“Let’s do it in one,” says the red-headed man, and Marfisa shrugs. He flips up the tails of his long green coat and perches on a round stool before a keyboard balanced on a couple of sawhorses. She turns to face the soft black bulb of the microphone in a spidery clamp up about her head, a circle of fine black mesh held before it on a twisty plastic arm. “Just like we said,” he says, and crooks his back fingers wiggling over keys a moment before falling. Simple chords march out one by one to lay down the bones of a melody, and when they double back a little more certain she takes a breath and then another and begins to sing.
“You want us to call you what?” says the woman with the short dark hair, curled up in a corner of the couch along the back wall of the dim studio booth.
“The. Blue. Streak.” The kid snaps off each word in its own little bubble of speech. He’s wrapped around a big-bellied acoustic guitar at the other end of the couch.
“I mean for short. Do we call you, I don’t know, ‘The’?”
“Blue’s fine,” says the kid.
“She means it’s stupid,” says the bald man sitting on a stool before the control board. “You want to shut up a minute?” Through the thick glass wall Marfisa’s holding her hands up around either side of her microphone as if to keep a candle from blowing out.
“What’s stupid?” says the kid. “Why do we have to call him John Wharfinger?” The red-headed man’s eyes are closed, his left hand marching still along the keys, his right hand stuttering, hanging above them, sprinkling notes. “Not just John. Always John Wharfinger.”
“There’s a lot of Johns,” says the bald-headed man.
“Not in the band,” says the kid. “And I’m not even gonna get started on your name.”
“What,” says the woman, “Otto?” as the bald man says “It’s a family name. Now would the both a you shut up and listen?” He turns up the volume on the monitors. Marfisa’s voice is pure and clear and cold and she’s singing “There are signs in our sky that the darkness is gone, and tokens in endless array–” and it takes all she has left just to hold that word aloft, and her wide open eyes aren’t seeing the foam sound baffles on the wall before her as she sways there just her curls the color of clotted cream bound in a thick rope down the length of her back. “For the storm which had seemingly banished the dawn,” her voice hushed now under those implacable chords from the red-headed man’s left hand, “only hastens the advent of day,” and as the chords step over into a new key she lifts her head and lies her heart out: “The good time coming is almost here, oh! It was long, long, long on the way!”
“Jesus,” breathes the woman.
“Wow,” says the kid.
“Now run and tell ’lijah to hurry up Pomp,” sings Marfisa, “and meet us at the gum-tree down in the swamp, for to wake Nicodemus today–”
“Wake Nicodemus!” written by Henry Clay Work, in the public domain.
His eyes pop open madly jerking about. He’s stretched out on the narrow back seat his black suit coat draped over him like a blanket, squirming under it, huffing, fighting to free his arms. Up in the front seat Mr. Keightlinger leans one arm along the back of it offering a huge plastic cup filled with bright blue slushie. Mr. Charlock grabs it and greedily sucks it down with long cheek-hollowing pulls at the straw until the cup gurgles. He wedges the cup between his knees and delicately presses his fingertips to his temples, trying a number of grips, index and ring, ring and pinkie, thumbs and middle, thumbs alone, until he shivers and doubles over in a coughing fit, hacking something blue and sticky into a handkerchief. “Fuck me,” he says. “It was easier when I couldn’t get in.” He sniffs, pokes the straw around the cup, slurps at what’s left. “Que hora?”
“Noon’s half gone,” says Mr. Keightlinger.
“Shit.”
“You needed the sleep. Relax. They’re coming back from Erne’s.”
“What I need,” says Mr. Charlock, “is a long hot shower. Gets warm like it’s supposed to today? You do not want to smell what I got going on. And the crick in my neck.”
“Was it worthwhile?”
“Last night?” Mr. Charlock shrugs. “Whatever they had’s still gone. The Chariot or whoever can mope about whichever damn door he wants and as long as I’m bounded in a nutshell done up by a joiner squirrel and drawn by a team of redundant little atomies, I can get in there whichever night you please. Just, please. Make it a night she’s had it good and long and hard first, okay? My ribs feel like they was kicked in by red shoes.”
“Oh?”
“It is positively sticky up there.”
“I should call in,” says Mr. Keightlinger.
“Because Lord knows we should fail to report their clockwork-like assignations with the dreadful Erne.” Mr. Charlock drops the plastic cup on the floorboard among a litter of fast food wrappers and empty cups and paper sacks, then grabs the back of the front seat and starts to haul himself over. “Remember the, the old days?” he says. “Letters in gentlemen’s magazines? Bulletins hidden, in misspelled roadside signs?” He ducks his head and rolls his back into the front seat, his feet swinging around, brushing the window-glass. “Took so long,” he says, wriggling himself upright, “it’s a wonder anything, we ever got anything done at all.”
