“Mine is the hand!” a howl from somewhere above. He looks away from the wide room ahead, back to the closed front door, the kitchen lemon-bright to one side, stairwell to the other, winding its way up. “Mine, the hand that writes upon the wall the name of God!” He swallows. Adjusts the knot in his tie of burgundy blue.

“Six are the wings unfolded from my face, and six times do they beat, and from them do I draw my quill! My ink!” That voice pummels the close walls as he climbs. “My ink the very dregs from your cups, and with it do I tally your numbers, many and all. Seven! Seven the wings that beat about my breast, but numberless the eyes within, and from them will I bring the scales that I must use to weigh you all, and find what you are wanting!”

He stops there, a handful of steps from the top, head down.

“Mine the mouth, to sheathe the burning blade! I am the one to draw it forth, when comes the time, and times, and the dividing of time!”

He resumes his climb, around and up into a ravaged hall, the carpet raked and tattered, crumpled walls smeared and splotted with ruddy brown. Two long ungainly feathered arms too skinny for the swollen hands at the ends of them, fleshy anchors twitching uselessly amongst fallen feathers and gypsum dust, and sat atop, a white-crowned pink-cheeked head, “My teeth, of iron! My nails of brass! I will devour, and break into pieces, and stamp the residue with my feet!” Spittle flecks those lips with foam, and spittle and tears shine the cheeks beneath wetly blazing eyes. “I will kill you all with death!” And jutting from the temple, he blinks to see it, the short plain handle of a knife, pale wood and two dull rivets smeared with blood, or something like it. “Minister to me! A thousand thousands, ten thousand times ten thousand stand!”

“Did you bring it?” says the Viscount Agravante, knelt at the other’s side, stripped to his shirtsleeves. “Rhythidd?”

“What?” he says, and “yes, of course,” lifting a heavy sack of blue velvet from a pocket. “Eagles and vultures,” the other’s muttering, “ravens and kites, and dogs. And owls.”

“Go on, then,” says Agravante.

“Yes,” he says, “of course, I should,” fastidiously hitching his trousers at the knee to kneel there, by the other. He tugs the sack open, and a horrid squeal wrenches from that jerking throat, “No! No! You cannot, will not, must not, no!” Rhythidd rears back from a skinny outthrust elbow rattling with pinions. Agravante leans his weight on fragile shoulders heaving, struggling to lift those uselessly enormous hands, “The blade, the pain, it’s cold but clear, that clarity is all, but gold? Dehab?” struggling, those wet eyes widen as Rhythidd tips out a palmful of brilliant dust, “That honey’s too, too warm, voluptuously sweet, do not, do not, you must not!” struggling uselessly.

“Go on,” says Agravante, stark.

“The flakes of my flesh are joined together, shut up as with a close seal,” the other, trembling with the effort of trying to lift that round little body those long frail arms against Agravante’s weight, “my very, nostrils, seething smoke,” twisting with a grimace from Rhythidd’s shining hand, “and my eyes,” a grunt, as Agravante shifts to free up a hand to grip that chin, those cheeks, to yank that head, turning the hilt back down beneath the gold, “the eyelids of morning,” a mutter squelched by pinch-squeezed lips. Rhythidd tips his hand to trickle a shining thread that spilling loops about the hilt, the black and sticky crust, hissing to fill the wound. “Sorrow!” a yelp, and one last straining push from those wrong-braced slender arms, “withers to joy at my feet!” as the last of the gold falls from Rhythidd’s palm.

“The blade,” says Agravante.

“My lord?” says Rhythidd.

With a snarl for Rhythidd’s consternated frown, Agravante plants a knee in the other’s belly, seizes the jutting hilt, though there’s no struggle now, no strain, just a drawn-out sigh as he draws it forth. Agravante sits back in a crackling flump of feathers, dropping that little knife. “More,” he says.

“My lord,” says Rhythidd, hoisting the sack. “There is no more.”

“It’s gone? All of it, gone?”

“Unless you wish to claw back what’s been portioned.”

“Even your Champoeg vault?”

“My lord,” says Rhythidd, “we must maintain reserves, in case of an, emergency,” starting, as with a plosive gasp Agravante giggles, a shivering mirthless whining laugh he stops up with the back of his hand.

“Actually,” the other says, “I’m already feeling much better.” Those hands, drawn back, no longer quite so large, as feathers drop from pimpled, thickening arms. “More myself.”

“There,” says Rhythidd, slumped against the crumbling wall, loose feathers lofted about the hand he lifts to his forehead. “Now, we might have this,” an airy gesture, at the wreckage all about, “dealt with.”

“Feel free,” says Agravante, tipping back his head, his long white dreads in sagging disarray.

“My lord,” says Rhythidd, consternation curdling. “I’ve no one here to see to it.”

