“Make me up.”
So I stood before the mirror, and she made me up. She was pale as snow, with a soft fever-rouge in the cheeks. Her lids became silver from a tube of eyeshadow. And then she made my lashes thick and black as midnight bushes from a tube of mascara. We painted each other’s mouth, sensual, alluring, a translucent amber.
The fever gave us the steadiest hands we ever had.
I ran out on the street. I ran up Tolerance. At the corner of the boulevard I saw the Asteroid, and it made me laugh.
In one of the streets I started to sing, and for the first time, because my voice seemed to come from somewhere else, I heard my voice. It rang light as a bell through the frosty air. It was thin and pure. It was—
“She‘s happy,” someone said, going by.
“She’s got a nice voice, even if she is blind drunk.”
Thank you, my unknown and friendly critic.
The market exploded before me, day-bright and golden.
Silver’s in the gold. Look for fire, look for the sun’s rising.
Lucifer. I should have called you that. An angel. A wicked angel. Bringer of light. But it’s too late now. I’ll never call you anything but Silver.
He was singing, and so I heard him, and so I found him. The crowd about him was thick, but I saw his face at last, between their shoulders. It was like the second time I ever saw him. Oh my love, my love. His face, bowed to the guitar as he made love to it. There’s a kind of beam, a ray that he draws to him. He draws all the energy of the crowd, and contains it within him, and then focuses it out again upon them. A ray like a star, a sun. I could see it now. I could see what it was. He wasn’t human and he wasn’t a machine. He was godlike. How dare I want to alter him? It didn’t matter if I couldn’t alter him. Not anymore. But to be with him, to love him—that mattered.
The song finished. The crowd roared. He looked up, and he saw me, right through the crowd, as he had seemed to see me that second time, as I think he did, after he sang “Greensleeves” in the Gardens of Babylon. And now his face grew still, so still it might be questioning. What did I do? What should I do? I knew. I remembered how he had been with me. I walked through the crowd. I walked up to him and brushed his hand very gently with my hand. “Hallo,” I said. And I stood by him, turning to confront, or to meet the crowd. A heap of coins and bills lay all over the ground. And now someone shouted for a particular song. Silver glanced at me, and hesitated. “You told me,” I said. “I trust you.”
He struck the chord, and started to sing. I came in on the third word, and straight into a harmonic I’d sung so often, it was easy. As I did, I caught the faintest spray of approval from the crowd. It was good. Silver didn’t check, or even look at me. The crowd began to clap in time with the rhythm.
I heard our voices go up together, his voice, hers. They had the same colors as our hair, his fire, auburn, darker, richer. Mine transparent and pale, a blond chain of notes. Chain. Jain. A Jain voice. And it was beautiful.
When the song ended, the crowd stamped and yelled. And I knew they were yelling and stamping for me too. Coins fell. But the sounds were far away. I wanted it to go on. I wanted to sing again. But Silver shook his head at the crowd. It began to melt away. It seemed to go very quickly. I think I wanted to call it back.
Then a woman came pushing through. She handed Silver a mug of something which steamed, and had an alcoholic scent.
“That’ll keep out the cold,” she said. She saw me. “Well, if it isn’t Blondie. Got the jacket on, I see.” My topcoat was open; this was the woman from the clothing stall. “Didn’t know you were here, or I’d have brought a drop for you.”
“She can share mine,” said Silver, and handed me the mug.
I drank. It was coffine, but it had brandy in it.
“Nice jacket,” said the woman, letting the remnants of the crowd, and any who passed, know where it came from. Obligingly, I slipped off the fur, and let the peacocks shine forth on the market.
“Wonderful value,” I said, loud and clear. “And so warm—”
“A bit too warm,” said the woman. She touched my forehead. “Not too bad, but you ought to get home.”
“My mother used to do that,” I said.
“She ought to be in bed,” the woman said to Silver. She winked. I suddenly knew she and he weren’t in some sexual conspiracy. We all were in it, it included me. So I laughed.
Silver was fastening my fur jacket.
“I’m packing up for the night,” he said.
“I should think so,” she said, “you’ve made enough. But you’re good for business, I’ll say that. And I liked that song. That song about the rose. How does it—?”
He sang it to her as he thrust the money in a thick cloth bag.
“A rose by any other name would get the blame for being what it is—the color of a kiss, the shadow of a flame.”
It was an improvisation. I rested against the golden night, and I added in my own, my very own strange new voice, extending his melody: “A rose may earn another name, so call it love, so call it love I will. And love is like the sea, which changes constantly, and yet is still the same.”
The woman looked at me.
Silver said, “That verse is Jane’s verse.”
“Love is like the sea. I love him,” I said to the woman. The brandy filled my head and the fever my blood.
“Well, love off home,” she said, grinning at us.
We walked out of the market, and he had me under a fold of his cloak, as if I were literally under his wing.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“A mild and minor human disease,” I said. “It’s nothing.”
“Why did you come here?”
“I wanted to be with you.”
“Why did you sing?”
“Did I sing?”
His arm held me.
“You’ve got through some barrier in yourself.”