Grey

the whole world was glued to the channels when you suffered so.” With one of her long black fingernails, she collected a tiny droplet from her left eye. “Unlike so many who were sorry that you didn’t dance again, I loved your transformation. You were becoming a man—your own man.” After shaking her head, her voice got quiet, “But this is a step backward. And it’s heartbreaking. You and Nora looked so perfect together.”

I said, “Thank you.”

Petra picked up her glowing isotope shears. “And I don’t believe that breach for a moment. That freeboot thing is crazy. It makes no sense!” She waved the blades in my face and I could smell their heat. “There has never been a breach of RiverGroup before, and it happens now? Someone was behind it. Believe me, someone was responsible!”

“Who do you think?” I asked, pulling back from her glowing scissors.

“It has to be the other families. They’re jealous of you and RiverGroup.”

“The report established that it was

freeboot

retaliation,” said my advisor. “But we thank you for your opinion.”

“I’m not allowed to speak my mind?” asked my hairdresser. “Is that what you mean? Are you censoring me? Is that what you’re doing?”

“I didn’t say that or mean to imply that.”

Petra turned to me. “This whole thing makes me sick! Now your father has you sniffing the foul and over- exposed rump of this polka-dog! I didn’t know Konrad Kez had grandchildren. I have never heard of Elle before, and I wasn’t happy when I did.”

“We are not exactly pleased either,” said Joelene, “but we are trying to cope. Could we please…” She mimed cutting scissors, but Petra didn’t get the hint.

“I should have gone after your father when I was young,” she said, turning to me again. “I could have seduced him, when I had my full powers.” She shook her abundant chest at me—it sloshed back and forth like warm gelatin. “I would have grabbed him by the ears, and gotten his attention. You know what Hiro Bruce’s problem is?” asked Petra. “He’s so fixed on

success,

he has managed to screw it up completely. Someone needs to throw him over their knee and make that ass of his glow in the dark.”

“I agree with you, Petra,” I said. “I agree with you completely.”

Her face bloomed. “Thank you, sweet Michael! You’re a darling.” With that, she worked my hair in record time, applied a tanning solution to my face, did my eyes with a natural shade, and colored my lips. Once she was finished, she kissed me on the cheek, and told me she adored me.

My dresser, Stefano, helped me with my clothes, as he had done my whole life. His eyes were dark and small, his hands were as dry and rough as cigars, and he always called me Master Rivers. As I stood before the iMirrors, he sewed on my underwear, put socks on my feet;

then

helped me into my pants. On top, he put on an undershirt, then a gen-cotton shirt with an attached collar. Once he had gotten it tucked in and secured, he held out the jacket, and I slipped it on.

Mr. Cedar’s suit looked even better now. And it didn’t appear as downtrodden as I had originally thought. There was a power inside of it, as if instead of my body, it cloaked some sort of potent machine. Once Stefano had knotted my tie, he said, “You look excellent, Master Rivers.” Once he had gone, Joelene looked me over.

“It’s one of his best,” she said. Then she got down on the tiles, and scratched at the floor. I watched dumbfounded. It was like she was imitating a cat. She found a trapdoor a foot square and lifted the lid.

I asked, “What are you doing?”

Sticking her hands inside, I heard what sounded like typing. “This building is all about liquid crystal,” she said, pointing her chin toward the back of the room. The light green wall popped as if it were an enormous soap bubble —exactly as I had seen demonstrated when we toured the MonoBeat on opening day.

Behind the wall was a utility space filled with pipes, machines, and bundles of wires. In the center was a tube four feet wide with a giant toilet-bowl-shaped opening and a cut-off valve above. 

“Is something wrong?” I asked, afraid

a freeboot

was trying to sneak up on us.

“No.” I heard her type again. The wall was restored like a closing camera shutter.

A second later, we heard a knock on the door. “We’re ready for Mr. Rivers.”

