Perfume (7 page)

Then she thought: What am I restraining myself
for
? I
want
Timmy to know I adore him, don’t I?

So she took off her seat belt and got on her knees and waved at the boys in the car behind.

Laurence made terrible faces, yanking sideways on his throat so he looked as if he had a toothbrush stuck down there, while Timmy simply grinned.

And then, because Timmy was a boy, and would prefer death to driving behind anybody else, Timmy put the pedal to the metal, streaked around Luce, and generally was a menace to everybody dumb enough to be on the road that afternoon.

“What a rotten driver,” observed Luce.

Dove sank back into her seat and thought about first dates and kisses that were not blown in the wind, but set gently on lips.

I
N THE MALL PARKING LOT
, the sun beat on them like a golden whip.

A thousand cars glittered, metal hot enough to burn a hand.

A thousand white-lined slots waited, like unused plots in an asphalt cemetery.

Every fear and every shiver she had ever had, got in the back seat with her. Dove did not want to get out of the car.

There was Laurence, leaping and bounding around, like a dog let out of a kennel. There was Timmy, a maniac in motion, but parked, the epitome of carefulness: locking each door and opening the cardboard sunblock under the windshield. There was Luce, slightly stern, in control. There was Connie, giggly and simpleminded and not in control of a thing.

They were her friends.

And this was just a mall, just a lot of stores gathered indoors.

Just a place where you could shop or not shop. Look or not look.

Dove tried to catch her breath. There did not seem to be enough of it to go around. As if Wing had seized a substantial portion of Dove’s lungs, was at work on Dove’s oxygen, taking Dove’s life and breath.

She wet her lips but they stayed dry. She touched her hair but could not feel it. Vaguely, at great distance, she could hear Connie calling.
Get out, Dove, hurry up, Dove, come on, Dove,
said the voice, over and over.

She bent, and hooked a foot out the front door, and emerged from the back seat of the little tin car.

At the heart of the mall, where stores and halls converged, a high sharp-angled glass roof let in the sun. Inside, trees in stone gardens grew year-round. A fountain tossed water while strange sculptures played games only they understood.

The glass glittered. It struck her eyes like a missile trying to blind her.

It was shaped like a pyramid.

A pyramid of glass, not stone.

Of shoppers, not Egyptian kings.

But nevertheless … a pyramid. Beneath which snakes curled and venom waited.

In her head Wing began to laugh, with the insane intensity of the locked-up.

“Coming, Dove?” said Timmy, smiling.

His hand was extended toward her. Her heart seemed to race right down her own arm and into her own fingers. He would feel it beating when their skin touched.

Part of her was lost in fear of Wing and pyramids.

Part of her was in love with Timmy O’Hay.

She had never held hands with a boy before. She took, his hand as timidly as a child on the first day of kindergarten. The two hands seemed to stick out, as if the world were pointing and laughing and staring.

Dove could not take her eyes off the place where their two bodies met.

Timmy could not look down at all, but kept his eyes on the mall entrance, saying, “Is this the right one? Is this closest to the shoe store?”

“All mall entrances are close to a shoe store,” said Connie. “The mall must have fifty shoe stores.”

“I want to go in the nearest door. I hate walking around the mall,” said Timmy.

Connie stared at him. “That’s the point,” she said. “Walking around the mall is why we’re here.”

A row of dark glass doors with dark metal edges stared at them like huge sunglasses over the mall’s eyes.

Dove swallowed.

Timmy’s hand tightened.

Or was that her imagination?

They entered the wing of the mall.

She had no sooner thought the word
wing
than the word became real, and flapped in her head, and brushed her brain with its terrible feathers.

Dove shook her head hard.

It shook their hands loose, and Timmy didn’t take hers back.

Dove blinked in the soft indoor light. Had the mall always had this strange brown floor? These ancient bricks? Had those weathered stone benches always sat there, and that water garden, with a lotus leaning out of the pot?

From far away she heard her friends’ voices. “Pizza,” they were saying, “french fries, soda.” “Sneakers,” they were saying, “escalator, stairs.”

