voice softly melodic with a
Caribbean accent she hadn't always had. She cast a quick look at Lex,
molasses-dark eyes dancing as she ordered an appetizer for him, too.
"Shrimp remoulade for sir, thank you." 

 When the waiter disappeared, Lex graced her with a smile. He felt at home
in the Parisian deco surroundings, warmed by the slight golden tinge to
the walls. No matter which way he looked, he could catch a glimpse of them
in the mirrors. She seemed exotic in tangerine silk, he fit the jacket and
tie dress code, but broke with a faintly bluesilver shirt. "And if I don't
like shrimp?" 

 "Then you'll suffer." She laughed, reaching across the table to smooth
her fingers over the back of his hand, coffee contrast to pale cream.
"With a smile, because you want to do business with me, and you'd hate to
offend me." 

 Lex registered her teasing touch with a flicker of brow, and nothing
more. That was her way, a little gift of intimacy that turned cold if the
affection was returned; Elizabeth Stride was his favorite lover he'd never
had, and she had a point. She'd inherited control over Barrington and
Stride Ltd., and while the father had never cared much for Lex, the
daughter had a fondness for old school friends. "You're right, I would.
You're doing me a favor." 

 With a quick squeeze, more pinch than caress, Liz drew back with a laugh.
"So pretty when you play at modesty." 

 "I was going for humility," he said, sinking comfortably into his chair.
He swept his gaze over the crowded, noisy first floor, Creole food
painting flashes of color on white linen. "This is a long way from
London." 

 Liz nodded. "As long a way as possible. Are you bored yet?" 

 "I think I can make it through dinner," Lex said, sitting back to allow
the waiter to fill their wine glasses. He looked around again, old money,
old establishment, quiet conversation and an emphasis on how things ought
to be done, he slowly fixed Liz in his gaze and asked, with a wry crook on
the edge of his lips, "A little slow for you, isn't it?" 

 Tracing her finger along the edge of her plate, Liz smiled. "Missing the
old days?" 

 All night parties, bars and mansions; dancing and passing clove
cigarettes mouth to mouth; Lex let the past ebb away before answering.
"Reminiscing." 

 "Don't yet." Liz lifted her glass, tipping it toward him. "The night's
still young." 

 - 

 After dinner, they passed Old John's Absinthe House on the Vieux Carre;
Liz moved so purposefully, Lex didn't have a chance to hesitate, though he
glanced back more than once. 

 Illegal since prohibition, absinthe had proved to be an elusive chemical
compound to replicate. Lex had toyed with it in college: wormwood oil
stirred into Chartreuse had tasted like licorice antifreeze, and the
"absinthe" from Rumania had foamed when he'd opened it- never a promising
sign for an uncarbonated beverage. 

 Turning down an alley, Liz looked back with a laugh. "It's only Pernod,
Lex. We could have had that at Galatoire's." 

 "I wasn't aware that extrasensory perception came with the accent." 

 "A girl does what she can to fit in," she said, ushering him to a
distressed, chipped-paint door. Gesturing with raised eyebrows, she
instructed, "Shave and a haircut." 

 With a curious smile, Lex hesitated, his gaze flashing across her
features before he raised his hand. Tapping out the rhythm, he managed
sarcasm with his deliberation. 

 The door opened on a scene from another century. Two steps opened into a
gallery of sofas and tables populated by well-dressed women with cigarette
holders and lazy, bedroom-eyed boys. Nearly blue with smoke, the air
swirled with low laughter and the buzz of whispered conversation. 

 Lex felt a hand press against his back, and he glanced over his shoulder.
A burly man, olive dark with a glistening bush mustache, smiled. 

 "Welcome to my home, Mr. Luthor," he said, his hand falling as he pushed
past. With a crooked finger, he invited them to follow. Down into the
gallery, the man presented a crimson brocade couch with a flourish. "Best
seat in the house." 

