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not by its presence, but by its absence.”
    “Not its beauty,” said Blaine. “Its power.” He smiled. “Let’s step out of the mob. Over there, where we can look out the window.”
    She saw Blaine against the chandeliers, which were shaped like toy tops, constructed in circles of light. Blaine said, “I always like to look out this window. You know, glass isn’t firm, not really, but plastic, although it takes a long time to collect at the bottom of a frame. In a couple of hundred years, it is thicker at the bottom than the top.”
    Carr looked up at the dark squares of night sky, on which there was a film of light from the chandeliers, and as she stepped up, the heel of her shoe snapped off.
    “Oh, no,” she said, blushing, putting a hand to her lips.
    “May I confess something to you?” said Blaine.
    “Yes,” she said.
    They were both looking down at her shoe.
    “I have always wanted to walk on the marble of this floor in my stocking feet. Would you mind if I took off my shoes?”
    He then reached down and undid his laces and stepped out of his shoes.
    “Just as I thought,” he said. “It feels wonderful. Would you like to try too? Let me hold your glass.”
    She took off her shoes and they both stood on the marble floor.
    “I wonder if you would like to have dinner with me,” he said.
    She laughed and said, “Yes. But how are we going to get out of here?”
    “We are going to walk,” said Blaine. He took his shoes in one hand as though he had picked them up from the floor of a closet. “I always thought it would feel good, but I never imagined anything like this. Don’t you agree?”
    Outside, Blaine’s driver opened the door, the car appearing in the crowded street like an object of certainty, almost like a monument, a black, sleek monolith. The pavement was cool and damp, its texture rough against her feet. The car was instantly silent after the driver closed the door, which shut like an expensive refrigerator.
    “Armor,” said Blaine. “It makes the car quiet.”
    His driver got in.
    “Jimmy, we’d like to go home,” said Blaine.
    The car slid up to the building like a long shadow. Blaine got out first, looking one way and then the other, and reached in and took her by the tips of her fingers, as though they were at dancing school. They went in, under the green canopy, past the doorman in his blue uniform with the gold trim, across the black and white order of the tiles of the lobby, and into the elevator, which was paneled with dark wood and had a mirror, in which Carr glanced at herself. She looked at her skin, her eyes, her hair, the somewhat disordered appearance of herself, which made her look as though she were in the midst of a fall, rather than rising in the cool elevation of the machine. It was all so smooth and easy, and she still felt that sense of almost lubricated movement when in the morning she left the apartment and found that the housekeeper had fixed her shoe and left it by the door, just as she found the car waiting for her, as though the driver had never gone home, but had been waiting there for her.
    At work, she told herself that she had to get a grip on herself, that this was wonderful, but she still had a job to do. She started going through Briggs’s code more carefully.

CHAPTER 4
    January 15, 2027
    AT 8:00 A.M., Blaine walked through the marble lobby of the building where he worked, carrying nothing at all, not a piece of paper, not a briefcase, nothing. As he passed under the dome, he glanced up at the stern angels. He went through the swirling hush of people, nodding here and there to people he liked, only raising a brow to people he tolerated, and ignoring a fair number of people altogether. Upstairs, he came into the room where staff meetings were held. These morning assemblies were known, by the people who attended them, as the Hit Parade. The room where they were held was just a little too small, and some people who came late had to stand. The others sat