Dove was still in control of the body they shared. And yet she was tipping backward, into the very far back of the mind. Come back, Dove! She called to herself. Come back here, pay attention, listen up, don’t leave yet!

“What’s your vote?” said Timmy to Dove. He was smiling the friendly but not-too-friendly smile he had, waiting for her cue.

She lurched toward him, grabbing him.

“Sneakers,” she said. Her lips were thick. She had been without water for a hundred years, out there in the desert sand. “No. Soda,” she corrected herself.

They had reached the center of the mall. Above them, the glass pyramid slanted toward the sky.

Wing fluttered in her skull.

“Let’s go find Dry Ice,” said Connie.

“I looked on the Directory when we came in,” said Timmy, frowning slightly, “and I didn’t see a listing for a store named Dry Ice.”

“You probably don’t know the alphabet,” said Luce.

“It’s up here,” said Connie, getting on the escalator, and they all got on the escalator and it drew them higher into the peak of the pyramid.

Dove was out of breath now, although she had done no climbing. The escalator had climbed for her. They seemed to be at a very high altitude, as if they had been climbing mountains in Tibet. The air was thin. Her head swam.

They walked around the third level.

They walked and walked and walked.

I will get blisters, thought Dove. I will have cramps, I will collapse. We must have hiked a hundred miles.

“See?” said Timmy. “What did I tell you? No such store.”

“There has to be,” said Connie. “We go in there all the time. Don’t we, Luce?”

Luce did not answer.

“Don’t we, Dove?” said Connie.

Dove did not answer.

“It’s that store that makes its own fog,” said Connie. “You know! The one where the vapor comes right out into the mall and catches your feet and forces you into the store!”

Timmy laughed. “Right. Just like the sneaker with lace memory.”

“Let’s get a pizza,” said Laurence.

There’s no Dry Ice, thought Dove. Where did it go? Was it ever there?

“There’s something wrong with this picture,” said Connie. Connie did not like being teased.

“You’re just jealous because now Dove is the only girl in the world with
Venom
perfume,” said Timmy. He ruffled Dove’s hair. How soft and affectionate the gesture was. Dove would have given him the world then if she had owned it. How starved she was for affection! She had not even known this fact until Timmy touched her. Her parents could have their phones and their faxes. She wanted affection.

“But hardly the right perfume for a Dove.” Timmy’s voice was soft, and just for her.

Just for me! thought Dove Daniel.

Don’t be a fool, Dove,
said the person in her head.
Nothing is just for you. It never was. There are two of us in here, and just because you hid me away this time doesn’t mean you can always hide me away. There’s plenty of
Venom
where
Venom
came from.

“I left the bottle of perfume in school,” said Dove.

I didn’t,
said Wing.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, DOVE TOOK
a long soothing shower.

She had always loved having her own bathroom. Such delicious privacy and peace. How sorry Dove was for her friends who shared bathrooms with brothers and sisters and parents.

Can you imagine, Dove thought to herself, luxuriating under the hot pounding water, how awful it must be? Every morning, whining voices screaming through the bathroom door at you?
Hurry! My turn! You used up the toothpaste!

Dove arched into the hot shower, letting it massage the back of her neck. It was true that water washed away cares. Here in the little pink-tiled box of the shower there was nothing but skin and water. Nothing but peace pouring down.

I’ve never had to share with anybody, thought Dove contentedly.

It felt as if an iron wrench tightened inside her skull, turning her brain as if it were a bolt.

“Aaaaaahhhh!” she screamed. “Stop!” she screamed. “What are you doing? You’re hurting me!”

I have a tumor, she thought. Or somebody shot me. My skull just opened up. She clung to the shower curtain. She was blind with pain. The shower curtain was nothing. It slipped from her hands and she fell to the tile floor, cracking her elbows.

“That’s the point, Dovey,” said Wing viciously. “You
never
shared. I was in here all the time and
you never shared
. Never asked. Never
cared
.”

Dove tried to breathe. But the pain had tightened around her chest as well. The tiny panting puffs of air hardly helped at all. She was sobbing now, but the tears washed down the drain with the shower water. “You didn’t tell me you were there,” cried Dove. “How was I supposed to know I had a sister?”

