A minute later they were all playing in the spray, like nothing weird had happened.

“Didn’t look like any oil I’ve ever seen,” Zahler said.

“Yeah. Probably just old water in the hydrant,” I said, not wanting to think about it. It had disappeared so quickly, I could almost imagine it hadn’t happened at all. “Or something like that. Come on, we’re late.”

Pearl’s room looked like a recording studio had mated with a junkyard, then exploded.

The walls were lined with egg cartons, the big twelve-by-twelve ones that you see stacked outside restaurants. Sinuous hills rose between the egg-shaped valleys, curving like the sound waves they gobbled.

“Whoa, you’ve got a ton of gear!” Zahler exclaimed. His voice was echoless, rebounding from the walls with less bounce than a dead cat.

I’d always told Zahler that we could soundproof his room this way so that his parents would stop yelling at us to turn it down. But we’d never had enough motivation to make it happen. Or enough egg cartons.

The floor was covered with spare cables, effects boxes, all the usual fire hazards—we stepped lightly over the spaghetti-junctions of power strips, dozens of adapters squeezed into them, all labeled to show what was plugged in where. Two racks of electronics towered at one end of the room, the cables gathered with twist-ties. The modules were organized neatly into tribes: black and buttonless digital units; flickering arpeggiators; a few dinosaur synths with analog dials and needles, like old science-fiction movie props ready for takeoff.

Zahler was looking around nervously, probably wondering if his cheap little electric was going to get squashed under all that gear. I was wondering why Pearl, if she owned all this keyboard stuff, had risked falling toaster ovens just to save a vintage guitar.

“Where do you sleep?” Zahler asked. The bed was covered with scattered CDs, more cables, and a few harmonicas and hand drums.

“The guest room, mostly,” Pearl said proudly. “I suffer for my art.”

Zahler laughed but rolled me a look. Pearl wasn’t exactly suffering. She hadn’t showed us all of her mom’s apartment, but what we’d seen was already bigger than his parents’ and mine put together, the walls crowded with paintings and glass cases full of stuff from all over the world. Stairs led to more floors above, and we’d passed a pair of armed security guards down in the lobby. Pearl had probably seen the Taj Mahal in person.

So why had she contemplated helping herself to the Strat, when she could obviously afford to buy one of her own?

Maybe she was used to everything falling from the sky. She’d looked pretty annoyed when we weren’t on time, like this was a job interview or something.

I sifted through the CDs on the bed, trying to peg her influences. What was Pearl really into, besides old Indian tombs, punctuality, and soundproofing? The discs left me clueless. They were hand-labeled with the names of bands I’d never heard of: Zombie Phoenix, Morgan’s Army, Nervous System…

“Nervous System?” I asked.

Pearl groaned. “That’s this band I was in. Bunch of Juilliard geeks and, um, me.”

I glanced at Zahler: great. Not only did Pearl have lots of real gear, she also knew some real musicians, which meant she might not be too impressed with us. We weren’t exactly into virtuosity—we hadn’t taken any lessons since sixth grade. This jam session was going to be a bust.

“Did you guys play any gigs?” Zahler asked.

She shrugged. “We did, at their high school, mostly. But the System had no heart. Or it did, I guess, but then the heart exploded. You guys want to plug in?”

The Stratocaster soothed my nerves.

It swung from my shoulder, featherlight, lacquered back side cool against my thigh. The strings were six strands of spiderweb, with the easiest action my fingers had ever felt. I strummed a quick, unplugged E-major chord and was amazed to hear that even a three-story fall hadn’t knocked the Strat out of tune.

Pearl pushed in the power button on a Marshall amp, a hulking old beast with tubes inside. (Why did a key-boardist have a guitar amp handy? Had it also fallen from the sky?) The tubes warmed up slowly, the hiss fading in like a wave breaking.

“You guys have to share this amp,” Pearl apologized. “Nonoptimal, I know.”

Zahler shrugged. “That’s fool.”

She raised an eyebrow. Zahler says fool instead of cool, which is kind of confusing. But at least he didn’t mention that I’d never owned an amp, so we shared one over at his place too.

Pearl tossed us cords, and I plugged in—a sizzle-snap of connection, then the familiar hum of six open strings. I dampened five of them and plucked a low E. Zahler tuned up to it, booming through his strings one by one, setting off a little plastic chorus of CD cases shivering against one another on the bed.

The Marshall was set to 7, a volume we never dared in Zahler’s room, and I hoped Pearl’s egg cartons worked. Otherwise, her neighbors were going to feel us in their bones. But I was ready to risk someone calling the police. The Strat was squeaking impatiently as I slid my fingers along its neck, like it was ready too.

Finally Zahler nodded, and Pearl rubbed her hands together, sitting down at the little desk jammed between the two racks of electronics. A computer waited there, cabled to a musical keyboard, the kind with elegant black and white keys instead of the usual jumble of letters, numbers, and symbol-junk.

She rested one hand on the keys, the other on a mouse. At her double-click, dozens of lights on the towers flickered to life. “Play something.”

My fingers were suddenly nervous. It was important to get these notes right, to make a solid first impression on this accidental guitar. Pearl thought that “fate” had brought us together, but that was the wrong word for it. Fate hadn’t made that woman go insane. People had been edgy this whole weird summer, what with the crime wave, the rat wave, and the crazy-making heat. That was bigger than Pearl and Zahler and me.

This guitar wasn’t destiny. It was just another symptom of whatever bizarre illness New York City was coming down with, something strange and unexpected, like that spout of black water on the way over.

For a moment the Strat felt awkward in my hands.

But then Zahler said, “Big Riff?”

I smiled. The Big Riff went back a long time, as long as we’d been playing. It was simple and gutsy, and we didn’t bother practicing it too much anymore. But the Strat was going to make it new all over again, like playing baseball with bottle rockets.

Zahler started up. His part of the Big Riff is low and growly, his strings muffled with the flesh of his right hand, like something trying to sizzle up out of a boiling pot.

I took a slow, deep breath… then jumped in. My part’s faster than his, fingers roaming in the high notes halfway up the neck. My part skitters while his churns, blowing sparks from his embers. Mine darts and mutates, keeps changing, while Zahler’s stays level and even and thick, filling in all the gaps.

The Strat loved the Big Riff, sliced straight into it. Its spiderweb strings tempted my fingers faster and higher, weightless against Zahler’s firmament. If the Big Riff was an army, he was the infantry, the grunts on the ground, and the Strat had turned me into orbital ninjas dropping from the sky, black pajamas under their space suits.

Pearl sat there listening, fingers flexing, mouse twitching, eyes closed. She looked ready to pounce, waiting restlessly for an opening.

We kept going for ten minutes, maybe twenty—it’s hard to tell time when you’re playing the Big Riff—but she never jumped in…

Finally Zahler gave a little shrug and let the Riff peter out. I followed him down, wrapping up with one last plunge from orbit, the Strat skittering into reluctant silence.