Plumage (5 page)

Sassy caught a quick, astonished breath, her glance darting to Racquel to Racquel's reflection then back again. “Your bird is male,” Sassy blurted.

Racquel froze over the sink with the soap still on her hands. Racquel's face went—not pale, certainly, but a different shade of dark. Gray. Slowly she turned her handsome head to stare at Sassy.

“Male,” Sassy babbled. “Your, uh, your bird.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” Racquel spun away, wiped her soapy hands on a paper towel with shaky haste, and strode out.

“Oh, just
great
,” Sassy whispered to herself. Now Racquel was mad.

But—great, that was the one, the Great Madagascar Horn-bill. Sassy distinctly remembered from
Birds of the World
—

Sassy returned to work with a mind even more preoccupied than before. During her next break, she trotted out to her car and checked the hefty book she had left on her passenger seat. Yes. The casque of the Great Madagascar Hornbill was unmistakably characteristic of the male.

Male. Racquel's reflection was male.

Bird-watching in mirrors for the rest of the day, Sassy focused on gender. Her own little mirrored parakeet was female, she knew—it had a cute pink cere (the leathery part above the beak where the nostrils were) just like the books said it was supposed to. When a woman in red walked by, the cardinal flapping in the mirror beside her was female, a subtle pinkish olive color. When the boss man Sassy knew to be self-deluded loitered on the mezzanine, the lyrebird loitering in the mirror was definitely male. Some species you couldn't tell, the males and the females looked the same—but otherwise, Sassy saw, all the men had male birds and all the women had female ones.

Except Racquel.

Well. Goodness.

Sassy contemplated Racquel. Tall. Handsome. Straight shoulders. Deepish voice. Large, strictly conical breasts that never seemed to bounce. Always something—a scarf, a high ruffled collar, a feather boa—concealing the Adam's apple area of the neck.

Good gravy.

“I feel awful,” Sassy told the maid she was working with at the time.

“You do? Why?”

“I found out something I'm not supposed to know.”

“Oh,
really
?” The woman turned to her with beady-eyed interest.

Sassy knew at once that it had been a mistake to say a word. This maid was a catbird. Meow, meow. Sassy turned away and scrubbed hard at a brass ashtray to keep herself from saying any more. But she did feel awful, her chest clotted with a churning cakemix of emotions, mad sad I've-been-had, and she badly wanted to talk to somebody she could trust.

Not Racquel. Lord. She felt hurt remembering that she and Racquel had sipped cappuccino and talked like friends. She felt queasy just thinking about Racquel sitting in the bathroom stall next to her—
sitting
, mind you—and peeing. The last person on earth she ever wanted to see again was Racquel. Well, put Racquel second in line after Frederick.

In the maids' locker room after work, Sassy traded mezzanine duty with somebody else for the rest of the week so she wouldn't have to go near Racquel's shop.

Then she darted out, hunched as if she were battling a headwind, to get away from her insane place of employment. But as she approached the back door, the maids' door, she nearly rammed into a flat emerald-green midriff. Racquel was standing there in the corridor. Waiting for her.

“Please don't tell,” Racquel said, keeping her—his—voice low.

Sassy reared back and barked up at him, “You used the ladies' room!”

“Shhhh! What do you expect me to do?” He ran his French-manicured fingertips down his flowing skirt. “Go into the men's like this?”

“
Hold
it!”

“Can't. I'm a coffee drinker.” He extended one long, shapely hand toward her in plea. “Sassy, please.” He was almost whispering, although the people rushing past were employees on their way home, bolting out the door, couldn't care less about listening in. “Management doesn't know. They'll crucify me if they find out.”

As one who had recently been hoisted on a cross made of her own good intentions, Sassy found herself feeling a grudging sympathy. Her tone of voice lowered to a grumble. “What exactly are you, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know enough weirdness to know what I mean!” Talking with this person who blurred her ideas of gender, Sassy felt existential nausea. Seasickness. No solid footing. No bedrock.

Racquel retorted, “I'm not a child molester, if that's what you—”

“Oh, for heaven's sake, I don't
think
that's what I meant.”

Racquel took a long breath and let it out slowly. Very quietly he said, “What exactly do you need to know?”

