Max Caspar
Jonas Siegler he has seen twice, first in a supremely awkward meeting in Jonas’s office, Lee hovering, smiling, Jonas did not smile and You’re on board for real this time, Jonas had said, an odd choice of words, was Jonas recalling that old trailer interview? or did he mean Ari’s truncated two-night stand? Then a few nights ago Jonas had cornered him in a third floor alcove, Jonas in a fuzzy yellow coat with a stand-up collar like a vampire’s cape, to ask You see Ari much? though seeming to disbelieve his answer—I don’t see Ari at all—and The Factory, Jonas had said, is always more than what you see.
Right now he tries not to see a white-suited creature in a wire mask, a headdress of intricate white lights and reflective white paint, human eyes in a machine head: Katya in tonight’s costume, her white-lipped smile a sneer—“You know there’s a pool going? How long it takes you to get fired?”—Katya merging back into the moving herd of dancers as Lee appears beside him, as sudden and quiet as a spy, to ask, “Are you friends with her, that performer? Outside of Dark Factory?”
He could lie, but why? “She’s friends with—a friend of mine. What does that have to do with anything?”
“You’re not here to socialize.”
-from DARK FACTORY by KATHE KOJA
