blond woman in an Ann Taylor jacket and a Kmart skirt. She had a cell phone headset over her bleached hair, smart-girl glasses perched at the end of her nose, and wasnât taking crap from anybody. I recognized the type. Black belt in shopping, no kids, no dogs, no husband, money market account diversified into international growth and mutual funds. Probably lived in a pricey but tiny closet on the Upper West Side and worked at Citibank or Chase.
She noticed us, and even for New York we were clearly not the usual sight. For just a second her gray eyes touched Rahel and locked on like missiles, and then she swerved and blasted past us, back to talking tensely about the latest slide of the Dow Jones. Rahel smiled. âSometime tonight, sheâll have a dream. Adream about flying, or falling, or monsters. And she wonât know why.â
âYou did that?â
âNo,â she said. âThey do it to themselves. We are not safe to look on for long, you know. Not for them.â She glanced over at me, and frowned. âOr perhaps sheâll just have a nightmare about your hair.â
âWhat about myââ I caught sight of it, reached up and dragged a tight curl down to focus on it. âDammit. Iâm Shirley Temple again.â
Rahel pulled me to a stop and over to the side, under the shelter of a red-and-white striped awning in front of a dusty shoe store. The pavement was spotted with pigeon poo and ages of tobacco stains. She stood in front of me, blocking me from bystanders, and brushed her long-nailed fingers gently over my head. I felt the curls relaxing. âThere,â she said. âRemember that feeling. Just reach for it when you need it.â She studied me more closely. âYour eyes.â
I neutralized them to the serene dove gray that Iâd managed earlier. She nodded.
We waded back into foot traffic again, and had a nice twenty-minute walk. I donât recommend that in cool shoes.
At the end of what I was coming to think of as the Manhattan Death March, the big foursquare bulk of the Empire State Building loomed over us, cool shadows rich and deep with history. âArenât we taking the tourist thing a little far?â I asked, staring up. The building was awe-inspiring in its achievement; I wanted to take a look in Oversight, but I knew thatif I did Iâd never get my hair and eyes straight again. Better to stick to the simple things, for now.
âInside,â Rahel said, and pushed me to the big revolving glass doors. I pushed, shuffled, and emerged into the big genteel lobby, under the steely gaze of a phalanx of security guys in snappy blue sport coats. The place smelled of fresh paint and old wood, and there was so much to see, even without resorting to Oversight or rising into the aetheric. Gorgeous deco touches, a sense of weight and history to the place that made me want to sit down and soak it in. So many people had come through here, over the years, bringing with them their fears, their loves, their hopes and dreams.
I could feel the echoes of them trapped in every tile on the floor, in every steel beam of the structure. It felt . . . deliriously weighty.
Visitors were queuing up behind a maroon velvet rope next to a sign that said TOURS . There was a metal detector involved, and I was sure the German shepherd sitting pretty in the corner wasnât there for his health.
âWalk through the detector,â Rahel said. âDonât touch anything.â
âUm, people in lineââ
âGo around them.â
I did. Nobody glanced my way. Now that I concentrated, I could feel something hanging around meâa kind of gray veil, a donât-see-me that wasnât quite invisibility. Rahelâs doing. I was getting better at figuring that out, anyway; I couldnât even sense it before. I waited until there was a pause in people going through the detector and darted in, zipped through,and felt the
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