"Before I woke, you were talking to someone."
"Please," she said, returning her eyes to her screen, "I have to work."
"You swore. And you said
leave him alone
. You were talking about me."
After a deep breath, she said, "Listen to me, I am trying to secure our future. Things have become extremely dangerous. Yes, I used strong language earlier, but I am working for exactly what you want." With that she continued to operate her screens.
I didn't know what to think. "What are you planning?" She didn't acknowledge me. "Hello? What is the plan?"
"Will you stop bothering me?"
Her tone was as harsh as I had heard before. Throwing off my blanket, I stood, and sped to my dressing room. After I rounded the corner, I waited for her to come after me, but heard no footsteps. I felt worse that I'd been forgotten.
My dressing room was as big as my living quarters, and was decorated with several shiny, charcoal-hematite chairs, an unfinished hemlock plank floor, adobe walls, and both color and black-and-white iMirrors. It was a simple, meditative space where I had spent hundreds of hours observing fabric in my loupe, admiring the evenness of stitches, and reading about the histories of various fibers. Today, I just wanted to break something.
To the left of my makeup chair was the tie rack, the underwear warmer, and shoe engine. Next sat my Mr. Renovation shirt machine, and filling most of the space were three rows of Stanley-Dior suit racks with my sixty Mr. Cedar suits. I couldn't touch them, so I grabbed a charcoal-and-burgundy-striped tie, reared back, and whipped it at the floor as though I were killing a snake.
I felt a stab of pain in my shoulder. The tie just lay there. The gesture had been pointless and I felt ridiculous. A moment later, the tie began to smoke, and then flames appeared. I had grabbed one of my favorite Mr. Cedar ties,
Love Alone,
which had nitrocellulose fibers. Using the dressing room fire extinguisher, I doused it with white powder. So much for my show of fury! I'd ruined a beautiful tie, covered my pajamas with sodium bicarbonate, tweaked my shoulder, and felt exactly the same sense of futility as before.
From the racks, I grabbed a suit at random, tore off my pajamas, got a pair of shorts and an ironed shirt from my machines, and dressed. Checking myself in the iMirror, I felt transformed. Without realizing it, I had gotten a suit titled
Constant Heart
. Mr. Cedar had designed it several months ago for a fashion show I hadn't attended. The fabric was a creamy moon-wool charcoal. The silhouette was slim and efficient.
"Joelene!" I called. "What tie should I wear?" Usually, my dresser, Stefano, would have come from his servant's entrance. I guessed he was sleeping. "Joelene," I said again, "Stefano's not here. Can you please help me?" I thought I heard a bump in the main room and headed out to check.
Xavid, Father, and his film crew were coming in. I didn't see Joelene.
"Come here!" said Father, waving urgently. "Let's do the big RiverGroup introduction together." Smiling, he added, "It'll be fun!"
"I'm not dressed. Where's Stefano?"
"We let that old fart go," he said. "Cost-cutting." He looked me up and down. "You're fine. Come here." Pointing at the closed door, he said, "They're waiting."
"I don't want to see anyone," I said, wishing Joelene could get me out of this.
"Get over here and be nice," he growled.
"Leave me alone."
"Why is everything a war with you?"
"Why are you threatening Nora?"
"I don't
want
to," he said as if it were self-evident.
"But you are!"
"I have to because you're such a disaster of a son."
"I hate you," I told him. "I hate the family, I hate the company. All I want is Nora and all you do is keep me from her."
His face turned purple. He looked angry and hurt, but mostly hurt. "Fuck-tastic!" he spat. "Things were going so lard six seconds ago. We caught Ken and his code worm. What do you think? That shows you I'm trying." Propping his hands on his hips, he said, "Thanks for ruining the whole day!"
"You've ruined my life."
He threw his hands up. "I can't believe you. I just can't deal with . . . " He kicked the air, then turned away, and while muttering, shook his head.
"Should I introduce our visitor?" asked Xavid.
Father said, "Whatever," with a flick of his wrist. He looked at me as if he had never been more disappointed with anything.
"I want my own life," I told him.
"You're not going to have anything if RiverGroup crashes and burns. And we've already crashed, and we are on fire!"
I asked, "Why did you hire Ken?"
For a second, I didn't think he was going to answer. His lips slowly tightened and it looked like he was going to have another outburst. "He passed all the tests! Okay?"
"What are your tests?"
