Glimmering

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—”