 "Thank you, Sully." Liz flashed him a brilliant smile, waiting for Lex to
offer his hand to help her sit. Her keen, dark eyes followed Lex's
expression as he settled next to her. "Happy birthday." 

 "My birthday's in August." 

 "Then happy Sunday." Leaning her head back, Liz traced the design pressed
into sofa, a cat smile twitching on her lips. Some incomprehensible system
in place, a young woman in a cheongsam slid up to the couch, sliding a
tray onto the table in front of them. She half-bowed, and melted back into
the smoky room, leaving two glasses full of bright leaf-green liqueur
behind. 

 Laying a slotted spoon on top of one glass, Liz watched Lex from the
corner of her eye as she placed a sugar cube on top and soaked it with
water. "I think you'll like this better than your experiments." 

 Lex followed her lead, the rituals of absinthe learned from books coming
back clearly as he stirred his drink from bright green to a soft mint. "Is
there anything you can't find in New Orleans?" 

 "They still have quadroon balls, so my guess would be no." Raising her
glass to him, she offered a smile. "To old friends." 

 "To new alliances," Lex replied, crystal singing against crystal with
their toast. When he brought the glass to his lips, he caught a hint of
pepper, then rosemary. Another breath, and the scent of anise wafted up.
Taking a careful sip, the liqueur bit on his tongue, sticky sweet with
fire beneath it. 

 Liz took her taste, then sank down against the arm of the couch with a
lazy wave. "What do you think?" 

 He wasn't sure. It burned all the way down, but the second swallow
soothed with a smoother flavor of sugared grass. It tasted nothing like he
expected, changing with each judicious sip. The heat remained constant,
spreading from his belly and into his veins, down to numb the tips of his
fingers and drawing a flushed warmth across his face. He swallowed on an
empty mouth, catching the barest touch of peppermint in the aftertaste.
"It has its moments." 

 Rolling the glass against her lower lip, Liz hummed a soft sound of
pleasure and laughter. Dark lashes fanned on her cheek when she closed her
eyes, swaying to some internal rhythm. Another sip washed the voodoo
accent off her tongue, and she murmured all upper-crust London again, "Are
you disappointed?" 

 He meant to say no, but a wave of fire poured over him, stealing his
voice. When he blinked, the haze of smoke crept by in lazy dragon curls;
they spread their talons and pushed Liz away- almost across the room, too
far to whisper to her. Swimming in his skin, hot all over, Lex didn't feel
the heat as he swallowed this time; just a sticky, creeping sweetness
dripping into his gut. Pulling out his handkerchief, he ground it in his
hand, trying surreptitiously to scrub the sweat from his palms. 

 Smoke dragons drifted past his nose, and he could hear Liz whispering
through a long tunnel. "Lex, are you all right?" 

 When he nodded, his whole body swayed with the lie. He blinked, and
speakeasy's muted colors turned carnivalgarish and gaudy, overpainted and
crass. Grasping the arm of the couch, he cut through the dragons and
forced himself to his feet. "Would you excuse me?" 

 Blood beat in his ears, fast and thin, reminding him of the tiny starling
he'd found on his mother's balcony, once. Nearly naked, so warm, its
frenetic whisper-pulse had radiated from every part of it into Lex's skin.
Searching out the door knob, Lex leaned against the door to balance
himself. He felt the starling in his hand, hot- so hot, so small, beating
away furiously... then stillness. Then cold. Lex's stomach turned, and he
forced his way outside. 

 Sucking in hard breaths, he scoured his hands with the handkerchief. He
couldn't get the memories off- bird dying, Cassandra dying, his mother
dead- all waxy, heavy dead in his hand. His hand- he flattened it against
the building for balance, squeezing his eyes closed and heaving. 

 Just pain, claws curled and wrenched uselessly through his belly- he'd
never been good at vomiting. There was something undignified about it, but
more than that, it seemed weak. Absinthe devouring him from the inside,
Lex was willing to concede to both to get rid of it. 