He rolled his eyes and said, "Just shut up. All right?"
I could only guess how ridiculous they must have been. Could Ken dance Bäng? Did he like Father's newest favorite band, like the Palladiüm Pinheads or whatever? Or maybe the tests were whether Ken would wear the company colors, and agree with everything and anything Father said.
"They're still waiting," prompted Xavid.
"Go ahead," muttered Father.
Opening the door, Xavid poked his head out, and said, "Listen for your name, then come on in." Returning to our side, he held a hand beside his mouth as if shouting to a crowd of a hundred. "Introducing a new friend and brother to the RiverGroup way of life. A fantastic human being with billions of healthy red blood cells . . . "
As he continued his useless introduction, I glanced toward the bathroom door. Was Joelene in there? Usually, she took no more than a minute. I hoped she wasn't sick.
" . . . So," concluded Xavid, "let's bloody our shorts for one of RiverGroup's new friends. That's right! It's our new pal, the stylish and very intelligent Walter Kez!"
A second later, a young man peered in. His baby-fat cheeks were as pale as cake flour. His watery, blue, manga eyes were ringed with red as if he hadn't slept for three days. He wore a long, slender, dust-grey suit that was short in sleeve and trouser as if he had grown or it shrunk. It looked like one of the lesser tailors—Me-Yaki, Seem, or Mix-a-Fibré. On his head he wore a wide-brim straw hat with a blue ribbon. The hat made him look like a
CubeEye
reader, albeit a pudgy, somewhat malformed one. He stood for a moment, adjusting the Windsor of his matching blue tie, and smiled a fidgety, nervous smile. Even from ten feet away, I could smell baby power.
"Welcome!" said Father, now trying to crank up the enthusiasm. "Come in! Meet my son, the famous and amazing Michael Rivers. He's going to marry your sister at the big product show. That's really exciting!"
Chesterfield Kez, his uncle, the skull-faced man whose hand I had not shaken last night at the club, strode in past his nephew. Chesterfield wore the same sort of iridescent suit and a pile of mahogany-and-teak-beaded necklaces that covered his neck, chin, and half his lower lip.
"Hold on, Ches," cried Father, "Xavid will give you a big, fun intro!"
"Is that a camera?" whined Walter.
"They're filming my big, dopy, butt-tastic life!" said Father, shooting a quick evil eye my way. "'Seven hundred hours! You're welcome to start watching anytime."
"Thank you!" said Walter, his eyes tearing. "I just can't be around cameras."
"Kid's got allergies," explained Chesterfield. "Polyester, iron, dairy, trees, plastic, vegetables, chicken, cardboard, and . . . " Chesterfield nodded toward the documentary crew, " . . . cameras."
"Butt rockets!" yelped Father. "Go on!" he told his crew. "Get out!" As they ran out the back door, Father said, "Xavid, grab the two security cameras!"
Xavid yanked the little cameras from the walls, but even so Walter was scratching feverishly at his neck, making the skin red and raw.
For the next hour—although it felt like a dozen—I sat polite prisoner before pale, powdery, straw-hat-wearing Walter Kez, as he showed me his magazine collection. His voice was whiny, nasal, and he had a habit of inflecting the end of his sentences.
"This is a rare
CubeEye
issue twenty-three?" He opened it and flipped through all the pages—past dozens of photos of men in felt and straw hats. "This," he said, picking up another, "is the first issue of
118 Tones
? It's very, very valuable? Oh, and this is
Blot
issue forty. There's a printing error on page five? So, it's worth billions?"
Blot
was actually not bad. It dealt with reproduction fibers. I asked for it and browsed while he continued to show copies of
skd, Re-Ax, Salon 17, École, Inhab
, and
Turncoat
. Meanwhile, I kept looking for Joelene. I worried that I upset her before. I shouldn't have stormed off to my dressing room like I had. She was probably mad at me.
"I really, really like
118 Tones
, don't you?" asked Walter, holding another issue.
It was a cheap imitation of
Pure H
, but I said, "Sure."
Walter narrowed his eyes at me and I felt defenseless, as though he could see how isolated and unhappy I was. Leaning toward me, he whispered, "My sister's mad at you 'cause you saw Nora."
The strange thing was, I had forgotten they were related. "Oh," I said, "I'm sorry to hear that."
He burst out laughing. "Don't worry! I don't like my sister." Bending farther toward me, he added, "I've seen her eat her own snot balls."