“You don’t have a sister,” said Wing. Her voice came out like sandpaper against Dove’s throat.

“Then who are you?” whispered Dove. I am beaten, she thought. I am a naked, cowering, shivering piece of skin lying under water.

“I am you,” said Wing.

“You can’t be me!
I’m
me.”

Wing said nothing. She had said all there was to say.

The pain ceased. Her throat was no longer sore. Her lungs worked.

Dove clung to the sides of the shower and hauled herself upright. It seemed the work of centuries to find the handle, turn off the water, step out of the shower. The mat on the floor felt soft and cottony and ordinary under her bare feet. She chose the largest towel, a beach towel, really, and wrapped herself in it.

Like a mummy, thought Dove. This is the shroud they will bury me in. Wing is going to kill me.

The mirror was fogged up. The blurry pale face and misty dark hair could have been anybody. Maybe it is anybody, thought Dove. Maybe anybody could come into my body and live there.

What terrible power that perfume had, that it could open the body to invasions by other souls. How was it that Wing had lain quiet and unknown for fifteen years, only to be released by the perfume? Did this happen to other people? It had not happened to Mr. Phinney. Luce and Connie and Laurence and Timmy seemed to be single people in single bodies.

Dove dressed. Buttons did not go into buttonholes and the blouse did not tuck in and the pocket would not lie flat and the sneaker would not lace. Dove’s fingers were stiff and uncoordinated. She could not blame that on Wing. They were still her fingers; Wing had not taken them over. Not yet, anyway. But her fingers felt the fear and shrank back.

The double beat in her heart returned.

Who is me? thought Dove. Is Wing me? Am I me?

Her head had lost its balance. Her thoughts were tipping over. She had to hold onto the banister to get down the gray-carpeted stairs. Otherwise her body would have lost its balance, too.

She did not pause for breakfast. It would be Wing’s appetite she catered to, Wing’s stomach she filled. She, Dove, would go right on being hungry and dizzy.

Instead she hoisted her book bag, unable to recall if she had done her homework, and dragged herself outside. I’ll feel normal outside, she told herself. Outside there will be sunshine and neighbors, school buses and delivery trucks, red lights and coffee shops.

But outside, the fog crouched thick, ready to pounce, like a world-sized Dry Ice. Pushing at its gray veils, Dove staggered through. “Hello?” she called out. “Hello?”

Nobody answered.

Did anybody else live in these condominiums?

Did even Dove live here?

Why was it so silent? So terribly silent?

Fragments of buildings loomed up in front of her and fell away behind her. The sound of car engines rumbled in the distance, but no headlights and no vehicles appeared. It could have been thunder, a storm miles away. But no. The thunder was inside her head.

“Wing, please,” mumbled Dove. “Stop it. Please, please, please stop it.” Wing was doing something different, something heavy and cruel, as if she had boulders in there, and could block openings of caves with them. My head, thought Dove, my poor head. I can’t keep carrying it around if all these things are going to go wrong up there.

“Hi, Dove Bar!” shrieked Luce.

Dove stared.

“My car wouldn’t start,” yelled Luce. “We’re taking the bus this morning, too. Isn’t that the pits?” Luce, hurling her book bag onto the pavement, bounded up to Dove. “I mean, aren’t there just some days where you just absolutely positively cannot believe that this is your life?”

Dove’s laugh was hysterical. “Frequently,” said Dove. She went on laughing, and the laugh became normal and stopped at the right time. Dove felt as if she might have another chance at being human. She laughed again, testing, and the laugh worked. Dove tried a joke line. “I hope there was nothing breakable in your book bag, Luce.”

“No. I always throw it down instead of setting it down. I’m trying to destroy the bag so I have a reason to buy a new one, but it’s one of those incredibly strong poly-something fabrics that stand up to arctic winds and tiger teeth. My great-grandchildren will probably carry their books in it.”

Dove had hoped too soon for normalcy. Wing had been making preparations. She was flying around in the mind with such strength that she was going to take off. Dove’s head felt as if it were detaching.

Dove set down her book bag more carefully than Luce had and locked her fingers together, resting the weight of her hands and arms on the top of her hair. Otherwise, my head will come off, she thought.