“We still do all of that.”
“Yeah, but,” says Mr. Charlock, smoothing his tie, pointing out the window toward the pay phone there by the yellow Pay Here box, “those things are fuckin’ wizard, you know? And they’re ripping ’em out. All over the place. Everybody’s got the cell phones or whatever. No money left in ’em. And here’s me thinking, strategizing, you know, open-ended detail that we’re on, what do we do if they rip that one out before she moves on?”
Mr. Keightlinger opens the driver’s side door with a popping squonk. “We plant a new one,” he says, climbing out of the car.
“Huh,” says Mr. Charlock. “I suppose that could work.”
The long thin bundle in her arms wrapped in towels Jo’s standing just inside the doorway, at the top of the stairs leading down by the switchback of the access ramp. She’s looking out over the checkstands, the florist stand off to the side, the aisles of groceries. Signs over on the far wall say Signature Café and Great Lunches and Ready Meats. There’s a very large photo of some cold cuts and cheese. The ceiling’s a maze of ductwork painted white and struts and there hanging over the top of the stairs a big flatscreen television displaying in full color the entryway to the supermarket, Jo standing just inside the doorway in her careworn jacket, army-green, eyeing the television, in her arms a long thin bundle wrapped in towels. “Maybe we should come back later,” she says. “We can pick it all up after work, I guess. Except, fuck. Laundry.”
“Can I at least get some coffee?” says Ysabel, her hand on the stair rail. The green sign that says Starbucks is at the other end of the store by the deli counter. A uniformed security guard’s leaning on the florist’s counter, laughing at something she said. The guard’s shoulder patch says Safeway Loss Prevention.
“I don’t think so,” says Jo.
“It won’t even take two minutes,” says Ysabel.
“I’ll just,” says Jo, shifting the bundle in her arms, turning back toward the door, “I’ll wait outside.”
Ysabel walks down the stairs into the store, tight faded jeans tucked into oxblood boots, a brown leather bomber jacket over a tight cropped leopard-print tank top. Clear crystal flashes from the gold pin piercing her navel. Necklaces dangle and clatter, amber beads and gold links, a little golden bee, a winking rainbowed eye, a gaudy crucifix. A soft brown fedora on her black black hair. Her lop-sided grin made it so hard to win, sings a voice over unseen speakers somewhere up among the ducts and struts, all right you are, and your promises are just promises, but a sinister little wave of her hand–
The woman behind the Starbucks counter wears a dark blue shirt and a dark blue visor and a green apron and a badge that says Petra B. Her hair’s short, though her bangs are long enough to brush the corners of her jaw, and her glasses have thick black rims. “What can I get you?” says Petra B.
“I would like,” says Ysabel, leaning her forearms on the counter, heels of her hands pressed together, “a large,” looking up at the menu board, “vanilla latte.”
“Large,” says Petra B. “Do you mean tall, grande, or venti?”
“Which is the large?” says Ysabel. “The biggest?”
“The venti.”
“Then I would like a venti vanilla latte,” says Ysabel.
“That’ll be three sixty-nine,” says Petra B.
“Is there more than one Petra?” says Ysabel. “Your nametag,” she adds, as Petra B looks up from the cash register.
“It’s my name.”
“And it’s a delightful name,” says Ysabel. “But why not just Petra? Why Petra B?”
“We’ve reached the point in the transaction where you need to give me money.” Petra B’s smile is pursed and knowing and a dark rich red.
“Hadn’t you ought to make me the coffee, first?”
“You’re supposed to pay first. That’s how it’s supposed to go.”
“But that won’t do at all. What if I don’t like it? You’ll have my money, and I’ll be stuck with a very large cup of coffee that I won’t want to drink.”
“Have you ever had a Starbucks vanilla latte before? Did you like it?”
Ysabel shrugs and nods her head to one side and says “Yes.”
“Well there you go.”
“But maybe you’re not very good at making them? I’m just saying.”
Petra B draws herself up and back with exaggerated dismay. “Is that what you think?”
“Tell me something, Petra B,” says Ysabel, the middle finger of her right hand idly scribing a circle on the countertop. Her short neat nails painted gold sparkle under a glossy shell. “Do you think I’m beautiful?”
“What?” says Petra B.
“Am I beautiful, do you think? Am I attractive? Good-looking? Would you say, in your opinion, that I’m, well, gorgeous? That I turn heads and stop traffic?”
“You’re, uh,” says Petra B, “striking?”
