was
connected in a way that she did not comprehend, and Joshua slowly began
to understand that it was his purpose to show her how. He had jobs to
do—real jobs, paying cases and ongoing investigations—but none of those
kept him awake at night, cold and sweating. This was an affair of an
entirely different sort.
Fixx made no eye contact with any of the copies. He found them
distracting, and this matter was of enough seriousness to him that he
wanted nothing to cloud his path. He took a ticket from the pocket of a
person deep in argument with a T-shirt vendor, and pressed on to the
Hyperdome’s entrance.
Over the doors in red neon letters eight metres tall, Juno Qwan told the
world that she was in Newer Orleans for one night only.
The dull reports of the support group’s climactic number built and
built, reaching down through the backstage spaces in hollow, confused
echoes. On the wall inside the wings, the countdown clock to the main
event was inching ever closer to zero, and the tech crew were scrambling
over the last few mike checks and hook-ups. There had already been six
fatalities among the staff on the tour and they were itchy with
short-timer’s fever. Newer Orleans was the last stop, and after they
were done here tonight they would leave America behind.
Heywood Ropé tasted the vibe in the air, the adrenaline scent messages
from the roadies thick about him. They parted before the slim man,
desperate to be seen to be busy, not one of them caught at rest. Good.
These weeks on the road together had bred only more fear of him, and
that was exactly how he wanted it to be. He reached the platform behind
the stage where the band were shaking themselves down, thumbing a couple
of capsules or applying derms inside their sleeves as need be. The
forever-placid cast of his face tightened a little, revealing the hard
lines of the skull beneath.
“Where is she?”
None of them answered. They all just looked in the direction of the
dressing room, some sighing, others frowning.
For one blinding instant, Ropé wanted to reach out and break someone’s
neck; anyone, he didn’t care whose. A bullet of hot anger smashed into
him, smouldering. His hands clenched into fists. He was so sick and
tired of ministering to these pathetic children, with their paltry and
ridiculous addictions, their idiotic fears and emotional fragility. In
that second, he longed to stride back to the tour bus and remove the
Glock subgun secreted in his luggage and start culling them. Gentiles,
he thought. I loathe you all.
Instead, he slammed an iron shutter over those feelings and produced a
thin smile that never went beyond his lips. “Fine,” he said aloud. Ropé
knocked once on Juno’s door and entered, locking it behind him.
There was little light inside. Most of the bulbs around the makeup table
were inert, shattered and sparking. The mirrors were all gone, reduced
to jagged shards. Juno looked up at him as he came closer, just for a
moment, and then returned to her task at hand. She was using part of a
chair leg to grind the broken bits of mirror into smaller and smaller
pieces. Juno had already worked a lot of the glass into powdery fines
that glittered all over the red carpet floor.
“Don’t worry,” she said, in a matter-of-fact voice. “I’ll be out when
I’m finished. I just have to break all the mirrors in the world first.”
A sigh escaped him. Apart from that incident in the limo on the way to
the studios in Chicago, there had been no sign of anything approaching
this level of instability. Ropé realised reluctantly that she must have
been storing it up, getting away with small, concealable things like
bouts of self-harm.
“Juno,” he said. “You’re on, darling. Everyone is waiting.” As if on
cue, the crowd out in the dome roared as the pre-show video started up.
He offered her his hand.
Her perfect face watched him, clouded with animal fear. She was wearing
the schoolgirl outfit from the “Locker Room
connected in a way that she did not comprehend, and Joshua slowly began
to understand that it was his purpose to show her how. He had jobs to
do—real jobs, paying cases and ongoing investigations—but none of those
kept him awake at night, cold and sweating. This was an affair of an
entirely different sort.
Fixx made no eye contact with any of the copies. He found them
distracting, and this matter was of enough seriousness to him that he
wanted nothing to cloud his path. He took a ticket from the pocket of a
person deep in argument with a T-shirt vendor, and pressed on to the
Hyperdome’s entrance.
Over the doors in red neon letters eight metres tall, Juno Qwan told the
world that she was in Newer Orleans for one night only.
The dull reports of the support group’s climactic number built and
built, reaching down through the backstage spaces in hollow, confused
echoes. On the wall inside the wings, the countdown clock to the main
event was inching ever closer to zero, and the tech crew were scrambling
over the last few mike checks and hook-ups. There had already been six
fatalities among the staff on the tour and they were itchy with
short-timer’s fever. Newer Orleans was the last stop, and after they
were done here tonight they would leave America behind.
Heywood Ropé tasted the vibe in the air, the adrenaline scent messages
from the roadies thick about him. They parted before the slim man,
desperate to be seen to be busy, not one of them caught at rest. Good.
These weeks on the road together had bred only more fear of him, and
that was exactly how he wanted it to be. He reached the platform behind
the stage where the band were shaking themselves down, thumbing a couple
of capsules or applying derms inside their sleeves as need be. The
forever-placid cast of his face tightened a little, revealing the hard
lines of the skull beneath.
“Where is she?”
None of them answered. They all just looked in the direction of the
dressing room, some sighing, others frowning.
For one blinding instant, Ropé wanted to reach out and break someone’s
neck; anyone, he didn’t care whose. A bullet of hot anger smashed into
him, smouldering. His hands clenched into fists. He was so sick and
tired of ministering to these pathetic children, with their paltry and
ridiculous addictions, their idiotic fears and emotional fragility. In
that second, he longed to stride back to the tour bus and remove the
Glock subgun secreted in his luggage and start culling them. Gentiles,
he thought. I loathe you all.
Instead, he slammed an iron shutter over those feelings and produced a
thin smile that never went beyond his lips. “Fine,” he said aloud. Ropé
knocked once on Juno’s door and entered, locking it behind him.
There was little light inside. Most of the bulbs around the makeup table
were inert, shattered and sparking. The mirrors were all gone, reduced
to jagged shards. Juno looked up at him as he came closer, just for a
moment, and then returned to her task at hand. She was using part of a
chair leg to grind the broken bits of mirror into smaller and smaller
pieces. Juno had already worked a lot of the glass into powdery fines
that glittered all over the red carpet floor.
“Don’t worry,” she said, in a matter-of-fact voice. “I’ll be out when
I’m finished. I just have to break all the mirrors in the world first.”
A sigh escaped him. Apart from that incident in the limo on the way to
the studios in Chicago, there had been no sign of anything approaching
this level of instability. Ropé realised reluctantly that she must have
been storing it up, getting away with small, concealable things like
bouts of self-harm.
“Juno,” he said. “You’re on, darling. Everyone is waiting.” As if on
cue, the crowd out in the dome roared as the pre-show video started up.
He offered her his hand.
Her perfect face watched him, clouded with animal fear. She was wearing
the schoolgirl outfit from the “Locker Room
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