 Another unproductive heave yanked through him, and he took a deep,
steeling breath. He didn't taste smoke on the air anymore, but something
rich and ferric. Opening his eyes slowly, he decided that he must have
thrown up, because he felt warmth and wet on his fingers. His head
clearing, he scraped the offended hand against the building, and something
hard bit his palm. 

 Something metal, Lex straightened up to examine it. Warmth drained out of
him, and his stomach lurched again when he saw a straight razor, sharp and
stained newly red. With little ambient light, the blade didn't gleam, it
just lay there, crossing his palm with more dead weight. Instinct told him
to move, but when he took a step, he nearly tripped. 

 Through rain, and he couldn't remember when it started raining, he made
out a dark, crepe lump curled on the ground. He made out the shape of a
shoulder, an arm trailing back at an awkward angle from it. Stumbling
again, Lex reeled back, stepping on a booted foot, feeling bones compress
beneath leather and flesh. 

 "Hallucinations," he said, trying to smooth himself back to control and
clear thought. In the distance, he heard a man shouting nonsense words
Lipski!; nearby, someone sang in Russian. From all scientific standards,
the secondary affects of absinthe should have just made the world seem a
little gauzy, a little odd- but it had always been the apocrypha that
interested him. A drink so forbidden that it had to be banned, an
alchemical potion that would part the hazy veil of one world onto
another... he'd had his theories that the poets and madmen were crazy long
before they stared into the paling louche of sugared absinthe, but now he
wasn't so sure. 

 Lex scanned his surroundings, squinting through dark and rain to make out
the door to the speakeasy. Turning slowly, the alley wasn't so much an
alley anymore, as a wide, open yard. Narrow buildings climbed straight up
in every direction. One end of the yard had been closed off with a wicker
gate, and he could see the dull flicker of light beyond it. Starting
toward it, he stopped when he heard hoofbeats. 

 The body (not real) behind him loomed with its own presence, and a cold
waver swept through, a deeper chill than the rain soaking into his shirt.
He had blood on his hands, a knife in his hands, and a man with a cart had
stopped at the gate to let himself in. Creeping back, Lex searched for an
alcove or a recess, some puddle of shadow to step into while he figured
out what was going on. 

 Too late, the driver hopped down from his cart and squinted in Lex's
direction. He seemed surprised to see someone standing there, but started
to raise his hand in greeting. Even at this distance, Lex could see his
gaze skimmed past him, and down. An electric moment of silence crackled,
then the driver dropped his reins and lunged forward. "Oy, you!" 

 Lex ran. Shaking the knife out of his hand, he ducked into an empty
stable at the back of the yard, coughing on the hay dust his escape
stirred. Tack rattled, metallic chatter to reveal his escape, but he
didn't stop, and he didn't look back. 

 "Murder!" 

 The cry rose up, echoing off the high buildings, and Lex squeezed himself
through a poorly locked door in the back. He found himself in another
alley, dingy and dark, but straightforward. His shoes slid on the wet,
cobbled pavement, and every breath he took burned hot and cold in his
lungs. A sliver of his mind worked on the problem: obviously, he was
hallucinating, obviously it was unpleasant. 

 Figuring the amount of absinthe he'd drunk against how much he'd had to
eat, factoring his weight and throwing in the variable possibility that
the wine from dinner might prolong the effects, Lex burst out onto a
curved road and looked both ways before heading toward the sound of a
train. It was entirely possible, he decided, that he was actually passed
out on a cheap brocade couch. Perhaps Liz had put an arm around him; he
doubted she'd let anything happen to him. 

 "Get him!" 

 Thick, accented voices cut through his thoughts, and Lex didn't bother to
look back. He could hear boots on flagstones, more than two, maybe a small
mob. Sliding across the street, Lex ducked down another alley between
narrow buildings. No time to catch his breath, he bounced off rough walls,
running through a labyrinth of back passages. It didn't really matter
where he ended up, his plan was to keep moving, keep the nightmare from
blossoming, until he sobered up. As he scrambled onto another lane, he
realized he never had finished his calculations. 