“Striking,” says Ysabel, a wry twist to her mouth. “That’s almost as bad as handsome.”
“I didn’t mean,” says Petra B, alarmed, but Ysabel’s saying, “Let me be more direct” and she hitches up on her toes leaning heels of her hands on the countertop now lifting herself that much closer to Petra B whose rich red lips aren’t so much smiling anymore, are quivering a little, her eyes behind those glasses darting from Ysabel’s eyes to Ysabel’s mouth and back. “Do you find me desirable?” says Ysabel, quietly.
“I don’t know,” says Petra B, too quickly.
“Do you want me?” says Ysabel.
And Petra B opens her mouth to say something, and maybe she’s about to nod, when Ysabel tilts her head and lifts it for a kiss.
For a moment they stand there, Ysabel swooped up against the counter, Petra B arched over it, her hands held out uselessly to either side, only their lips touching, and then Petra B sighs into the kiss her shoulders relaxing, her mouth opening over Ysabel’s mouth, her hands fluttering down to light on Ysabel’s arm on the fleecy collar of Ysabel’s jacket jerking as if burned then gingerly settling again. Ysabel breaks the kiss, and Petra B eyes closed behind those glasses rests her forehead against Ysabel’s until Ysabel pulls back just a little. “Now,” she says, smiling. Resettling her hat. “Make me that large vanilla latte.”
Nodding Petra B steps over to the espresso machine. Ysabel stoops to peer at her reflection in the side of the cash register. Petra B’s pouring clear syrup into a large white paper cup. Ysabel’s smoothing a corner of her lipsticked mouth with her pinkie nail. The milk’s foaming under the steam wand. “Whipped cream?” says Petra B.
“No,” says Ysabel straightening, “maybe I’ll put on a little nutmeg. Do you smoke?”
“What?” says Petra B. “No, I mean, I could, I guess. I’ve never. Here.” She hands over the latte. “Will I see you again?”
Ysabel carefully takes a sip. “Not bad,” she says. “Not bad. Thanks.”
A hand slaps a five-dollar bill on the counter, a hand in a grubby fingerless bicycle glove. “Keep the change,” says Roland. His jagged green sunglasses like pieces of broken bottle.
“Oh, no,” says Petra B. “That’s not necessary.”
“You’re not needed here,” says Ysabel, her voice low, her eyes narrowed.
“Where’s Jo?” says Roland.
“She didn’t want any coffee. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Really,” says Petra B. “It’s okay.”
“Go on, miss.”
“Go away, Roland.”
“Miss, please. Take the money.”
“Roland.”
“It’s okay. Really.”
The hand in the bicycle glove crumples into a fist over the five-dollar bill still flat on the counter.
“Chariot,” says Ysabel.
Out on the corner before the doors to the supermarket Jo’s smoking a cigarette, the long thin bundle up on one shoulder, her free hand draped over it for balance. Across the street a blocky bunker of a building, pale red brick, a sign that says Christian Science Reading Room. Down the block a construction site, a condo tower, lower levels sleeked with new green glass. A panel truck snorts past. Staples, says the big red sign on its side. That was easy. She turns just as behind her Roland stiff-arms the crashbar of the big glass doors to the supermarket bursting out onto the sidewalk to stand there in a crisp white track suit with green piping, his blue and white headphones down around his neck. “Roland,” says Jo, and he looks up to see her there, “hey,” says Jo, “I’ve been meaning to ask,” and he’s walking toward her, “about Ray, I mean, how do I get a hold of him,” and his gloved hand’s coming up balled in a loose fist, “do you have a what’s that?” and is planted squarely against her chest. There’s something inside. She sticks the cigarette between her lips and tugs out the five-dollar bill. “What’s this for?”
“Figure it out,” snaps Roland, and he walks away.
“Well?” calls Jo after a moment. “Do you have a phone number for him or something? Huh? Nice to see you too, asshole!”
“What was that about?” says Ysabel behind her, sipping from a large cup of coffee. Jo’s stuffing the money into her pocket. “Fucked if I know,” she says. “Let’s go dump this shit and get ready for work, huh?”
In the tub Ysabel’s lifting a dripping calf from steaming water, slicking it with a soapy hand. In her other hand a molded pink safety razor. On the side of the tub a translucent white teacup its rim smudged with red lipstick and a pink and white My Little Pony lunchbox. A half-smoked cigarette smolders by a black smear of ash on a yellowed saucer. “I don’t know,” she says, drawing the razor up along her leg. “He wanted to pay for my coffee.” The door to the bathroom’s half-open. Music’s floating in from the main room, a guitar, a woman singing like laughing with liquid in your mouth, like you’re choosing between laughing and spitting it all out. “Guess that explains the money,” says Jo. “Sort of.”