“Why you are masquerading as a woman.”

“I like froufrou!”

They stared at each other.

“I like sequins,” Racquel elaborated. “I like velvet. Chiffon. Silk, satin, taffeta, tulle. I like high heels. I like long gloves. I like long gowns. And I most particularly like long gloves and long gowns edged with marabou. Or emu. With plumy headgear. Ostrich. Egret. Or a pheasant-feathered mask. Or a feathered choker. And I like—”

“You like fancy plumage,” Sassy said.

“Yes, dammit. Don't you?”

“Yes. No. I don't know.” He was some kind of big sissy, Sassy decided. A homosexual. She wanted to ask him in a very sophisticated way whether he was gay, but found that she felt too tired to deal with any more unwanted information today. She asked, “What's your real name?”

“‘Racquel' is as real as any.”

“Whatever. I'm going home.” Sassy sidestepped to walk past him.

He stretched out a hand to stop her. “You going to tell on me?” He sounded like a child caught doing something naughty at recess.

“I'll think about it,” Sassy grumped.

“Please—”

“I said I'll think about it!” Once more Sassy tried to get past him. Once more he stopped her.

“Please just quick tell me one thing. How did you know? Did you see through the stall wall in the john, or what?”

“I am going
home
,” Sassy said with great decision as she pushed past him, then hustled toward her car.

THREE

The Sylvan Tower's Operation Catch Parakeet required a cooperative effort between Pest Control Professionals, so advertised on their pristine white coveralls, and Climb Any Mountaineers, Inc. The Pest Control people stood on balconies and unfurled what had to be the world's longest badminton nets, but with gossamer-fine mesh, way too fine for badminton nets, really. Mist nets, they called them. Bird nets. The mountaineers rappelled down from higher balconies and conveyed the trailing ends of the unfurled nets to other Pest Control personnel on the opposite side of the atrium. Meanwhile, management sweated, hoping the media would not show up, and with them unwanted attention from the animal rights activists. And meanwhile hotel denizens, including Sassy, gathered on various levels of the lobby to watch. By the end of the day, when the Pest Control Pros and the Climb Any Mountain people had (with the aid of walkie-talkies and much shouting) done their job, giant cobwebby nets crisscrossed the atrium from treetop level on up, and already someone had markered a graffito in one of the men's rooms, Cristo Was Here.

Then everybody went home. Except Sassy.

Her work shift was over. In the maids' locker room she had changed out of her uniform into another sort of work outfit, carefully selected—black sweatpants, a dark turtleneck and a navy cardigan, shabby old black sneakers. Not really athletic shoes. But then, she wasn't really athletic, which was one of the problems on her mind as she hung around the shadowy reaches of the Sylvan Tower lobby: she wasn't up on the latest rappelling techniques. The Sylvan Tower would have made a great playground for a musketeer, a perfect movie set, but Sassy did not feel capable of swinging from a chandelier. Nor was she inclined to attempt any Tarzan-style stunts, even if she were in possession of a grapevine or a rope or something, which she was not.

Assuming that the parakeet was stupid enough to blunder into one of the nets—which seemed a fairly safe assumption, actually—Sassy meant to get it before the Pest Control people did. But how?

Chin on her folded hands on a balcony rail, her tush ungracefully protruding, Sassy brooded upon the difficulties involved.

It occurred to her that she knew somebody who might help her.

No.

But—

No. Absolutely not. She didn't ever want to go near that weirdo again.

Fine. Then look at a parakeet in the mirror for the rest of—

Listen, things could be worse.

Sure they could. Twenty-seven, make it twenty-eight years wasted on a, what the heck had Racquel called him, a jellosnarf—

It was the warm memory of all the inspired names Racquel had called Frederick that made Sassy mutter, “Oh, good gravy,” straighten from her brooding stance, and head toward PLUMAGE.

As usual, the employees were doing the real work; Racquel loitered at the hat display, fondling a soft felt chapeau trimmed with white cut-feather flowers and butterflies, and a wide-brimmed picture hat with a pouf of feather fluff all around, and a toque with multicolored aigrette. Today Racquel was resplendent in a shimmery lavender dress with a banded sweetheart illusion neckline and a peplum.