 The footsteps seemed distant now, the voices had died, and new faces
watched him as he slowed to a purposeful walk. Gaslight illuminated his
wet path, spreading out shadows on the tightly packed houses that crowded
the street. Even through rain, he could smell a low, pervading odor of
garbage and decay, and he crossed the street when two men in breeches and
suspenders threatened to beat each other to a pulp right in front of him.
A long-gowned woman hissed from a doorway, curling her fingers to catch
him and draw him closer. "You there, are you lonely?" 

 He ignored her, and the curse she threw after him when he walked past
without meeting her gaze. The stinging rush of adrenaline still coursed
through him, making him edgy as he ducked around another horse and cart to
cross the street. He trailed his gaze up the side of a corner building,
and swallowed empty laughter at the sign whitewashed onto brick.
"Whitechapel - Ellen Street, Backchurch Lane." 

 Degas and Rimabud had been lucky, pouring paintings and poems from a
little glass of green; apparently they weren't diseased with a deeply
disturbed sense of humor. That would be something to consider later, Lex
decided. Maybe he'd give Clark a copy of "The Lotus Eaters" and share
"theories" on otherworldly intoxication, just to watch his sunshine face
set. 

 A thick voice crashed through Lex's amusement, and he spun around just in
time to see a meaty fist fly at him. He jerked his head away, feeling the
blow glance off his cheek, and he tried to put up his hands to block
another. A swarm of sour-smelling men surrounded him, angry voices buzzing
as they surrounded him. Someone from behind pushed, someone at the side
grabbed his wrist and yanked his hand up hard enough to make his shoulder
snap. 

 Another shout rose on rancid breath. "He's the one! He's the one what cut
up Long Liz, I seen him!" 

 Offering a tight smile, Lex leaned his head back and stared down into
dark, beady eyes. "I think if you let me explain..." Swinging an elbow
hard into someone's chest, Lex jerked his hand away and lunged against the
wall of flesh in front of him. He managed to knock one of the men down,
and for a moment, he could see the path of his next escape. A long street,
wide and twisting, prostitutes and pub dwellers peered at him curiously,
then turned back to their business when he was dragged back down into the
throng. 

 It took a second to realize he wasn't standing anymore, and by the time
he did, there was no chance to deflect the blackjack hurtling toward him.
Through a quick spangle of pain, he saw red, then black, then nothing. 

 - 

 Head pounding, Lex rubbed a heavy hand across his eyes. He felt like he
had bees under his skin, stinging and buzzing as he slowly pushed himself
up. The soft scent of perfume made his stomach turn, but it jolted him the
rest of the way awake. He was in bed, soft sheets and pillows sliding
against his bare skin, and he could see himself in the bureau mirror on
the opposite wall. Long and pale in the dark, he wasn't bruised or
bloodied, and he wasn't alone. 

 Glancing over to confirm reflection with flesh, Lex pursed his lips.
Curled on her side, Liz lay next to him, so peaceful she didn't stir when
he reached out to touch one of the delicate beads woven into her hair. A
sickly-sour taste rose in the back of his throat, in time to the aching
roar in his head, and he exhaled a thin breath. Bad enough that his body
had satisfied its curiosity without sharing the memory, but LexCorp needed
Barrington and Stride's unvarnished goodwill. 

 Lex rolled out of bed to get a glass of water, already crafting the right
words to simplify the situation. Padding into the bathroom, he flipping
the switch and squinted when sudden brightness burned his eyes. She wasn't
a naive and neither was he, so direct was probably best. I think we can
agree this was a mutually enjoyable diversion, he composed and reached
blindly for one of the paper-lidded glasses at the side of the sink. 

 He felt a prick, and jerked his hand back- close to his face to examine
the thin, sheer line of blood welling across his finger. Shielding his
eyes, he leaned down to identify the offending object. Something metal- a
straight razor, sharp and newly stained with red. In this light, it did
gleam. 

 Lex closed the bathroom door before he could look at the body on the bed.
  
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