The field nearest the barn was a seething mass of moving shapes. Ragged children ran back and forth in packs; dogs barked; some of the travelers were dancing outside, pumping their arms and stamping to the strange loops and electronic chatter of the music; others cooked food, or just sat in huddles near their fires, on bright blankets and quilts they had laid out on the ground.
Mina shrank back, but Cassandra caught hold of her and pulled her into the throng. The music grew louder, beating in on Mina’s ears; she felt assaulted by smells and sound. There was a rich drift of marijuana, of sweat and unwashed clothes; cooking fumes, car exhausts, burning wood, mud, and icy air. Outside the barn doors, a man dressed in a scarlet embroidered Afghan coat was juggling with colored balls. Beyond him, inside the barn itself, lights danced and bounced on the walls. The strobe flashes dazzled Mina’s eyes. She clutched Cassandra’s arm and watched her face speed up, like jerky frames of old film, so her expressions were fragmented, and the scorpion on her forehead appeared to move.
Cassandra’s eyes, black, then bright, were searching the crowd. Somewhere here, Cassandra said, somewhere in the midst of the tossing hair and jerking arms they would find Star.
“He’s tall,” Cassandra shouted through the din of the music. “He looks like an angel. He has long black hair. He’ll be wearing a red scarf.”
She began to push her way through the dancers, holding Mina tight by the arm. And as they fought their way through, Mina began to feel it, the pulse of the music, and the electricity of the crowd. It was benign, not threatening, and heady too. She could feel the rhythm of synthesizer guitars start to beat in her veins; the random snatches of words incorporated into the music opened up the corners of her mind. She liked the weird, high-pitched helium voices. She chanted the words; she wanted to dance too; she wanted to get inside the sound.
She moved her feet, then her arms; she sucked in deep breaths of the smoky, acrid air. She was parted from Cassandra, then tossed out to her again into a little space on the edge of the crowd.
“You see? Isn’t it great?” Cassandra’s face came and went. The scorpion on her forehead came and went. She had lit a joint; its end glowed then was dark. “Here.”
She passed it across; Mina sucked in the wonderful sweetness. It was instant lift: she could move on the music; the lights buoyed her; she felt she could touch the rafters fifty feet above her head—one more little suck and she might reach out her hand and touch the sky.
Cassandra was smiling; her face was making flashes of encouragement and understanding.
“You see—just wait. Come and find Star.”
She turned her head the wrong way, into the music, into the strobe, and Mina, for whom time was braking, realized that Cassandra couldn’t sense him the way she herself could. She tried to shape the words and tell Cassandra: she knew even without looking that Star was already beside them. He had come out of nowhere; without even turning her head she knew he was there.
She turned around to look at him and knew at once that she trusted him. At first, because he was so startlingly beautiful, he was like an apparition. She stared at the flash of his eyes; the strobe made his smile like lightning. Then he took her hand, and Cassandra’s hand, and she felt it immediately, just as Cass had described it—the jolt of his power.
He greeted Cassandra, then turned to Mina and gave her a long, unwavering stare.
“And this is Mina,” he said. “Your American friend. Welcome, Mina. I’ve been told all about you. Are you happy tonight, Mina? Are you flying yet?”
“A little,” Mina said. “Yes, I am.”
“Good.” He pressed her hand, then released it.
“I can help. I’ve brought you both wings.”
It was like watching a conjuror magicking cards out of air. A moment before, his hand had been empty. Now he extended it slowly, uncurling his fingers, and there, flashing in the strobe light, were two little pills. One was pink, bright pink, the color of cotton candy; the other was smooth and white as a pearl.
“A White Dove and a pink jewel,” he said slowly. “Star’s special gifts to two very special girls. Now, which shall it be? Is Mina a dove girl or a jewel girl?”
“Which is stronger?” Cassandra asked.
“Oh, they’re both powerful. I brought them back myself, from across the sea.”
“From Amsterdam?”
“Maybe. Who knows?” The music gave a twist, and Star gave a smile. “Pink for Cassandra, I think,” he said, “and white for Mina. Pink like a fine Burmese ruby, and white like a nun’s veil.”