Sassy blinked as she walked in; Racquel always seemed to affect her like neon. Sassy wondered how Racquel achieved cleavage.

“Hey, woman!” Racquel turned to her, seeming nervously glad to see her. Lavender feathers bobbed above the lacquered, marcellated crest of her hair.
His
hair. Sassy had trouble thinking of him in the masculine gender. He put her off-balance altogether, worse than meeting somebody you couldn't tell
which
it was, and silently but viciously she wished misfortune upon his metallic-sculpted coif; just once she wanted to see Racquel's hair
move
.

“Woman, yourself,” Sassy grumped.

Racquel seemed suddenly affected by a nervous twitch under his oh-so-tweezed eyebrow. “Um, talk with you outside?”

“Whatever.”

Out on the mezzanine, Sassy said to him, “Will you do something for me,
sir
?”

“Shhhh!” Sotto voce, he said, “If you keep quiet about me, yes, sure I will.”

Sassy was by no means sure she should keep quiet. Ever since she had found out about him, her Sunday-school upbringing had been crimping her gut muscles. She eyed him suspiciously. “Maybe I shouldn't. Women go into your changing rooms—”

“If I'd gone to medical school, I'd see a lot more.”

“But women know when their doctor's a man. They think you're—”

“Shhhh!”

Sassy lowered her voice slightly. “They think you're a woman, you hand things in to them—”

“I don't. My staff takes care of fittings.” Hands hovering in the vicinity of his twin-peaked bosom, he twisted his rings—moonstone, sapphire, amethyst. His fingers were long, strong-looking, and his perfect mauve-enameled nails were decorated with tiny electric-pink primroses with glued-on faux-gem centers. “Anyway, I don't care about seeing women in their bras or any of that.”

“You don't?” Sassy put a freight load of doubt in her tone.

“No. I don't. I just—I just like—”

“Uh-huh. I know. Fancy feathers.”

“Don't get so damn superior.” For the first time some edge crept into his low-spoken tone. “You're a cross-dresser yourself.”

“I am not!”

“Yes, you are.” He jerked his chin at her; his hair and the rest of him did not move. “You're wearing slacks.”

“That's not—”

“Yes, it is. It's cross-dressing. If it's no problem for a woman to put on pants, then why is it such a big deal for a man to put on a skirt?”

Sassy had no idea. “Uh,” she hedged, “uh, but, I'm not masquerading—”

“I
have
to. If people wouldn't get so
hysterical
,” Racquel grumbled, “I could
go
in the men's room.”

This debate was making Sassy feel a bit dizzy. Stress. Just let it go, she decided. Perhaps for the worst reason, because she wanted his help, Sassy found herself believing Racquel. He was gay, she told herself. He wasn't attracted to women. He wasn't going around with a happy dick under that dress. Okay. Whatever. “All right,” she grumbled, “okay, fine. I'm a cross-dresser too. Here's what I need you to do.” She explained it to him.

“Are you crazy?” he exclaimed.

Not for the first time, Sassy considered this issue. “Possibly. I'm not sure.”

“
Why
do you so badly need to capture this parakeet?”

“That's my business.”

His metallic-mauve-shadowed eyes widened. “You're not out for revenge, are you? You're not going to
poop
on it or something?”

“Just never mind. Are you going to help me, or do I go to Silly Willy?” This was the self-deluded boss man whom Sassy had seen reflected in a mirror as a lyrebird.

Racquel's broad shoulders sagged. Plaintively he asked, “May I at least go home and change first?”

“Please
do
.”

Sassy felt her position of power over another human being hanging unfamiliar and exhilarating in her chest as she leaned on the mezzanine railing and waited for Racquel to return. Blankly staring, she was not really watching for the parakeet, not yet—but there it was. Perched in the nearest tree. Staring back at her.

It had a brilliant yellow head with an orange mask over the eyes. A green body with blue primaries on the wings. A bright yellow butt. A few yellow markings on its long pointed tail. No striations. None of the usual teardrop mottlings around the throat. It looked like a parakeet—no-necked, big-headed, high-browed yet clownish—but its coloration and markings were nothing like those of any of the parakeets in any of Sassy's books.