Dirty Wings (2 page)

He laughs. “
Bien sûr, chérie.
We will begin with the first movement. ‘
Ondine,
' you will play for me next week. I wish you to play it for your audition.” He means her audition for the music conservatory in New York he has chosen for her, the audition this spring that will decide the course of her future. “It must make you think of demons and that sort of thing.”

“What?”

He clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Demons. Demons and ghosts.”

She keeps her face neutral, wonders if Oscar's shucked straight off his rocker. “Demons. Okay.”

He beams, pats her shoulder. “Demons. Next week.”

“Next week.” As always, when he holds the front door open for her she almost curtsies.

 

 

It must have rained while she was at Oscar's; the sidewalks are slick and slug-streaked, and there's still a faint mist to the world that leaves her cheeks dewy. If she walks home it'll take her an hour and there will probably be hell to pay, but she's restless for no reason, too antsy to wait for the bus that won't come for another twenty minutes at least anyway. She tucks Oscar's music into her shoulder bag. She can walk along the canal and cut over to the university before she reaches the freeway.

The January air has a chilly, damp edge to it, and she pulls her jacket tighter as she walks. The streets are deserted. Her brown loafers make a neat tap on the wet pavement. She's tempted to step deliberately in a puddle, take some of the shine off the polished leather, but even tiny rebellions never go unnoticed in her house. Sit up straight, cross your legs like a lady, chew with your mouth closed, speak when spoken to. The severe line of her mother's unsmiling mouth, immaculately lipsticked in her immaculate white face. Tasteful pearl earrings, silk blouses without a single wrinkle, the delicate gold cross always at her throat. Blond hair pinned back into a neat chignon if she's teaching, spilling down her shoulders in rich honeyed waves if she's going out. The click of her heels—never in the house, never ever on the floors; no one wears shoes in the house. Her cool green eyes. When Maia was little, her mother dressed her like a doll, ruffled pinafores and starched collars and a red wool coat that buttoned all the way to her throat; Maia dreams about that coat sometimes, dreams where she's choking. Her mother dresses her still. It's easier than fighting and anyway, what does she care about clothes. When she sees herself in a mirror, her dark hair sleek and straight, twins of her mother's pearl earrings—a sixteenth-birthday present from her father—dotting her own ears, pressed khakis, the loafers with their tassels falling neatly over her instep, she sometimes fails to recognize herself. And then she sees her brown face and remembers. Her skin makes it hard to forget.

She stops by the canal for longer than she should to watch a yacht make its stately way toward the Sound. Even this early in the year the water's dotted with kayakers, wetsuited against the chill. Their boats flash bright yellow and orange against the grey water, double-bladed paddles dipping with a rhythm like wings. Her father took her kayaking once, when she was small. They'd both been clumsy, splashing more water than they moved through; Maia nearly upended herself in the lake. Shrieking with delight, sun hot on her shoulders, the white sails of a nearby boat crisp against the blue sky. The water so close to her fingers, that far from shore, was disconcerting. If she'd fallen she could have tumbled endlessly through that deep green world to some alien kingdom at the bottom of the lake, where fish-finned women swam with their long hair streaming behind them. A palace she could almost picture, dark turrets rising against the darker depths. But there's no fear in the memory, only joy. When she thinks of darkness, she thinks of sleep, not death. The moments of her life when she was happy are easy for her to catalogue, because there are so few of them that aren't at a piano. She keeps walking.

It takes less time than she thought it would to reach the Ave, and she wonders why she's never walked home from Oscar's before. If she hurries, she might even beat her mother home from her afternoon seminar. Her mother teaches the history of ancient Greece; it's easy to impose order on dead civilizations. Maia's never sat in on one of her classes, but she can imagine the scene. Her mother, starkly beautiful, moving her elegant hands to illustrate the difference between kinds of spears. The front row of desks crowded with admirers writing down her every word.

Despite the chill in the air, the Ave is crowded. Students laden with books hurry to classes; a couple of jocks play Hacky Sack outside a coffee shop; a patch of scraggly street kids trailing hemp ropes and mangy dogs begs for change on a corner. Maia looks away from them, walks faster as she passes. One girl calls out to her. “Hey, princess. Spare a quarter?” Maia pulls her shoulders up to her ears. But the voice gets louder. “Hey, princess. You got somewhere to be?”

