Zona, her blue Aztec deaths-head burning bodiless, ghosts of her blue hands flickering like strobe-lit doves: Clearly, this dickless whore, the disembodied, has contrived to ensnare his soul. Stylized lightning zig-zags rose around the crown of the neon skull in deliberate emphasis.
Chia wondered what shed really said. Was dickless whore an artifact of instantaneous on-line translation, or was that really something you could or would say in Mexican?
Waiting hard confirm from Tokyo chapter, Kelsey reminded them. Kelseys father was a Houston tax lawyer, something of his particular species of biz-speak tending to enter his daughter around meeting time; also a certain ability to wait that Chia found irritating, particularly as manifested by a saucer-eyed nymph-figure out of some old anime . Which Chia was double damn sure Kelsey would not look like realtime, were
they ever to meet that way. (Chia herself was presenting currently as an only slightly tweaked, she felt, version of how the mirror told her she actually looked. Less nose, maybe. Lips a little fuller. But that was it. Almost.)
Exactly, Zona said, miniature stone calendars whirling angrily in her eye-holes. We wait . While he moves ever closer to his fate. We wait. If my girls and I were to wait like this, the Rats would sweep us from the avenues. Zona was, she claimed, the leader of a knife-packing chilanga girl gang. Not the meanest in Mexico City, maybe, but serious enough about turf and tribute. Chia wasnt sure she believed it, but it made for some interesting attitude in meetings.
Really? Kelsey drew her nymph-self up with elvin dignity, batting manga doe lashes in disbelief. In that case, Zona Rosa, why dont you just get yourself over to Tokyo and find out whats really going on ? I mean, did Rez say that, that he was going to marry her, or what? And while youre at it, find out whether she exists or not, okay?
The calendars stopped on a dime.
The blue hands vanished.
The skull seemed to recede some infinite distance yet remain perfectly in focus, clear in every textural detail.
Old trick, Chia thought. Stalling.
You know that I cannot do that, Zona said. I have responsibilities here. Maria Conchita, the Rat warlord, has stated that
As if we care, right? Kelsey launched herself straight up, her nymphness a pale blur against the rising tangle of green, until she hovered just below the canopy, a beam of sunlight flattering one impossible cheekbone. Zona Rosas full of shit! she bellowed, not at all nymphlike.
Dont fight, Chia said. This is important . Please.
Kelsey descended, instantly. Then you go, she said.
Me?
You, Kelsey said.
I cant, Chia said. To Tokyo? How could I?
In an airplane.
We dont have your kind of money, Kelsey.
Youve got a passport. We know you do. Your mother had to get one for you when she was doing the custody thing. And we know that you are, to put it delicately, between schools, yes?
Yes
Then whats the prob?
Your fathers a big tax lawyer!
I know, Kelsey said. And he flies back and forth, all over the world, making money. But you know what else he earns, Chia?
What?
Frequent-flyer points. Big-ass frequent-flyer points. On Air Magellan.
Interesting, said the Aztec skull.
Tokyo, said the mean nymph.
Shit, Chia thought.
The wall opposite Chias bed was decorated with a six-by-six laser blowup of the cover of Lo Rez Skyline , their first album. Not the one you got if you bought it today, but the original, the group shot theyd done for that crucial first release on the indie Dog Soup label. Shed pulled the file off the clubs site the week shed joined, found a place near the Market that could print it out that big. It was still her favorite, and not just, as her mother too frequently suggested, because they all still looked so young. Her mother didnt like that the members of Lo/Rez were nearly as old as she was. Why wasnt Chia into music by people her own age?
Please, mother, who?
That Chrome Koran, say.
Gag, mother.
Chia suspected that her mothers perception of time differed from her own in radical and mysterious ways. Not just in the way that a month, to Chias mother, was not a very long time, but in the way that her mothers now was such a narrow and literal thing. News-governed, Chia believed. Cable-fed. A present honed to whatever very instant of a helicopter traffic report.
Chias now was digital, effortlessly elastic, instant recall supported by global systems shed never have to bother comprehending.
Lo Rez Skyline had been released, if you could call it that, a week (well, six days) before Chia had been born. She estimated that no hard copies would have reached Seattle in time for her nativity, but she liked to believe there had been listeners here even then, PacRim visionaries netting new sounds from indies as obscure, even, as East Teipeis Dog Soup. Surely the opening chords of Positron Premonition had shoved molecules of actual Seattle air, somewhere, in somebodys basement room, at the fateful moment of her birth. She knew that, somehow, just as she knew that Stuck Pixel, barely even a song, just Lo noodling around on some pawnshop guitar, must have been playing somewhere when