either,” Honey said. “And yet, here I am, trying to help you.” She hopped down from the bar stool and walked Marlow to the window. Below, on Eighth Avenue, people scurried, looking goal-oriented, seemingly unconcerned with Marlow’s whereabouts. But then she saw a cab pass—two, actually, in quick succession—with holograms of her face shimmering above their roofs.
“So, to recap,” Honey said. “People already know you’re at this address. And I think you know what will happen if you try to leave on your own. My car’s around the corner, at the freight entrance. I know you don’t trust me. But I’m your only good option.”
Marlow turned her back on the window and looked up at the ceiling, pretending to weigh her nonexistent options. She noticed then the strangest thing above their heads: running across the ceiling, just above their heads, was a row of white jagged bits, shaped like teeth, jutting downward. Sharp remnants of a wall that had been shattered, or blown away—a wall that must have once protected the couch from the sunlight that ruined it eventually.
Honey was watching her. Marlow met her eye. “I’d feel better about this,” she said, “if you’d just tell me what you want. What your angle is.”
Honey rolled her eyes. “You Constellation folks,” she said. “You can’t see past plot. Out here in the real world, sometimes we do things just to do them, and see what happens later.”
Marlow remembered, suddenly, a middle-school lesson on local culture. The teacher had been going on about someplace where people ate chili on top of spaghetti—this factoid conjured blank looks, since Constellation kids had never tasted either—when a student asked the teacher what she would say Constellation had. What people did only there. Being filmed and broadcast all day to millions was the obvious reply, of course. But since the teacher couldn’t say that on-camera, she launched into a speech on the town’s architecture. Marlow had another answer, though she didn’t raise her hand to offer it. We see story, she thought, crystal clear. We see arcs everywhere. That’s what comes from living this way. That’s what’s ours.
And maybe, Marlow thought now, she could use that to her advantage. Because usually, she knew, the simplest plot was the right one. Twists only put off the inevitable. This was easy: Marlow had destroyed Honey’s face. Even if Honey wouldn’t say it, she had to be after revenge. And as long as Marlow knew that, she could stay one step ahead of the story. Honey would be a character in hers, she told herself, firmly. Not the other way around.
“All right,” she said to Honey. “Let’s go.” She added, reluctantly: “Thank you.” When they walked behind Mateo to the elevators, Marlow made sure to keep Honey where she could see her. That was the key to getting through this, she decided: following from behind. Never letting Honey out of her sight.
* * *
Honey’s building was a mirrored rose-gold spike, her apartment its very top shelf. The walls were all glass, an effect that wrapped sky around the whole place. Everything inside it was white. There were white bleached wood floors covered in white shag rugs with white suede sofas sitting on top. The dining, coffee and end tables were cubes of blinding concrete topped with swirled marble. There were gigantic, freestanding fireplaces made of white steel on both sides of the room. The appliances in the kitchen were luminescent pearl. Marlow could see a man bent in front of the fridge, buffing at it with an air of great crisis. When he saw them, he straightened and hid the rag behind his back, as if it was something unsightly.
“Hello, David,” Honey called to him brightly. “This is Marlow. She took a chunk out of my face, back in the day.”
Marlow turned to stare at Honey.
But David only nodded politely. “Hello, Miss Marlow,” he said. He gestured at the fridge. “Water? Club soda?”
She asked for water, and when David brought it, Marlow stared at the red lines in his eyes, at the uneven coast of his hairline. What must it have cost Honey, keeping human help? You almost never saw that now. Marlow knew Honey was a pundit—Jacqueline, who voraciously cataloged the ups and downs of every person they’d ever met, had informed Marlow years ago that Honey was “some sort of white-trash Jesus—she preaches to people, you know, tells them they should live a certain way.” Marlow had asked what way Jacqueline meant—what did Honey stand for?