Glimmering

by Elizabeth Hand

  “We don’t want to lose control of what we’ve got here,” Peter Paul said. He wore a plain white surgeon’s mask over his mouth and nose, something he seldom bothered with back in Branson. “Trip. Your—our—success. Bringing the Word to all these kids. We’re talking about a very special situation here, and we just have to be very careful about not losing control.” He dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief.

  Sprawled in his chair facing Peter Paul, Trip didn’t laugh—he was too polite for that—but he did smile, tightly, a very controlled smile that didn’t show any teeth. “Sure,” he said in his soft voice, then lowered his head, one hand shading his eyes. “I understand.”

  The next day he called Agrippa Music, the subsidiary of GFI Worldwide that had distributed LIVE FROM GOLGOTHA. “This is Trip Marlowe. I—I want to talk to someone about signing.”

  The someone who returned his call was A&R head Nellie Candry, who was (to put it mildly) taken aback.

  “Of course we’d love to, Trip, that would be awesome, I mean it would be better than awesome, but you have to go through the proper channels with these things.”

  Trip could hear her voice catching, that tightness in the vocal cords people got when they were nervous or excited. He felt a quick surge of guilt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, like, go over someone’s head or something—”

  “No! No—” The tremor in her voice eased and Trip relaxed, slumping down onto the hotel bed. “It’s just that—well, we should really talk to your attorney, find out the terms of your contract with Mustard Seed, things like that. I mean, I assume they control the rights to everything you’ve done so far—”

  “Just LIVE FROM GOLGOTHA and the singles. I mean, we haven’t actually recorded anything else—”

  He heard her take a breath. “Right! We’ll have to iron that out. But there’s always a way around these things, Trip, so don’t worry. I’ll get someone in Legal on it right away. Right away! ”

  Trip didn’t tell her he didn’t have an attorney, except for those employed by Mustard Seed. Instead he arranged to meet her in the hotel lobby bar that evening at eleven-thirty.

  “Eleven-thirty?” Nellie laughed. “In a bar? Isn’t that kind of weird? For you, I mean.”

  Trip shook his head: it was one of those rare occasions when Lucius had booked them into a fancy secular hotel, and he was curious to check it out. “It’s a good time for me,” he said. “I don’t have a show tonight. I’ll see you later.” And he hung up.

  It actually was late for him. Lucius never bothered to check, but John Drinkwater enforced a strict ten o’clock curfew on those nights when Trip wasn’t performing. This wasn’t for reasons of propriety, so much as to ensure that Trip, a lifelong night owl, would get enough sleep. Trip’s onstage shenanigans notwithstanding, John Drinkwater could no more imagine his protégé doing something truly outrageous—drinking, smoking, drugs, girls—than he could himself.

  That night, John’s good-night call came at 9:17. Two hours later Trip went down to the lobby. His long green-streaked hair was shaved in the front, and he had a new cruciform brand on his forehead, still raw and red in the center. He wore black denim jeans, faded to steel gray, and a lumpen wool fisherman’s sweater that had been his father’s. He drew the attention of the hotel’s few ostentatiously dressed guests. It was impossible to read the expressions behind their masks, those artfully minimal Noh-like carapaces favored by the rich; but their conversation fell silent as he passed, and he could glimpse their eyes tracking him from inside their glittering shells.

  Still, no one seemed to recognize him: that’s why they were staying in the secular Stamford Four Seasons, and not a church-owned place. He walked quickly, heart pounding as he glanced around for Lucius or John Drinkwater. But the lobby was nearly empty, save for uniformed bellhops and a lone woman waiting by the front doors, dark eyes regarding him suspiciously from behind her extravagant floral mask.

  He had to show ID to get into the lobby bar, a roomy alcove overgrown with tropical plants. The golden retriever held by the security guard sniffed Trip apologetically, tail wagging.

  “Enjoy your evening,” the guard said, and waved him past.

  Just inside the lounge a discreet gold-lettered sign read For your health and safety, this area has been treated with Viconix. Little bamboo pagodas held tiny birds, finches and weavers that chirped plaintively as Trip passed. Hidden lanterns cast a twilight glow upon the overhanging branches and sent ripples of indigo and black washing across an elaborate fountain shaped like a dragon. There was a smell of rain, of newly turned earth, and the ubiquitous vanilla scent of the Viconix enzyme.

