think that’s too much to ask.”
No snow and no steaming gutters distracted me as we walked down the hill. It was almost a normal, crisp December day. We lacked Christmas lights, but who needed them when the sewers blazed red? Wonder what it would take to get a little green around here?
Given our environmental disaster problem, going green was a joke.
Loud music poured from Chesty’s even before we opened the door. It’s hard keeping the music pumping when the Zone messed with electronics, but apparently we’d expended enough bad energy today and the good vibes flowed, even though it was only afternoon. I was already feeling cheerier and humming to the beat when we entered.
“ Surprise!”
The music kicked into a painful birthday rock song. Balloons dropped and the crowd shouted and screamed “ Happy birthday!”
I almost fell on my face. I grabbed my chest, certain my ticker had stopped ticking.
Andre swung me off the floor and planted a smooth, rich one smack on my mouth. Before I could start drooling, he slid me down his front, allowing full access to the whole package before he gestured for a glass of champagne.
I detest champagne, but I was too totally stunned to notice the taste. And I couldn’t say for certain if that was due to Andre’s kiss or the surprise party. I tingled in places that hadn’t tingled for a long time, my eyes moistened, and a strange emotion ballooned in my chest that I thought might be joy. I wasn’t sure because it had been so long since I’d known true exhilaration. The sensation was more dizzying than the champagne.
A man had died this morning. Fascists had threatened us with condemnation. But the Zone partied. I got that. But to go to all this trouble for me . . .
I’d never had a birthday party. I caught a balloon and hugged it and batted back tears. “I love you guys,” I muttered, leaning back against Andre and letting him hold me while I appreciated the truly admirable chaos.
Chesty’s walls were decorated with naked mural figures that, like the Zone’s statues, had developed a life of their own. They were rocking hard, pumping their fists and gyrating the way they’d never done before. Ernesto’s pole dancers wore their finest feathers and cheered to the stupid birthday song as they writhed. Cora was twisting and swaying with Bill, while her boss tossed one of the waitresses in some fancy swing move. Sarah, with her Godiva hair rippling, was shyly sitting at the bar and listening to Ernesto.
Milo leaped out of the tote and went in search of mice in the kitchen.
All was right in my world for this one moment. This was why we needed the Zone. I might wonder about Max in his lonely haunted mansion, but this was my world, my people, not his. I wiped a tear from my eye, handed my champagne and balloon to Schwartz, and rocked into the crowd, with Andre hot on my tail.
***
“Unless somebody can produce no-see-um magic to disguise our existence, I vote we talk to the environmental agencies and whoever else is prying around,” I proposed over a bowl of scrumptious kale soup. My empty stomach had finally demanded feeding while the party partied on. Given Ernesto’s tightwad tendencies, this wasn’t exactly a private celebration. Some of the hard hats had taken up stools at the bar, and a scattering of tourists had stared for a while before joining us on the dance floor.
Schwartz, being the only mundane among the Zone crowd, snorted skeptically at my premise. “The feds only have to walk down the street and watch the snow melt to figure we’re hot. Expect evacuation shortly.”
He meant hot , as in radioactive. I didn’t think that was our problem, but telling him my paranoid theory about sitting over hell—possibly with Gloria smoldering beneath our feet—wasn’t conducive to a rational discussion. If word got out, we’d have every freakin’ religious idjit in the state marching through Chesty’s.
Glancing at the dancing naked people murals, I