She’s squatting on the futon sorting through wadded-up T-shirts, tossing black ones to one end, anything with color over there, a couple white ones dropped beside her. Farmers & Mechanics Bank says one, and Mykle Systems Labs says another. One of the black ones has a big red devil’s face on it, sticking out his tongue. She’s wearing a white one with a ragged collar and yellowing armpits that says This is Not a Slogan in scrawled Sharpie letters. “I get that he’s keeping an eye on you? I get that.” She frees a grey T-shirt printed with a colorful tangle of luchadores and ninjas, dithers with it a moment over the black pile before chucking it over with the colored T-shirts.
“There was a but in that,” calls Ysabel from the bathroom.
“But,” says Jo. “His timing? Fucking sucks. He shows up to try and buy your coffee? Where the hell was he when, when whatever the fuck it was tried to jump us on the MAX, huh?” She roots around one of the blond wood crates and pulls out a pair of black jeans, reaches inside to disentangle a pair of white underwear. “Damn sight more useful than a five-dollar bill. Are you gonna be in there all night? It’s already ten after.”
“So?”
“So they lock down the laundry room at midnight, and the Safeway closes at midnight, and we didn’t go shopping before work like we were going to, and we didn’t do laundry last night because you just had to see the Girl From Mars show–”
“Which was a great show,” says Ysabel. Water sloshes as she shifts in the tub, reaching down for her cigarette.
“Which it was, but that’s beside the point. We can’t keep spending five bucks on a cup of coffee because there’s nothing but dust in the Taster’s Choice jar.”
“It’s hardly the same thing,” mutters Ysabel, cigarette on her lips, lifting her other leg from the water.
“So are you gonna be getting out of there any time soon?” Jo’s stuffing her piles of clothing into a big beige canvas sack. The boom box on the floor by the futon’s playing a new song, a lonely fuzzed electric guitar, a woman’s high and reedy voice singing if the sun shines but approximately? What a world of awkwardness! What hostile implements of sense!
“Let me ask you something, Jo,” says Ysabel, slicking her calf with soap, laying the cigarette back on its saucer, taking up the molded pink razor. “Do you believe in love?”
Jo’s sitting there, the mouth of the canvas sack in one hand and her white T-shirts and underwear in the other. “Do I what?” she says. “What the hell has that got to do with any damn thing?”
“It’s a simple question,” says Ysabel. “Do you believe in love?”
“We don’t have time for this,” says Jo, yanking the sack’s drawstring.
“What was his name?” More sloshing. “Frankie? You never talk about him.”
“Love is bullshit, okay? Now you want to get out of the fucking tub?”
“So that’s a no, then?”
“It’s a glandular thing,” says Jo, her hands up, agitated, “that evolved so we could stand being around somebody else long enough to, to–”
“See,” says Ysabel, “I think you’re only saying that because you’ve been in love, and now you’re not.”
“I was not in love with him,” mutters Jo, as Ysabel’s saying, “Now, I’ve never been in love, yet I can’t help but believe in it. I see it all around me, every day. It’s why Roland does what he does.”
“Never?” says Jo, still sitting on the futon, elbows on her knees. “So you and Marfisa, that was, what? You never talk about her.”
“Shit!” says Ysabel. “Ow.”
“What’s wrong?” says Jo, looking up and over toward the half-closed bathroom door.
“Cut myself,” says Ysabel.
“Well, that’s what you,” says Jo, and then as she’s climbing to her feet “Oh, God,” and stumbling over the black spear-haft on the floor past the glass-topped café table she bursts through the bathroom door to see Ysabel leaning forward in the tub one leg propped up on the rim of it looking up, licking her thumb and pressing it to a little yellowing gash on the swell of her calf there below her knee. “You’re,” says Jo, “you’re okay.”
“It’s just a cut, Jo,” says Ysabel, her other arm up to cover her breasts.
“You cut yourself,” says Jo, still in the doorway, staring, “I’m here, and you cut yourself, and,” but Ysabel’s started laughing. “Oh, Jo, poor Jo,” she says, throwing back her head, her heavy damp black curls plopping against the water. “No no no. This is not a battlefield, sweet Gallowglas.”
Jo sighs. “We, uh. Were sort of fighting.”
Ysabel lifts her thumb slick with something thick and milky to her lips and licks it clean. “You thought I was done for. Gone down to dust. And you came running.” She presses her thumb back against the slowly reddening cut. “You do care.”
