Astor Michaels laughed at me from the other end. "Well, at least we have something to celebrate. They're finally ready."
I squinted in the sunlight streaming into the dining room. "The contracts?"
"In my hand."
"Your lawyer works on Saturday morning?"
"They were ready yesterday."
Mom was pretending not to listen, but I tried not to swear too loud. Everyone had been nine kinds of bugging me to get the negotiations over with, like the delay was all my fault. "And you didn't mention this last night why?"
"I had a very busy evening in front of me."
"Oh. Your mysterious errand." He'd left me and Alana Ray at the club before the gig had ended, smiling like he had a dirty secret.
"And after that, things got even busier." Astor Michaels sighed tiredly. "If you meet me downtown in two hours, I'll explain everything."
"Explain whatever you want," I said. "Just bring the contracts."
"Contracts?" my mother said the moment I hung up. "Does this mean you're really going through with all this?"
I looked down at my hands, which were quivering a little - half hangover, half excitement. "Yeah, I really am."
She looked out the window. "Why we wasted all that money on school, I don't know, if you were just going to do something like this."
"Juilliard wasn't a waste, Mom. Not hardly. But it's... over."
She looked at me, trying to muster up a look of disbelief, but she knew I was right. Fewer students showed up for classes every day, and those that were still around were all planning some kind of escape from the city. Ellen Bromowitz had called it exactly right: one week ago, the senior orchestra had been officially put on hold for the rest of the year. The infrastructure was already failing.
"Plus," I said, "this is my lifelong dream and everything."
"Lifelong? You're only seventeen, darling."
I looked up at her, about to reply with some snark, but her eyes had turned shiny in the sunlight. Suddenly I saw something I'd never even imagined before: my indestructible mother looking fragile, as if she really was worried about the future.
I wondered if her friends were all doing the same as mine - heading to Switzerland, leaving the city behind. What if no one bothered anymore to raise money for museums and dance companies and orchestras? What if all the parties she lived for had no more reason to exist and simply stopped happening, leaving all her diamonds and black cocktail dresses useless?
Mom needed her infrastructure too, I suddenly realized, and she was watching it crumble away.
So all I said was, "Seventeen years is a long time, Mom. I just hope this isn't too late."
I called Moz's house right away to tell him to come along. The two of us had started the band, after all. This was our moment of success.
His mother hadn't seen him that morning. She wasn't sure if he'd come home the night before and didn't sound very happy about it. Maybe sometimes in the past Moz hadn't made it home on Friday nights, she kept saying, but the way things were these days, he really should know better...
I hung up a little worried, hoping Moz wasn't going to go all lateral on me. Except for Alana Ray and almost-eighteen Min, all our parents had to countersign the Red Rat contracts. With our first gig only six days away, now was not the time to pick a fight.
I called Zahler's house next, but there was no answer, and my brain started to spin with every imaginable reason the two of them might have gone missing. The police were investigating a lot of disappearances lately, especially underground; there was talk of shutting the trains down altogether. But Moz and Zahler wouldn't be stupid enough to go down into the subway, would they?
Not now, when we were this close...
Astor Michaels had given me the address of a huge block of apartments on Thirteenth Street. I got there right on time and found him waiting in the lobby, an alligator-skin briefcase clutched under one arm.
"Shall we go on up?" he said.
"You live here?" I frowned. The lobby carpet was a bit threadbare in spots, and two security guards sat in reclining chairs behind the doorman, eyeing us carefully, shotguns across their laps.
"Heavens, no. Red Rat owns a few apartments here. I thought you might want to see one."
I didn't know what he meant by that, but I looked at his briefcase. "Whatever."
The elevators were the old-fashioned kind, zoo cages on cables. An ancient guy in uniform slid the door closed after we stepped in, then wrenched a huge lever to one side. The machine began to rise, the floors passing just through the bars. My hangover started to grumble about the three cups of coffee I'd had.
Astor Michaels turned to me, clutching his briefcase a little tighter. "Pearl, I've been doing this since the New Sound was really new."
"That's why I tracked you down."
"And I've signed fifteen bands in that time. But yours has something special. You know that, right?"
As I watched the floors slide past, I let myself smile, remembering how thrilled I'd been to find Moz and Zahler. "We've got heart, I guess."
"That heart is Minerva, Pearl. She is what makes you special."
We came to a stomach-jerking halt. I swallowed, my heart beating harder, wondering where Astor Michaels was going with this. Did he not want to sign the rest of us? Was he trying to make me jealous of Min?
The elevator man was nudging his lever one way and then the other, bouncing us up and down to align our feet with the red-carpeted floor on the other side of the bars. I tried to remember how many glasses of champagne Astor Michaels had bought me last night.
"I know Minerva is special," I said carefully. "I grew up with her."
"Indeed."
Finally the elevator lurched and bumped its way to a halt, and we stepped off into a long hallway. The cage rattled shut and slipped away.
Astor Michaels just stood there. "Of my fifteen bands, Pearl, eleven have self-destructed so far."
I nodded. That was pretty famous, how Red Rat bands tended to explode. "All part of the New Sound, I guess."
"And why do you suppose that is?"
"Uh, I don't know. Drugs?"
He shook his head. "That's what we usually tell the press. But it's rarely true."
I narrowed my eyes. "You mean, you cover up the truth by saying it was drugs? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?"