And the icon was not.
He glanced down, saw the girl had been sick. The icon shimmered. There was a break in the image, a subtle rippling that for an instant distorted its eerily beautiful face. Trip felt a brisk clarity at the foul smell that rose from the floor behind him. He shut his eyes, but the impulse to see the icon was irresistible.
“Make it stop,” someone cried out. “Oh God make it stop…”
Trip swallowed. Fear nudged at him; too late he tried to wrest his gaze from the icon, one leg drawn up beneath it like a heron’s.
Whirling stars swept across its eyes, green trees and blue water, a rippling brown mat of living creatures racing across an emerald plain. The icon opened its hands. Within its palms golden-eyed frogs crawled, throats bubbling as they sang. They leapt into the air, forelegs extended so that he could see their tiny toe pads, their glistening skin. Where they had been an egg trembled in the icon’s cupped hand, its shell a color that Trip had forgotten he ever knew. Cracks appeared upon the shell, the clawed nub of a minute beak. Something pushed its way free until it sat with lidless glaring eyes. Something like a tiny feathered dragon, eagle’s curved beak and claws, pointed ears that flattened against its skull as it hissed at him.
Trip’s flesh prickled. With all his will he forced himself to look away, to stagger in the other direction; and directly into Leonard Thrope.
“Trip…” Trip looked up to see the slight man standing somewhat unsteadily. “Trip Marlowe?”
Trip swung at him. Leonard moved backwards as a hand grabbed Trip’s and yanked him sideways. “Oh, hey, Trip, nice to see you too—”
Flash of crimson as he smiled; another flash as someone struck Trip on the side of the face. He cried out, looked up through watering eyes to see a blond woman a full head and shoulders taller than he was, her body sheathed in pink latex, face hidden behind a Barbie mask.
“Check him, Mikey,” said Leonard.
Within the mask a mouth opened, showing white teeth filed to a point and tipped with gold. “Okay,” she said to Trip. “C’mere, you—”
She spun him to face her, ran her hands expertly up and down his sweater and pants; found the wallet Martin had given him. She glanced inside, with a shrug handed it to Leonard and reached for his knapsack. At Leonard’s admonitory glance she set it down. “Nothing on him but that.”
As she stepped away Trip slumped to the floor. His cheek throbbed where she’d hit him, his head felt as though it’d been pumped full of Novocain. He stared murderously up at Leonard Thrope, who only grinned and took the wallet. He opened it, raising his eyebrows at the amount of cash; then screwed up his face to examine the driver’s license. “Old enough to drink yet, Trip? Let’s see.”
Leonard frowned. Then his appearance changed, melted from malign amusement into something Trip had only seen once before, when his mother received the news of his father’s suicide. An utter void of expression, lines smoothed away, eyes blank. He looked at Trip, then at the license. He perused it for a good minute, thumbed through the rest of the wallet, examining business cards, photographs, whatever was in there. Leonard held the driver’s license between two fingers and stared at it, finally slid it into a pocket of his leather jacket.
“Where did you get this, Trip?”
Trip glared at him sullenly. He thought of lying, of saying he’d stolen it. Instead he got to his feet, squaring off with his fists at his sides. The Barbie Amazon edged closer to him. “He gave it to me.”
“Who gave it to you?” Leonard asked.
“He gave it to me.” Trip said defiantly. He stuck out his hand. “Martin Dionysos. Can I have it back?”
“Martin Dionysos gave this to you.” Leonard glanced at Mikey. He nodded and she backed away to lean against a wall, eyes blank as pewter, her body giving off the scent of rubber and vanilla.
Leonard turned back to Trip. “Where, Trip? Here? In this club?”
Trip shook his head. The other man seemed uneasy, staring back at Trip with an intense, fearful hunger. Trip felt a sting of poisonous exultation: so Leonard Thrope could be afraid of something!
“No.” He grinned disarmingly. When Leonard ventured a wary smile back, he snatched the wallet from his hand, ducking as Mikey lashed out at him.
“You little fucker—”
“Mikey—no!” Leonard shouted. Like a snake she drew back. “Leave him…” Quickly he turned back to Trip, who had grabbed his knapsack and was breathing heavily. “Is he here? Martin—is he in the city?”
Trip shook his head. “No. It was back in Maine. At a place called Mars Hill…”
Leonard nodded, eyes distant.
“Though actually, he did give me this here”—Trip held up the wallet, then shoved it into his front pocket—“on his boat.”
“When?”
“Yesterday—” Trip frowned. “No, this morning.”
“What were you doing with him?”
Trip hesitated. “He saved me. I—I tried to kill myself, up there. At home. I jumped into the water to drown. But I was washed up on shore. Martin found me.”
Leonard’s gaze shifted from whatever far-off thing he had seen to Trip’s face. “This is after I saw you. After we made the recording.” Trip nodded. “Lucius said you’d do that—he said you’d split and go back to Maine. He thought you’d freak out on tour. He said you wouldn’t be able to handle it—he said you’d go home. Nellie thought you took off with her foster daughter.” Leonard nibbled his lip; a ruby spark flared and died. “That’s what I thought, too. But you didn’t?”
“No. Do you know where she is?”
Leonard shook his head. “No,” he said. “I really don’t.”
He sighed, ran a hand through his long mass of greying curls. He tugged at an intricate braid of gold and leather and tiny mirrors until it stretched before him; stared into the spectrum of tangled glass and metal as though divining something there. He raised his eyes to Trip’s. “You said Martin gave you his wallet, here in the city. He left Mars Hill, then? He came with you? Where is he now?”
Trip shrugged. He had lost his balance: Leonard Thrope had moved his hand and once again the world had shifted under Trip’s feet.
“Where is he? ” repeated Leonard.
“He left,” said Trip. The words tore at his heart. Because suddenly he saw the blond girl again, a shaft of bright pink disappearing through a revolving door.
“To where? Did he tell you?”
“I don’t know. He had his boat—we sailed down here, we left about two weeks ago—”
“But why did he leave?” Leonard’s tone grew anguished. “He was so sick! The only thing keeping him alive was that he stayed up there—why would he leave?”
“Well—he brought me here. I mean, I asked him to,” Trip said; then, with slowly dawning astonishment, “You know him?”
“I’ve known Martin Dionysos for twenty fucking years. We were at RISD together, I left my goddamn high-school sweetheart for him. Then Martin dumped me. We ended up at different galleries—”
He laughed harshly. “—we had, oh, different views about art. Among other things. He hasn’t left that place up in Maine for years, now.”
“But he wanted to—” Trip’s voice rose defensively. “I mean, I didn’t, like, force him or something—”