  “Trip.”

  He started. The voice came from behind a thicket of bamboo. When Trip peered around it he saw a youngish older woman sitting at a small glass table. She had short dark hair, very chic, and was heavily made up: chalk-white skin, eyes elaborately kohled with swirls of red and blue and yellow, mouth a crimson minnow’s curve. She wore a long-sleeved billowing silk dress, sand colored, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. A rubber mandrill mask lay beside her wineglass. Except for the enzyme-treated gauze that lined it, exuding the smell of vanilla, the mask resembled the sort of thing kids on Moody’s Island used to wear at Halloween. At the woman’s side sat a very thin blond girl who would not meet Trip’s gaze.

  “Trip! Hi, Nellie Candry.” Extending a hand gloved in topaz silk. “And this is my daughter Marzana—”

  “Marz,” the girl murmured. Trip caught a defiant glint in her eyes as she glanced up at him.

  “—Marz, my daughter Marz. She’s actually my foster daughter,” Nellie went on in a conspiratorial tone, as though the girl weren’t there. “I mean, you can tell,’Cause I’m not like actually old enough to be her real mother. I was supposed to get another girl, I went over to Poland the week after the earthquake and—this is incredible—the other girl is dead, everyone at that particular orphanage was dead but Marz !”

  Nellie leaned back in her chair and stared covetously at the girl beside her. “So I like bribed everyone I met and brought her back. Isn’t that amazing ? Not only that, she loves your music, and I thought, what the fuck, what’s the good of being A&R if you can’t do something like this, you know, bring the kid along so she can meet you. I didn’t think you’d mind. Oh! please, Trip, have a seat, have a seat—”

  He sat. Nellie was asking him something, what he wanted to drink; he gestured weakly with one hand, nodding when he heard papaya juice but still not looking at Nellie, looking only at her—

  The blond girl. He had no idea how old she was—fourteen? sixteen?—that was a part of him that never had the chance to develop: girl radar, boy radar. But she was so thin she looked younger, hands so long and pale and slender they were like bundled birch twigs; a white chip of a face with no makeup. Even her lips were pale, and her cheeks. The tiny indentations to each side of her delicate nose looked almost surreally dark, as though they had been daubed with black powder. A fringe of white corn-silk hair fell across her brow. She batted at it nervously with one hand, and he saw that her nails were bitten to the quick. On her right hand she wore a ring, a plain thin band of dull gold. Trip couldn’t tell how tall she was. She looked tiny, and he would have thought she really were a child were it not for the kingfisher flash of her eyes, oddly vigilant and twilight blue.

  “Trip? Here’s your juice.”

  A gloved hand pushed something across the table and he took it, drank it, but tasted nothing. He heard nothing, saw nothing except the girl staring back at him with such wild intensity that his face flushed and he could feel himself growing hard, so hard so suddenly that he moved awkwardly to hide it and nearly spilled his drink.

  “Trip? You okay?” Nellie’s voice dipped in concern. “We could do this tomorrow—”

  “No—no, this is good, this is fine…”

  If he had looked up, he would have seen a flicker of satisfaction in Nellie Candry’s dark eyes as she glanced from Trip to the blond girl, and heard a
very soft sigh as she leaned back in her chair. Somewhere in his head a lisping voice warned him: fear the beguiling, hypnotizing phantoms of the Kali Yuga…

  But it was too late. He was bewitched.

  They talked. Rather, Nellie talked, Kabuki makeup belying her excited tone.

  “You know, I was at Todd and Haiko’s show, when all the girls were wearing these—” She held up the mandrill mask, made a face, and laughed. “I mean, talk about revolt into fucking style! The Surgeon General oughta give those guys a medal—you know, fashion fucking matters. It can save lives.” The mask fluttered in her hand as she motioned for their waiter. “Do you have irradiated skim milk? Trip? More juice?”

