Dead Matter by Anton Strout Page A

mean I couldn’t correct that.
     
     
    I shook off my conversation with the intense Ms. Daniels as I left the offices and strolled out through the movie theater. I found Jane having coffee with Mrs. Teasley up front in the Lovecraft Café. The old woman had just finished reading Jane’s fortune in a pile of used coffee grounds, promising Jane that she was about to make an electric connection with someone. I didn’t bother to get into the crack-pot shoddiness of Mrs. T’s fortune-telling. Instead, Jane and I headed outside and I hailed a cab for us. We rode in silence for a bit, both too tired from running around the night before to say much. By the time we were heading crosstown on Fifty-ninth toward Columbus Circle, I felt myself waking up in anticipation of getting some answers at the Gibson-Case Center.
    “How was the Arcana brunch meeting?” I asked.
    Jane looked like she was perking up, too. “I’d say pretty poorly named since it was totally BYOB,” she said, shaking her head. “Bring Your Own Brunch.”
    The cab pulled up along the circular drive in front of the Gibson-Case Center. “Well, let’s hope we can find something to eat inside,” I said. I paid the cabbie and got out.
    As we approached the center, its towering structure gave me a bout of vertigo, and that was just from looking up at it. The sun was high and bright this time of morning, causing a near-blinding reflection off the polished steel and endless windows of its exterior. Being regular operating hours, the revolving doors of the public atrium were bustling with people coming and going with bags and packages of every shape and size. Stepping in through the doors myself, I felt like I was entering the Mall of the Future.
    The atrium was open and huge, the sun cutting through the enormous panes of tinted glass that rose several stories straight up. It shone down onto an actual garden within the building, complete with trees that dwarfed the ones nearby in Central Park. And the stores! They stretched outward and upward in every direction.
    “Wow,” Jane said. “I know I’m going to sound all country mouse here, but this place puts the Mall of America to shame.”
    “It’s okay,” I said, taking her hand. “City Mouse finds this pretty damn impressive himself.”
    I looked around, unsure of where to start our search. I turned to Jane, but her eyes had gone glossy. She turned to me, smiling with all her teeth showing.
    “I can has shopping?” she said.
    “Focus, Jane, focus.”
    The light died in her eyes. “Right,” she said, trying to hide the disappointment and reluctance in her voice. “I know. I’m just … umm, getting into character.”
    “If you say so,” I said. I squeezed her hand and we set off under the guise of a happy couple out for a day of touristy shopping. All in all, not a hard disguise to pull off. Feeling bad about denying Jane some retail therapy, I stopped and bought her a red resin heart on a chain with the word FOREVER across the front of it on a silver banner. I put it on her, unable to wipe the cheesy grin from my face or hers. There was no reason we couldn’t have a little fun playing our roles, after all.
    After wandering the open expanse of the lower mall area for more than a half hour, we found one of the building’s touch-screen directories that was set farther away from the hustle of the shopping crowds. I immediately started tapping away at one of the display panels.
    “Well, there seems to be a lot of options—residential, the shops, the restaurants, rental opportunities, co-ops …”
    “Great,” Jane said, leaning up against the directory bank. “Nothing like an afternoon sifting through the mundane. Is there anything about the management company, maybe?”
    I shook my head and continued scrolling through the various directories. After several minutes my eyes started to bug out. I stopped poking and rubbed my eyes.
    “Maybe …” I said, but stopped myself.
    “Yes?”
    “Maybe you