Dierdrax began to fuse with the machine. A neat spiral of code spun up into her arm like a drill bit and slithered along her shoulders and back, stretching the fabric of her jacket. She turned her head and regarded Christina with pleading eyes as a merry grin split her face, widening to anatomically unsettling dimensions. Her teeth were filed to sharp chrome points.
“Hey, Christina?” William sat up.
Dierdrax’s eyes were wet with tears. She bent at the waist and with a nightmarish contortion took a bite out of her torso and began to chew.
Carina Tyler belted out “Baby,” and the word got stuck in a loop like a skipping record. Melissa advanced to the next song.
Christina tried frantically to log out, but her commands had no effect. She was frozen out of her own hack session. Dierdrax ate ravenously without distinguishing between the terminal and her own body.
William put his hand on top of hers. “I got the Thursdays real bad.”
Christina faked a smile. She disconnected the seashell and closed her laptop, trying to make sense of what she’d seen in ARACHNE’s depths.
They didn’t need their fake IDs in New Orleans. At least not at Riverbend Shorty’s, where nightlife spilled onto balconies lined with iron rails twisted into vines and fleurs-de-lis. Even the ironwork seemed languid in the swampy heat, yet nothing about the city felt hopelessly wilted. It stewed in its own juices, a carnival of wild plants in a greenhouse.
Inside Riverbend Shorty’s, the sweat of two hundred partiers condensed upon the roof beams until the swollen wood had no choice but to send it back down. Mist hung all over the club, from the teeming bar to the elevated stage that shuddered as the brass band stomped the life out of it.
Somebody was blowing bubbles that rode meandering updrafts, carving soapy pathways through the haze.
Behind the bar a poster of William Butler Yeats said CAST A COLD EYE. Daniel had skimmed Yeats as part of his required Princeton summer reading. He retained nothing of the poetry but remembered cracking the book on an afternoon in June with the sun streaming into his living room and the house silent for once, everybody gone, just Daniel and a glass of lemonade and William Butler Yeats. He thought that was suitably poetic. Yeats looked like a man who’d appreciate the sun warming a quiet room. He lifted his half-finished beer and saluted the poster.
The bartender materialized in a blur of forearm tattoos. “Another one?” he asked brusquely.
Daniel wondered if he’d accidentally made some kind of silent-auction bar signal that would give him away as an underaged rookie who’d only ever been to the crusty old U-Turn in Fremont Hills. Then he figured out that it looked like he’d been lifting his glass to indicate more beer, please, good sir!
The bartender slipped away to mix somebody else’s drink.
“I was just cheersing Yeats!” Daniel yelled above the crash-boom of the brass band. The bartender didn’t hear him or else pretended not to. Calling out the poet’s name felt right, somehow. An invocation. Daniel felt like he belonged in this place and time, stuck fast to this bar stool, alone with his beer, as reedy horn lines punched through the laughter all around him. The link between his brain and his heart was a luminous rope. Lamplight danced along the bottles that lined the bar when he bobbed his head to a trombone’s smeared melody, just one long note when you got right down to it.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and William appeared at his side.
“There you are!”
“I’ve always been here,” Daniel said. The phrase seemed packed with meaning. He felt very good about the way it had come out. He winked at the Yeats poster. Irish poets were so cool. He vowed at that very moment to take a trip to Ireland once he’d saved up some money.
“You want a beer?” Daniel asked.
“Nah, I’m just getting a water for Christina. It’s a million degrees up by the band.”
Daniel grinned. “Hernandez on the dance floor. Never thought I’d see the day.”
“It’s not really a dance floor. It’s more like a happy mosh pit. But yeah, she’s moving her arms around and stuff. Listen…how are you doing, man?”
“Fine. I’m fine. I’m great, actually. Feeling great.” He tapped a fingernail against his glass.
“All I know is what Melissa told us on the way here, while you were sleeping. Which was that you guys broke up. And then she stared at her phone for five hours. Which was awesome because Christina was on her computer the whole time, so I basically just hung out with Otto. I told her that you and me haven’t really had a chance to talk about it, so I might be a little while. Are you guys seriously broken up?”
Daniel took a big sip and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No, yeah, we’re totally broken up. Which I get, you know?”
William regarded him suspiciously. “No. What? You guys are Daniel and Melissa.” He paused. “I’m sorry in advance, but I have to ask—are you guys fucking with me?”
Daniel sniffled. “Like, are we fake breaking up to prank you?”
William nodded.
“Nope!” The music swelled to a crescendo, and Daniel raised his voice, intent on hammering his every word home. “You are currently witnessing one lone poet adrift on the tides of fate, getting tossed to and fro by the waves of fortune! A defiant human cog in the machine that refuses to go quietly into the deathly humid night!”
He drained his beer and slammed the glass down on the bar. William shifted his eyes uneasily to the bartender, then slapped Daniel on the shoulder again and let his hand linger. Daniel was supremely touched by his friend’s concern.
William leaned in close. “I don’t know what to say, it seemed like you guys were fine all day.”
Daniel squinted. “I don’t see too good, am I sitting here with