“No.” The strobe lit Cassandra’s face with little flashes of mutiny. Mina, who could not stop looking at Star, could sense something new in the air, something edgy like jealousy, or resentment.
“No,” Cassandra said again, her voice rising. “I’ve seen those pink ones before. I want the white one, Star.”
“You’re sure? So be it.”
He gave another tiny magic movement of his hands. In his left hand the pink pill remained, and he offered it to Mina, who took it and swallowed it without hesitation. In his right hand was the white pill, which Cassandra snatched from him. She swallowed it, then began to fumble in her pockets. Star seemed to be waiting, Mina couldn’t be sure, for some dancers moved close to her, and the air flashed light and dark, but she thought that Cassandra handed him some money, so the magic pills weren’t really a gift after all.
But the space was very whirly by then and the stone floor of the barn was starting to move. Before she could say anything, Star put one strong arm around her waist and began to move her away. She looked back once over her shoulder and saw Cassandra’s face in the distance, as still and pale as the moon.
Star led her outside to a quiet place, where the music was muted. He spread a quilt on the ground for her, a bright patchwork quilt, and Mina sat down. Star snapped his fingers, and a small dog appeared from nowhere. It crept onto the quilt beside Mina. Mina stroked its odd, bristling gray fur; the dog seemed very thin, timid, and docile. Her name was Dancer, Star said. Mina stroked Dancer’s delicate pointed muzzle; the dog crept closer and began to lick her hand. Mina felt a rushing powerful exhilaration; she felt she loved this little dog intensely; she felt some god had just reached down from the sky and made everything right in the world.
Star sat beside her, and Mina looked at his face. She was astonished that Star should single her out in this way, and she was even more astonished when she realized that for a while at least, he meant to stay.
“You have a hawk on your cheekbone.” He touched her face very lightly with his fingertips. “Your eyelids are gold. You’re beautiful, Mina.”
Mina stared at him. No one, not even her parents, had ever said such a thing before.
“I’m not,” she replied. “Cass is, but not me. Look—” She lifted her face to the firelight. “I have freckles, and red hair.”
“Cassandra is an ordinary girl. There are thousands of Cassandras. I like your skin and your freckles and your hair, Mina. In the firelight, it’s flames and red gold.”
Mina continued to stare at him. She was trying to place his voice, which wasn’t English, wasn’t American, wasn’t German or French accented. It seemed to be unidentifiable and uniquely Star’s own.
“Are you afraid?” he said suddenly, watching her eyes. “I’d know if you were, and I don’t think you are.”
“No. I’m not afraid. I feel—” Mina hesitated, trying to describe what was happening to her, and something was happening to her, she could feel it stealing its way along her veins.
“I feel quiet. Calm. It’s like—there’s a door opening, and on the other side of the door there’s my home.”
The answer seemed to please him. He looked at her intently for a few moments more, then he lay back on the quilt beside her, cupped his hands behind his head, and looked up at the night sky.
Mina looked up too. The stars were very bright. She thought she could see the Plow and Orion, the Pole Star, the Milky Way. She th
ought of Cassandra, and where she might be—dancing, perhaps—then she forgot Cassandra. A child ran by them; she looked around this improvised encampment. Beyond the fires and the dancers, some new vehicles were pulling into the field. She watched them distantly, a small fleet of new, expensive cars. Their lights flickered, their doors opened, and they disgorged their passengers, all male, all suited; the men were shouting to each other; they bunched and spread out, laughing and swearing, making for the barn. Mina turned to Star.
“Who are they?”
“City people. They come here to score from the travelers. And me.” He sounded bored. “They pay well. They’re fools.”
“Are you a traveler?” Mina asked.
“No. I fit in everywhere and nowhere. I belong to no one and nothing. I come and go as I please.”
“Isn’t that lonely?”
“Not now. I’ve found you, Mina. And I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”
He gave her a glittering look. “Let it happen, Mina,” he said, then he lay back down on the ground again, his eyes fixed on the sky and his hand grasping hers.
