“Of course she’s not okay! Where’s your manager?” Elise snapped. Calliope stayed quiet. She liked letting her mom do the talking, when they were first laying the groundwork; and anyway, she was supposed to be injured.
“I’m s-sorry, I’ll call him …” the boy stammered. Calliope gave a little whimper for good measure, though it wasn’t necessary. She could feel the attention of everyone in the lobby shifting toward them, a crowd beginning to gather. Nervousness clung to the front desk boy like a bad perfume.
“I’m Oscar, the manager. What happened here?” An overweight man in a simple dark suit trotted over. Calliope noted with delight that his shoes looked expensive.
“What’s going on is that my daughter fell in your lobby. Because of that spilled drink!” Elise pointed to a puddle on the floor, complete with a lost-looking lime wedge. “Don’t you invest in a maid service here?”
“My sincerest apologies. I can assure you nothing like this has ever happened before, Mrs. …?”
“Ms. Brown,” Elise sniffed. “My daughter and I had planned on staying here for a week, but I’m no longer sure we want to.” She bent down a little lower. “Can you move, honey?”
That was her cue. “It really hurts.” Calliope gasped, shaking her head. A single tear ran down her cheek, ruining her otherwise perfectly made-up face. She heard the crowd murmur in sympathy.
“Let me take care of everything,” Oscar pleaded, turning bright red with anxiety. “I insist. Your room, of course, is complimentary.”
Fifteen minutes later, Calliope and her mom were firmly ensconced in a corner suite. Calliope stayed in bed—her ankle propped on a tiny triangle of pillows—holding perfectly still as the bellman unloaded their bags. She kept her eyes closed even after she heard the front door shut behind him, waiting till her mom’s footsteps turned back toward her bedroom. “All clear now, sweetie,” Elise called out.
She stood up in a fluid motion, letting the tower of pillows tumble to the ground. “Seriously, Mom? You tripped me without warning?”
“I’m sorry, but you know you’ve always been terrible at a fake fall. Your instincts for self-preservation are simply too strong,” Elise replied from the closet, where she was already sorting her vast array of gowns in their color-coded transport bags. “How can I make it up to you?”
“Cheesecake would be a good start.” Calliope reached past her mom for the fluffy white robe that hung on the door, emblazoned with a blue N and a tiny image of a cloud on the front pocket. She pulled it around her, letting the threads of the tie instantly weave themselves shut.
“How about cheesecake and wine?” Elise made a few brisk motions with her hands to call up holographic images of the room service menu, pointing at various screens to order salmon, cheesecake, a bottle of Sancerre. The wine popped into their room in a matter of seconds, propelled by the hotel’s temperature-controlled airtube system. “I love you, sweetie. Sorry again for flinging you on your face.”
“I know. It’s just the cost of doing business,” Calliope conceded with a shrug.
Her mom poured them two glasses and clinked hers to Calliope’s. “Here’s to this time.”
“Here’s to this time,” Calliope echoed with a smile, as the words sent a familiar shiver of excitement up her spine. It was the same phrase she and her mom always used when they arrived somewhere new. And there was nothing Calliope loved more than starting somewhere new.
She headed into the living room, to the curved flexiglass windows that lined the corner of the building, with dramatic views over Brooklyn and the dark ribbon of the East River. A few shadows that must have been boats still danced across its surface. Evening had settled over the city, softening the edges of it all. Scattered flecks of light blinked like forgotten stars.
“So this is New York,” Calliope mused aloud. After years of traipsing the world with her mom, standing at similar windows in so many luxury hotels and looking out over so many cities—the neon grid of Tokyo; the cheerful and vibrant disorder of Rio; the domed skyscrapers of Mumbai, gleaming like bones in the moonlight—she had come to New York at last.
New York, the first of the great supertowers, the original sky city. Already Calliope felt a burst of tenderness toward it.
“Gorgeous view,” Elise said, coming to join her. “It almost reminds me of the one from London Bridge.”
Calliope stopped rubbing her eyes, which were still a bit itchy from the latest retinal transfer, and glanced sharply at her mom. They rarely spoke of their old life, before. Yet Elise didn’t pursue the subject. She sipped her wine, her eyes fixed somewhere on the horizon.
Elise was so beautiful, Calliope thought. But there was something hard and a little bit plasticky about her beauty now: the result of the various surges she’d had to change her appearance and go unrecognized each time they moved somewhere new. I’m doing this for us, she always told Calliope, and for you, so you don’t have to. At least not yet. She never made Calliope play more than a supporting role in any of her cons.
For the past seven years, ever since they’d left London, Calliope and her mom had moved constantly from place to place. They never stayed anywhere long enough to get caught. The pattern was the same in each city: They would trick their way into the most expensive hotel in the most expensive neighborhood, and scout the scene for a few days. Then Elise would pick her mark—someone with too much money for his or her own good, and just enough foolishness to believe whatever story Elise decided to tell. By the time the mark realized what had happened, Elise and Calliope were always long gone.
Calliope knew that some people would call the pair of them cheats, or con artists, or swindlers. She preferred to think of them as very clever, very charming women who’d figured out how to level the playing field. After all, as Calliope’s mom always said, rich people get free things all the time. Why shouldn’t they, too?
“Before I forget, this is for you. I just uploaded it with the name Calliope Ellerson Brown. That’s what you wanted, right?” Her mom handed her a shining new wrist computer.
Here lies Gemma Newberry, beloved thief, Calliope thought in delight, burying her most recent alias with a silent flourish. She was as shameless as she was beautiful.
She had a terribly morbid habit of composing epitaphs each time she set aside an identity, though she never shared them with her mom. She had a feeling that Elise wouldn’t find them quite so amusing.
Calliope tapped at the new wrist computer, pulling up her list of contacts—empty, as usual—and noticed to her surprise that there wasn’t a school registration listed. “You’re not making me go to high school for this one?”