The sky over Crystal City was the color of blue flame; the glass skyline reflected shimmering silvers and golds, achieving an aesthetic ugliness that comes from a kind of sterile perfection. It was if the entire city was hiding behind one way mirrors, and if Ernie Milford could not yet see Jenny Featherstone’s private corner of the city, she sure as hell could have seen him coming.

Milford found himself gazing upwards at the city’s massive skyscrapers, almost losing control of his 1966 Montclair, it’s engine now chugging like a sick steam engine. He checked the scribbled address on a torn piece of legal paper that Rhodes had taped to the Montclair’s glove compartment. Jenny’s art gallery was a brown semi-circular glass and brick Bauhaus style building coming up on his left, smack in the middle of the city’s main drag. Ernie felt like he was going to black out behind the wheel from sheer, stupid anxiety. With an honest to god Lothar Spengler in his trunk, the prospect of dealing with Jenny had him playing with the variables; their meeting would either prove to be mutually profitable both financially and socially, or a colossal waste of time.

He pulled into the gallery’s parking lot, got out of the Montclair, and still nervous lit a cigarette. He hadn’t seen Jenny since she changed her name from Martha Pfizer seven years ago. They had been friends and lovers, and for no good reason Ernie could think of, they simply lost interest in each other. And now she was living in C.C. Time, Ernie thought, that and success change everyone.

The inside of Jenny’s gallery looked bigger than the outside, an illusion Ernie thought suited her quite well. The art on display was eccentric Crystal City chic; a blazing pink neon abstract light sculpture stood next to a striking, almost billboard sized tinted black and white still of Marlene Dietrich. It was a publicity shot from "Morocco," with Dietrich wearing a tux and a top hat cocked to slightly to one side, a burning cigarette between her fingers. Ernie began to panic again, his better instincts telling him to forget the whole deal, get back in the Montclair and drive out of C.C. forever, back to the toxic charms of the Flats, with its attendant stink and brown fog. But it had been too late the moment he put the Spengler in the trunk; he had to try for a way out of the Flats, and if he could get one foot in Jenny’s door as an art dealer, he might not have to go back to teaching.

Jenny appeared from behind the huge visage of Dietrich like a phantom. She had shoulder length blood red hair, and her body was made to look square and heavy by a black one-piece outfit with too-large shoulder pads. Smoke plumed from her Sherman cigarette, glowing pink from the neon.