“Lie down beside me,” he said. “Pretend we’re two figures on a tomb. Lie absolutely still. Watch the sky.”
Mina did so. The sky was now brilliantly colored, striated, and moving very fast. She could see endless patterns, shapes twisting and turning and reinventing themselves.
“Do you know what you want in life, Mina?” Star asked.
“No, I don’t. I don’t even know who I am,” she replied.
“I’ll give you what you want, and I’ll show you who you are,” he said, not moving. “Hold my hand. Feel the power.”
Mina obeyed him. They lay side by side in silence, for hours, for centuries. Mina felt her body be discarded. She felt the strength of her own soul. Even Star’s little dog knew something extraordinary, something momentous, was happening.
After a while she became restive; she whined, then licked Mina’s hand; a few millennia later she lifted her gray muzzle skyward, and howled.
Chapter 6
CHARLOTTE WAS PLEASED WITH the way her dinner had gone. They had eaten by candlelight, at the long table in the kitchen. The pastry had risen perfectly, the steak and kidney pie had been excellent. Gini ate very little, but poor, neglected, half-starved Rowland, who had no one to cook for him—or no one serious to cook for him—had wolfed down two helpings. Had Rowland been one of her own children, Charlotte could not have been more pleased. At ten-thirty, when the others had been shooed through to the sitting room, she and Max found themselves briefly alone in the kitchen. A restful marital quietness filled the air. Charlotte was making coffee; Max, she suddenly realized, was fiddling with some port decanted earlier; it was one of his most precious ports, a Fonseca ’69.
“Max,” she said. “You’re not actually going to give them that? Is that wise?”
“Almost certainly not. I’m going to risk it though.” He caught her eye. “At dinner—you noticed the frisson?”
“I did. It was maybe a one-sided frisson, but it was there.”
“It can’t hurt to cultivate it.”
“Max. You told me not to match-make. You said I shouldn’t interfere…”
“I know.” He kissed her neck.
“Rowland will talk if you give him that. He’ll talk all night, and all tomorrow as well.”
“I like Rowland when he talks. So do you.”
“Will Lindsay though?” Charlotte gave him a glance. “And don’t think I didn’t see you earlier, Max, before the cocktail guests arrived, whispering in Lindsay’s ear.”
“I was not whispering. I was just mentioning things in a casual sort of way.”
“You mentioned Rowland’s girls, didn’t you? Max, look me in the eye!”
“Just in passing. It can’t hurt her to know. It is true, after all.” He held the port to the light appreciatively. “What’s more, you remember what you said about the perversity of women? You were right. The instant I told her, I spotted it. A distinct gleam in the eye.” He paused. “Why are women that way, incidentally? Why is your sex so weird? Rowland’s reputation ought to make any sensible woman run a mile—”
“Max, go and give them that damn Fonseca. One glass only might be prudent. Oh—and make Gini’s a double.”
“You don’t serve doubles of port,” Max said fondly, “as you well know.”
“Then give her a damn big glass. I may love her dearly, but she’s tried calling Pascal six times this evening, and she’s driving me mad.”
This plot was foiled. Gini, along with Charlotte, refused the Fonseca. Rowland made a brief eloquent speech as to its glories when he was only halfway through his glass. Lindsay, to whom alcohol was alcohol, useful when nervous, drank her glass unwisely, very fast.
At eleven forty-five the telephone rang. Gini, who had been talking to Rowland in a desultory fashion, half rose from her chair. Color washed into her face and throat; Rowland moved away. As Charlotte went to take the call in Max’s den, Rowland took down a book from Max’s shelves and began reading. Gini waited on the edge of her chair.
When Charlotte returned, she found she could not meet Gini’s eyes.
“Lindsay, it’s that blasted Markov man,” she said quickly. “He says he has to talk to you. He’s calling on his car phone. From Paris.”
Lindsay rose, sighing. She trotted through to Max’s study and picked up the telephone.
“Will you listen to this?” Markov said without preamble. “I mean, will you just check this out? Is this poetry? Is this insight? Yes or no?” He held the phone close to his car’s stereo speakers. The recording, which Lindsay could hear only too well, was an old one. It was “My Foolish Heart.”
