Perfume (8 page)

“You haven’t called me up in days,” said Luce. “What’s the matter with you, Dove Bar? There’s so much to talk about. What do you think about Timmy? I think Timmy likes you. I think he’s going to ask you out. He was sort of flirting with you.”

Hands were not heavy enough. Dove set her book bag on top of her head, like an African woman carrying water from the well. There. That felt much better. Even Wing could not conquer such weight. “Dove,” said Luce, giggling, “has anybody ever told you that you are getting very weird these days?”

“No,” said Dove. She tried balancing the book bag without holding onto it. But that was too much balancing for somebody whose brain has been shoveled into a corner to make room for another person. Teetering, she managed to get on the yellow school bus and drop into a seat next to Luce, who chattered endlessly.

Mr. Phinney was absent.

The substitute said she was very very very sorry, but Mr. Phinney had not left a lesson plan and so the children were to be very very very quiet and work very very very hard on whatever readings they had previously been assigned.

Another very very very person, thought Dove. I vote we get rid of that trio.

Wing was laughing. Dove could tell from the way her brain shook.
I did it!
cried Wing silently.
I knew I could do it with my
Venom.
His vanished twin took over! He’s destroyed!

What vanished twin? You are imagining things! He’s just absent, thought Dove.

No, he’s ruined
, said Wing.

Not everybody has a vanished twin, you know.

It’s probably coincidence, thought Dove. She could feel Wing’s shock. The sudden quiet, the abrupt end of Wing’s dancing with joy.

Not everybody has a vanished twin?
repeated Wing.

Course not, said Dove. She said it in such a way that nobody could argue with her, because what if Dove were wrong? What if the whole world could possibly be invaded? What if every single living human body had a door through which, given the right set of circumstances, another soul could enter? Could take up residence as easily as buying another condominium?

You’re wrong
, said Wing with fury.
You’re wrong! Everybody has a vanished twin! There are billions of waiting twins like me, trapped inside, trying to get free!

Nope, thought Dove. There’s only you.

She was an actress now, keeping her manner certain and upbeat. Allowing no fear to escape. Trying to con Wing.

The biology teacher was right after all, she thought, and Laurence was wrong. The brain
is
in layers. Wing does not have them all; some of them are still mine. I can listen to two different people talking inside my own head. Yet at the same time I have separate thoughts, and Wing must also have separate thoughts, so she has a layer of my very own brain that
I
don’t have access to!

“Playing with us?” said Timmy.

Dove stared at him.

“I hate when you have that expression on your face, Dove,” said Hesta. “You look as if you’re dead in there.”

Dove stared at Hesta.

Hesta giggled. “Now you look homicidal.” She flounced while sitting down, making a big deal of ignoring Dove from now on. “Here, you go first, Timmy. We don’t want to play with Dove.”

“Yes, we do,” said Timmy. “Hangman’s more fun with three.”

For one horrible moment, Dove again saw her head coming off. Saw both herself and Wing in the skull, as the noose tightened and their shared body swung from the gibbet. No! thought Dove, please no!

She was trying not to scream. I’d rather live with Wing than have a hangman—

Timmy put a pencil in her hand and said, “Hesta’s first.”

It was only the word game. Hangman. On Timmy’s desk was a large blank piece of paper with a primitive gibbet drawn toward the top of the page. Hesta had chosen a word with five letters. Under the gibbet she had pencilled the blank lines for the right letter guesses: _ _ _ _ _.

Dove already knew what it was. It could not be anything else. Dove did not even bother to call out a letter choice, but just filled in the blanks.

V
E
N
O
M.

“How did you know?” cried Hesta. She was angry and frustrated and also a little frightened.

“Weird,” said Timmy, looking at Dove with strange eyes. His eyes had a new shape and a new thought, and Dove did not know what either one was. Except he kept looking at her and did not look back at Hesta.

Dove managed to smile. Timmy seemed to have no trouble smiling back. The smiles trembled, like little children alone in the park.

Dove’s eyes dropped. Timmy’s eyes turned to the window.

Their eyes swung back, met, dropped again, and they both giggled breathlessly.

“Hey,” said Luce suddenly, “what do you think you’re doing?”