“I’m gonna,” says Jo, stepping out of the doorway, into the main room. “I’ll take the laundry down. Set it up.” Rustle of cloth, jangle of keys. “Go to the fucking Safeway and put them in the dryer when I get back.” She’s back in the doorway now, in her careworn jacket, army-surplus green, the canvas sack slung over her shoulder. “You stay put, heal, get clean, whatever the fuck, just don’t leave the apartment.”
“You’re leaving me alone.”
“Shit’s gotta get done,” says Jo. “It’ll only take an hour or so. And you aren’t going anywhere. And you can always call for Roland if you need to, right?”
Ysabel’s folded her arms on the rim of the tub, leaning her chin on her crossed wrists. “You don’t have anything of mine in that bag, do you.”
“I am not sorting your laundry, Ysabel,” says Jo. “More’n half of it’s dry-clean only anyway.”
“Could you at least wash some of my underwear?”
Jo snorts. “I’ll buy you some Woolite. You can slosh ’em around with you the next time you take a bath.” She jerks open the door to the apartment and slams it shut behind her.
Ysabel reaches down for the cigarette, looks at what’s left of it there between her fingers, then stubs it out on the saucer. She climbs out of the tub and heads dripping over to the bathroom doorway, standing there, staring at the door to the apartment.
Then she walks back to the tub, scooping up the towel that’s draped over the back of the toilet. Patting her face, her chest, drying her hands, she crouches by the tub and opens the pink and white My Little Pony lunchbox. There among the jumbled muddle of bottles of nail polish and lipsticks pots of scrubs is a small glass jar, half-filled with a viscous, milky fluid, frothed with tiny bubbles at the top, touched with just a hint of warm yellow gold.
“Sinister (But She was Happy)” written by Robyn Hitchcock, ©1996 August 23rd Music. “Falling is Like This” written by Ani DiFranco, ©1994 Righteous Babe Records. “The World and I” written by Laura (Riding) Jackson, ©1938.
On her back on the bed in the dark her pale hair still in its thick rope of a ponytail draped over one shoulder soaks up what little light it can. Her knees drawn up together tipped over to one side, her little black dress rucked up about her hips, her feet bare. Her eyes closed. It’s a round room with casement windows all around cranked open to the sound of rain. Cardboard boxes full of clothes stacked here and there, and more clothing strewn about the bare wood floor. The table by the bedside’s a scrolled marble top balanced on a single fluted pedestal leg. A little blue glass reading lamp, dark, an alarm clock, a flimsy balloon of a wineglass with a small dark puddle at its bottom. A paperback book turned over, splayed open, says The Wounded Sky on its spine. She opens her eyes.
He’s standing in the doorway, the only flat wall in the room, silhouetted by the dim light in the stairwell. His head a great dark mass, his hair in dreadlocks that hang down past his shoulders. “You’re in a mood,” he says.
“Go away,” she says, closing her eyes again.
“Tell me,” he says, “this isn’t what it looks like.”
After a moment she reaches for the switch on the cord of the blue glass lamp and flicks it on. “What does it look like?” she says, sitting up a little, picking up the wineglass.
“Like you’ve suffered some apocalypse of the heart, sister dear.” His eyes are bright, his smile is gentle. “Like you’ve lost your one true love, who’s never to return.” He leans in the doorway, arms folded. His shirt’s a pale pink silk, open at the throat. “Tell me you haven’t gone and screwed everything up.”
“You,” she says, and then she downs what’s left in the glass. “Of course you knew. How did you find out?”
“About the sweet moments you’ve stolen with our absent King’s Bride-to-be? Sister love, who do you think sent her up to find you at Robin’s Midsummer’s party?” He comes into the room, stepping from the dim light of the stairwell to the dim light thrown by the blue glass lamp. “That first fumbling kiss is a memory I shall treasure till the end of days.”
“We were found out,” she says, as she takes great care in putting the glass back on the table next to the book. “Perhaps you heard? The Dagger struck at me, with a gallowglas on the field.”
“Because of that? I’d heard he just went mad, and’s been exiled for it.” He sits on the bed beside her, his hands in his lap. “Unfortunate you were there when he snapped, and thanks to grace and luck and running shoes the Chariot was there in time.”
“The Chariot, who as much as threatened me with banishment, if I so much as spoke with her again.”
“And it’s him says who’s to be denied the bread and salt and oil, these days? I hadn’t known.”
“He knows, brother. He saw us, together. The Dagger knew. The Duke knows.” She takes a wobbly breath. “The Gallowglas…”
“Ah,” he says, his hand on her knee. “Sister mine, a secret everyone knows but none dare speak of is still a secret kept. The Princess will be Queen soon, and were you still her paramour– well. There’s power to be had, in forcing others to speak around a thing like that.”
