Elizabeth Hand - Glimmering

“Jackie. I’m sorry this isn’t Brian Eno.” A pause; something clinking against the tape recorder. “This is gonna sound really melodramatic. I’m sorry, Jackie. By the time you hear this…”

“No.”

The voice went on, the words blurring into each other—

“… because she’s sick, she thinks I don’t know but I heard her on the phone. She may have—she may have gotten it from me—”

“Fuck!” Jack shouted, pounding the dashboard; “ fuck, fuck! —”

“… can’t live like this. But I—I don’t want you to think it had anything to do with you, Jackie, Emma either. I know it’s selfish—”

—and then Jack was out of the car and running, shoving people aside.

“Hey! Asshole! What—”

“Julie.” He began to shout above his roaring heart. “ Julie! ”

There were armed guards at the revolving doors, eyes flicking nervously across the excited mob. “Let me in!” Jack yelled. “Goddammit, I know him ! Please, let me—”

One of the guards raised her arms to block him. Her head mic blared, and there was an answering blast from a speaker overhead. When she looked up Jack pushed through the door and into the security checkpoint.

“—WHITE MALE, ARMED, GATE SEVENTEEN—”

More guards, dogs straining at leashes, overturned chairs, and papers blown across the floor. Monitors chattered and shrieked, the high-pitched hum of head mics soared off into static. A masked man in a black suit was shouting at several guards. Directly behind them was the glowing arc of the metal detector, and through that Jack glimpsed uniforms and well-dressed women covering their mouths, people being pushed away by city police, all under a blinding sun. He moved through the shadowy booth, pushing aside a fallen chair . The man in the suit turned, his mouth open, but Jack heard nothing. Hands reached for him but he swept them aside, reached the metal detector and passed through it. Then he was in the sun, blinking. A few feet in front of him the crowd had formed a broad half circle, as though watching street musicians. Men and women in uniform knelt on the ground shouting at each other while armed guards waved back the crowd. Someone grabbed Jack and restrained him, he could not pull away so stood there with the rest, staring at the floor.

Jule lay there on his back. His face was pale save for a circular bruise, red and blackish purple, that radiated from mouth to chin, across his shattered nose to touch the pouched skin beneath his eyes. A corona of blood and what looked like black earth was etched around his head; his eyes were open, staring up into the brilliance. His big hand splayed open and a policeman crouched there with a white cloth and a plastic bag, fingering a gun delicately, as though it were an orchid.

“Julie,” whispered Jack. He lifted his head. Behind the crowd there were trees, stones, a waterfall; clouds of twinkling red and green lights. A young man comforted a slender woman who was shaking convulsively. A crimson arc was sprayed across the bodice of her dress. Jack shook his head, then froze as he saw the child.

She stood within the crowd, Emma’s tumbled blond curls and Jule’s hazel eyes, her hands raised before her, clasped. Sun made a glare of her clothes, if she even wore clothes. She was smiling. As he stared she raised her head. Her eyes locked with his, Julie’s eyes. Her lips moved, and Jack strained to hear her voice.

“— please, go!”

Someone jarred him, and he stumbled. When he looked up the child was gone. Where she had been a woman with short dark hair stood in dappled sun as though entranced, staring not at Jule’s body but at a point a few feet above it in the bright air. Her features were obscured behind Noh-mask makeup. Her lips moved, and her hands. Amidst the crackle of walkie-talkies and sirens Jack could hear her voice, clear and thin.

“ He has come through. ”

Then someone grabbed him and pulled him backwards, into the security booth.

“You know this guy? You know him?” a policeman shouted.

Jack nodded, straining to look back out into the light.

“ HOLD HIM! ” someone screamed, and he was shoved against the wall. They held him for questioning, first by security and then by city police, and finally brought him to another security checkpoint on the main floor, with an adjoining office that was nothing but a holding area for suspicious persons who violated GFI security. He was strip-searched and sprayed with Viconix, made to fill out numerous forms with GFI logos. Jack sat numbly and watched on a monitor as an emergency crew hurried in, after some minutes rushed out again, pushing a long white-draped gurney.

“His wife works in Mount Kisco,” he said hoarsely, though he had no idea if anyone was even listening. “Northern Westchester Medical Center…”

“She’s been notified.” The police detective who had been questioning him turned from another monitor. She sighed as a masked officer affixed a magnetic strip around Jack’s wrist. “They’re going to want to see you again, after the autopsy.”

He nodded.

“Do you want anything? Something to eat?” On her console a tiny artificial Christmas tree listed to one side. “There’s some kind of fake coffee…”

“No.”

He listened as the detective fielded calls from hospitals, police stations, other offices within the Pyramid. The Range Rover had been impounded. Jack sat forgotten in a swivel chair by the wall, wondering if he would have to wait for Emma to appear before he could go home. He drank tepid water from a bottle. It tasted of plastic and something harshly chemical. His stomach recoiled; he clenched his teeth, fighting nausea, a darkness that pulsed before his eyes no matter where he looked.

“You can leave now.”

A shadow moved toward him. The police detective.

“Mr. Finnegan?”

“Yes?” It hurt to speak.

“You can go. We located Dr. Isikoff. She—”

“Oh God.”

“She’s trying to make arrangements. To get down here. It will probably take her a while. She said something about a brother-in-law or a friend up there?”

He recognized the effort at kindness in her tone, but could only gaze at her. After a moment she asked, “Do you have a car?”

He shook his head.

“Do you have any friends or relatives here you could stay with? Do you want to find a hotel? No. Well. Okay, then.”

She crossed to the door and remained there. He realized she was waiting for him to leave. “I’ll see what I can do about arranging to get you back home. Rye, is it?”

“Yonkers.”

“Right. Yonkers.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. But I’ll have to ask you to leave now, Mr. Finnegan. I have to finish filing my report.”

He stood. At the doorway he stopped, that darkness rushing in, his head spinning…

“You can wait in the atrium.” He saw but did not feel her hand upon his arm, propelling him through the door. “I cleared it with security. There’s places to eat under the waterfall, you can sit there and wait. I’ll see about getting you a ride home.”

He nodded and walked down a blue-lit passage he had no memory of entering. Gradually its dimness gave way to the atrium’s artificial daylight. He left the passage, walked slowly across the atrium’s stone floor, staring at his feet as they crushed a thin layer of moss and lichen, soft grass that had the look of infant hair. Tiny colored lights were strung between stands of birch trees. In front of the revolving doors a small crowd still lingered, people with cameras and vidcams, security guards in GFI red and gold. There was no sign of any medical personnel, no sign that earlier a body had lain crumpled on the grass. Outside, the ambulance had gone, and the police cars. Through the doors he could glimpse the same dark line of limos beaded here and there with a yellow taxi. Another gaudy knot of Bright Young Things burst in, giggling as they left the security station. Jack could smell their perfumes, the vanilla scent of Viconix.