And his clothes—a full tuxedo in the brightest red imaginable, black shirt and white cummerbund, a combination that was eye-hurting even in the dim bridge lights. Harris felt a laugh bubble up inside of him, but managed to choke it before it emerged.
The newcomer walked around the car and up onto the walkway. His voice was a musical, melodious treat: “Son, don’t do it.”
“Don’t do what?”
The tuxedoed man shook his head gravely. “Don’t jump. I know things may seem hopeless now, but—”
The laugh Harris had restrained finally emerged, a high-pitched cackle that sounded crazy even to Harris’ ears. “Don’t jump? Mister, you’ve come to the wrong place. I wasn’t going to jump.”
The man took a cautious step forward. “You might not have known that you were. But the moon’s full and there’s a storm in your heart. You could have hit the water before you knew what you were doing. Come away with me.”
Ah, so that was it. This guy wanted something. Was he a smooth-talking mugger or a stubborn homosexual who wouldn’t take no for an answer? Harris didn’t care; he waved the intruder away. “Scram.”
“Is that your name? Scram? I am Jean-Pierre.” The man took another careful step forward; he was now within half a dozen feet of Harris. “But if you’re not going to jump, you can come away with me. I’ll take you somewhere safe. Warm food. We can talk.”
Harris gave the man his most knowing smile. “Yeah. Sure. I don’t know what you want, man, but you’re not getting it from me. And if you don’t get in that freak show of a car and get out of my face, I’m going to have to break your head. You got that?”
The man with the French name paused and frowned over that. Then: “Yes. Yes, I do.” He started to turn—and then made a sudden lunge for Harris, both hands outstretched.
A bad, clumsy move. Harris stepped sideways and fell into a back stance, keeping his weight mostly off his bad leg; he was surprised to feel himself go off balance from dizziness and he nearly fell over. But he still managed to use his left hand to sweep the man’s arms out of line, a hard knifehand block, and brought his right up in a fast uppercut that cracked into Jean-Pierre’s jaw. The man in the red tuxedo looked dazed and surprised, as though some six-year-old had walked up and broken a shovel across his face, and took an involuntary step backward.
Which set him up for a follow-through kick. Harris brought his injured leg up in a front straight kick that ended with the ball of his foot cracking into the man’s jaw. Harris’ extended leg seemed to scream as the move stretched his wound taut, but Jean-Pierre stiffened, spun partway around, and slammed down to the boards of the walkway.
Weakness washed over Harris again; he swayed and heard a roaring in his ears. The exertion had come close to taking him out, too. But, tired and hurt as he was, he’d won.
He’d better leave before Mr. Fashion Disaster woke up, though.
He turned, and there she was.
Not Gaby. This woman was short, beautiful, and Asian. All he had time to register was her face, the somber expression it wore, and the stick she held.
The stick she rapped against his temple.
Suddenly the pain in his leg was gone.
Along with his eyesight. His hearing.
He never even felt the impact when he hit the walkway beside Jean-Pierre.
Sound returned first. Indistinct murmurings that became words: “ . . . said he wasn’t . . . off-guard . . . stop laughing . . . ”
Then, sensation. Warmth. Uncomfortable, lumpy softness under his back. A little pain in his leg. The pain was actually comforting. It meant that the events he was starting to remember had actually occurred.
Light through his eyelids.
He opened his eyes, and for the second time in hours saw a face hovering over his.
It wasn’t the beautiful blond man again. This was a large pug nose surrounded by a merry round face and eyes as green as jade; this man’s skin and hair were nearly as brown as a pecan shell. He wore a stiff white shirt, undecorated and short-sleeved, and a large, bulky stethoscope around his neck. He glanced back over his shoulder, revealing his ear to be sharply pointed, and called, “Your rescuee is awake, my prince.” His voice was surprisingly light, his accent cultivated and not quite American.
“You’ll be healing yourself if you keep at me.” The voice was Jean-Pierre’s, and angry. Harris groggily turned his head to look.
He was in a big room, the size of a low-ceilinged gymnasium, crowded with dozens of large work tables. Some tables were piled high with books, others with burners and glass tubes and complicated glass-and-wood arrays Harris didn’t recognize, still others with what looked like mason jars filled with jams and jellies. The walls were paneled in dark, rich wood, and the floor was wooden planking of a lighter tone.
Bright light, the color and warmth of noonday sunlight, glowed from banks of overhead lights that resembled fluorescent light fixtures. Along the far wall, a bank of tall windows looked out over a glittering vista of skyscrapers at night.
Harris found that he was lying on a long paisley sofa in a corner of the room; there was other living-room furniture arranged nearby, including a very large version of the round-screen TVs he’d seen earlier.
On a nearby stuffed chair sat Jean-Pierre, his tuxedo jacket off, a blue bruised spot on his jaw the souvenir of their meeting; he looked irritable. Nearby, curled up in a corner of a divan, sat the woman who’d clobbered Harris. From ten feet away, she seemed tiny, even more dainty than most of the women he’d seen earlier. She wore some sort of pantsuit cut from burgundy silk, the jacket sleeves full and flaring; her expression was serene. Next to Harris, the man with the nut-brown skin sat on a sturdy high-backed wooden chair.
Jean-Pierre rubbed his jaw and the bruise Harris had given him, then narrowed his eyes. “Awake, are we? Then it’s time to answer a few questions.”
Harris ignored him for the moment; he struggled to sit up and pulled himself back so that the high arm of the sofa supported him. Only then did he realize that under the blanket they’d thrown over his legs he wore only underwear; his pants and shoes were gone. “Hey!”
The moon-faced doctor grinned. “Sorry, son. Had to tend your wound. Your breeches were a loss, torn and bloody.” He reached down behind his chair, where a pair of gray trousers lay folded across an old-fashioned doctor’s bag. He handed the pants over to Harris. “Try these.”
“Thanks.” Harris hurriedly pulled the trousers on, barely glancing at the white bandage wrapped around his thigh. His injury wasn’t giving him much trouble; the doctor must have given him something for the pain. “Okay. Where am I?”
“The Monarch Building, up ninety. I am Alastair Kornbock. I hear you have already met Jean-Pierre Lamignac and Noriko Nomura; formal introductions are probably moot.”
Jean-Pierre picked up something from his lap, a wallet, which he flipped open. “Is your name Harris Greene?”
“Yeah. Hey, that’s my wallet.” Harris tried to stand, but weariness tugged at him and he thought better of it.
“Yes, it appears to be.” Jean-Pierre flipped it shut and negligently tossed it to Harris. “I gather from the way you defended yourself that you really weren’t trying to harm yourself on the bridge. So what injured you?”
Harris actually felt himself flinch away from the memory of Adonis. “You’d never believe it.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“No, you tell me. Tell me what the hell is going on. What all this crap is about Neckerdam. What happened to the Brooklyn Bridge. The streets. The cars, for Christ’s sake. Barefoot truck drivers and dwarfs who’ve filed their teeth. Because, believe me, I was knocking down some pretty good vodka before all this started happening, and I don’t want to waste time talking to you if you’re just DTs.” Harris glanced through his wallet to make sure everything was in place, then pocketed it.