Eyes closing, she shakes her head. “No, brother dearest. The tower’s ruined. It won’t help.” She lifts his hand from her thigh. He jerks it from her grasp, looks away from her, out an open window at the rainy night. “It’s cold in here,” he says. He stands and cranks a window shut, moves over to the next. “You should have a care,” he says, his back to her. “Remember, an axe is useless without its handle.” But her breathing’s settled into sleep.
Wrapped in a Spongebob Squarepants towel Ysabel crouches by the futon fingers hovering over the buttons on the boom box, stabbing suddenly at the one that says Eject. The tape drawer pops open. She pulls out the cassette and tosses it to one side, then clatters through a shoebox full of tapes, pulling out a smokey clear one that says The Weasley Variations in tidy white-inked letters. She drops it in the drawer, snaps the drawer shut, presses the button that says Play. Thundering drums and a squalling guitar and a man singing somewhere under it all they hit you at school, they hate you if you’re, and “Shit!” says Ysabel, slapping the button that says Stop. Her fingers hover again until she finds Rewind and holds it down until the tape stops. She presses Play. A jangling guitar’s followed by drums, then bass, then a man’s voice declaiming there are no angels left in America anymore. They left after the Second World War, heading west. Ysabel stands and still wrapped in the towel half-dances over to the glass-ropped café table, grabs the empty pizza box and the tall green glass vase, stuffs the pizza box in the garbage can in the little hallway kitchen, sets the vase in the sink. “They kept heading west, to who knows where,” she sings along with the tape, dancing into the bathroom.
Wrapped in the Spongebob Squarepants towel Ysabel’s standing by the glass-topped café table looking it over, a box of matches rattling in her hand. Three lit candles, one tall and white and skinny, one short and red, its wall of crinkled wax collapsed to one side, one in a glass chimney covered with praying hands and a bleeding heart wrapped in thorns and the faces of saints. Before them the small glass jar half-filled with something milky. Thickly fuzzed guitars seep from the boom box, and someone’s singing when you clean out the hive, does it make you want to cry? Are you still being followed by the teenage FBI? Ysabel’s in the kitchen, dropping the matches on the counter, pulling a round yellow bowl out of a cabinet. She sets the bowel on the table by the jar, steps back, head cocked. Shakes her head. Takes the bowl away, comes back with a wine glass. Sets it on the table by the jar. “No,” she says, taking the glass away. She comes back with the bowl. Sets it down. Picks it up again. “Shit,” she says.
The Spongebob Squarepants towel wrapped about her waist Ysabel’s peering at herself in the bathroom mirror, smiling, frowning, wiggling her eyebrows. Music’s drawling in the other room, a dark voice chanting the lower the sun, the longer the shadows become. She pulls a dark red lipstick from the My Little Pony lunchbox and paints her lips, smoothing a corner of her mouth with a pinkie nail, then suddenly daubing one nipple, then the other. She leans back wet hair heavy on her shoulders, looking herself over. Her grin slides into a scowl. She throws the lipstick into the sink, jabs her fingers into a jar of Vaseline, smears the color from her lips. “Fuck,” she says, reaching for the toilet paper.
Ysabel naked sits on the carpet her back to the bulky blond wood armoire, her hair tied back in a simple tail, her head in her hands. The boom box is silent. The candles still burn on the table. She leans to one side and pulls a shimmering white slip from the laundry spilling out of the drawers of the armoire, turing it over in her hands, fingers worrying at a faint ivory stain, a smudge of something red at the neck. “Dammit, Jo,” she says, dropping it on the crumpled cloud of frothy lace beside her. “Would it have killed you.” She finds a pair of grey yoga pants and sniffs them, her face souring, shakes them out, kicks one foot into them and then the other.
The laundry room is brightly lit and steeped in the sussural static of tumbling soaking churning clothes, three dryers on the back wall, one set to spinning, five washers in a line, two with their lids up. Ysabel in grey yoga pants and her leopard-print tank top, her armload of shimmery satin and frothy lace, stands before one of the open washers, running a finger along the text printed on the underside of the lid. “Need some, uh, help?” says the man standing in the doorway.
“Which of these is the dry cleaner?” says Ysabel, without looking up from the lid.
“There, ah, none of them,” he says, frowning. He wears a neat reddish beard and a navy blue hoodie that says Beloit College. “You’d have to go to Bee’s, I think they’re the closest.”
“How long does it take to dry-clean something?” says Ysabel, looking up at him.