Unfortunately, I could easily conjure the image of Elle, dressed as a cat-beaver-bunny gnawing on a dark, waxy little bit stuck under a fingernail.
"I like Nora better," he said. "She's very alluring and enchanting."
"Thank you," I said, not sure I appreciated his admiration.
Reaching into an inside pocket of his jacket, he held out his hand. In his sweaty palm were two black cockroaches. "Want one?"
"No!" I said, recoiling.
"They're pills!" he said with a giggle. "They're aru!" His eyes were glowing. "They're illegal, but so soothing! I get them in the slubs!"
The bug-shaped pills were hideously realistic with little eyes and painted-on legs. They were the ones Joelene had mentioned. Mother took them, and the freeboot who shot me had had something to do with them.
"They make
all
bad feelings go away," he said, as he first glanced toward his nannies, then placed one of the things onto his pink tongue, reared his head back, and swallowed. "Go on," he said, holding the other toward me.
"No," I said, "thank you."
After he pouted for a second, he returned the pill to his pocket.
"You go to the slubs?" I asked, since it was not just illegal and frowned upon but dangerous.
"Some places are very fascinating." He stuck out his lower lip. "Not the bad place where you were."
I was still shocked he went, let alone survived. "Doesn't your uncle watch you?"
"He can't," he whispered, with a sly smile. "I have such a bad camera allergy."
A beeping little alarm sounded in his jacket. I watched him check inside his left lapel. "Oh, gosh!" he said, all excited. "Nora is on the channels!" Turning to his nannies, he said, "Nora is on! May my friend Michael and I watch, please?"
We had not been left alone. Before Father, Xavid, and Chesterfield headed to one of the meeting theaters, two of Walter's nannies had come in to watch us. They were older, matronly woman who wore black suits and straw hats that matched his.
"I suppose that would be all right," said one, as she fiddled with the control Father had given her. Finally, she switched on the main screen. Against a raging forest fire were the words
Heavy Profit Camp
in black outlined with glittering gold.
The titles faded and sitting before a faux campfire was Nora's father, Mr. Gonzalez-Matsu. She had inherited his fierce eyes, but little else. While her features had an uplifting feel, his were the opposite. His mouth resembled the beak of a flesh-eating bird. The bottom edge of his nose was tilted upward so that his nostrils formed a curvy lowercase m. But his two most distinctive features were the puffy bags under his eyes, which made him look like he hadn't slept in five years, and his oily, black hair, with its shiny, pointed locks that resembled crow feathers.
As for clothes, he wore a striped green jacket over a patterned gold shirt. The top four buttons were undone to expose a green and gold undershirt. His pants looked like a combination of woven yellow leather and maybe some sort of green vines with leaves and odd little persimmon flowers here and there. His shoes were thick soled and the leather was as so dull it looked more like pressed dryer-lint.
As he held a stick before him where a burnt wiener dangled on the end, he said, "Our product offers a dramatic choice and much less operating costs. Super non-symmetry takes a lot of power. We don't." He tried to laugh a friendly laugh, but all the lines in his face pulled the other way.
"Were you insulted by Mr. Rivers' assertion that mkg was at fault for the freeboot?" asked the interviewer, a man dressed in aquamarine and pink flannel who was toasting several marshmallows on a long fork.
"Idiots!" shouted Nora's father with such energy that his wiener did a summersault on his branch. "I don't have any comment. Except they're idiots and grubs!"
Beside Mr. Gonzalez-Matsu sat what were obviously his versions of Ken Goh and Xavid, two men in wooden suits with big hairdos, who chimed in with
Idiots
and
Grubs
, respectively.
To the right of the yes men, sat Nora. Her face was so serene, so perfectly at ease, and her clothes so minimal and colorless—that she looked like she was a photo of a woman from a different world pasted into the picture.
She wore a brilliant white shirt that looked at once downy-soft and as smart as folded high-silica paper. Her tailored jacket was a deep charcoal and the fabric had flecks of what looked like black quasar dust. The shoulders and arms so perfectly fit her body, in a strange way, it was indecent because it so perfectly reflected her nude body beneath. Her eyelids were a smoky brown; her eyelashes resembled the sable of a fine paintbrush lightly dusted with crushed black iron, and her hair had been trimmed and brushed so that it resembled finely grained mahogany.