Dove could not wrench her eyes off Timmy to see what Luce was talking about. He was too handsome, too fascinating, too wonderful.

Hesta said, “Oooh, lemme try some, Dove.”

Dove heard her as if through valleys of fog. Nothing important, just Hesta noise-making. Who on this earth deserved Dove’s attention but Timmy O’Hay?

Timmy’s smile became stronger, more certain … more inviting.

Hesta said, “I thought you left it on Mr. Phinney’s desk yesterday, Dove Bar, but here it is in your purse.”

“Dove didn’t say you could go into her purse,” accused Luce.

Hesta laughed. “If I had asked, she would have said no, so I just went in anyway.” Hesta dug into the small slender bag and removed a small glistening object.

Now Dove turned.

Now Dove knew the danger.

Now her eyes focused and her ears heard.

Every muscle in Dove’s body contracted.

I mustn’t breathe, she thought, I must get out of here.

Cramped among the yanked-tight muscles, Wing began laughing. The laugh grew into a roar, like jet engines during takeoff, and filled every available molecule of Dove’s brain and thought.

Hesta pulled the stopper out of the bottle of
Venom
.

Dove struggled to her feet. Wing pushed her back down. Dove did not breathe. Wing fought her way up the throat.

Hesta swung the bottle gently to waft the scent into the room.

Timmy said, “Dove?” His smile was eager, boyish, special. Dove wanted that smile more than anything. It was hers, that smile, it was not directed at anybody else in the world.

Dove shivered inside, outside, upside down. She breathed deeply, wanting love, wanting affection, wanting a boyfriend. And all those were only inches and moments away. “Timmy?” she whispered.

“I’m—uh—well—going to a hot air balloon festival Saturday morning. It’s really early.”

“Yes,” said Dove, breathing again. Nothing will happen, she told herself, people in love are safe from bad things, I’m sure of it.

“I mean really early,” said Timmy. Their eyes were locked. “We have to be there at six
A.M.
Because they can only take off in the dawn atmosphere.”

“Yes,” said Dove.

“It’s really beautiful, Dove,” said Timmy, eyes on fire. “There’ll be seventy-five huge balloons. As brightly colored as Christmas tree decorations, sailing in the sky.”

Dove would have gone to a gathering of garbage trucks if that was what Timmy wanted to do. At
three
in the morning.

Joy requires a deep breath. A wonderful satisfying date with oxygen. Dove was laughing now, nodding, smiling, filling her lungs …

… with
Venom
.

“You don’t see everything when you’re not using the body,” explained Wing out loud, using Dove’s mouth, Dove’s lips, Dove’s tongue. “So you didn’t see me yesterday taking the perfume bottle back off Mr. Phinney’s desk and putting it in your purse.”

Dove was falling backward, deep, deep, deep down. The dizzy plunge knocked away all thoughts, all speech … all hope.

“So will you come?” said Timmy anxiously.

Hesta stuck her face between them, but Dove could not see her very clearly. “What do you mean, ‘you don’t see everything,’ Dove?” said Hesta.

“Of course I’ll come, Timmy,” said Wing.

No, no, please!
cried Dove, as gagged as if there were tape over her mouth.
Timmy asked
me
Wing,
I’m
the one going with Timmy!

But I’m the one who accepted the invitation,
said Wing. Her cruel smile lit the inside of her head like green neon at the end of a gloomy tunnel.

“Great,” said Timmy, taking the hand he thought was Dove’s. He beamed at the girl he thought was Dove. “Who knows what could happen at an event like this?” he said, flirting with the girl he thought was Dove.

“Indeed,” said the girl who was Wing. “Who knows?”

“L
UCE?” SAID WING INTO THE
telephone. “It’s Dove.”

She knows the telephone numbers I know, thought Dove, and the people I know. Wing could just paint me out if she wants.
Why don’t you just tell her you’re Wing?
said Dove bitterly.

Later
, Wing said.
I’m going to be using your friends until I make friends of my own. So for now, I’ll stick with your name.

“Hi, Dove Bar,” said Luce, pleased to be called up. Her friendly familiar voice came through wires into Dove’s house, and vibrated in Dove’s room—but entered Wing’s ear. It isn’t my conversation, thought Dove, it isn’t my friendship anymore. It’s like a cousin once removed: It’s too far out there to be sure of.