“I think,” he says, “they’ve got same-day service, but, you know, they’re not open right now, can I help you? With anything? Do you have any, other, laundry in here? I’m gonna have to lock this up in about an hour.”
“I think Jo’s got her stuff in the washers here, but she’ll be along soon to do whatever needs to be done to it.”
“Jo. You’re staying with Jo? In four-oh-seven?”
“Yes,” says Ysabel.
“Could I, talk to you? Just for a minute. About Jo. I mean, it’s irregular, yes, you wouldn’t have to answer my questions, if you didn’t want to, but I’m trying to help your–”
“Who are you, exactly?” says Ysabel.
“Oh! Tim. Tim Carroll. I help manage the building, do some counseling, for our residents–”
“Counseling?”
“A lot of our folks are on assistance of one sort or another, we help them navigate the paperwork, can we go to the office? It’s a little more, ah, private–”
“These are private questions?” says Ysabel, stepping around the line of washers.
“Well, it’s a little more discreet? Than the laundry room?”
It’s a small office, tucked behind the front desk up by the racks of mailboxes in the lobby. Tim squeezes between the desk and the wall and drops into a swivel chair, careful of the teetering stack of bankers boxes in the corner. “Go ahead,” he says, gesturing, “take a seat, just close the door first, it’s harder if you do it the other way around.” He’s opening a drawer as she pushes the other chair in the room to one side to make room for the door to swing shut, and he looks up from the yellow legal pad he’s pulled out to see her pushing the chair back to make room to sit, and his eyes fix on the crystal flashing from the gold pin piercing her navel. “Your questions?” says Ysabel, sitting down, draping her armload of lace and satin over her lap.
“How long, ah, have you known Jo?” he says, looking up to her sidelong smile.
“I don’t know, exactly,” says Ysabel.
“Well how long have you been staying with her?”
“I couldn’t precisely say,” says Ysabel.
“Maybe a guess? Did you know her in school? Has it been years? Months? Weeks?”
“What time is it?” says Ysabel, sighing.
“Quarter past?” says Tim. “Eleven?”
“Then I have known Jo Maguire for thirty-three days, one hour, fifteen minutes. Thereabouts.”
He picks up a pen, puts it back down again. “Okay–”
“I can’t be more exact.”
“That’s, okay.” He leans back in his chair with a grinding squeak. “Could you maybe, guess then, how long it is you’ve been staying with her, I mean, you are staying with her, right?”
She shrugs. “Half a day less?”
He sits up again. “Ah.”
“Oh?”
“Where were you, staying before?”
She waits until he’s looking her in the eye again. “With my family. Here in town.”
“Did you, run? Away?”
“You haven’t even asked my name, Mr. Tim Carroll.”
“It’s not, I don’t need to know that, you’re not one of our residents. Not really. This is about Jo.”
“It’s all been about me, so far. Not run, no. I’d say it’s more like I was pushed.”
“Because of Jo?”
Her smile widens. “Not in the way you’re thinking.”
He’s looking down at the empty pad again, fiddling with the pen he hasn’t uncapped. “And, ah, you’re employed?”
“I work with Jo, yes.”
“You help with, the rent? Groceries? Like that?”
“I am apparently paying my way,” says Ysabel.
“Ah,” says Tim.
“That’s the second time you’ve uttered that terribly freighted syllable, Mr. Tim Carroll.”
“Jo,” he says, tapping the pen against the pad, “receives a voucher, from the Housing Authority, to assist her with rent, she was very lucky to get it. But one of the conditions of the voucher is, she’s to report any change in the size of her household, that would be you, to the Housing Authority, in writing. And one of the conditions of the voucher is, she’s to report any change in her household’s, income, in writing. To the Housing Authority.”
“And we need to write a letter?” says Ysabel. “You’ve got the pad already. That’s so kind of you.”
“It’s not, ah, it’s been over a month. There’s nothing to be done now, they’ll review the case, but I’m afraid Jo’s going to lose her voucher.”
“Because you think she doesn’t need it? Because I’ve changed her situation?”
“You’ll have to leave regardless. She was also supposed to inform us, that she had someone living with her. Which is grounds for eviction.”
Ysabel gathers up the froth of lace and the shimmering slip from her lap with a rustle and lays them on the pile of papers by her chair. “You weren’t entirely honest with me, Mr. Tim Carroll.”
“I, it’s not like I–”
“You had an ulterior motive that cut against our best interests. Had I know that, I would have declined to answer your questions.”
“I have a responsibility–”
“Yes, to your residents, to, what was it you said? Help them navigate these rules and regulations?” She leans forward, her elbows on the desk, her hands lightly on the legal pad. “It’s a very,” he’s saying, “the rules,” as she says “Tell me something.”
