The fire in the Museum court, a kind of echochamber, danced over the walls. Two or three men tossed beams and boards into the blaze, stoking it, nursing its warmth. Around the periphery of the hall, a few women walked around, resting paintings and sculptures against the walls, murmuring to each other now and then, but completely absorbed in their work. I counted about twenty women reclining around the flame and talking in low voices, with their legs stretched out toward the fire. Some raised their heads as Holly and Adela entered the room, and then turned back to their neighbor and continued talking.

As we entered that circle, I peeked out of Adela’s pocket and looked around. Lounging in the laps of these giantesses, or curled around their clad and unclad feet, worshiping piously, I saw a good number of men more or less my size, some larger, some smaller. On the whole it seemed that these women paid no attention to them—but every so often—talking all the while—one of them would suddenly start with some silent gesture: she would turn and set her foot on its blade, raise the heel of her shoe, lift her toes, drop her hand, wiggle around in her seat, or snap open her panties. And the man, urged on by this silent gesture, this unmistakable cue, moved on to his next task.

The room was full of laughter, the glassy clinks of winecups, and the slow, bright blaze of the bonfire. It was remarkably tranquil, and reminded me of some old St. Martin’s Day harvest festival. Anyway, these women had reaped something big. How far would it take them?

In the shadows of the flames I made out a few Italian baroques stacked and spotlit against American scenes, Hudson River School stuff: impossible people and impossible landscapes, beside which this new and gigantic reality was all the bigger, stranger, more encompassing and overwhelming. (Later, I learned that these works were brought up from storage, and were set to be moved the next day to one of the riverside mansions upstate.) The overall effect of these old, priceless artworks appearing in the background of this new scene was uncanny and almost spooky. Tall women, like the goddesses in some new—or old and till now secret—pantheon, talked in a circle casually, like they were at some salon or dinner party, and not at the beginning of a new and much different world.

The person who greeted Holly at the entrance was a slim, fine-boned, middle-aged woman. Behind her intelligent eyes one could see her thoughts flickering—rapidly, if not deeply, covering a large territory in a very short time. She was dressed in a black executive suit, and wore a pair of shiny black pumps over her somewhat large, shapely feet. Her shoes clacked and echoed over the white marble floor, her hand outstretched to Holly as she invited her inside.

“Holly,” she said, with a glint in her eyes and a kind of sharpness in her voice. “What a pleasure to finally meet you.”
Holly smiled and reached back to find Adela’s hand. “Pearl,” she said. “This is my daughter, Adela. Adela, Pearl.”
Pearl passed her eyes over my mistress somewhat indifferently, as though she were mentally adding up two very large numbers. The introduction was brisk and efficient, and they shook hands without a word.
“Come and sit down,” she said to Holly, taking her gently by the shoulder with those long, delicate fingers. “You must be tired. Adela? Yes, you too. Come along. We have a few things to run over before you leave.”
Pearl drew Holly to a candlelit alcove on the outskirts of the circle, just to the side of the Museum’s grand staircase. Adela tailed along behind and thus far remained silent.
“We haven’t been able to unlock the basement, yet,” said that slender, officious woman in an offhanded way. “And the curators haven’t been very helpful, yet, either.” She smiled tightly, as though excusing herself for starting the small talk. She was the kind of woman who deprecated and avoided small talk in principle.  
“Well,” said Holly, sitting down on the lowermost step and slowly unsealing the zipper on her right boot. “I’ll be helpful. I have a woman who’ll make the work easier for you, here.” When my teacher daintily reached in and plucked the little woman up from the insole of her boot, Meredith looked as dazed and drenched as a newt, suddenly exposed to the cold wind, after it’s hibernated during the winter under the slimy muck on the borders of some pond. Holly blew on her, and she woke up. 
“Meredith, wake up!” I poked my head out again, and saw her lazily open her eyes, and lift her hands to her face.
“Well,” said Pearl, waving aside the matter with her hand. “We can deal with that in a minute. Give her to me.”
Holly put her in Pearl’s cold, finely-chiseled hand, and Meredith promptly disappeared into one of her hundred pockets.

