“Make way!” She mucked through the masses. Elbows, bags of roasted nuts, shoulders, holo-paper zines, toes she could not avoid stomping on. “Apologies. Condolences. Make way! Make way!”
Gram moved in a silent path behind her. He was much better at navigating a crowd—those with Recorder training always were—probably imagining it as one big Tetris game. Imogen would’ve let him lead, but she had a better idea of where they were going. It was a path she’d walked most mornings through periwinkle haze, past the Department of Agriculture, with its fifty-story-high wall gardens, through the financial district—Imogen had often bought her morning stimulant patches from the vendors here, since they were twice as strong to keep the bankers goinggoinggoing—along a man-made canal and into the Palisades, a residential district where new houses put on their best old-money faces. Many of the senators had “city-houses” here, and Imogen often wondered how many of the globe’s laws were decided behind their lion-knocker doors.
The boutique—Before & Beyond—sat at the edge of this neighborhood. Its ground-level walls were made of holo-glass: programmable to a variety of vistas. Right now they mimicked a jazz club from the 1930s, which meant it was Bel’s shift. The shopkeeper’s expression flickered when the door opened—veiled annoyance, Imogen knew. She felt it, too, when customers sauntered in five till close. Once he spotted the hair, his face went just as bright. He set down the poodle skirt he was clipping to a hanger.
“Imogen! Dearest! Come to check your schedule? You could’ve just comm-ed.”
Schedule? Oh right. Technically she still worked here, though it’d been ages since her last shift: a few days in Central time, weeks for Imogen. As much as she wanted to hand in her notice, having access to the store’s closet was worth staying on its payroll.
“Hi, Bel! I—we were hoping to get into the closet before you left.”
“We?” The man’s face lit even more as he looked over Imogen’s shoulder, where Gram stood, studying an early-twenty- third-century mirror gown. “Oh! Who is this?”
“My…” Oh Crux—she couldn’t say coworker. Bel was her coworker.
“Your…?” Bel prodded.
Bluebox blunders on a blathering whale’s tail! She couldn’t even say his name now because then the pairing would be My Gram and her pause had gone on a beat too long. Welcome to the pinkest skin that had ever graced her cheeks.
“Friend,” Imogen finished, flustered. “Gram’s my friend.”
At least she couldn’t see Gram’s fallout face, mercifully behind her. She’d already spent most of the day analyzing his expressions, trying to scrape whole memories from Vegas. They’d danced together. His smile had made Imogen feel floaty. After that the night went splintery. Lights. Blur. Bodies. Booze.
Curse Belvedere and its ability to make her talk!
Something important had happened during those lost moments… Imogen was sure of it. A raw, fundamental thing had shifted; there’d been such a tension between them all day. Stumbly words, caught glances, cleared throats, all while her heart pitter-patter wilted. It was every awkwardness she’d feared, plus some.
Gram was far from awkward now. His levitating grin returned as he introduced himself to the shopkeeper. “Gram Wright.”
“A pleasure. Bel Fisher.” Bel shook the Engineer’s outstretched hand; his eyebrows waggled at Imogen in a terribly unsubtle fashion.
“Can we get in the closet?” she croaked. “Please?”
“Sure, sure. As long as you make it snappy. I’m meeting Jansen for dinner. Well, dinner for me, breakfast for him, seeing as he works nights and all. I’ve told you about Jansen, right? Redhead. Dreamy. Does security for the Corps. It was Mrs. Chun who introduced us—”
“We’re on a bit of a time crunch as well,” Gram prodded.
“Indeed?” Bel’s gaze bounced between the pair. “What’s the occasion? Dinner? Dancing? Dalliances?”
Imogen wanted to crawl under the mink coats and hibernate for the rest of her life, but the shopkeeper was already heading off to the back room to unlock the closet entrance. “We’re going to a toga party,” she said.
“How retro! There are plenty to choose from down there. Virilis, candida, trabea, praetexta. We might even have a few picta, too.” Bel waved at the wrought-iron stairs. “You know your way around. Just bring up what you need and I’ll run it through the system.”
Imogen muttered her thanks before rushing down the staircase. Gram’s steps echoed behind her, accented by the fact that they were alone.
What had she said in Vegas?
What should she say now? Talk, talk, tell him was the only thing on her mind, thanks to Eliot, who hadn’t been as helpful at salvaging the dark hours as Imogen hoped. Instead of doing reconnaissance, the girl had suggested that Gram make the wardrobe run in Farway’s place.
Now they were here and Imogen had no words.
Gram didn’t, either, but his speechlessness was caused by the view. What the employees of Before & Beyond called a closet was more along the lines of a warehouse—millennia’s worth of styles on hundreds of racks. Some eras were better represented than others. The 1920s had an entire row dedicated to beaded gowns, while the 1120s consisted of a few flared-sleeved tunics, probably on order for a Recorder expedition.
“Some closet.” Gram whistled. “Got any string we could tie to the bottom of the stairs to find our way back?”
He was making jokes. That had to be good, right? Should she joke back? Should she smile? Would that scare him off? Why was her brain rushing along at a thousand kilometers an hour while she stood there paralyzed?
Pull it together, McCarthy.
“No need.” Imogen knew this place backward and forward. “The BC section is this way.”
“So this is where you come to get outfits. I always wondered.”
“The Corps uses it, too. All of this stuff is accurate, sometimes painfully so.” Imogen paused to take a whalebone corset from the eighteenth-century rack. “These reshaped women’s rib cages, you know.”
“That’s”—Gram’s eyes went wide, and Imogen realized exactly just what she was holding—“awful.”
“Right?” NOTE TO SELF: AVOID SHOWING OFF LADIES’ UNDERWEAR TO CRUSH. INCITES DEER-IN-HEADLIGHTS LOOK. She returned the corset to its rack and kept walking toward the BC section. It was smaller than the closet’s AD portion, if only because the citizens of the ancient world had less to work with. Plant dyes, flax fiber, and sheep’s wool. Hades, some of the Greeks preferred no clothes at all!
Even still, there was plenty to choose from. Alexandria was a port city founded by the Greeks in Egypt, which meant that Farway and Eliot could get away with numerous styles. Imogen’s magpie nature gravitated toward traditional Egyptian garb—jewels, kohl, gold—but such shininess would draw too much attention. Best to go with something simple.
“A toga virilis or a chiton?” She took one of each from the racks. “That’s the question.”