“They’re very strict,” he says.
“What was the first thing you thought when you saw me in the laundry room tonight? The first thought that went through your head? Was it, I’d better ask her my questions while I’ve got the chance? Was it gosh I hope she smiles at me?” She sits back in her chair. “Was it, I wonder if she’s wearing any underwear?” Her flip-flops flap to the floor. She kicks her bare feet up to rest on the edge of the desk. An anklet golden shining, a silvery gold-tinged ring about a middle toe. “Why don’t you take off that sweatshirt, Tim?” Her toenails painted gold and sparkling under a glossy shell.
“This is improper,” he says, the bottom of his hoodie bunched in his hands.
“You knew that from the start,” she says, hooking her thumbs in the waistband of her yoga pants, pushing them over her hips and down her legs. Dropping them on the frothy pile of lace. “Do you think I’m beautiful?”
And he nods, slowly.
“Then please take off your shirt.” By the time he’s struggled out of the hoodie she’s skinned off her tank top. He’s wearing a brown T-shirt that says Chewie is my Co-pilot. She’s stretching, her arms up, undoing the tie about her fall of thick black curls. “Now,” she says, standing. “Let’s think a moment.” Sitting on the edge of the desk her back to him, pushing her chair back against the door with a foot. “What can be done?” She spins on the desk scooting forward a little and spreading her legs to rest her feet on either arm of his chair. His mouth open a little eyes wide staring at the crystal flashing from the gold pin piercing her navel. “Jo is my very good friend,” she says, and then she takes his head in her hands. “She takes good care of me, and I will do no less for her.” She bends to kiss the top of his head. “So how do we keep these terrible things from happening?”
“I don’t,” he says, and she pulls him to her, resting his head against her breast. “Don’t say don’t,” she says, softly, her lips against his ear. “Say can, Tim. Say will.”
Jo sets the shopping baskets she’s carrying in either hand on the floor before the shelves of canned beans. She pulls down a couple with blue labels that say Black Beans. Eighty-nine cents says the price tag. “Buck eighty,” she says to herself, putting a can in either basket. “Plus twenty-six fifty, twenty-seven, twenty-eight uh, thirty.” She pulls a grubby little white pad from a pocket of her army-green surplus jacket, fishes up a grease pencil from another pocket, crosses something off on the pad. “Twenty-eight thirty,” she says again. “Dairy.” She picks up the shopping baskets each maybe half full, a couple of onions in one, a couple of potatoes in the other, a box of rice balancing a jar of coffee. She heads up the empty aisle toward the front of the store. Music’s floating down from the unseen speakers up among the ducts and struts, a lazy, loping beat, drink this to put out the flame, drink this, it tastes like vanilla. Aside from the clerk at the lone lit-up checkstand the only person at this end of the store is a woman with long black hair and a loose blue skirt, looking over the frozen pizzas at the end of one of the aisles. Jo heads over toward the dairy display. “Fucking Woolite,” she says to herself, stopping, setting the baskets down. Pulling out the pad and pencil to make another note.
“Gallowglas,” comes a voice behind her.
Jo looks over her shoulder.
It’s Orlando standing by the freezer full of pizzas in his blue sarong, his white half-unbuttoned dress shirt, his long black hair draped over one shoulder. “Where’s the Princess, Gallowglas?” he says, and though his voice is soft it carries.
“Oh, fuck me,” says Jo, looking past him. The clerk’s gone from the one lit-up checkstand. The florist counter’s dark, and the deli counter too, and there’s no one, no one in sight at all, not even at the tables by the Starbucks counter.
“You’re alone here?” he’s saying. He puts the box of five-cheese pizza back on the freezer shelf. “How fortuitous. So am I.” His hand a loose fist out to his side turning a curl of light in the air between them as he draws his arm back to himself, and it’s gone so suddenly still, no more bleeps from the registers, no squeak of a shopping cart’s wheels from the next aisle over, even the compressor in the freezer’s rattled to a stop, and the music’s gone away. “Go on,” says Orlando, settling the hilt of his Japanese sword in both hands. “Where’s yours?”
“Fucking fuck me hell,” says Jo.
The Wounded Sky, written by Diane Duane, ©1983 Paramount Pictures. “Working Class Hero” written by John Lennon, copyright holder unknown. “Angels” written by David Byrne, ©1994 Moldy Fig Music. “Teenage FBI” written by Robert Pollard, copyright holder unknown. “The Lower the Sun” written by Tom Vek, ©2005. “Uncle Ray” written by Stuart Davis, copyright holder unknown.