“For the moment,” Pearl went on, “we aren’t facing a shortage of food—there’s an overplenty if anything—but we’ll solve the problem of obtaining good food and drink, for good, tomorrow or the next day, when we lay down the law in the Midwestern cities. The Far West takeover is underway. I’ll give you Emily’s number.” She scribbled something down, handed it to Holly, and then leaned back against the cold marble of the bannister. 
“Even so, we’ve found that a number of women, for reasons we don't fully understand, yet, have been trapping, stealing and—although admittedly this is, for the most part, still a rumor—devouring all the men they can find unprotected. We planned for this, and the number is, at the moment, smaller than we expected, but it’s still very alarming. For obvious reasons we would like to nip this practice in the bud. It could otherwise turn common, and what’s common is only two or three steps away from acceptable, fashionable, and enforced. Already—and in only the last twelve hours—about three thousand men in the city are unaccounted for. So the predators shall be caught and punished accordingly. We’re presently working that out,” she said, and paused. “Overseas, we’re in communication with Mme. Lefèvre, Mlle Marchand, and Nora. You know Nora, I think.” 
“Right,” said Holly.
“But on the whole—let me be clear—we expected a much larger number of these women, these dissidents and troublemakers. The number as it stands is not significant. Tomorrow we restore power to the major centers, establish and appoint the new government, enter and fully secure the suburbs, and begin the next phase: work reassignment and general reconstruction.” She glanced over at Adela, and I thought, for a moment, her eye caught me too. If it did, her expression revealed nothing.
“How was your trip?”
“Smooth,” Holly said. “You have the box.”
“Yes. If no one claims them by tomorrow evening, I’ll transfer the refugees to some of the widows and orphans.”
“Perfect. Is that all?”
“For now,” Pearl said. “Except for this one, final point: I suggest that you leave the city by a different route. And take the usual precautions.”
“Good,” said Holly. As they shook hands, she bent close to Pearl’s ear, and whispered something. Pearl smiled, nodded, and with a turn as sharp as a whiplash, clacked across the blazing, shimmering room to a door in the east wing. She opened it with a key and then vanished inside. For a brief moment, before the door slammed shut, I might have seen or caught a glimpse of a spiral staircase going down.

At that instant there was a loud commotion around the fire. Adela turned to face the noise, and I saw a woman stand up, point, and swear at one or two objects around her feet. Some dispute between a mistress and her slave. They had evidently been together for a considerable time, and the issue was quickly settled: she dropped one of the men below the waistline, from behind, while the other climbed, hangdog, under her pointed finger and withering eyes, into the woman’s bright blue heel, which she immediately put on. The silence ended, and conversation resumed.

Holly took Adela by the wrist, and led her up the stairs a few steps.
“We’re leaving now.”
Adela stared. “Now? What about…”
“She can stay here. We have to go.”
“Mom, why don’t we wait for her to come back? What about the box? What about…” I felt her look around the room—maybe she was thinking of sleep.
“No,” said Holly. “It has to be now. Where’s Martin?”
“In my pocket, but…”
“Put him in my hand.”
Adela hesitated. The tension in the air rose slowly, and then became palpable.
“Put him in my hand.” Still nothing. Holly stood up, regally, and swept the room with her eyes one last time.
“You aren’t going to give him to me,” she said. “Here’s the heart of the matter, here’s when I need him, when Pearl needs him. It’s the worst possible time, Adela. What’s wrong with you— have you fallen in love with the little thing? You get one last chance, and then it’s done. Hand him to me.”
“I can’t,” Adela said. Her heart was pounding. “I’m sorry, Mom, I thought I could. I can’t…It’s not like…”
“I’ll stop you there. It’s not like that at all, you spoiled girl, and you shouldn’t compare the two cases. Your father wasn’t fit for you or me. If you won’t give me the kid, I’ll take him.”

As Holly approached Adela, a plunging, tumbling, dizzying wave washed over me, and I tossed over the spindrift in some wild ocean storm, far offshore. For a moment I was conscious of other eyes turning in our direction, and other women approaching us, and then, after what seemed hours, I landed on a plush, steamy, moist surface, and felt the pressure of hot, foul flesh cover and eclipse me in a wave. As the pressure was alternately applied and released, like some fearful machine, the image of a runner came into my mind, and I realized—very briefly, but with a shock of clarity—that I was under someone’s foot. But whose? Whoever she was, she was quickly, softly forming me into the voidlike hollow under her toes, and she was beginning to run—and running fast.