Perception Fault. James Axler

personal. Hey—you think I don’t know? Whose picture do you think was taped inside my locker door all through high school?”

      “Sure, I want to see her,” Ethan said, not smiling back. “I want to see her face.”

      He couldn’t have said why it shocked him so profoundly to learn that one of his all-time favorite singer-songwriters—the one responsible for the music that had fueled his idealistic fervor all through college—was, in fact, a slumlord and the person responsible for Louise Parker’s death. Or what he hoped to see in her face—the face that had filled his adolescent dreams—as she confronted Louise Parker’s neighbors. Repudiation, maybe? Say it ain’t so, Joe. He only knew that thinking of his favorite Phoenix songs, like “Fire On The Water” and “City Woman”—more poignant and gut-wrenching than “Pretty Mary” as far as he was concerned—now left him with a bitter taste in his throat, and a very personal sense of betrayal and loss.

      So, while wild horses couldn’t have prevented Ethan from attending the meeting in Phoenix’s business manager’s high-rise office, in keeping with his promise to Father Frank, he was doing his best to keep from being noticed. Which was proving to be more difficult than he’d anticipated.

      He supposed he couldn’t really blame Phoenix for not wanting to confront the delegation of citizens in the intimate confines of her business manager’s office. Instead, she’d chosen to hold the meeting in one of the building’s conference rooms. Designed for corporate business meetings, its furnishings consisted of a huge expanse of polished tabletop surrounded by sumptuous leather-upholstered chairs. At the head of the table, a polished wooden lectern flanked by potted dracaena plants loomed before a screen worthy of a small multiplex. It was a room designed to intimidate corporate vice presidents; it would have taken much less to awe the small group of people that stood shifting their feet on the plush burgundy carpeting.

      Having been shown into the room by an aloof secretary and left to their own devices, the delegates—Father Frank and Ruthie Mendoza, Mrs. Schmidt, Kenny Baumgartner from EMS and six residents from The Gardens, eleven in all including Ethan—rather tentatively selected seats around the huge table. No one spoke; the only sounds were some rustlings and scrapings, nervous throat-clearing, a subaudible hum of tension.

      A door, cleverly hidden in the design of the paneling to the left of the movie screen, swished silently open. There was a collective intake of breath, followed by a disappointed exhalation as a tall but slightly built, rather stoop-shouldered man came into the room. He moved without hurry, pausing just short of the lectern to make eye contact with those seated around the table and to introduce himself as Phoenix’s business manager, Patrick Kaufman.

      “We come to see Phoenix,” one of the tenants, a balding, heavyset black man in his early sixties said in a loud, belligerent voice, which prompted several of the other delegates to nod and mutter in agreement, much like an evangelical congregation murmuring “Amen.”

      The business manager held up a long, pale hand. “She’ll be along very shortly. As I’m sure you’re aware, she is currently in the midst of preparations for a new world tour. She has rearranged her schedule in order to meet with you today, so I hope you will be patient—” He broke off as Father Frank rose to his feet on a wave of more rustlings and angry murmurs.

      “Yes, and as I’m sure you’re aware, a woman has died.” The priest spoke quietly, but even his customary poise was betrayed by a slight tremor of nervousness. “And many of these people have taken time off from work in order to come here today—time they can ill-afford. I would hope—”

      “Hi—I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.” The husky voice, instantly recognized and unmistakable, spoke from the back of the room. And every head in the room snapped toward the sound as if pulled by the same invisible thread.

      Later, when he’d had a chance to think about it, Ethan was able to convince himself that she probably hadn’t meant to make such a dramatic entrance. It was just that, with Phoenix, there couldn’t be any other kind. The woman had only to step onto a stage, or walk into a room, he thought, and you could hear the thud of bass guitars and the zap-zap of laser lights, taste the tension, smell the excitement. It seemed as if she carried the spotlight with her wherever she went, like some kind of personal energy field. And yet…and yet… For the life of him, he could not put his finger on the reason why.

      It couldn’t have had anything to do with the way she was dressed. In jeans—fashionably low-slung on hips as slender and lithe as a girl’s—and a pale blue knit top with a square-cut neckline that clung to her supple body like a stocking and stopped just where the waistband of the jeans began, she could have passed for one of the delegates seated around the conference table—or one of their children. But for the mirrored sunglasses, of course. And the hair—that famous hair, now the irridescent blue-black of a crow’s wing—that fell from a haphazard center part, rippled down her back and slapped gently against her buttocks when she walked.

      “Traffic was murder,” the world famous rock star said as she crossed the room with the same long-legged stride that would carry her the width of a concert stage in a few pounding beats. Her voice was breathless, her smile wry, inviting those seated around the table to commiserate. “They’ve got Fremont all torn up—what are they doing, fixing potholes? Anyway, I got lost in all those one-way streets they’ve got downtown now. Whose idea were those?” Having reached the head of the table, she whirled and addressed those seated around it as if she truly wanted to know.

      The delegates shifted uncomfortably, awestruck but unwilling just yet to relinquish the angry baggage they’d come with. Father Frank, apparently only just remembering that he was still on his feet, slowly lowered himself into his chair. Someone—Kenny, maybe—cleared his throat too loudly. Ethan wasn’t surprised to find that his own heart was beating hard and fast. He could hear its echo, like distant drumbeats, inside his own head.

      Phoenix stepped behind the lectern and slowly took off her sunglasses. Then, for long, unmeasurable moments she said nothing, while her unshielded eyes—those remarkable, trademark eyes, electric, heart-stopping blue and fringed with sooty-black—traveled around the table, touching each person there in turn.

      With his own confrontation with those famous eyes fast approaching and his frequent and futile wish for invisibility strong within him, Ethan was surprised to find himself smiling. Laughing, actually—silently, with a schoolboy’s dry mouth and sweaty palms, deafened by his own heartbeat—laughing with pure chagrin at his own childish vulnerability.

      And it happened to be just that moment that the eyes touched his. They slid past the laughter and moved on… Then jerked back suddenly, flared with something he couldn’t fathom, and abruptly lost all expression, as if a curtain had fallen behind them. But in the instant before they moved on, for good this time, Ethan felt a strange jolt of recognition. They reminded him of someone, those eyes. Someone or something he’d seen just recently.

      It was a few moments more before it came to him exactly where. With the shutters down, devoid of all life and expression, Phoenix’s eyes—the almond shape, the exotic tilt, not the color—reminded him of Louise Parker’s eyes.

      The realization made his throat tighten and his body go chill with the cold wash of memory. And he no longer felt the slightest urge to laugh.

      Her eyeball-to-eyeball circuit complete, Phoenix spoke softly, in her trademark rusty croak. “First, I’d like to thank you for agreeing to meet me here.” Her smile was quick—not too much, for this was a somber occasion. “I thought we’d all be more comfortable here, on such a hot day.”

      Ethan winced as a low mutter rose from those seated around the table. Could the woman not know how it was, exactly, that Louise Parker had come to die?

      “Got no AC in The Gardens,” someone growled.

      “Maybe if we did, Louise Parker still be alive.” That was echoed by a rumbling chorus of Amens.

      Phoenix waited, her face impassive, until the last grumble had died. It occurred to Ethan then—irrelevently, he thought—that she wasn’t wearing any makeup at all. Or it was so skillfully