My knees felt jittery as I walked down the entrance platform toward the table in the spotlight at the center of the restaurant. It wasn’t because of the spectators in the stands, or the billions of viewers on the channels, or the sad prospect of this ridiculous promotion date, it was that I feared I wouldn’t see Nora because it was too difficult. Joelene had opened the wall behind the green room, but only found pipes, tubes, and wires, not a way out. I hated to imagine that Nora would see the message on the suit, go to the SunEcho, but that I would have no way of joining her.

A deep and booming voice said, “And here he is, girls… the greatest dancer the world has ever known, nineteen-year-old Michael Rivers of RiverGroup, looking very handsome in a sexy and scorching black suit!”

It’s not black, I thought to myself. It’s charcoal.

A waiter, in a military-cut navy jacket, pulled back my chair. Once I sat, he scooted me toward the carved, bituminous coal table. A moment later, a woman in a three-piece, coffee-colored bikini, took a bottle of Frix’s Krill Kola Thirst Crusher from a golden tray and placed it before me with efficient moves. When I picked it up, a blast of music played and the girl did a dance and sang, “The renewable kola, with the outlaw taste!

Yeah, Frix!”

She smiled a toothy grin, and then dashed off.

Then I sat there before fifty channel cameras, holding the bottle and feeling like a performing seal in a circus. For a second, I considered throwing it down and leaving. The problem was, Father would probably take me back to the Loop and toss me over, and I could see the body of the dead bellybutton prostitute and the black flies that had crawled over her.

So, careful not to obscure the smiling monkey logo with an ill-placed thumb, I took a tiny sip. The stuff was salty and fishy, but not too terrible that I couldn’t eke out a simulacrum of pleasure.

“He likes it,” said the house voice. “Who wouldn’t, with the taste and power of krill? And now, look who’s joining him! It’s the sexy and scintillating Elle Kez, of Ribo-Kool, granddaughter of that powerhouse of a capitalist, Konrad Kez!” After a fun-filled and faked laugh, the voice added, “Don’t they look blistering?”

I saw her shoes first. They were furry pink pumps with tiny silky flowers around the sole. Her white socks had smiling pink cat faces. Her skirt was a ruffled and partly shredded carnation and plum polka-dot thing that looked like it might have belonged to a run-over flamenco dancer.

So far, it was basic Petunia Tune stuff, but when I looked up, I was taken aback. First of all, while her tailored grey jacket was clearly a nod to Pure H, the silhouette, material, and notions were all wrong. It looked more like concrete than a warm or lush fabric, and it was so pinched in the middle, I doubted she could breathe. Stranger yet, around her wasp waist, on a metal belt, ran a flock of tiny motorized hens that chased a red rooster. They orbited her every ten seconds, and while I guessed this was some reference to my fame, and maybe her and others’ pursuit of me, I had no idea why it was there.

Beneath the jacket, she didn’t wear a blouse. Instead, her chest was covered with pink fur that matched her pumps. On her neck the fur gradually disappeared, and from there up, she had been made-up like a cat, complete with a triangular black nose, white whiskers, and a few freckle-spots. Orange eye shadow over-emphasized her blue eyes.

On top of her head sat a massive, curly, golden wig with the texture of sea foam, three feet high and five across, shaped like an enormous bloated banana. Coming from the top were two three-foot-tall, pink rabbit ears. Between the ears were three small dioramas. One was the black, Pantheon-shaped PartyHaus. Another was a curve of Loop road with what was probably supposed to be my blue and orange car. Beside that were two naked dolls locked in an oral-genital embrace.

Once she saw that I had taken her in, she turned around, and from somewhere in the folds of the back of her skirt hung a wide, quilted beaver tail, the size of a swollen tennis racket. When she had spun all the way around, she began to sing to me in an off-key falsetto. “My heart is a daffodil! Oh, daffodil affection… daffodil affliction.

Quivering daffodil of my love!”

She then laughed and asked, “You know that? It’s so petunia. Don’t you think? It’s by The Pipsqueak Beaver-boys. I just love them. You like my tail?”

“Your tail…” I repeated, unable to conjure anything positive. “Um… well… it’s… um

…