He sprang to his feet and began pacing, running his fingers through his hair to pull it back off his face, tugging it by the roots as if to stimulate his brain. Oberon leaned forward and turned off the music.

“The problem is that people want to kill you,” Ángel said.

“That is one of my problems, yes,” agreed Oberon. If Ángel didn’t look at him, he thought he could hear warmth in his voice. Amusement?

“They want to kill you because they’re afraid of you,” said Ángel. “But you’re really only scary when people can see you. I mean, your face is scary.”

“It is?”

“Even on TV, it’s not so bad, but still. A little. In person . . . But your voice. If people could just hear you talking—if they could get to know you, without having to see you—”

“Are you suggesting I do radio interviews?”

“Easier,” said Ángel. “A podcast. It’s low tech, it’s so damn simple to do. You wouldn’t have to go to New York to get shot at. We could do it here. People could learn who you are.”

“What would I talk about?”

“We could talk. Like we already do. We could talk about music, and the lyrics you don’t understand, and, oh my God. We could talk about the project you’re working on. How you’re sending our music back to your people. How you decide which pieces you’re going to send home to the Otherworld. Maybe we could talk about one piece of music per week.” He paced. “Not the Ramones. The entire city of New York will unite against you like a hive of bees if you dis the Ramones.”

“The Ramones are simplistic to the point of idiocy,” said Oberon, “but I can’t imagine that they would have been troubled by controversy.”

“Yeah, nope, let’s not go there. But . . . anything else. Really. Marissa’s brother has a podcast about motorcycles, which could not be more boring, and he has hundreds of listeners. But everyone is interested in you.”

Oberon was silent, but Ángel’s mind continued to whir with possibilities. “I could get some books from the library about how to do it,” he said. “We could listen to some podcasts, decide how we want it to sound. I think the best ones are short, like twenty minutes or a half hour per episode, max, and sort of off-the-cuff and casual. The DOR could make a nice website, do promotions. And get permissions from the artists so we could play the music and then talk about it.”

“Do you truly believe people would listen to what I have to say about Rachmaninov?” Oberon sounded doubtful.

“Yes!”

“You’ve had Rachmaninov for a hundred years.”