the other at her mouth. She shouted something toward the cameras, but Marlow couldn’t hear it. She was supposed to have her device on—that was how everyone else here was getting audio. She took a step back from the display, frustrated, and squinted at Floss’s moving lips, trying to read them.
Suddenly, she felt fingers on her shoulder, tapping. She knew instantly it was a bot; the fingers mimicked the rhythm of someone wanting her attention, but the force of the touch was off. Too hard. It was one of those motions bots struggled with, even after hundreds of updates.
Marlow turned. Mateo was standing there, holding out a basket of plastic blue earpieces. “Happy to help,” it said.
Marlow rummaged in the basket. “Do these still work?” she said.
Mateo nodded. “The Archive currently uses them for our guests younger than seven, and our guests whose income indicates that they live below the information line,” it said. “In other words, our guests who do not have devices.”
Marlow pressed one of the tiny buds into her ear. “Thank you,” she said. Mateo nodded again and put its hands behind its back. It didn’t retreat. “That, um,” Marlow said. “That will be all.”
“Of course.” Mateo took a few steps backward, never taking its eyes off her.
Marlow felt the buzz of her earbud syncing up with the content in front of her. Floss was frozen, in the frame she had paused on, with her tongue rolled up in the cave of her mouth, about to unfurl. Marlow pressed Play.
“My friend Orla Cadden,” Floss cried out. “C-A-D-D-E-N. She’s a literary talent—” The ancient cameras, spitting loud clicks and lightning, drowned out the rest of the sentence.
Marlow uncapped the eyeliner again to write the name down. “Search Orla Cadden,” she demanded.
In all her years of taking answers for granted, she had never heard the words the voice responded with. It dropped its sunny ting, like she had ruined the fun. “Error 404,” it said. “Not found.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Orla
New York, New York
2016
Within an hour of Danny’s arrival, Orla did three things she wasn’t proud of.
First, she took him to a bar. Not one of the dozen within walking distance that were considered of the moment, with their bartenders who knew Orla by name and treated her with discretion. No—she wanted to go somewhere terrible, where people would see her and fuss. They went to a cheap box in the East Forties where tourists ate nachos with half-melted cheese and drank volleyball-sized margaritas. They sat in a cream-colored pleather booth with a tall, quilted back. She knew, as they sat there, that she would never forget the sight of him, there across the table. What she didn’t know was how memorable the booth itself would prove to be. Less than a year later, when the city was still reeling from the Spill, Orla would pass this place again and find the booths dismembered on the curb, junkyard-bound, part of the design exorcism going on in rooms across America. Everyone was trying to forget white padded walls.
Danny looked up as two girls—both young, both Asian, both with spilled-drink stains on their silk Theory shells—clambered toward their table. They bent, cuddling up to Orla, and extended their arms for selfies.
“I’m a Floss,” said the one on Orla’s right, sucking her cheeks in as she snapped the photos.
“And I’m an Orla,” said the other. She had glasses.
Watching the interaction, Danny touched his face and wagged his head in disbelief. “Whoa,” he said.
After one round—he followed her lead and had the prickly pear, on the rocks—their eyes swam in their heads. They smiled at each other.
“Let’s get it over with,” Orla said. “What happened with Catherine?”
They both groaned theatrically. It was the second thing she felt bad about.
“The truth?” Danny stirred his second drink. “I’m over it. She’s over it. I know it’s supposed to be more complicated than that, but it’s not.” He took a long sip and sat back. “Oh, and I wouldn’t go to church. Which is exactly what she wanted.”
“What do you mean,” Orla said, “what she wanted?”
“Catherine’s smart these days.” Danny dug his elbows into the table. “She’s not the little—oh, who, me?—she was in high school.” He glanced at a table that was staring at them and swallowed. Orla could tell he thought they were looking because he was being loud, but the people were focused on her.
“She didn’t want to be married to me anymore,” he went on in a lower voice. “But she’s not an idiot. She’s