“What about it is jazz? I’m getting the ‘waltz’ part, but the ‘jazz’ escapes me.” Nash found herself puzzled by the piece of music Greg was so bent on having her hear.

  “An understandable question, but it’s foundational you see…” he beamed, spinning, and nearly tumbling around the empty ballroom.

  “Is it because of the horn parts?” She implored, eager to move past this trivial detail and onto more important matters. Some part of her regretted wanting this party. It all felt fabulous in her head when it was still a distant notion, but now that it loomed large in front of her, the actual composition and orchestration of the thing was getting to be too much. “Even a wedding can’t be this bad.”

  “Not this time, in fact, a lot of songs have horns…” Greg trailed off, flitting across the floor to paw at the shiny tassels on the drapes. He pulled back the dark velvet from the tall, gilded windows to reveal an even darker sky without. Only a few days’ worth of the true night remained until the event. It would begin four hours before the first sunrise, so that guests would be drenched in light as they left. Presently, the forecast threatened snow for the appointed time. An unseasonable cold snap was upon them, but Nash remained unconcerned. She had given up fretting about the weather a while ago and was more anxious to have the whole thing over with.

  “But why is it so important the band play this specific one?” Her voice echoed across the room.

  “That’s why!” Greg faced her and smiled even bigger this time, extending a finger towards the ceiling. “The acoustics in this place are begging for a grand piece like that.” He walked towards her with arms wide open. “Think of how it will be when everyone’s in here!” With an angelic twinkle in his blue eyes, he took her hand and spun her around. The maneuver was more graceful than she could have expected, a mirror of the over-simplified waltz to come. As he released her he continued to insist “it has to be the Shostakovich, I’m sure of it!”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he playfully waved her off and sauntered to the imposing staircase at the back of the room. “I’ll help you with whatever you need, it’ll all be perfect!”

  “If you insist,” she said. By now he was halfway up and unable to make out her words.

  “What?” He called, still climbing higher.

  “I’m good! Thank you!” She shouted as he passed through the large door at the top of the steps to the entry hall. He raised a thumb high above his head before disappearing from view. After a few seconds elapsed she heard the enormous doors to the street outside open and close. As flippant as Greg seemed in that moment, she knew he took event planning as seriously as a heart attack. For this, she breathed a sigh of relief. His materialism was matched only by his intellect and eye for detail. “Look at him, even caring about the party...” She thought, when she knew it would be a miracle if Kory managed to show up only one hour late with both shoes on her feet.

  #

  Nash’s suspicions rang true when the fabled night arrived. It happened in almost an instant; all of the planning, anticipation, and building it up in her head for it to simply pop into existence out of thin air. But the air wasn’t thin was it? Rather, it hung heavy with smoke and perfume, and in spite of the height of the ceilings, the palpable tang of static too. At the head of the ballroom, Nash was draped in a satiny gown of dark bronze and swirling black. It complemented her lavender skin and eggplant hair which fell in shining ringlets past the tops of her shoulders. She stood chatting with old friends and greeting new ones when at last, almost one hour exactly from the official start time, Kory appeared as a wild flame of crimson crinoline at the top of the staircase.

  On her left arm was Zol and on her right was Billy, both dressed in tuxedos of midnight and evening shades, respectively. Her eyes darted madly between them with all the energy and innocence of childhood playmates. As they began their descent the two men had a tiredness in their eyes characteristic of those who had been ready long ago and were left to gather dust on a plush couch not their own: the awkward silence punctuated by occasional muffled shouts of ‘just one more minute’ from the messy bedroom at the end of the hall. Whatever imagined trepidation lingered between them had evaporated over the preceding weeks as each man realized just what a valuable fighter the other was. On a deeper level, they had come to a shared understanding that Kory, charming though she was at times, was off limits, for reasons not known even to herself. Her strength and occasional spurts of brilliance could not be denied, but her cloudy head and childlike heart earned her only superficial affections. She had to be treasured, protected even, they both concluded independently. And even so, the team was really coming together; unwise to throw a wrench in it at this point.

  For Nash, it was a very different sort of evening than the one she expected, even after her friend’s arrival. She spent the bulk of her time talking at length with people she barely knew and hardly any with people she did. Whatever disappointment she felt at the lack of substance was blotted out almost entirely by the extravagant, and timely, present she received from her uncle. Early on in the party he had appeared before the crowd of malcontent twenty-somethings and announced the lavish gift of a new spacecraft for his niece. It was top-of-the-line, spacious, and fast above all else. Bragging about the specs of the thing helped obscure its purpose, which remained strategically unstated, though the premise of it was inescapably odd. Many of the young guests were not inclined to fly themselves between the stars, and even fewer knew that Nash could do it at all. Owning one’s own ship was uncommon, even for this privileged crowd. She accepted it graciously and made a small joke about how difficult it would be to park in the hangar.

