Dirty Wings (26 page)

“Don't even want the party,” Percy mutters. He's holding the television antenna while Byron fiddles with the dial. “They could just pay the electric bill for us instead.”

“It'll be fun,” Maia says placidly. “Come on, Cass. Anybody need the bathroom before we take it over?”

Cass sits on the toilet seat while Maia showers, humming to herself.
I fucked your husband. Your husband and I fucked.
She tries the thought on like a new coat. Who has husbands? The only husbands she has encountered thus far were the stepfathers, and they never did anybody any favors. “We didn't do anything for your birthday.”

“I know,” Maia says. “I've known you for a year now, isn't that crazy?”

“It seems like longer.”

“And like no time at all at the same time.” Maia shuts off the water. Cass passes her the cleanest of the towels. “This house is disgusting,” Maia says ruefully.

“Maybe this record really will make a lot of money.”

“That would be nice.” She pulls open the curtain, the towel wrapped around her hair. Her long brown body is still lean, her belly flat. If Jason's kid is kicking around in there, Cass can't tell. This creature, this Maia, unselfconscious, wise beyond her years, is a completely different person than the cocooned princess who found Cass in the street all those months ago. Here's Maia, utterly transformed, and yet Cass is the same hardscrabble traitor she's always been.
I fucked your husband.
Maybe now she's just worse.

“You look so sad,” Maia says, kissing the top of her head.

“It's nothing,” Cass says.

“Are you sure?”

“Get dressed and I'll do your eyeliner.”

Maia leaves the towel on her head and walks naked into the living room to find her clothes, and Cass trails after her just to see the expression on Byron's and Percy's faces. She's not disappointed. Back in the bathroom, Maia puts on her dress. It's the white slip she married Jason in. Cass helped her dye her hair again a few days ago, and it flares a brilliant red against her brown skin. She perches on the edge of the sink as Cass draws swooping cat's eyes with black liquid liner. “I stole it,” Maia says proudly.

“Sssh,” Cass says. “Don't move or I'll fuck it up.”

When she's done she surveys her handiwork. “You look beautiful,” Cass says, her voice catching.

“Now you.”

“I'm not coming.”

“Cass. You have to. Are you kidding me? You can't leave me. Please come.”

Cass thinks of an entire excruciating night spent at Jason's side, sighs. Probably there will be free food, at least.

“Anything for you,” Cass says.

“Thank you. Cass—” She stops. “If this does—if this record really does sell. You know. If things change. Nothing will change for us. For you and me.”

“Of course not,” Cass says, and maybe she even believes it.

“I love you, Cass.”

“I love you, too. You can buy a really nice piano, at least.” Maia's eyes get soft, and Cass wonders if she's hurt her. “I'm sorry,” she says, “I didn't mean to bring it up.”

“I'd be in New York right now.”

“Are you—do you wish you were?”

“No,” Maia says. She chews her thumb, an unconscious echo of Cass's habit. “No,” she says again.

 

 

It's Maia, now, who dresses Cass, in a soft, short velvet-and-lace dress that hangs loosely. “I look like an idiot,” Cass says crossly, but Byron and Percy whistle appreciatively.

“No,” Byron says, “you look like a girl. It's a refreshing change.” Cass throws the television remote at him. Maia insists on doing Cass's eyeliner, but she makes such a mess of it—one eye hopelessly crooked, the other with a jagged black spike where Maia's hand slipped—that Cass washes it off and does it herself. Jason's shaken out of his sulk and opened another bottle of whisky. He's still unwashed, his dirty hair falling in his eyes until Cass wants to yank it out of his head, but Byron has put on a clean flannel shirt for the occasion. They wait in the living room for the limo, passing around the whisky and fidgeting. Someone has put the bed away. Maia sits on the couch, one arm around Jason's shoulders. She's put on a moth-eaten fake fur coat that somehow makes her look even more queenly. Jason kisses her cheek and whispers something in her ear. Byron paces in tighter and tighter circles. Percy sits at the other end of the couch, gnawing at his knuckles. Only Maia, serene and lovely in her white slip, displays no sign of nervousness. Her face is flushed, her expression expectant, as though she is waiting for something she's been promised.
We're just kids,
Cass thinks, looking at all of them.
God help us, we're just kids.

 

 

The party is in a penthouse apartment on the top floor of an old hotel building downtown. The building is old-fashioned, with stately marble columns and oak paneling, but the apartment is a sleek and modern expanse of open space, with floor-to-ceiling windows installed so cleverly that they look like a seamless expanse of glass. It seems familiar, for some reason Cass can't pinpoint, and then she realizes in shock that it is the apartment she dreamed about on the beach in Mexico. The city glitters below them. Beyond it is the dark sweep of the Sound, the ragged edge of black mountains against the star-speckled, moonless sky.

The apartment is packed. “Jesus,” Byron mutters, shrinking back against Cass as she follows him in. She pats his shoulder.
Who
are
these people?
she wonders, these tall and long-limbed people, elegant and beautifully dressed. The four of them look homeless in comparison. Jason lifts his chin defiantly.

