my jacket on Joelene and grimaced. “God, you’re not even dressed! I know your dad got some clothes for you. Let’s go look.”
“I had a suit made!” I said again. “Like the orange ones from
“HammorHeds? One of my favorites! Love them.” Getting out a small screen, he checked with someone. “Michael’s got a suit on the way. Did it get here?… Oh! Great! Level fifteen!” he said to me. “It’s waiting on fifteen. Hurry. We have to hurry!”
We dashed past the sculptures and the people everywhere, up the stairs and past the violence in the orange lights, and back to the dance floor. Now the director was in charge of pushing the Ultras back and shouting, “Coming through!” We made a right and headed to the stage. Across the huge orange curtain a swarm of lights circled as though it were about to open.
“He’s here!” he said, once we had gone through a black door to the backstage. Hulking boxes of equipment sat everywhere. The floor was covered with lines of taped-down power cords. The workers were all dressed in blue leotards with words on their chests—pyrotechnics, lighting, fluffer, sound, security, continuity, costume, makeup, and so on. Several stopped before the director and me and cheered.
A woman with the word
“Good!” he said. “Good, we’ll be right back!”
He led me to a decrepit elevator—obviously the PartyHaus was just refurbished for the public—and we headed up to the fifteenth floor. When the door slid open, the director held the doors for me. “Here we go,” he said, pointing to a sign. “This way.”
Soon we came to a door with the number 15-T. He opened it and we entered.
At first I thought it was a huge bathroom. It was fifty feet wide and all surfaces were covered with some sort of cobalt tiles. Around the perimeter were thirty or so black metal toilets. The far wall was glass that looked out at the distant lights of Ros Begas, and in the middle sat several boxy pastel couches and chairs. On the center cushion of a lacy gold and pink sofa sat Mr. Cedar. He had one leg folded over the other, his hands in his lap. Even in the light, I could see how supple, smooth, and soft was the material of his jacket. After all the Ultra nonsense, it was like the beautiful and calm eye of a hurricane. Under his jacket, he wore a pure white cotton shirt that I suspected had been ironed by Ise–B, as it had that distinctive combination of formality and insouciance. As for neckwear, his tie was a deep shade of magnesium. On his feet, his thin-soled shoes were a midnight brown.
Standing, he bowed and said, “Greetings.”
To his right, partially hidden in the darkness, stood his assistant Pheff, and behind him was a six-foot-tall black case covered with latches and several glowing dials. They had brought it!
“Thank you,” I said.
“We have to hurry!” said the director. “Big hurry. Show’s about to start.”
Pheff began unlocking the box with both speed and care. Clearly, they had guarded the suit to make sure it didn’t fall into the wrong hands. Once he had opened all the locks, he pulled a lever, broke a seal, which released a slow hiss of gas, then he swung open the door.
“Love it!” gushed the director, his eyes wide. “Incredible! I just love it!”
“Thank you,” said my tailor, coolly.
Inside the box, on a top-of-the-line Silver-Dream Chanel-Royce hanger was a wide-shouldered, orange suit. Even as I could see Mr. Cedar’s impeccable tailoring, the supple lines, and the gentle roll of the lapel, it was a fierce-looking thing. It shimmered as if with heat or some catastrophic potential energy.
For a long beat, I stood staring at it, mesmerized and afraid.
“Finally, color!” said a familiar voice. Turning, I saw Xavid. He wore a huge blue and orange color-blocked suit with bloody seal pelts hung here and there like hunting trophies. His face was covered with operatic-styled makeup and his hair was braided and looped into a complicated mess like the collapsed skeleton of a crashed blimp. “Your father,” he said, stepping closer, “will be exceedingly proud.” Then he spoke to everyone. “I need a minute with Michael. If you could all excuse us.”
“He has to dress for the show!” said the director. “We’re about to start.”
“I have an extremely important message from his father.” He waved his hands as if to urge them out. “Thank you so much! Just one minute. There you go.”
As Mr. Cedar, Pheff, and the director headed out, I stood facing the box, and worried that Father had found out about the suit. What could I do? Could I grab it, run, and then just throw it at him? Or was this about Xavid and what I now knew about him and his identity thievery?
“I’m so glad you’re back,” said Xavid, stepping before me and smiling. “We have a big show after all.” Now he narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure what happened to you out there. Contradictory rumors are going around.” He paused, as if I was going to explain anything to him. “In any case,” he began again, “like I said, your father will be most pleased with your suit. We’re all glad you’re giving up that tedious grey shit.”
“What do you want?” I asked, impatient.
“Listen to me,” he said, his voice turning hard and angry, “from now on and for the rest of your life, you are forbidden from leaving the compound. You are forbidden from speaking to the press. You must ask me before you do anything! And you will do exactly as I say.” He began to dig into a pocket. “If not, he’ll go get the rest.” He then tossed a small glass vial at me.
I caught the thing and held it up. Inside, floating in a clear fluid was a small human toe. The nail had been painted a metallic charcoal.
All the blood cells in my body seized. My muscles froze. Then a single synapse jumped from one nerve to another and eked out a single message: Nora.
The toe was hers. The freeboot beast had cut it off.
“I can’t tell you what happened in the past,” continued Xavid, his voice light and dreamy. “I don’t even know, nor do I care to know all the mistakes your father made. That’s the past and Xavid doesn’t worry about the past. Now, what’s expedient is to gain control of this enterprise. It’s like a massive colony of algae that has choked itself and I know that I will do an extremely good—”
“Shut the hell up.” I didn’t say it loud, but he heard the boiling anger in me. His eyes, like two small, frightened fish in the aquariums of his lenses, darted toward me and held. Stepping past him, I stopped before the nitrocellulose suit. “Get out,” I told him. “I have to dress.”
Eighteen
Nora was right—I wasn’t her Michael anymore. I wasn’t the dancer, or the crazed half brother I had been when I ran at the satin. Instead, as I stood before the suit, and the orange ebbed and throbbed like the surface of a violent and stormy planet, I felt that I was nearing a final point, one beyond anger and revenge, a place of only action.
I heard the door close. I had wanted to pummel Xavid’s face as I had seen them do in the PartyHaus basement, but I knew he wasn’t worth it.
“Let’s get you ready!” said the director, as he rushed back in. “Dressed for the show.” Behind him came Mr. Cedar and Pheff.
“The show,” I repeated, thinking of the audience in the PartyHaus. When I’d thought about blowing up Father and me, I had not imagined an audience and wasn’t sure I liked the idea. The problem was, this crowd would love the brutality, and I hated to imagine them standing and cheering our charred bodies. But I couldn’t let it worry me. Whether they loved it, thought of me as a fool or a horrible and ungrateful son, and whether or not they came to understand what had happened, none of that mattered.
Stepping beside me, Mr. Cedar spoke quietly. “The original material was too volatile. I doubted you would last the evening, so I rewove it, created a twill with two layers and functions. The top is both photo-luminescent and protective. The lower layer is…” He paused and twisted his beard hair once. “… quite hazardous.”
As he spoke, Pheff removed the suit from the box and took the pants from the hanger. I glanced from the fabric to my tailor. Maybe it was the glow from the suit, but the scar that ran down the middle of his face was more
