“I’ll walk you back to your charging plate,” Iris tells him, as if he’d said nothing. “We can say good night there. Leave the Monowheel. I’ll get it later.”

She still holds her hand in his. They walk, in no hurry now.

At the far end of the plaza, he cries out in a sudden, loud, falsely cheerful voice, “If you’re having a good time, why should the fun stop here? It’s just one slim coin for another thirty minutes of devotion! What do you say, Iris, old pal?”

He falls silent.

They cross the street and travel almost another block before he speaks again.

“You didn’t find that distasteful?”

“No. It didn’t bother me. What will bother me is if you pretend to feel regrets we both know you can’t feel.”

“I don’t regret it. Regret is an inversion of desire, and it’s true, I don’t want things. But I can tell when a musician strikes the wrong note.”

They have reached his corner. His meter has less than four minutes on it.

“I’ll let you make it up to me,” she says.

“Please.”

“You were a good birthday gift, Chip. You carried me to the top of the Spoke. You gave me the sun and the stars. You saved me from blackmail, and you floated down to earth with me. For an hour you gave me back the life I had before my father got hurt.” She leans toward him and kisses his cold mouth. It feels like kissing her reflection in the mirror.

“Did that make it up to you?” he asks.

She smiles. “Not quite. One more thing. Come with me.”

He follows her past his charging plate and up onto the overpass. They climb the slight slope of the bridge until they’re over the rails. She straddles the wide stone balustrade, one leg hanging over the tracks, one leg over the sidewalk, the aquaball in her lap.

“Chip. Will you climb up here and drop this thing in front of the next train? I’m not sure I can time it correctly. They’re so fast.”

“The mermaid was a gift from your father.”

“It is. It was. And he meant well. But when I look at it, I feel like I’m looking at him: this helpless thing, trapped in a little space, that isn’t good to anyone anymore and won’t ever be free again. Every time I look at it, this ugly fish is going to remind me my dad won’t ever be free again, and I don’t want to think of him that way.”

Chip climbs onto the balustrade and sits with both feet hanging over the rails. “All right, Iris. If it will make you feel better.”

“It will make me less sad. That’s something, isn’t it?”

“It is.”