Maia stops. The girl's gotten up to follow her. She's about Maia's age, with wild-cropped blond hair dyed red at the ends. She's wearing a dog collar as a necklace, a filthy T-shirt under a cardigan three sizes too big for her, and a pair of camouflage pants tucked into black combat boots. But the most striking thing about her is her eyes—sea-grey pools Maia can't look away from. “You got somewhere to be?” the girl repeats. Maia shakes her head. Then, panicked, she nods. “Which one is it?”

“Somewhere,” Maia whispers. “Somewhere to be.”

The girl looks her up and down. “Tea party? Etiquette lesson? Damn, girl, who put you in those shoes?”

“I don't have any money.”

“Someone you know does.” The girl's mouth twitches into a smile that's gone so fast Maia wonders if she imagined it. “Come on. Help me out.”

“I really don't.”

“Then at least do me a tiny favor. Look, I'm not from here. I need directions.”

“Directions where?”

“Complicated directions. I need a map. Can you get me a map?”

“A map?” Maia repeats.

“You dressed like a stockbroker
and
deaf? Hello, cruel world. I bet they have some kind of map in that convenience store. Of the area. Or the state. State parks. Like, any kind of map. But listen, you don't know me, right? So don't act like you know me. Because you don't. Come on.”

“I told you I don't have any money.”

“Then get me a free one.”

The girl propels Maia with one hand toward a convenience store across the street. Bemused, Maia lets herself be directed. Once they're inside, the girl whips her hand away and saunters over to the beer aisle, whistling. She pulls bottles out of the refrigerated case, puts them back again.

Maia looks for a rack of maps, doesn't see any. “Excuse me?” she says to the man at the register. He's watching the girl with a wary eye, doesn't notice her. “Excuse me?” she repeats, louder. He looks at her. “Do you have maps?”

“Maps of what?”

“Of, um, the area? Like a tourist map?”

Now he's irritated. “I look like a tourist to you, kid?” The girl is rummaging through bags of chips. “Hey!” he yells at her. “You ain't got money. I know you kids. Come on, get the hell out of here.”

“No crime being in the aisle,” she snaps back.

“It is if I say it is. Get.”

She storms up to the cash register, knocking Maia aside with the full weight of her slight body. Maia can smell her skin. Sweat and underneath it something musky and wild. “I could call the cops on you,” she hisses. “Fucking old perv.”

The man at the register has gone from cranky to irate. “I mean it! Get the hell out of my store!”

She lifts her chin. Despite the dirt, the ragged clothes, she looks like a queen. “I go where I want,” she says softly, and then she walks out the door. The man at the register scowls.

“Goddamn street kids,” he mutters. “Someone oughta exterminate the lot of 'em. What kind of map you want, honey? I got a street map.”

“You have any free maps?”

“
Free
maps? Go to the goddamn
library.
” He stares at her in disgust. For the first time it occurs to her to wonder why the girl didn't ask for her own map.

“Okay,” she says. “Thanks anyway.” He snorts.

Outside, the girl is waiting for her in an alley down the block, one foot against a brick wall. She's smiling for real this time, a smile that's not going anywhere. Her teeth are fetchingly crooked.

“I didn't get your map.”

The girl puts both hands on her knees and hoots. Maia is bewildered by her reaction. “I bet you didn't,” she says, still laughing. “It's cool. Let me see your bag.”

“No way,” Maia says. “Look, I don't know what your deal is, but I'm going to go.”

“Sure thing, princess. Just one minute, though.” The girl pushes off with her foot and in one swift movement reaches into Maia's shoulder bag before she can protest. To Maia's utter astonishment, she pulls out two bottles of beer.

“Where did those come from?” Maia gasps.

“You stole them.”

“I didn't steal anything!”

“What did you think I was doing in there? Coloring? Come on, girl, don't tell me you're that dumb.”

“I didn't—”

“You did. That deserves a drink, don't you think? Come on.” The girl takes her hand, tugs her down the alley. Maia knows to say no. Maia knows to get the hell out of here, right now, get home, never come back to this corner again as long as she lives. The girl pries the bottles' caps off with a lighter and holds one out to Maia. “It's just a beer,” she says gently. “It won't bite you.” Maia accepts the bottle gingerly, as if she expects it to detonate in her hand.

“I'm Cass,” the girl says. “Short for Cassandra. The bitch who knew everything and no one would listen to.”

“I know who Cassandra was. I'm Maia.” She takes a sip, nearly spits it out. Beer foams over the lip of the bottle.

“You ever even drink before?” Maia shakes her head mutely, mortified.

“Well then. It's a day of firsts for you.” That grin again.

