Free AEgypt by John Crowley

the other holding champagne), “that's how you know Sid? The movies?"
    "Sort of,” Pierce said, no actor at all in fact, though when Sid had recruited him for a day's work, he'd assured Pierce that didn't matter a bit. Sid himself, though he could convincingly, even with a certain air, describe himself as being “in films,” was in actuality a landlord, a born landlord in every sense, which is how Pierce had come to know him, Pierce's building required minute and constant attention from Sid, who would far rather have been at work on his other enterprises, in films.
    "A dream sequence,” Sid had explained to him as he tried to conjure heat from Pierce's stricken furnace that November. “A day's work is all. Less. And twenty dollars in it for you too, not that you need the money.” Sid had just acquired the rights to a Japanese film, a piece of mild erotica that he thought might appeal to a certain audience, only it included no male nudity; a high court had recently allowed as how male nudity was not in itself grounds for prosecution, and Sid was sure his film could make money if it went to the absolute limit and could be so advertised. Noticing a scene where his much-tried heroine collapses into a deep sleep, Sid had thought of inserting a dream sequence just at that point, as full of naked men (and women) as he could make it, an Orgy Scene in fact, though “all simulated, all simulated,” as Sid said, gesturing No with the wrench in his hand. And masked: the masks disguising the fact that the dream-revelers Sid had hired were neither Oriental nor appeared anywhere else in the film—as well as giving the proper surrealistic touch.
    She was masked, then, when he was paired with her, and abstracted further by harsh lights that paled her tawny skin almost to transparency, unreal as a doll. Her mother, an amateur of several arts, had made the masks, and they were clever: just scarves of thin, silky stuff, almost transparent, on which Effie had painted Kabuki faces, beetling brows and outthrust chins. When the scarf was tied over the face, the features beneath gave some life and movement to the painted features—spooky and dreamlike indeed. Her mother had also, out of some fund at her disposal, paid for the shooting. Her husband knew nothing of it.
    Pierce understood nothing of this at the time, they were all strangers to him then but Sid, it was only explained to him by Sid in a hurried whisper as they mounted the stairs together to her apartment at Christmas. Sid didn't whisper, though—Pierce couldn't remember him ever mentioning it—that Effie's own daughter had been among the dream-revelers. Or perhaps he had mentioned it, at some point, only it had not struck Pierce as it did now, among the family, at Christmas, drinking her father's champagne.
    "Oh,” she said, “there's the bell.” She got up from her mother's bed with a bounce and went to answer it.
    "Are you going to play later?” Effie asked her husband, who struck a new pose, shy, coy.
    "Oh sure,” Sid said. “You must, must . It wouldn't be Christmas."
    "Olga's here,” his daughter said, looking in.
    "Oh, tell her to come in,” Effie said. “I have to talk to her. Alone. Just for a while.” She passed the box of chocolates to Sid, and tidied herself.
    Olga was old, a sharp-eyed scarved head necklessly atop a tiny and plump figure, a beachball in flowing garments and heavy gold. Pierce was briefly presented, and was offered a ringed child's hand and an absurdly deep, grandly accented “How do you do” that might have come from Bela Lugosi.
    "My mother's cousin,” she told Pierce when Olga had swept on into Effie's room. “From the Gypsy side.” She took Pierce to the sideboard, where food was displayed, catered, she said, nobody in this house could cook. She talked rapidly, her long earrings that might have been Olga's trembling as she laughed or bent to the table, explaining family history, Christmas customs (Olga's visit, her father's