“Markov,” Lindsay said with force, Fonseca coursing through her veins. “Who gave you this number? Louise? It’s midnight, Markov. It was a lousy record the first time I heard it. It’s still a lousy record now.”
“You mean it doesn’t speak to you? What are you, insensitive? How’re things at Maxopolis? What’s going down?”
“Markov, get off this fucking line.”
“Lindy, I’m in Paris. This is Paris I’m calling from.”
“I don’t give a shit if it’s Outer Mongolia. Stop hounding me. And don’t call me Lindy—it drives me insane.”
“You want to know something seriously interesting? You want to know who I eyeballed at the airport just now?”
“No, I don’t.”
“In the VIP lounge? Like, I’m coming in, and they’re about to fly out? You want to know this, Lindy, believe me, you do.”
“Oh, all right. Who? You’ve got ten seconds.”
“Lindy, you’re getting a tad boring, you know that? All right. Only Maria Cazarès. And Jean Lazare. Together—very much together. Like he has his arm around her, like she’s crying and shaking, and he’s trying to kiss her hair.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“Darling, I have twenty-twenty, remember, and I wasn’t wearing shades. They were thirty feet away from me. I was quivering, Lindy. I overheard some very interesting things.”
“Markov, wait a second—”
“Sweetling, I have like fifteen million people I have to call right now. I mean, we’re talking Chernobyl here in information terms. I have to spread the word.”
“Markov, wait! This is important. Who’ve you told already?”
“No one. I called you first.”
“Dinner Monday?” Lindsay was thinking fast. “Maxim’s? Le Tour Eiffel? Grand Vefour? Where d’you really yearn to do a shoot, Markov? Name it, it’s yours.”
“Hyderabad. Five-day shoot. Quest and Evangelista. Three spreads. Full color. In the Sunday. Sixteen thousand. You can swing that?”
“You got it.”
“Plus Grand Vefour, Monday.”
“Jesus, Markov. Oh, all right.”
“My lips are sealed, sweetling. I adore you. Ciao.”
Lindsay hastened back to the sitting room, face aglow. A
yawning Charlotte and a silent Gini were already leaving.
“Time for bed,” Charlotte said. Lindsay waited a few seconds, until the door closed behind them, then started talking very fast.
“Hyderabad?” Max said some minutes later. “Are you insane, Lindsay? No way. The Sunday will never buy that. I wouldn’t even ask.”
“Sixteen thousand?” Rowland said. “The port must have gone to your head. Markov’s flaky. He’ll be hitting the phones right now.”
“He won’t. We understand each other. Besides, it’s less than his ad rate.”
“It’s extortion. He wouldn’t prize that out of Vogue.”
Lindsay abandoned Rowland, a lost cause. She turned to Max, who was pacing up and down.
“Max, just lean on the Sunday—please. I can’t offer Markov color, but the Sunday can. Besides, Jancy’s been dying to use him. She’ll leap at the chance. He’s hot, Max, the hottest there is. And Quest—you just wait, she’s extraordinary. She’s going to be huge—”
Rowland groaned; Lindsay ignored him.
“Come on, Max. It’s such a little little favor. I just need you to lean on Jancy’s editor. Dammit, Max, he was at Oxford with you and Rowland and the rest of the male world. Network for me for once, Max. Use your legendary powers of persuasion… Shut up a minute, Rowland, I haven’t finished. Please, Max—it’s a circulation booster. Just one little word in his ear, Max. Is it so much to ask?”
Lindsay had her arms around Max’s waist. Max’s glasses were winking and blinking; he was on the edge of giving way.
“It’s damn well pointless,” said Rowland, who seemed to take exception to such wiles. “So he saw them at the airport together. So what? Maybe it’s mildly interesting, from my point of view. It’s not headline news.”
“You don’t know Markov. I do. This was just the aperitif, Rowland. Just let me talk to Markov. I know there’ll be more.”
“Here’s a better idea.” Rowland gave her a cold green glance. “How about I talk to Markov? Because he certainly won’t jerk me around.”