“You came alone?”

“I even drove myself,” says Rhythidd. “On this, you were quite clear, and firm.”

“Then we are as you see us. Mix up the plaster and find us a trowel.”

“There’s no one here, but us? What of the Princess?”

Agravante looks away, down the hall, the door at the end there, padlock shut upon its hasp. “Safe, for the nonce. You’d have her take up a broom?”

“Excellency,” says Rhythidd, taken aback.

“His grace,” says Agravante, “got greedy.”

“The hell I did,” snarls the other, sitting up with a grimace. “Horse-headed asshole was the one did this, only it wasn’t your bitch of a sister.” Pointing an arm foreshortened to smears of blood dried dark, dragged down cracked and broken plaster. “That? Ain’t mine. Though it would’ve been. Should have been.” That arm joining the other wrapping both to cradle a belly pinkly wrinkled. “I had her in my mouth. Salt, and iron. And the heat,” that last word folded in a drawn-out groan.

“I should, perhaps,” says Rhythidd, but, “A moment,” says Agravante, a hand up in forbearance over the clenched and rocking figure of the other, who coughs, a laugh, “I’m more, myself, yes, but,” those small eyes squeezing shut, “not entirely. Candy floss.” Nostrils flare. Those eyes pop open. “Better’n nothing.”

“I must see to her highness.” Agravante stands, brushing feathers from his trousers.

Those eyes, that regard, woozily unfocused, turns to take in Rhythidd, who shifts his feet, but does not get to them, who lifts a hand, but does not sit up. He skews his necktie in a brusque attempt to straighten it. “I should,” he says, but doesn’t, his expression, clarifying, scums over with a greasy sheen of horror as the other, featherless, slumps forward, pushes up, on hands and knees. That white hair has resumed its wild corona, matted only a bit there by the ear, where what gold’s left drifts dustily to gleam a burgeoning shoulder. “My lord,” says Rhythidd, trying again. “This is not your grandfather.”

“This is necessary,” says Agravante, halfway down the hall.

“What of,” says Rhythidd, flinching as the other’s hand crumples the shoulder of his jacket, clinging, “my brother’s portion? How can you,” as the other seizes his tie, “what will you, what will you!” as a grey-pink tongue slips out to wet those pale pink lips. “Without me,” says Rhythidd. “He won’t give it to you without me!”

“We’ll make do,” says Agravante, reaching for the padlock. “At the moment, it’s come down to you, or me. My position’s,” looking back, “understandable.”

“Please,” says Rhythidd, the word stretched to a whisper.

The other chuckles, once. Feet kick, a briefly tumult in the feathers, and then the dull tock of a bit of bone, dropped to the carpet.

Ding the microwave, she opens the door of it, reaches in with a hot pad for a steaming yellow mug that says Ray of Fucking Sunshine. In she dunks a bright red seahorse infuser, dandling its delicate chain a moment. Color seeps.

Out of the kitchen, across the living room, dark wood paneling, grey-green shag, shuff of her bare feet into a shadowy nook of a hall. Nudging open a door into a small room filled with watery cloudy light from a sliding glass door, framed to either side by heavy curtains drawn. Around the foot of the great wide bed, messily unmade, to stand there by the glass, satiny tap pants in an antique beige and a scarf about her shoulders like a shawl. Sips her tea. Her hair’s been shorn to a yellow fuzzing the curve of her skull.

Lopped open on the bed a bright blue rolling duffel, and stuffed within it, spilling out of it over the rumpled duvet, scraps and shreds of satin, silks, clouds of tulle and filmy lace, diaphanous rayons, workaday nylon and lycra in competitive colors, here and there white cotton knit. Setting her tea aside she turns to it, shoving this bit in, tossing that out, whirl of dangling straps, clatter of fasteners striking the wall. Leaping up onto the bed to step across it, angry squonk of springs, she drops to the narrow space on the other side. Shelves there, opposite the glass, haphazardly piled with more clothing, and she seizes handfuls of leggings, T-shirts, stuffing them heedlessly into the duffel, snags a translucent tub filled with balled-up socks, dumps them in after.

Outside, a bug-eyed little hatchback, bright red with racing stripes, swings into the space before the glass. She opens the passenger door, climbs out, transparent raincoat over a neon bandeau, baggily shredded jeans. Under the glassy hood, her yellow hair’s cut short in back to swoop in lengthening, asymmetric sheaves about her face. She watches, for a moment, the room through the glass, before stepping up to rap it, smartly, with a knuckle.

She looks up from the duffel to see her there, without. Sets off around the bed, not over it, stooping before the glass door to pry something up, a sawn-off broomstick from the bottom rail, then straightening yanks on the unmoving handle, and again, rolling her eyes as on the other side of the glass she’s pointing to the latch that, clutching the scarf about her shoulders, she’s already undoing. The door slides open with an effortful squeal.

