Gunther loses his apartment, so he moves into the shell of the Rally’s down the block. He brings a bedroll, a battery lantern and soap. He buys some vegetables. He finds an old drive-thru radio headset and wears it; the battery’s dead. The weather warms.
One evening, as he’s deciding to take off the headset and a layer of sweatshirts, it crackles for a second. “actory patterns,” it says, and goes silent again.
Bemused, Gunther goes outside to see if there’s somebody waiting out at the menu board. There isn’t. But on the ground sits a dingy blue hardback book.
Holly and Roger graduate, along with twenty-two other students who weren’t at the dance. There’s news. People are vomiting money at her so she says yes to some school which, she understands, is on high ground, with trees.
She and Roger don’t speak again. She buries his corsage under the tree with her fifth-grade time capsule and plants yellow flowers on top. She sells things and packs light. She gets on a plane. At her first party she meets a girl with Rowan’s eyes: her name is Rose.
In her pockets, in her dreams, in secret, the desert waits.
Tanning a face is tender work, and Alzado uses the dull knife like a lover’s touch: each pass frees a little more hair from the edges. It’s a good sign that the six rings punched through the mask haven’t begun to tear away yet. The brine is starting to dry him out, so he shakes down fresh water from the dripping willow: rubs his hands clean, splashes his face.
In the cool shadows of the indoor room, Melora lies on a flat cot. There are peyote buttons under her tongue. She’s breathing. A second willow drips water on her lidless eyes.
Miss Chamuel leaves her hat in the empty coat check, walks down the mezzanine, and drives her sword into the wall below the stage.
The proscenium wakes, roars, smashes at her with coils of velvet curtain; but Miss Chamuel is quick and sharp. She dodges and lops. Curtains shred. The proscenium howls in pain.
“Recognize my key,” says Miss Chamuel, brandishing, “and I’ll stop.”
“Fiddlesticks,” it grumbles, and yawns wide.
“Thank you,” says Miss Chamuel, who is used to setting an example of politeness. She wipes the blade on the proscenium’s hardwood tongue. She walks into its mouth, and the dark.
Jesper shakes his head. “It’s a cross-section of a sphere,” she says. “A circle. No ends.”
“Right now, yes,” says Tamarind, then raises the walkie-talkie. “Beedeep. We’re under it, are you getting the coordinates? Beedeep.”
“You don’t actually have to say ‘beedeep,'” says Jesper.
Tamarind pretends not to hear him, or maybe really doesn’t, as the helicopter swings into view. The giant mirror strapped to its belly flashes.
“Sometimes the little bastards give us luck,” Tamarind shouts. “Sometimes we take it.”
The chopper crosses the rainbow and reflects it down, into the ground at their feet: light, roaring, gold.
“I can find out,” says Sambethe. “Two hundred and a vial of synaesthetic.”
Kosta unwraps the bills from the vial, drops them and holds the glass up to catch the light.
“Excellent,” breathes Sambethe, removing her shawl. Her head is bald, a map of tattoos and scabbing, but what’s worst is the corks: seven of them, filling the holes in her skull. She removes the one over her ear, scraping off granulation.
“Trepanning,” says Kosta, ill.
“That’s for letting demons out,” Sambethe says. “This…” She uncaps the vial and screws it carefully in the cork’s place. “Is for letting them in.”
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
“I owe you my life,” says Nez, shivering.
“I’ve already got it.” Luck rubs the pain out of his arms. “Thanks anyway.”
Nez thinks he understands. “I’m your man then,” he says. “Your bondsman, your loyal servant–”
“I don’t think you take my point,” says Luck coldly. “Every murder costs a life. A certain man killed; he’ll die to pay for it. My killing him, in turn, will cost the life I just saved. Now go away.”
Luck walks. Nez stands and stares. Blot breaks away and scurries back to him.
“Plus,” she says, “you owe me five knots for helping.”
Enriquillo and Ayiti found each other waterfall-bathing accidentally, six years ago. He was barely a man and she only just a woman. They shrieked and accused and ran away, then carefully came back at exactly the same time–one week later, and every week since.
But they are not lovers, Ayiti reasons, and therefore what she feels is not jealousy. Once she had Enriquillo’s attention on her, like a warm scent, even alone; now it’s cooling. The new girl is a deprivation.
So she curses four times, licks a black stone, and writes Elua’s name on the wall of thieves.