  “It parks itself, honey. You don’t always need to do things the hard way,” Enzo remarked before disappearing again. As he left Nash felt the urge to follow him, to chase him and shake him down for more information, anything more than the scraps she’d been fed. New vehicle notwithstanding, the road ahead was rough and more likely to be difficult than not.

  #

  A good while later, the large door to the street opened yet again, but just barely. The late-arriving guest crept into the dark, opulent entry, past the loners and couples loitering intimately in the foyer. Ahead of him lay a staircase lined by gilded rails. The first landing just off to the left led to the ballroom, while the stairs continued on to a quieter mezzanine above before terminating at the door to the rooftop. “What I’d give to be up there now, in that bracing cold,” he mused. As predicted, snow and wind had indeed graced this night with its presence, but inside the venue the atmosphere was warm, sickening even for a man dressed in what he likened to a ‘overpriced, brocade hell.’ He checked his appearance one last time in a dusky mirror by the ballroom door and lamented yet again his choice of dress. Sadly, this shade of indigo, like any color, was not his color. But alas, he’d allowed himself to be outmaneuvered by the pretty shopgirl who pegged him correctly as having more money than sense. In any case, it didn’t matter now. There was nowhere to go but forward. He foisted a heavy mass of hair over his shoulder and left his reflection behind.

  The double doors swung open before him, revealing the crowded room below. It felt hotter in here than in the space before, or at least the air was thicker. A dim cloud obscured the ceiling, lending the light a softer quality against the gold walls. Taking inspiration from the environs, the newcomer lit a cigarette of his own and scanned the room until his eyes landed on the bar situated along the right-hand wall. He extended a leg to take his first step downward when he nearly tripped over himself for the sight of her. A sudden clarity of purpose over washed him when he laid eyes on the ruby shining amongst the trove of carnelian and amethyst below.

  #

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  The fabled and long-awaited waltz was just beginning as Kory spun madly through the crowd. No one knew how to dance to it anymore, especially in a place and time so far from its composition, so around and around they reeled, each turning to grab the arm of another before being flung to the next person. Her itinerant partners were mostly strangers, and she wondered how it was that Nash knew all these people. Here and there she’d link up with Billy. He was smiling as big as she was. At least someone knew how to have a good time. Zol, she assumed, was off in some corner, bored and brooding. She understood well enough his desire for real action and exploration, the likes of which lay both behind and before them, but how could these little diversions in life not be their own reward? Wasn’t there meaning enough in frivolity simply for its own sake?

  As the dance picked up and the pace quickened she felt a tightening in her chest. It couldn’t be the exertion of it. She was sure she had better cardio than almost anyone in this room. Occasionally her sister would spin into view. Mia perched on a velvet barstool along a distant wall, dressed all in hot pink and glaring down her pointed beak of a nose at the ever-present Greg, who hung off of her shoulder and yammered incessantly as he was wont to do. Kory shoved off her curiosity for the two and lost herself in the present moment. If only the present moment offered comfort as it was meant to, as opposed to a sense of unease. The air grew denser, and the music faster. Somewhere at the front of the room the precision-engineered violin bows burned through their synthetic strings performing a task they weren’t up to.

  All of a sudden her face felt cold. How could this be when she was moving so quickly? Faster and faster the dancers spun, with Kory a red blur between them. Her breath grew short. For one so physically fit, she was unused to the threat of fainting, and yet, the feeling crept over her as clearly as it did the day she collapsed in fear to hear the ‘world breathe.’ The music playing now was nothing like that deafening resonance, but it was dreadful in its own way, sweeping them each along, accelerating into oblivion.

  She sensed she was being watched. Out of the corner of her eye Kory almost believed she saw flashes of lightning. Her hands tingled and vibrated as she grabbed forearms with each new dancer. Her terror mounted as the piece reached its final crescendo. Surely they must be done now. All breath had left her. Odd apparitions darted along the periphery of her vision. It had to end here. One final rotation, and one final stranger’s hand to hold while the last note played. The abrupt end of the waltz was punctuated by the shock of what she saw when she turned her head to face the one at the end of the song.

  No words passed between them, but lives like theirs needed no introduction. Her surprise and his unsteady triumph took the place of all they might have said, as the silent world of emotion grew into its own universe, grander and more real than anything extant, with room only for two. And so, he led her thusly away from the throng on the dancefloor, cooling her from within by his frigid touch.

  #

  “How could it be him? We left him in the middle of nowhere with nothing!” These and other thoughts reeled through Kory’s dizzy head as she took stock of her ‘rescuer.’ His familiar brown eyes glittered behind a curtain of white fringe. She felt him deftly press a drink into her hand just before he finished his own. He signaled the bartender for another, extending his colorless, silvery hand.

