Free Glimmering by Elizabeth Hand

were like bundled birch twigs; a white chip of a face with no makeup. Even her lips were pale, and her cheeks. The tiny indentations to each side of her delicate nose looked almost surreally dark, as though they had been daubed with black powder. A fringe of white corn-silk hair fell across her brow. She batted at it nervously with one hand, and he saw that her nails were bitten to the quick. On her right hand she wore a ring, a plain thin band of dull gold. Trip couldn’t tell how tall she was. She looked tiny, and he would have thought she really were a child were it not for the kingfisher flash of her eyes, oddly vigilant and twilight blue.
    “Trip? Here’s your juice.”
    A gloved hand pushed something across the table and he took it, drank it, but tasted nothing. He heard nothing, saw nothing except the girl staring back at him with such wild intensity that his face flushed and he could feel himself growing hard, so hard so suddenly that he moved awkwardly to hide it and nearly spilled his drink.
    “Trip? You okay?” Nellie’s voice dipped in concern. “We could do this tomorrow—”
    “No—no, this is good, this is fine . . .”
    If he had looked up, he would have seen a flicker of satisfaction in Nellie Candry’s dark eyes as she glanced from Trip to the blond girl, and heard a very soft sigh as she leaned back in her chair. Somewhere in his head a lisping voice warned him: fear the beguiling, hypnotizing phantoms of the Kali Yuga . . .
    But it was too late. He was bewitched.
    They talked. Rather, Nellie talked, Kabuki makeup belying her excited tone.
    “You know, I was at Todd and Haiko’s show, when all the girls were wearing these—” She held up the mandrill mask, made a face, and laughed. “I mean, talk about revolt into fucking style ! The Surgeon General oughta give those guys a medal—you know, fashion fucking matters . It can save lives .” The mask fluttered in her hand as she motioned for their waiter. “Do you have irradiated skim milk? Trip? More juice?”
    Trip nodded. Ceaselessly, restlessly, after a while not even pretending to look at Nellie or pay attention: he was simply riveted by the blond girl. She sat scarcely two feet away from him, but he might have beheld her upon a television screen. She seemed that distant, that detached; that unreal. She continued to stare at him with those feral eyes, every now and then tilting her head to regard something else, a slight movement in the lush branches above them, the clatter of a dropped glass like a gunshot at another table. But mostly she just stared back at him: two enchanted children, and not a word between them spoken.
    “Well, Trip,” Nellie Candry said at last. Her gaze lingered on the boy. It was a look Trip might have recognized if he had seen it, a certain affinity with Lucius Chappell’s avid gaze; and if he had been less moonstruck, he might have wondered, too, at the mandrill mask, the discreet tattoo of a running antelope revealed on Nellie’s wrist where the silk glove cuffed above a spur of bone. “This has been enlightening. I guess I’ll just have Legal call someone tomorrow at Mustard Seed. You said you didn’t know who—”
    “I’m sorry.” Trip wrenched his head around, forcing himself to look at her. “I mean, probably I could get a name for you—”
    “ Please . Not to worry.” Nellie’s fingers curled around a blinking plastic chip: somehow the check had been taken care of, his second empty glass replaced with a full one, and all without him noticing. “This will work out fabulously. Now—”
    She slid the mask over her face, immediately was transformed into a simian goblin. As she stood Trip found himself stumbling to his feet, his hand outstretched imploringly; not to say good-bye but to beg her to stay, to leave the girl at least for another moment—
    “Marz, would you mind waiting for me a few minutes?” From a pocket in her loose dress Nellie pulled a phone. “I’ve got to send a message.