faded. And then it boiled away before my eyes.
"What the hell was that, Moz?"
"I don't know. Maybe somebody's heating oil leaked into the pipes?" I shook my head.
The kids were staring at the hydrant warily, half afraid the water would turn black again, but also eager to wash themselves. A few stepped forward, and the oily stuff seemed to slide from their skin, dark stains disappearing from their soaked shorts and T-shirts.
A minute later they were all playing in the spray, like nothing weird had happened.
"Didn't look like any oil I've ever seen," Zahler said.
"Yeah. Probably just old water in the hydrant," I said, not wanting to think about it. It had disappeared so quickly, I could almost imagine it hadn't happened at all. "Or something like that. Come on, we're late."
Pearl's room looked like a recording studio had mated with a junkyard, then exploded.
The walls were lined with egg cartons, the big twelve-by-twelve ones that you see stacked outside restaurants. Sinuous hills rose between the egg-shaped valleys, curving like the sound waves they gobbled.
"Whoa, you've got a ton of gear!" Zahler exclaimed. His voice was echoless, rebounding from the walls with less bounce than a dead cat.
I'd always told Zahler that we could soundproof his room this way so that his parents would stop yelling at us to turn it down. But we'd never had enough motivation to make it happen. Or enough egg cartons.
The floor was covered with spare cables, effects boxes, all the usual fire hazards - we stepped lightly over the spaghetti-junctions of power strips, dozens of adapters squeezed into them, all labeled to show what was plugged in where. Two racks of electronics towered at one end of the room, the cables gathered with twist-ties. The modules were organized neatly into tribes: black and buttonless digital units; flickering arpeggiators; a few dinosaur synths with analog dials and needles, like old science-fiction movie props ready for takeoff.
Zahler was looking around nervously, probably wondering if his cheap little electric was going to get squashed under all that gear. I was wondering why Pearl, if she owned all this keyboard stuff, had risked falling toaster ovens just to save a vintage guitar.
"Where do you sleep?" Zahler asked. The bed was covered with scattered CDs, more cables, and a few harmonicas and hand drums.
"The guest room, mostly," Pearl said proudly. "I suffer for my art."
Zahler laughed but rolled me a look. Pearl wasn't exactly suffering. She hadn't showed us all of her mom's apartment, but what we'd seen was already bigger than his parents' and mine put together, the walls crowded with paintings and glass cases full of stuff from all over the world. Stairs led to more floors above, and we'd passed a pair of armed security guards down in the lobby. Pearl had probably seen the Taj Mahal in person.
So why had she contemplated helping herself to the Strat, when she could obviously afford to buy one of her own?
Maybe she was used to everything falling from the sky. She'd looked pretty annoyed when we weren't on time, like this was a job interview or something.
I sifted through the CDs on the bed, trying to peg her influences. What was Pearl really into, besides old Indian tombs, punctuality, and soundproofing? The discs left me clueless. They were hand-labeled with the names of bands I'd never heard of: Zombie Phoenix, Morgan's Army, Nervous System...
"Nervous System?" I asked.
Pearl groaned. "That's this band I was in. Bunch of Juilliard geeks and, um, me."
I glanced at Zahler: great. Not only did Pearl have lots of real gear, she also knew some real musicians, which meant she might not be too impressed with us. We weren't exactly into virtuosity - we hadn't taken any lessons since sixth grade. This jam session was going to be a bust.
"Did you guys play any gigs?" Zahler asked.
She shrugged. "We did, at their high school, mostly. But the System had no heart. Or it did, I guess, but then the heart exploded. You guys want to plug in?"
The Stratocaster soothed my nerves.
It swung from my shoulder, featherlight, lacquered back side cool against my thigh. The strings were six strands of spiderweb, with the easiest action my fingers had ever felt. I strummed a quick, unplugged E-major chord and was amazed to hear that even a three-story fall hadn't knocked the Strat out of tune.
Pearl pushed in the power button on a Marshall amp, a hulking old beast with tubes inside. (Why did a key-boardist have a