Elizabeth Hand - Glimmering

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?”