“He didn’t put my face in it,” Ripple says. His voice cracks with disappointment like a little boy’s.
Ripple’s likeness is the only one in the hall with a title: Wanderer Above the Sea of Smog. In it, he stands on a parapet of the mansion roof, looking down from the Heights onto Empire Island below. He faces away from the viewer, his brown hair tousled in the wind, his right hand jaunty on his hip: a hero’s pose. But the artist has dwarfed him into insignificance. The city spills out before him. Wreathed with smog, marred skyscrapers jut up like knives; smaller ruins—townhouses, apartment buildings, theaters and libraries and museums—smolder in their shadows, barely visible. A distant new fire, zigzag-shaped like a Z, slashes near the middle of the canvas, electric orange, as if the artwork itself has been defaced. Torchtown? From it pours a blacker, fresher smoke, which mixes with the rest, becoming one at the horizon with the stormy sky.
Most shocking, though, are two shapes, smudges, really, high above the wanderer’s head, near the top of the frame. Yellow and green, only implied—they could be mistaken for HowFlys or birds. But no. No. They are dragons. They are here at Ripple’s wedding. How well, he wonders, can this bode?
“Well, I hate it,” says Pippi. “How very grim. Whyever would someone paint such a thing? If it were a window, I’d draw the shades.”
* * *
Nothing live—no band, no chanteuse. If Swanny wants to hear a human voice raised in song, she’ll have to go find the klangflugel and bang the tunes out herself. Of all the things, why did she agree to economize on this, the music at her reception? As dreadful recordings play, decades-old earworms bereft of vital force or meaning, Swanny slumps next to Katya at the banquet table, morosely eating marzipan roses off the three-tiered cake. Swanny felt less alone in childhood, taking imaginary tea with her taxidermied rabbits.
“Were you a mail-order bride?” she inquires of her new mother-in-law, leaning over to pluck another rose.
“No. Humphrey and I met at work.”
“You worked together?” Swanny stifles a melancholy laugh. “Were you a receptionist?”
“We met at my work.” Katya delivers the information robotically. “Not his.”
“Oh.” Swanny’s read enough erotica to fill in the blanks. Katya herself is a blank: a sexual tabula rasa upon which the worst conclusions are easily drawn. Swanny changes the subject: “Well, you’re certainly rich now. That must be a relief.”
“Is it for you? Are you glad to take my son’s money and have the run of his household?”
There’s no challenge in Katya’s inflection, but the words are clear enough. Swanny goes on the offensive. “I am, actually. He’s a worthless human being, but it would have been a shame to let an opportunity like this go to waste.”
Katya smiles, vaguely, and rises from the table. “Have a nice wedding night.”
Swanny watches her stride long-leggedly away, a formula of perfection fantasized into existence—36-24-36. She names the Day-Glo magenta hue of Katya’s dress like a curse: Hot Lips, Fashion Doll, Dragonfruit.
To know what a man expects of women, look no further than his mother.
“A perfect wife,” Swanny observes aloud. “Have you ever met someone so unnervingly polite? It’s as though she’s been lobotomized. I consider myself quite the feminist, but perhaps some of us weren’t made to advance. It’s like they say about genes: you can’t express what isn’t there.”
“She has her moments, but on the balance—she’s a mindless automaton,” Osmond agrees, splashing more End of History in the general direction of his glass. “That’s why Humphrey’s in love with your mother.”
“What?”
Osmond nods in the direction of the dance floor, where Ripple moons around for the videographers, a skeleton crew from his old Toob series doing this family memento work-for-hire as “mostly a favor.” They’ve been checking their watches for the last forty-five minutes. In the background, Humphrey and Pippi are swaying cheek-to-cheek.
“How horrifying,” Swanny murmurs.
“Oh no. I didn’t mean to subject you to another punishing realization.”
“But it can’t be reciprocated. It can’t be. She’s still in love with Father.”
“Hasn’t he been dead for twenty years?”
“Nearly seventeen. But Mother always says she ‘will never love again.’ She says it very sternly. I never thought to question it.”
“Far be it from me to sow the seeds of discord; I have no notion what lurks in her inscrutable heart.” Osmond burps, 55 percent ABV. “Most likely, she’ll play out the flirtation until it no longer benefits you. Then she’ll shatter my brother’s hopes and they’ll settle into their natural roles as archenemies. I’m eager to observe, at any rate. Your mother is terrifying, but at least she’s alive.” He raps his fist twice on his insensible thigh. “Which is more than can be said for some of us in this house.”
Swanny turns to him with sudden intensity of feeling. “Uncle Osmond, you have the warmest heart of anyone present. You’re my only friend in this godforsaken place.”
Osmond takes this statement very seriously. “You know,” he says, gazing at the ancestral tablecloth, stained now from the joyless festivities, “if I had had a wedding, it would have been very much like this.” He fervently clasps Swanny’s small, pudgy hand in his small, pudgy hands. “Only, I would have adored you.”
Swanny begins to cry.
“Is it really so obvious to everyone that Duncan doesn’t love me?”
“Of course it is, my child. And hardly unexpected, considering the lout in question. He didn’t appreciate the caviar at dinner either.”
“But—but—” Swanny blinks back inky tears, dabs at them with her cloth napkin. “I thought I was irresistible.”
“Swanny, no one can resist you forever. And ‘forever’ is the term on the contract you just signed. I should know. I notarized it.”
* * *
Forever. Upstairs in the Guest Room, Abby is learning the meaning of the term. That is how long she has been stranded here, how long she’ll be alone. She’s been watching the wedding proceedings for the last six hours; they livestream from the videographers’ cameras to the house’s Toob sets, with automated dubbing in a strange foreign language for the staff.
She’s seen so much now, so much she can’t unsee. Yet she fears she never will understand this world of people—of her people, she reminds herself, of human beings just like her. Why are they so strange? She misses walking naked on the beach, feeding cockroaches to the ducks, shitting in a cardboard box. Here her body stays confined to a single room. Her mind is meant to wander on without it, into the glow worlds of the Toob.