Glimmering

“Listen,” she said in a lower voice. They stood in a softly lit alcove before a set of black glass doors with Nellie Candry etched in gold script. “I just want you to know this is a really nice thing you’re doing. It really means a lot to Marz. She’s had a hard time in the last year or so, coming from a war zone, you know? She and I are still getting used to each other, and she hasn’t really made any friends at the Brearley School yet. So it’s a pretty big deal that someone like you would take her somewhere. She’s just a kid, you know?”

A flutter of panic in Trip’s chest: how old was she, anyway?

Nellie rattled on. “But I figured, well, we’re nice guys, right?” She cocked her head and gazed at him with those disconcertingly lovely eyes. “Us Christians. I mean Xians. You especially. I mean, I probably wouldn’t let her go out with that guy from Slag Hammadi, you know?”

Trip blushed, but already Nellie was steering him through the black doors and into her office. There were posters tacked to the walls, rollaway stands holding video monitors and VCRs and, surprisingly, piles of old-fashioned silver film canisters. In one corner leaned some kind of staff, topped with a grotesque wooden mask and deer’s antlers.

“My secret life,” Nellie confessed. She paused to rub a strip of acetate between her fingers. “I started out as a maker of documentary films. Then I got sick—”

She grimaced. Trip looked away from her scarred face, to her hands, and noticed that she wore a dull gold ring like Marzana’s. “—though actually, I’ve got another film project I’m working on now. This A&R stuff, it’s just a day job, you know? Not that I don’t take it seriously,” she added, grinning. “Okay, Marzie! Company!”

Nellie edged past Trip and slid behind a tiny banana yellow desk strewn with IT discs and promotional gadgets: Viconix dispensers, crucifix penlights, body gloves. Atop her telephone perched a snowy owl mask. “Here he is. Now, if you guys can hang here for just a minute—”

“Hey,” said Trip, trying to keep his voice from breaking. “Marz. Hi.”

Marz lifted her head and peered out from between the arms of the chair in front of Nellie’s desk.

“Hi,” she whispered.

A fringe of corn-silk hair hung across her eyes. She wore very tight, white jodhpurs, a fuzzy lavender sweater, and a hugely oversize raincoat of transparent pink vinyl that made a crunching sound when she moved. Her feet were clad in pink plastic mules with bunnies on them.

Trip shook his head. It was the end of March, and freezing outside.

“Aren’t you going to be cold?”

Marz shot him a disdainful look. “No.”

Nellie laughed. “What’d I tell you?” She pointed a finger at Trip and smiled triumphantly. “You’ll take better care of her than me—I told her to wear that coat.”

He sat uneasily, staring at the blond girl. Nellie was asking him questions—had he ever made an IT recording? Had he ever been to New York before? Had he ever done drugs? IZE?

This last was odd enough that Trip looked away, startled. “Drugs? Jeez, no.”

“Never?” Nellie tilted her head, her eyes unreadable: was he being tested? She picked up several 8xl0s, black-and-white photos of blank-faced people standing in line, and fanned herself with them. “A lot of people don’t really think of IZE as a drug, you know. I mean, they practically had FDA approval before—”

Her hand waved disdainfully at the wall with its square of dark protective glass. Outside the glimmering could be glimpsed only as arabesques of black and gray moving above the skyscrapers. “—before all this came down.”

Trip hunched his shoulders. He wanted to leave. This woman was acting fucking bizarre. “Uh, yeah. I guess. But I don’t do drugs. I mean, I’m not just saying that. I never, ever did anything. My father was an alcoholic and he, like, killed himself. I signed a pledge when I was in sixth grade, and I’ve kept it.”

Nellie smiled. “Of course. I read that somewhere, or no—I saw you on Midnight, that’s it. Well, that’s great, Trip, really!” Her eyes grew soft as she leaned across the desk, smoothing the photos and setting them aside. “’Cause a lot of these bands, they’re just cashing in on the whole Xian phenomenon, just riding the wave—but you feel like the real thing to me. I think you’re just going to get bigger and bigger, Trip. I think you’re going to be huge.”

He nodded, forcing himself to smile; then let his glance ride back to Marz. She stared at him, eyes narrowed, and very slowly licked her upper lip.

The phone rang. “Okay!” crowed Nellie, cradling the receiver in her palm. “Off you go, kiddies. Marz—be good—”

They left. Even with her head down and eyes blanketed by her hair, Marz managed to navigate the Pyramid lobby with enviable ease. At her side Trip tried desperately to think of something to say. He did remember to let her go first into the limo, the driver holding the door open for them.

“The museum?” she asked. Trip nodded, and they were off.