Grey

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.

She would breathe in, hold her air for an instant, and then exhale. Her blinking was the same. Each time her lids closed, they held as if she were resting, sleeping, or escaping for a single instant. When open, she focused on her father’s profile in such an intense way that I got the idea that she had been required to be on the show, as if it were punishment for her meeting me at the SunEcho.

Her father tried to talk about their new product, and something he called integrity-cloak, but the interviewer kept asking about RiverGroup and me. After a minute or two of the back and forth, Nora’s father began screaming. “RiverGroup is a foul and constipated old lady!” After he spoke, he wrenched his face into a smile.

Nora’s eyes turned to mine.

While I had been concentrating on her before, now I was transfixed.

And I swore she could see me through the electromagnetic fields between us. As I looked back into her eyes, the blush in her face deepened, and the corners of her mouth quivered toward a smile. I wanted to reach through and pull her through to my side.

Her right hand, in one of her grey chenille gloves, moved from her lap and then her index finger touched one of the black chrome buttons on her jacket. Her hand held for an instant, and then fell back to her lap as if it had never moved. A moment later, her eyes returned to her father.

“We are a prestigious family of true blood!” he continued. “We will persevere and work hard for our clients. And as for that other so-called company, council has advised me not to mention that Ribo-Kool is nothing but an assemblage of snot-dripping vagrants!”

The screen went black. One of Walter’s nannies had snapped it off. She then came to Walter’s side and began stroking him.

“There… there!

Never mind him! He’s nothing but an angry old snuffly-guffly.”

I stared at the blank screen. Of course Nora could not see me—there was no possible way. And yet, I knew she had. Moreover, she had sent me a message, but what it meant, I wasn’t sure. Did it reference a Pure H story in issue nine where a woman touches a shirt button on her blouse to signal her former husband that she has returned from an affair with machines? If I remembered, though, the reader knows that her heart stops the same instant she touches the button. Perhaps she was referencing a photo^R6 in issue nineteen. Amid a mass of black threads is one silvery button. The copy read

A

single cast iron snowflake. At least, that wasn’t negative.

The front door opened. I expected Joelene, but in came a man in a four-foot-tall orange chef’s hat and matching jacket, wheeling in a tray.

“Good morning!” he said, with a big smile. “I’ve brought a special breakfast especially chosen by Mr. Rivers Senior, himself. And this exciting, fast-breaking meal has graciously been provided by Frix Food Product Corporation—Making Your Life Something You Can Snarf.” His broad smile faded as he glanced about, as if trying to find the cameras.

“They’re gone,” said one of the nannies.

“Oh,” he said, disappointed, as if this was supposed to be his big moment.

As Walter’s nannies seated him at the table, I said I’d be right back, and hurried to my bathroom, but she wasn’t there. In the dressing room I knelt and looked under the hangers. “Hello?” I asked, as I opened the servant’s door. Surprisingly, inside was a dark stairwell, and just ten feet ahead, a heavy locked gate.

She must have gone out the back door. I headed out of my dressing room and straight toward it. As I did, I heard Walter’s feet across the iron tiles.

“Wait! Where’re you going?” he asked, as if afraid I was leaving.

I pushed open the iron door and stepped outside. To the far left was the black PartyHaus, covered in shadows. Straight ahead were several technology buildings, and to the right, were the garages and storage buildings. I didn’t see Joelene anywhere.

What would she be doing somewhere else in the compound? Or had she left me? Had she gotten so frustrated and angry she had quit? It didn’t seem like Joelene, but maybe the past few days had been too much. And Father’s punch last night couldn’t have helped.

“What is it?” asked Walter.

“Nothing,” I replied, discouraged.

“Look it!” he said, pointing at the PartyHaus. “The place you danced!”

“Yeah.

Come on. Let’s eat.”

Back at the breakfast table, I told myself Joelene was doing as she had said—working to get me what I wanted. Maybe she was in a secret place sending Nora a message. She would be back soon; she would have good news. I had to be patient.

Meanwhile, the chef held a large covered dish before us, and then lifted the cover. A steam cloud rose and revealed two long cakes shaped like scantily clad women. I recognized Frix’s slut cakes, as Father ate them all the time. The skin was a sweet, rubbery fondant. Inside was a layer of soft cake, around a candy skeleton, which, when fresh, bent at the major joints. The one nearer me was a brunette in bright green shorts, red platforms, and pasties. The other had red hair, a tiny blue skirt, boots, and big, dark nipples. The cook served them.

Walter clapped his pudgy hands as his was placed before him. “She’s beautiful!”

I stared at the doll’s tiny bump of a nose; her full, fuchsia lips, her large, dark-circled eyes, and her two sharp eyebrows and imagined Nora lying on an enormous plate in a sugary, suspended animation. Better yet, I saw the two of us, lying next to each other for a sweetened eternity.

Just then, I remembered that in Pure H seven was a photo^R4.5: the front of a grey woolen jacket was wrapped over a fist, and over the middle knuckle a buttonhole was stretched taught. The image was violent and angry, and I hoped that wasn’t what Nora was feeling. Then again, she had surely been coerced to appear with her father on that business show. Maybe she was expressing her frustration.

“How do you eat her?” asked Walter, turning his head from side to side, as if looking for instructions.

Father, Xavid, and Chesterfield returned after we’d eaten. Now Father and Xavid’s hair was orange and braided into complicated shapes.

“We had the mother ass of all meetings!” said Father, spreading his arms as if to demonstrate. “The ScrotumKings sang their new hit to start us off. Then Xavid did our hair. And if all that wasn’t lard enough, Chesterfield got up and jammed with the Kings.” Father laughed an easy and joyful laugh that sounded so real compared to his usual forced guffaws and howls.

“Heard you enjoyed your slut cake!”

Father said to Walter.

“Oh, I did, indeed!” he beamed, as he knit his hands together and then tried to pry them apart in a wiggly sort of excitement. “First I licked her boots, and then her bottom!”

“They’re good that way! Take some home,” said Father, as he presented him with a box. “You know,