  “Go on then,” he gestured towards her glass. “It’s supposed to be a party isn’t it?” She took a tentative sip. It tasted bad, but she swallowed it silently and continued to observe him. His voice seemed so foreign in that moment, but she wasn’t sure she recalled what it had sounded like before. He seemed to her such a boy when he’d gone, and here he was looking taller and broader of shoulder, with a squarer jaw. Though, on the whole, his face still reminded her of some bizarre earth animal she’d seen in a picture. Had it been called a pozum? A perzum? Whether it was the pointed nose or sharp gaze linking him to the creature, there was no doubt in her mind this really was Sohrab, clawing his way back from where she’d buried him in her mind.

  “I had no idea you were here. How did you manage it?” She stammered, hating the awkwardness of the question. Though the fervent dance was over, she still felt her face burn as her hair melted into a lank, black puddle atop her head. The garbage juice cocktail did less than nothing to help, but she took another sip anyway in hope the coolness of it would offer some relief. It didn’t. Without realizing what she was doing, she took an ice cube from the glass and rubbed it from the nape of her neck to her collarbone.

  He noticed, and with a tactful smugness, said: “My thoughts, exactly. To the roof, shall we?” Feeling a sudden shame, she tossed the nearly depleted ice cube to the ground in embarrassment and trailed after Sohrab to the staircase without a word. In the midst of the disquietude, certain sets of eyes followed their ascent to the grand door.

  Outside in the hall, he led them both to the coatroom where Kory suffered the continued awkwardness of remembering that in her frenzied dash out of the door that night, she had forgotten to bring a coat altogether. “You really came all the way across town in this weather with nothing else on?” He teased as he draped his own shiny, gray cloak around her bare shoulders. “I’m the only one who should be doing that.”

  “Are you sure you don’t need this?” Kory protested as the shimmering fabric fell over her with just a bit of extra length pooling about her ankles.

  “I couldn’t be surer,” he replied languidly as he fished an ice cube out of his own drink and trailed it down the side of his face, in a gesture of both reassurance and desperate need. Whatever consolation the act was supposed to offer wasn’t enough. By now, the events of the preceding minutes had beaten into Kory such a painful self-awareness that she focused solely on trying not to trip over the borrowed garment and her own dress as they traversed the quiet stairs to the roof together.

  When they stepped outside, the wind and cold hit her harder than a sack of wet concrete. She pulled the cloak tighter around her elbows but allowed it to billow from the waist downward, acutely aware of how ridiculous she would look with it wrapped all the way around her body, like some kind worm in a cocoon. Behind her, Sohrab stepped confidently into the night. Previously fallen snow swirled around them, and in the sky above the clouds cleared, permitting but a few stars to shine.

  “There was snow on your planet when we left you there,” she said, stepping further away from him to the balcony at the edge of the roof.

  “Believe it or not, there was always snow there… No seasons, no day or night, no time really, just the ache of knowing years were passing by…” He stopped himself once he sensed her confusion at his monologue. “…And besides, my work has me more up north these days, so I find myself missing the cold down here.”

  “What work is that exactly?” She turned to face him; an eyebrow raised in denial that he had found any sort of purpose. He was insulted by her unspoken insinuation but decided instead to smooth things over.

  “I do a little free-lance consulting, nothing that won’t make sense soon enough,” he said with a smirk as he closed the distance between them, taking his place at her side along the icy railing.

  “Soon enough?” she repeated. Were they up too high? She began to believe so after one furtive glance over the edge.

  “That’s right,” he affirmed as he emptied his glass. “I told Nash to keep it all under wraps so that it could be a surprise for you. Not only am I back here on Celhesru on a more permanent basis, but I’m also coming with you all when you depart for New Galveston in a few days’ time.”

  “But how? What will you –”

  “Never you mind about that, it’s all been arranged.” His eyes gleamed as he placed a finger to her lips. He nearly recoiled at the warmth of her skin, but persisted anyway, moving his hand to the side of her face to tuck an errant curl behind her ear. Kory was a statue at his touch, uncertain if the moment should continue. “You must understand, just how compelled I was to return to this place, to all of you, and to you especially.” His hand now rested under her chin, and he gently drew nearer to her. “Has anyone ever said that your eyes are remarkable, like the space between the stars…”

  “I think the sun is coming around soon,” she whispered. “That means it’s the end of the party.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” he said as he lowered his hand and allowed her to float away from him. A faint glow appeared on the horizon over the spires of the elegant city. The long day was dawning, and with it all of the heat and light it promised, even in this startingly early winter. “Go, and say goodbye to her, for both of us” he said, smiling one last time. Kory turned and started towards the stairwell, but stopped halfway when she remembered the cloak she wore wasn’t hers. She turned again to him and lowered her gaze, untying the silk ribbon from around her neck. “Keep it, my dear girl,” he insisted. “Until the next time you see me. It won’t be as long as our last parting, you can be sure.”

  Off she went, without another word, a mist of tungsten and scarlet. The powdery snow and advancing golden light obscured her departure until she was no more than a memory of shape and color to the man who now stood alone on the roof. He briefly contemplated throwing his glass onto the street below from the four-story height but decided against it and dropped it at his feet instead. Depressingly, it was too thick to shatter.