“May I come in?” she says.

“You still live here,” she says, turning away.

“I, ah,” she says, stepping within. “You cut your hair.”

“Got tired of not remembering how long it was, on any given day.” She shoves another handful of stuff in the duffel.

“We hadn’t seen you, at the warehouse. Not since – ”

“I haven’t been to the warehouse. I got this done,” a hand, lifted to her yellow fuzz, “at Rudy’s, on Division. Paid Bethany seventeen dollars, plus a five-dollar tip. And you don’t even know their names.”

She draws back. “What?”

“When you went behind the screen, for the, coat, your hair, the, the jeans, what is that, cybergrunge? Did you ask for that, like, specifically? Or was it more of a dealer’s choice?”

She looks down, transparent coat a-crinkle. “Aigulha,” she says. “And Costurere. Of course I know their names.”

“Well,” she says. “You did fuck them.”

“Is, is that what this is about?” Shaking her head. “That can’t be what this is about.”

“We swore,” she says, that word shored up with something like cold steel, “we were never going to do,” a breath, “that,” she says, “again.”

And at that, some uncertainty slips from the set of her shoulders. “It takes two to tango,” she says, without smiling, and yet.

“But only one to wallflower.” And then, before she can respond, “I push too far, you pull back, that’s the balance, that’s how we,” turning suddenly away, resettling the scarf about her shoulders. “Did you come here to get something, or,” wadding up a scrap of lace, stuffing it in the duffel.

“I told you,” she says, gently. “It’s been a couple of days. You haven’t answered your phone.”

“I need to charge it,” she snaps.

“Where are you going?” she says then, small and quiet.

She shakes out what she’s holding, spandex tights the color of lemon sherbet, rolls them tightly to lay them atop the pile in the duffel. “LA,” she says. “Reg knows somebody who knows somebody in Westwood, up in the hills. It’s a landmark, of Brutalist architecture, he says. Anyway. Cameron’s shooting there, next week.”

“Prescott?”

“Dameshek.”

“Wow. Just you?”

A shrug. “Three or four other girls. You know how it goes.” She plucks out something, ivory satin edged with lace, and lets the scarf slip from her shoulders. “Flight’s at four. It’s only sixty bucks.” Lifts it over her head to slip it on, a camisole.

“That’s a one-way price,” she says, once more small, and quiet. And then, shaking her head, “We’re shooting next week, too. We got the show.”

“Ah,” she says, looking through the glass to the car without. The driver’s still behind the wheel, anonymously hooded, a silhouette through the rain-spangled windscreen. “Turned out twins were enough, huh?”

“I’m sure he could make it work, if – ”

“What about our show, Chris?”

“It could,” she says, “still be three.”

“Strippers,” she says. “At an Exhibition. Remember? All our plans? What it was we were gonna do to take the world by the balls?”

“Pictures,” she says, “at an Ecdysis.”

“Who cares! Huh? Is it ever gonna happen, now? Ever?”

Staring then, glaring, each at the other, the one of them heaving angry breaths, the other preternaturally still. “What about the Queen?” she says.

“Oh,” she sneers, “I think you got that covered.” But then, blinking rapidly, she turns away, a shake of her head, hands casting about to settle on the duffel, close up the flap, zip it shut. “And anyway,” she says. “I can’t blow off Cameron Dameshek.”

“You told him about the hair?”

“He knows about the hair. He likes the hair. You should maybe try it, next time you’re in for a glow-up.” Hauling the duffel off the bed, setting it upright on the floor.

“Stef,” she says, her hand on the handle of the glass door. Looking up, across the bed, to her. “I love you,” she says.

“Sure,” she says. “Like that’s got fuck-all to do with anything.”

His one shoe propped on the pallet, nylon that might’ve been blue, and silver stripes long since gone lustreless, hands stuffed in the pockets of his oversized hoodie, greyly green, or maybe a greenish grey, he’s looking out over the great wide knee-high tub, bound about by riveted iron, wide enough his skinny arms stretched wide could never reach across it. Over on the other side, sharp Jenny Rye steps up, her dutiful scowl underlit by gold to shift and soften into something no less stern, but gone’s all trace of pettiness, or of resentiment. She favors him with a nod of recognition that startled he returns, and then she leans out to scrape a teacup through all that golden dust, draws it up to wave beneath her nose, careful of her chin, savoring something about it before she tucks it teacup and all away in a pocket of her coveralls. Up steps Brether Ned, ponderously kneeling to dip in a hand, pinching up a goodly amount between spatulate fingers and thumb that he drizzles into an opened handkerchief, and paint-spattered Getulos, dunking a stripped tin can, and Trucos behind him, holding out both hands for what Getulos lets spill.