“I cannot stand a single piece of clothes in this closet,” Wing told Luce, which was true. She had held up, thrown on the floor, and stomped on every outfit Dove owned.
Dull namby-pamby pastel junk!
Wing had raged.
You expect me to wear this in public?

Dove could have wept at the destruction of her soft and sweet clothing. At the very least, she wanted to look away—but she could look only where Wing looked, and Wing looked with satisfaction at the tornado she had caused.

“May I come over and borrow some of your clothes, Luce?” said Wing.

“Absolutely!” cried Luce. “I can’t wait to dress you. You’ve always needed a new look, Dovey.”

Wing smirked.
What did I tell you?
she said to Dove.
Even your best friend has always thought you’re pathetic.

Dove ached. What if everybody liked Wing better than they had liked Dove? What if even Mother and Father liked Wing better than Dove? It was not impossible. Didn’t Mother still dream of the vanished twin, flying strong and free?

The ache in Dove had no center, because she had no body. It was everywhere, overwhelming and yet invisible.

Like strong perfume.

They entered Luce’s house.

I think of me in plural now, thought Dove. We do things, things happen to us, things are ours. I don’t want to be two! she thought. I don’t want a twin! I want to be me.

Wing chose a black shirt with a pattern of silver threads like morning dew. Its sleeves clung at the wrist and bagged at the elbow. She tugged on black pants, ending tightly at the calf, and black lace knee-high stockings to go under them. A pair of black sneakers with scarlet jewels glued on. Half gypsy, half witch, totally different.

“You never wear stuff like this, Dovey,” said Luce, delighted, of course, that Dove was finally acquiring fashion sense.

Wing smirked.

Dove was even more detached from her body. It truly was somebody else’s now: clothed in somebody else’s taste and somebody else’s colors. Wing was the one who pirouetted in front of the mirror, and Wing was the one who picked out the long, thin, silver-and-crystal earrings.

“I got them from a catalog,” said Luce eagerly. “They’re supposed to be what Egyptian queens wore.”

“They’re not,” said Wing.

Dove shuddered, for Wing actually knew, because Wing had been there. What if she takes me back there? thought Dove. What if the
Venom
runs out … and instead of leaving me to my life … she takes me with her into the past and the evil?

Her shudder annoyed Wing, who hit the side of her head to stop the itch.

“That’s such a weird habit you’ve developed,” said Luce. “Hitting your head like that.”

Way inside, behind the eyes, Dove saw how Wing looked at Luce, despising her. Luce was nothing but a creature from whom to borrow accessories. In this sweet friend, Wing saw no personality, no frailties, no strengths, no goodness, no nothing—just a body.

But then, that was all Wing saw when she looked at Mother.

A maternal body.

Not a real mother, who loved and was loved, who was completely predictable and yet a mystery.

Just a maternal body, a carrier, a wage earner, a car driver.

Dove could not look at the world like that. It was too horrible, too futile and pointless.

Wing left without saying thank you, of course, and Luce tagged along momentarily, hoping for a normal conversation about Timmy, and the date, and where it would lead, and what would happen. But Wing was no longer interested in Luce and did not waste time talking to her. Luce was left standing in her doorway, confused and hurt.

Wing was not using the mouth, and Dove, because it was her friend standing there so pitifully, called back, “Thanks, Luce! See you Monday! I’ll tell you all about it then!”

Wing burst out laughing, and their two noises were frightening, a cacophony of unrelated sound.

“Do you know what I’m going to do tomorrow?” said Wing to Dove. “On this little date of yours? With your dull little boyfriend?”

Dove did not know what a viper would find enticing.

“I don’t know yet,” said Wing, “but it will be something dramatic. Your life is too boring for me. I want action.”

Timmy picked her—or was it them?—up at five
A.M.

It was still rather dark, and he had stopped at the convenience store for two coffees to go. He was driving his father’s new car, and was full of pride at having been allowed to take it for the morning.

Wing pricked up at this; here was a vulnerable place; the car, perhaps Wing’s drama could be through the car, which Timmy, of course, had promised to take perfect care of.