Harsh Oases Read Free Page B

Martin Fallows.”
    We shook hands.
    “Let me say thanks, Martin. I was really dead on my feet, but I felt obliged to entertain.”
    “It’s nothing,” I said. “Maybe you can help me some day.”
    Congealed silence filled thirty seconds, as our conversation hung by its fingertips over the abyss of embarrassed unfamiliarity. Desperate, I said, “Uh, you have quite an unusual name. Your parents?”
    She smiled. “No. My own choice. Artist’s prerogative. Nike, the goddess of victory. And Nikki, from an old Prince song.”
    “Great singer,” I chimed in. “Too bad about his career ending so badly.”
    I was referring, of course, to the famous case prosecuted under the Robertson-era Helms-Falwell Morals Act. Taking it all the way to the Rehnquist court and losing had pretty much bankrupted and demoralized the pop-star. But I had heard heartening rumors that, in the new atmosphere that began to bloom a couple of years ago, after Joe Kennedy’s election, he was contemplating a comeback.
    “Yes,” Nikki agreed. “He still sounds great.”
    “Oh?”
    “I just heard him at a private party last month.”
    Well. There wasn’t much I could add to that. I switched the focus to her assumed surname.
    “You’re very concerned with success, I take it.”
    “It’s the only thing that counts, Martin. Failure is instructive, up to a point, but ultimately unsatisfying. Consider this piece I did tonight.”
    I nodded in what I hoped was an intelligent fashion.
    “Sure, I could have stayed groundside, while we shot up the canisters. But what if something went wrong, and I wasn’t up there to do my damnedest to fix it? Besides, what kind of art is it where the artist never even approaches the canvas?”
    “Putting it on the line,” I said. A little cynicism slipped out.
    She shrugged. “Gotta walk it like you talk it.” Her lips caressed her glass, her throat worked beautifully.
    “How was the whole thing possible? I thought aurorae were visible only around the poles.”
    “Not so, Martin,” she said somewhat pedantically. “May 13, 1921, Samoa had fine viewing. Same for Mexico, September 13, 1957. All it takes is a walloping big geomagnetic storm, set off by intense solar activity, like what happened two days ago and is just reaching us now.”
    “And you seeded the atmosphere with what?”
    “Lithium, barium and a soupcon of Europium.” She shook her cropped head, marvelling. “Hard to believe a couple of pails of exotic dust could paint such a picture. I gather you enjoyed it.”
    “Very much.” I hoped I sounded sincere instead of flattering. But it was hard to produce the unaccustomed tone.
    She straightened in the soft chair, as if resisting its comfort. “What about you, Martin? What do you do?”
    That stopped me cold. What could I tell her? I am the paid consort of an aging, washed-up television star. I work on my tan, play poker, and drink too much. But I was once a Harvard graduate, who imagined he was something akin to a poet. It all sounded like self-pitying slush. So I simply said, “I live here, in the Hesperides.”
    She knew everything that implied. Emptying her glass, she lost all interest in me. She got to her feet, and said, “Thanks again, Mr Fallows. I feel better now, and I really should rejoin the party.”
    At the door, I said, “Will you be doing aurorae again?” Meaning, of course, Will I see you again?
    “Depends on the sun. I’d like to, but I also have to see about raising more funds. The videotape of tonight’s show should help.”
    Nikki opened the door and walked out. I followed.
    I didn’t even see Jasmine till her open palm connected with my face.
     
    Sunlight struggled painfully into the kitchen through the slits in the pastel blinds. I sat at one end of a white oval table, drinking black coffee. Jasmine occupied the opposite seat, surrounded by a cloud of hostility and hangover-bitterness. She was reading the online edition of Variety on her lap-micro. I knew her