But among these people, Maia shines like a star, come into her own. She is radiant, her back straight, her head high. She shrugs the fur coat off her shoulders, and a man is already at her side to take it from her with a little bow; she acknowledges him with a regal tilt of her chin. She searches the room, and then her eyes light up. “He's here,” she says.

He
is the man in the black coat. “No,” Cass says, but it is him, here, real, the skeleton's face and skeleton's hands, the well-cut black suit, the dead black eyes. He is smiling. Jason stands up straighter next to her. The skeleton man walks toward them, toward Cass and Jason, toward Cass and the boy she sold him, the boy who sold himself, and Cass opens her mouth to say something, anything, and then he walks past the both of them, past Percy, past Byron, leaving Cass and Jason with their mouths agape in shock. The man in the black coat holds out his hands to Maia and she takes them, her lips parted, her face turned up to his. And Cass thinks of the painting in the apartment in her dream, the painting of Jason, the girl in the white dress at the edge of the frame, as though she is following him; and Cass understands in an instant what it is she has lost. The man in the black coat kisses Maia softly on the forehead, looks over her shoulder at Cass, and smiles.

Welcome, Cassandra,
he says.
I believe we have a friend in common.

THEN

The sun is so bright for their leaving it feels like an omen. They drive west, west toward the ocean, through miles of deep green woods, silent trees looming overhead. They stop in a roadside diner in a run-down logging town in the late morning and eat pancakes and drink watery black coffee that the cheery waitress keeps refilling. “You girls from around here?” she asks, knowing they'll say no. The diner, has an old photo booth in the back near the bathrooms, and they squeeze in together on its plastic bench, pull shut the faded red velvet drapes, and feed it quarters. Frames one and two, they can't think of anything funny to do and just grin maniacally at the mirror in front of them; frame three, they flip off the camera in unison; frame four, Maia turns to Cass and kisses her impulsively on the mouth, then pulls away quickly after the flash, blushing. Cass looks down at her lap. They wait for the strip of pictures, laugh at themselves in the quartered line of images. Maia tucks the photos in her bag.

They keep driving, windows down, sun pouring in all over them like honey. At last they see the green-and-white signs:
OCEAN BEACHES.
Maia parks the car in a gravel lot by the side of the narrow highway. They can hear the distant roar of breakers.

They walk on a wet trail through the woods, ridges of mud rising around puddles that wink patches of blue sky and leafy green back at them. The earth smells rich and heavy and clean. Birds call at them from the high branches; a squirrel, enraged, scolds them and then darts away. Maia flexes her fingers, thinks of the ache of constant practice leaving her bones, her muscles loosening in the warm weeks ahead. She breathes in deep and holds out her arms, twirling. “Look at us,” she says.

“Look at that,” Cass says, and points at the slice of blue-grey ahead through the trees. “That's the Pacific.” Cass takes off running and Maia follows her, and they crash along the trail and come out at the shoreline, scramble over driftwood, sunbleached logs as big around as boulders, and then they are sprinting flat-out across the stretch of fine grey sand to the ocean's edge. At last, rolling out at their feet all the way to the horizon, the heaving blue mass of it. They are alone on the beach. The sun's high and hot in the sky. Gulls call at them, wheeling on the wind. They could be the only girls left in the world, the two of them, their futures in front of them like a bright ribbon unspooling.

Maia laughs with her mouth open wide, her head thrown back. Bleached hair, blue sky. Cass pulls her shirt off, strips down to her underwear; after a second, Maia does the same. “Oh,” Maia says, and Cass says, “What?” and Maia says, “Towels, we forgot towels,” and Cass says, “Princess, we have the sun, and we will dry ourselves as god intended instead,” and Maia laughs again. When they get back to the car, they'll roll all the windows down again, let the salt breeze in to move across their skins as they head south. The two of them, alone in all the world together. Running not away, but toward. “Are you ready?” Cass asks.

“Yes,” Maia says. “Yes. Let's go.” Cass takes the first step toward the water, and Maia takes her hand.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you: As always, my parents and my extended family, particularly my tireless publicists Aunts Mo and Bernie. Cristina Moracho, the best life partner a Petlet could wish for. Justin Messina, sweetheart and dreamboat, who patiently endured an endless barrage of questions on the nature and habits of classical musicians. Melanie Sanders, amazing friend and equally amazing copyeditor. Friends, cheerleaders, treasures: Hal Sedgwick, Bryan Reedy, Meg Clark, Nathan Bransford, Tahereh Mafi, Mikki Halpin, Kat Howard, Bojan Louis, Neesha Meminger, Kate Zambreno. Brianne Johnson, miracle of agents. Sara Goodman, unicorn among editors. The truly magnificent WORD bookstore in Brooklyn, especially Jenn Northington, Molly Templeton, and Buffy Night. Everyone at St. Martin's who's worked so hard on my books: Jessica Preeg, Sarah Goldstein, Stephanie Davis, Anne Marie Tallberg, Anna Gorovoy, Rafal Gibek, and Olga Grlic. I'm indebted to the inimitable, much-missed Charles Rosen, whose work I had the delight of discovering while writing
Dirty Wings
, and to whom Oscar owes his insistence on detective stories. And thank you, dear reader, from the bottom of my heart.