Snowscape; Variety show; Vamp hair

Can't keep everything in order.

Stumbling through a city, or a cluttered room. It's crowded and dark. Maybe I'm sitting down to watch a movie, but suddenly the horizon opens up and it's a dazzling snowscape. Low hills, ice floes, but on the ground. Patches of beautiful glowing snow and ice separated in chunks like the pattern on a giraffe.

I'm in the vista. Switching pov. Two children, and a hero. A gruff explorer type who is kind to the children. At first I'm one of the children, sneaking up behind a group of men. We don't know if they're dangerous or not, but we're taking the risk. I'm a girl, but I pretend to be a boy.

The hero knocks over a tree and makes it into a long bench. A small child runs up to him/me, and I pick him up by the armpits and put him in my lap to enjoy the new seat.

In a building, a classy hotel? Back in Washington. Sarah Glidden is there, and she asks me, as a native Washingtonian, to help her get to a local culture magazine. I look on a computer map and find out that the place is actually in New Jersey. In disgust, I give up the project.

The grand hotel--a variety show is going on. I get up and leave when it becomes clear that the next act is a guy with a fire house that he's going to squirt the audience with. At the door, he splashes me a little bit. I turn around and smirk, "Thanks for not coming on my face," which I think is hilarious but no one else laughs.

In the hotel, I find TIm Kreider and some other dissipated buddies at the cafe, eating pastries. Tim and I squabble over a delicious roll and then split it. I get bored and leave. Another switching back and forth, a beautiful woman with black, short, vamp hair, shaved at the neck, wearing a necklace made of silver coins stacked together. I'm her, and then I'm seeing her. She's asleep, and I come up to touch her hair, not thinking I'll wake her. She wakes up at once, and lets me pet the shaved part of her hair, and kiss her.