Asiya = normalcy was a lunatic equation, he knew, but nonetheless he suddenly realized how much he had needed Asiya all along.
And what was she thinking? What was going through her head right now? The final image he had of her — after the real final image of her hurling insults, many of which were made incoherent by the force of her sobs that last night — was her breathing hard breaths into a brown bag, as she so often did those days. In a way she had gotten what she wanted: something had happened, something was happening.
Silber had mostly put it behind him, now that the illusion was in its final stages and Manning and company were finally on his team again. But the one sentence that stood out from the whole letter read, I am a friend of someone you know, who I can reveal once I meet you. Every so often, on a break from ordering and overseeing and demanding and commanding, Silber would sit back, light a Fantasia, and think of that line. Who in the world? He knew so many freaks — it would be impossible to narrow them down. And yet, he played roulette with the characters in his lifetime and eliminated them one by one, during his off-hours, of which there should have been none, but Silber was of course master of making something out of nothing.
Indigo had seemed unwell since the letter arrived. She seemed thinner — not a bad thing, but a thing, since Indigo was a big girl and that was part of her head assistant allure: her imposing presence. She seemed wrapped up in herself, spiritually and in stature, which was all slouch, and her Silberish wordplay — previously pitched to harmonize with his — had become a watered-down version of its original incarnation. If Silber had the decency to really consider her, he’d have assumed she was depressed.
“Indy, look, I get it — I mean, I never thought I’d recover from Ofra Haza and DJ Screw both dying last year, and here I am,” Raj tried to console. The pop singer Aaliyah had died several days before in a plane crash in the Bahamas. It was no secret that she was Indigo’s favorite chanteuse — favorite celebrity even. Indigo had for days gone on about how fitting it was that her name meant “exalted one” in Arabic and that a German newspaper had run an interview just last month in which she said, It is dark in my favorite dream. Someone is following me. I don’t know why. I’m scared. Then suddenly I lift off, far away. How do I feel? As if I am swimming in the air, free, weightless. Nobody can reach me. Nobody can touch me. It’s a wonderful feeling.
“God,” Indigo had sighed, “I have the same exact dream.”
Lionel, the new assistant, had almost shut her down when Raj shook his head and quickly grabbed her for a hug.
But that had been days ago. And it had seemed like Indigo was doing better.
“I thought I was okay,” she said to Raj that day.
“You are. You are,” he said in that determined Raj way.
“What are we doing here?” she whispered to Raj, conspiratorially.
“We have the best jobs ever and you know it,” he whisper-hissed back.
“What are we doing with our lives?”
“Indy, stop it.”
“Just look at this place.”
“Indy, you don’t have to be here. But it’s an honor for me, so snap.”
She sighed, loudly, almost a groan. “This thing sucks.”
“What thing?”
“The Towers thing.”
“The Fall of the Towers.”
“Whatever.”
“I think it’s going to be beyond.”
Indigo tried to nod. “He got some girl arrested and everything. Thanks to me.”
“Oh, come on! He had to. She was a maniac! Oliver says it was a terrorist letter! Did you want all those innocent people getting McVeighed all over the place? Shit!”
“The letter was. . confusing, but I don’t know if it was like that.”
“I wonder what that freak is like.”
“What freak?”
“The girl who wrote it.”
Indigo shrugged. “Who knows. This city is filled with crazy people. He attracts them all!”
“Silber? Yeah.”
“Remember Bird Boy?”
“How could I forget?”
And amazingly, just hours after he’d come up, “Bird Boy” appeared on Silber’s AIM screen, with the words Bran Silber, please help me.
She had opened her mouth to call him, but then stopped herself. Did this warrant an interruption? Did this warrant a gist-ing? What would Bran, knee-deep in illusion, want her to do?
Whattup, buttercup, she typed. Got to be quick, because I gotta be like jam on toast with this illusion, know?
Zal, meanwhile, was amazed. Silber sounded friendlier than he had in ages. No cold shoulder, no hint of feud, no memory of a diss, it seemed.
And Zal, who had gone a full day with Willa’s directions in mind, home and just home alone, frozen, no idea what to do, had turned to the only other authority he had ever come close to, other than Hendricks, whom he just couldn’t risk bringing into this: Asiya the criminal on top of Asiya the crazy and Asiya the anorexic — no way. A man of magic seemed like just the person he’d need. And there was always the chance he knew about this, given his proximity to the building. He wanted to at least complete the connection.
So Zal told Silber everything.
And the answer to her question earlier that day magically unraveled itself for Indigo. The girl was linked to Bird Boy. The freak to the freak. Holy crap, she thought, that was Bird Boy’s girlfriend.
Just then, Silber shouted from the opposite end of the Silbertorium, “Indy, I need you to run to Brent’s for more WZ0s, please! Call Brent first for twenty yards at least, at sixty, like he promised!”
But Indigo didn’t hear.
Insane, kiddy-kad, insane, she was typing back to Zal.
Zal — impatient with all the Silberisms and yet weirdly comforted by them, so alone he felt in his dark apartment with nothing but the buzz of a half-broken cheap air conditioner to console him — wrote back, You don’t even know the half of what my life’s been like this year. This is just the logical outcome of it all, you could say.
Uh-huh. Hey, Zalz, can you hold on a sec? Indigo needed to answer Silber as much as she needed a second for her thoughts.
“Indy, what are you, deaf, pet? I need action, girl!” Silber had been humming the theme song to Flashdance all day long, singing only the words Take your passion, and make it happen! He did it in a foreboding way as he goose-stepped his way over to her.
“I’m sorry, so sorry,” she stammered as he walked up to her.
“This is no time for online dating or porn or whatevs,” he snapped. “But you have more color to your face. Done mourning Queen Latifah yet?”
She shook her head slowly, looking from laptop to Silber, Silber to laptop, gulping hard. News like this could set them back a whole day, knowing Silber’s state recently. And yet he seemed better, too. On the other hand, so much of this had started when she told him about the letter in the first place. But she’d have lost her job if she hadn’t. And yet, was that such a bad thing?
Angels and devils danced on Indigo Menendez’s shoulders.
Silber, weirded out by her indecision, grabbed the computer from her hand and, still humming the Flashdance song, read and read and read.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.