He shifts his shoe from off the pallet to squat, lean over, reach within but not to touch, the back of his closed fist no more than an inch above that warmly golden light. Unfolding his fingers, haze-edged silhouettes almost lost in the brilliance. Cheekbones hunching, he squints at the inside of the wall of the tub. Splays his hand along the oaken staves bound tightly, uncaulked, one against another. Difficult to make out in the effulgence, but a glimmer grits the gloss of the wood, up from the tip of his little finger, there, just above the burning surface, up and up to about the end of his thumb, a bit yet below the lip of it. He drags a fingertip up against the wood, gets to his feet as he eyes it judiciously, the pale pad glittering, granules of gold trapped in the whorls of the print. Turning away from the tub he nearly crashes clank and chime into a short woman peering thickly at him, leather jacket and something, a great big sword leaned up against her shoulder, “Hey,” she says, “buddy, you okay?” He waves her off with his other hand, ducking his shoulders to swerve away, the one hand still held up to his nose, his mouth, his lips, that glimmering finger brushing his

“oh,” says Christian Beaumont, turning to look back at that wide and shining tub, out in the middle of it all.

“Okay, everybody!” calls the woman with the great big sword. “Gather round! It’s here, folks, it’s here! Go on, open those up,” one hand balancing the weight of the scabbard, pointing with the other to the stalls along the wall, the overhead doors in each of them, some of them already open, some rattling up as she’s calling, and hands hasten to open up the rest, “let’s go, everybody, here she comes, it’s here!”

Down from the walkway above the empty, unlit stage, Gloria Monday’s making her way down the skeletal stairs, baggy sweatshirt and knee-length purple tights, her bangs dyed freshly pink. She stoops under the rising big overhead door there, and everybody follows, out through the stalls and doors to the loading dock outside.

A battleship of a pickup’s parked on the street, snugged right up next to the dock, black paint gleaming, dealer’s sticker still pasted in a window. Hiked up over the tailgate a gooseneck hitch hooked to a long and empty flatbed trailer, clad in corrugated steel. Gloria nimbly leaps from dock to trailer, clang of the impact, “Okay!” she shouts. “All right.” Lifting her arms to address them all, a benediction, an adjuration, a conductor’s imperation, or a conjurer’s. “This?” she says, “all of you, here, now?” and those upraised hands close in fists of acclamation, “this is not what I had in mind!” Those hands clap together, pop! “But that’s okay! That’s okay. This is not what I made, not at all. It’s what we all have made, together,” quick shake of her head, spreading her hands, allegro, vivace, she bulls her way through, “the, art, the food, the, the home! That we have made. The community! That we have all, together. It’s, a wonderful thing! A wondrous thing.” Lowering her hands, clenched again in fists, ritenuto. “And it should be celebrated. It should be seen! And this?” stepping back, to one side, “this is how,” a sweeping gesture, mostrare, for the shining flatbed stretched beneath her feet, “this is how we make that happen!”

Some of them already coming down off the loading dock, the stairs there, and there, the ramp at the end, or just dropping down to the street, running their hands over shining corrugations, inspecting the hitch, the grimly oversized grille of the truck, and Big Jim leaning an elbow out the window of it, grinning under his thick mustache. “One week from today, from tonight!” Gloria’s saying, “Downtown! The Rose Festival’s gonna crescendo with the Starlight Parade! And this?” Clangingly stomping the flatbed. “This is gonna be our float! We are gonna ride this,” another stomp, “into the parade! Into legend! So! Start thinking up what we might wanna do, here. What are we gonna build? What’s it gonna be? It could be, anything. Anything. Sky’s the limit. Whatever you need to make it happen, lumber, lights, giant buckets of papier-mâché, I don’t know, truckloads of flowers, tell me! And I will make! It! Happen!” Fists waved over her head, but faltering, lowering herky-jerkily, frowning at the lack of applause, the dearth of enthusiasm, the wholesale shift of attention from her, and the truck, and the trailer, to something, someone stepping out from under the big overhead door, dressed in loosely flowing whites, black curls undone, the Queen, making her way implacably through the crowd as it bustles to part before her, with curtsies, and with bows, heads ducked, hands folded, with fingers lifted to murmuring lips, with eyes that shine. She holds a hand up warily, as if to indicate her intended path, the palm of it and the fingers slathered with gold, and her gold-dipped feet are bare. She passes without comment or acknowledgement, down to the ramp at the end of the dock, white robe lofting behind her as she strides off down the street, each step a golden print to mark the dull black tarmacadam, and all the crowd left awestruck as she goes.

“What the hell was that,” says Gloria Monday.