“How did you even—I mean, I didn't even see you. You did it when you bumped into me?”

Cass rolls her eyes. “You live near here?”

“Up by the college.”

“Fancy.”

Maia shrugs. “My mom's a professor. My dad—” She stops. What is there to say about her dad? “My dad's a writer.”

“Fancier and fancier.”

“Where do you live?”

“I squat a place with some kids.”

“You squat?” Maia imagines a roomful of dirty girls like Cass, crouched down on their haunches.

“You know, like an abandoned building that we moved into?” Maia's face is blank with incomprehension. “Girl, where are you
from
? Do you know anything?”

“I know lots of things,” Maia says, indignant.

“Different things than I know, I guess. Anyway, it's an old house that no one was living in. Some people I know took it over, and I live with them.”

“Those people back there? With the dogs?”

“Some of them. People come and go.”

“You said you weren't from here.”

“I lied. You know how it is.”

Maia has absolutely no idea how it is, cannot begin to imagine how it is. How does this girl eat? Take baths? What does she do for money? How did she get here? Does she have parents? Where does she sleep? Does she even have a bed? Maia considers which of these questions would be appropriate, decides none of them. “Do you like it?”

Cass shrugs, tilts her head back, finishes her beer. “Come on, princess, drink up. It'll do you good. We'll find some more and keep drinking.”

Maia thinks about what time it must be, and her heart thumps in her chest. “I can't,” she says, handing her beer to Cass. “I have to go. Really. I can't. My mom—I can't.” Cass looks at her again. Those cool grey eyes.

“Maybe I'll see you again,” she says.

Despite herself, Maia smiles. “Sure.”

 

 

Cass's story is so boring she tells it to no one. Dad dead of a heart attack when she was just a kid, a series of stepdads Cass's mom picked up somewhere between her favorite bar and her second-favorite bar. Maybe her third-favorite bar. That would explain what assholes they were. Bad grades, bad home, bad friends. Pretty soon having to lock her bedroom door at night: Bad stepdad, what a surprise. Not that the lock stopped him.

There was a shelter for a while when she was eleven, in between stepdads one and two; stepdad one had been a hitter. He'd seemed nice enough at first. He had a real job, something at the bank. He wore suits and took her mom out to dinner and bought Cass a doll with white-blond hair and a painted-on red smirk. When he'd gotten transferred to a branch in Portland he'd told them he wanted to move as a family, and so they did. Cass's stuffed dog next to the new doll in her pink plastic backpack, a rented truck, a new apartment with mint-green walls. And then once the both of them were stuck, once they had no place else to go, no friends, no car, and no one to talk to, he went monster. Stopped going to his job, stopped paying for anything, stopped the candy-sweet words and steak dinners. The first time he'd hit Cass's mom was when she told him she didn't have any money left in her savings to pay for groceries. The first time he hit Cass was when they left, in the middle of the night like secret agents, one suitcase between the two of them. Cass's mom couldn't afford a cab, so they walked two miles across town to the shelter, Cass's cheek blooming with a riotous purple bruise that matched the sunrise sky.
If I were in a movie,
Cass thought,
there would be a shot of my face, and then a shot of the clouds.

The shelter was in a residential neighborhood, an ordinary-looking house with a yard surrounded by other ordinary houses. The neighbors gave them dirty looks when they walked to the corner store for milk. The shelter was supposed to be a secret, but the neighbors weren't stupid. There were other women and kids who lived in the shelter. The women who worked there sat in a little office by the front door. The daytime office women were serious and wore real office clothes. They had meetings with the moms and gave them lists of places to call and appointments to keep. But the women who sat in the office at night wore cutoff shorts and T-shirts and no bras. They chewed gum and ate their dinners, which they brought from home, in the big common room with the women who lived in the shelter. They slept on a bed in the office, and if you needed cold medicine in the middle of the night you could knock softly and they would come to the door, sleepily pushing their tousled hair out of their eyes, and hand it over to you in a tiny cup. All of them were pretty. Some of them were in college and told Cass about their classes.
Anthropology
, Cass said to herself later.
Chemistry. Psychology.
Those were things you could do, if you were a girl like that. One of the nighttime girls had brown skin, sleek black hair, orchids tattooed across her shoulders, and a ladder of white scars that stretched from her left wrist to her left elbow. Her dinner was always sushi that she had made herself, and once she gave Cass a piece: tofu, avocado, carrot, and brown rice, none of which Cass had ever had before. The orchid girl was Cass's favorite.