  Trip nodded. Ceaselessly, restlessly, after a while not even pretending to look at Nellie or pay attention: he was simply riveted by the blond girl. She sat scarcely two feet away from him, but he might have beheld her upon a television screen. She seemed that distant, that detached; that unreal. She continued to stare at him with those feral eyes, every now and then tilting her head to regard something else, a slight movement in the lush branches above them, the clatter of a dropped glass like a gunshot at another table. But mostly she just stared back at him: two enchanted children, and not a word between them spoken.

  “Well, Trip,” Nellie Candry said at last. Her gaze lingered on the boy. It was a look Trip might have recognized if he had seen it, a certain affinity with Lucius Chappell’s avid gaze; and if he had been less moonstruck, he might have wondered, too, at the mandrill mask, the discreet tattoo of a running antelope revealed on Nellie’s wrist where the silk glove cuffed above a spur of bone. “This has been enlightening. I guess I’ll just have Legal call someone tomorrow at Mustard Seed. You said you didn’t know who—”

  “I’m sorry.” Trip wrenched his head around, forcing himself to look at her. “I mean, probably I could get a name for you—”

  “Please. Not to worry.” Nellie’s fingers curled around a blinking plastic chip: somehow the check had been taken care of, his second empty glass replaced with a full one, and all without him noticing. “This will work out fabulously. Now—”

  She slid the mask over her face, immediately was transformed into a simian goblin. As she stood Trip found himself stumbling to his feet, his hand outstretched imploringly; not to say good-bye but to beg her to stay, to leave the girl at least for another moment—

  “Marz, would you mind waiting for me a few minutes?” From a pocket in her loose dress Nellie pulled a phone. “I’ve got to send a message. Trip—”

  She turned to him. The rubber mask muffled her voice. “It’s been great talking to you.” Her hand when he shook it was small and fine boned. She lifted the mask so that he could see her smile. For the first time, Trip realized that the heavy makeup covered a network of scars, gashes that began beneath her eyes and extended to her jaw. Petra virus. Embarrassed and slightly horrified, he looked away as Nellie went on. “I’ll touch base with you tomorrow. And Marz—right back.”

  Immediately he slid into her empty chair, the one nearest to the girl.

  “Hey,” he said.

  The girl smiled tentatively. “Hi.”

  “So.” Trip cleared his throat. “She’s, like, your mother?”

  The girl stared at the empty glass in front of her. Her expression clouded, and she brought a hand to her mouth, started nibbling at her thumb. After a moment she spoke, in a sullen tone. “Yeah. She’s okay, I guess.” Her voice was heavily accented; it made his skin break out in goose bumps. “I am supposed to be dead, you know.”

  “Oh,” said Trip.

  He was close enough that he could smell the sweetish fragrance that clung to the fine white hair brushing the nape of her neck. Without thinking he took one of her hands. The other remained at her mouth, where she continued to chew her thumbnail. In the room around them Trip could hear soft voices and the sleepy twittering of caged finches, the plink of water in the fountain. He thought that probably he should say something but had no idea what. He had practically no experience whatsoever with girls, except those heavily chaperoned at church outings; a big deal had been made of his signing a vow of celibacy along with his morality contract. Virginal as a nun at twenty-two, Trip Marlowe had never really understood what the big deal was all about.

  Until now.

  He squeezed the girl’s hand. She didn’t squeeze it back, but smiled at him with devastating sweetness. Her skin was the bluish white of skim milk, the hollow of her throat lavender-gray. When she tilted her head her eyes caught the light and glowed violet. “So,” Trip coughed self-consciously. “Marz. Your real name is Marzana? Is that, uh, Polish?”

  She shook her head. “They called me the hyacinth girl.” Her voice was raspy, with a slight lisp. “So—just Marz. Okay?”

  “Sure. Listen—” He took her other hand, the thumb still damp, and held it tightly on the tabletop. “Could you—you want to do something? Like see a movie or something?”

  Marz laughed. “It’s kind of late—”

  “I mean tomorrow. I could meet you somewhere, pick you up. John Drinkwater could come with us, from my church. So you can tell her—Nellie, your mother—”

  “I don’t know.” The girl slipped her hands from his. She looked away, very deliberately. “Plus I just met you. I like your video, though. But yeah, okay.”

  He met her the next afternoon in the city, in Nellie Candry’s office at Agrippa Music. He told himself he couldn’t believe it was so easy. In fact it was almost the hardest thing he’d ever done. He lied to John Drinkwater and Jerry and Lucius, telling them he wanted to go to the city to visit one of the museums, the one with the dinosaurs. John was surprised but not suspicious, and instantly said no.

  “By yourself? You crazy, Trip? You never been in the city by yourself.”

  “I won’t walk—I’ll take taxis everywhere,” Trip protested, trying not to sound desperate. He’d been up all night, figuring out what he’d say. Now his heart was beating so hard he was afraid John would hear it; he was afraid John would know he’d jerked off three times already, thinking of her. “Or get me a driver like we did in Austin—”

  “You want to go to the city?” Lucius raised his eyebrows. “By yourself?”

  The manager looked over at John Drinkwater and shrugged. “Hey, there’s always a first time, right? I turned Alabaster Jar loose in San Francisco once, turned out okay. And Trip’s not like Jerry. He’s not gonna get in any trouble.”

  He turned back to Trip. “Sure, you can go, man. I’ll call Skylark Limo and get you a driver. Just—I dunno, don’t flash it all around who you are, okay? And don’t make a big deal out of it with the others. And definitely don’t tell Mr. John Paul Tightass Joseph.”

  To Trip’s amazement, John Drinkwater sighed and agreed. “Okay. You’re a big boy now, you can take care of yourself. I guess. Here—”

  John took out his wallet and carefully counted ten twenty-dollar bills. “Now put those in your shoe, in case you get mugged and they take your credit card. And tell the driver to have you back here by four. We got a show tomorrow, and I’ve got some stuff to discuss with you all.”

  He walked Trip to the door of his hotel room, his hand on Trip’s shoulder. “And listen—”

  Trip halted. He looked at John’s face but couldn’t meet his eyes. “You be careful, okay? Use your head, don’t do anything stupid.” And John hugged him, his unshaven cheek brushing Trip’s as he kissed him on the forehead.

  The limo arrived, petrol-driven with an array of small solar cells atop it like so many black parasols, and monstrous tires, the better to hydroplane through the messier parts of the Merritt Parkway. The interior was clean but worn, smelling strongly of Viconix and stale cigarette smoke. The uniformed driver was a former marine whose Medal of Honor hung beside her ID card on the dashboard. Her mouth was hidden behind a utilitarian blue-and-gray mask embossed with the limo service’s logo.

  “You going to the Pyramid?”

  Trip shrugged and glanced ner
vously back at the shining outlines of the Stamford Four Seasons, fading into the rubescent streets behind them. “I guess. The GFI building?”

  The driver nodded. “That’s the Pyramid. Ever been there?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “It’s something else, man. Like Disney World, ever been to Disney World? But this Pyramid, miracle they even got it built, you know? All this shit coming down, they still throw that thing up in two years. Fucking Japanese, man, they can do anything. It’ll be a few hours before we get there. Want to hear some music?” Trip shook his head. “Sure? Okay. Let me know if you want anything.” She pressed a button and disappeared behind a plasmer shield.

  He dozed most of the way, exhausted by expectation. He didn’t wake until they were on Riverside Drive, stalled in traffic beside a park, trees holding on to withered brown leaves, swing sets with no swings, some kind of playground structure that had been so vandalized its original purpose could only be guessed at. Broken blacktop and scuffed brown earth, no grass; but there were benches, and there were people: lots of them, faces protected from killing sky and viruses by hats or cheap plastic masks. Even through the car’s closed windows Trip could smell smoke, meat cooking—meat! The scent made Trip dizzy; he couldn’t recall where he had last smelled meat. Was it Austin? A radio blasted music that sounded like gunfire. Mothers watched children, dogs strained at leashes. A group of men and women sat cross-legged in a circle, chanting, heads tilted to the sky so that he could see the soft fleshy outlines of faces beneath their masks. Along the edge of the cracked sidewalk, people sold things from rickety card tables or blankets laid upon the ground. The crimson sky gave it all a harsh, premonitory glow.

  Sudden loud tapping at the passenger window. Trip edged nervously into the center of the car seat as a maskless woman pressed her face against the glass.

  “I will pray for you,” she shouted. She had sun-ravaged skin, gray-blond hair, and a red dot in the middle of her forehead. “Pray for me—”