Plumage (6 page)

Of course, with all the new variations the breeders kept coming up with, this was understandable. “Some sort of sport, are you?” Sassy queried it.

The parakeet gazed back at her.

She was not expecting a response. Her questions were rhetorical. “You really are watching me, aren't you? I mean me specifically. You're hanging around me.”

The parakeet cocked its head. Perhaps it chirped at her. In the echoing atrium, it was hard to tell.

“You're
stalking
me,” she told it. “That's not
nice
.”

The parakeet shifted uncomfortably on its perch. Its dainty vermicular toes, Sassy noticed, were mauve, like Racquel's makeup.

“You
did
mess up my reflection, didn't you?”

The parakeet dropped its gaze, looking down and to one side.

“I think you understand every word I'm saying,” she told the bird. “You and I need to talk.”

“It's not going to move until daybreak,” Racquel complained to Sassy. “We might as well go home.”

Perched opposite the fifth-floor balcony from which they watched, the parakeet made a hunched silhouette against the dimmed, midnight decorator lighting: with its head facing its tail and its beak tucked between its wings, it slept.

Even though it didn't move, Sassy watched it intently. “How do they
do
that?” she muttered.

“What? Sleep standing up?”

“Crank the head around 180 degrees.” Effortlessly. And sleep that way.

“I was watching a robin one time,” Racquel said, a droll quirk in his voice, “just kind of watching it hop around, and I said to myself, How does that thing get around on only two legs?”

Sassy laughed. She was trying to maintain a brisk and businesslike stance toward Racquel but she couldn't help it; she had to laugh. Get around on two legs, indeed. And there he stood in platform clogs. Fuchsia open-toed platform clogs with gold-braid trim. And gold-braided scarlet toreador pants. And a scarlet bolero. Racquel's idea of changing his clothes for a covert operation did not seem to include either practicality or subterfuge.

“They're going to wonder what we're doing if we keep standing here,” Racquel said. “We might as well go home—”

“They wouldn't notice us at all if you weren't dressed like a road flare!”

“They would too. They'd spot the glare off your glasses a mile away.”

“Not as bright as that getup!”

“What did you want me to wear,” Racquel complained, “a chador?”

“You could have come as yourself and nobody would know who you were.”

“Huh?” In general, Racquel seemed like a genuinely easygoing—guy or whatever, but now he became somewhat wrought. “
Huh
? What did you say?”

“I said, just come as yourself.”

“To
what
self do you refer?”

“Oh, never mind. Wear whatever you like. Wear a belly-dancing outfit,” Sassy grumbled, “made of feathers.”

Racquel stared at her, his expression smoothing. “You know,” he said slowly, “that's not a bad idea.”

Sassy rolled her eyes.

“You really don't want to go home and get some sleep?”

“No.” There was a downhill dynamic to these things, Sassy knew from years of sour experience. Go home, go to sleep, and set the alarm clock for four in the morning to get back to the hotel lobby. And then oversleep? And then rush around like—no, thank you. “I'm staying. I don't know when the Pest Control people might show up.”

“You still haven't explained to me why you're so fanatical about rescuing this parakeet.”

Sassy stared straight at the bird in question and said nothing.

“Well, listen. If we
must
hang around, we could go into the shop for a while.”

Not a bad idea. It would get them out of management's sight, yet keep them close to where Sassy wanted to be. “Okay.”

Racquel led the way, and trailing behind him, Sassy watched his hornbill flap along beside him in the mezzanine mirrors. Odd. Maybe it was because she had never been in the hotel at such a shadowy time before—but in the darkly gleaming glass she seemed to see, not mirror-image mezzanine behind the hornbill, but forest. She glimpsed the plumy movement of foliage, the snaky outlines of vines in the shadows, the silhouettes of unknowable flowers folded for the night. She could almost hear the rustling of ten-foot ferns, the breathing of trees, the silences and echoing cries of night birds. Her chest yearned. She wanted to be there.

Then she blinked, and her sleepy mind woke up in alarm. What was she thinking? What did she imagine she was seeing? She looked again, and saw the reflection of ficus-on-steroids trees.

Racquel led her through a service door into the labyrinthine, windowless, and blessedly mirrorless guts of the hotel, the gray cinder-block corridors employees used but of which guests were seldom aware. When they reached a steel door marked PLUMAGE, Racquel unlocked it and motioned Sassy in. He did not turn on the lights.

Dim, the shop felt larger than it was. Deep, like—like a forest again. Feather capes and boas hung like willow leaves, swaying in the breeze of Sassy's passing. She liked the way they responded to her, almost as if they were alive.

She breathed deeply of their dry spicy scent and sank into the leather chair where patient husbands were supposed to wait. Her feet were tired after a long day, even though she wore silicone-padded uglishoes to clean. Racquel, however, who wore four-inch heels all day, did not sit down, but roamed the shop with hands lifted like wings, his long fingers questing. He plucked a teal derby from the hat stand, strode over and plopped the topper on Sassy. He crouched in front of her and adjusted it at a coy angle.

“Fetching,” he said. “Very fetching. Look at that little pointed chin. You have a face born for hats, Sassy.”

He brought a feathered pillbox and tried it on her instead of the derby.

“No,” he murmured, “you're more of a farouche type.”

He went off again and returned with a highland bonnet trailing pheasant feathers. He crouched and settled it gently on her.

“Oh, that's
charmante. Très charmante
. Come look in a mirror, Sassy.”

She shook her head, her chest aching. Drat, she loved hats; why had it been so long since she had bought a hat? But she knew she would see nothing in the mirror except a blue parakeet.

“Why not? Don't you like it?”

“I'm tired.
You
try on hats.”

“Can't. That's the only thing I don't like about my look. I can't wear hats.”

“Because of all the hair?”

“Yes, because of all the hair.” He removed the pseudo-Scottish bonnet and returned with a plumed picture hat worthy of a Renoir. Sassy loved it. She couldn't help leaning forward to accommodate the brim as Racquel placed it on her head, precisely adjusted the angle, and tied the silky ribbon—robin's-egg blue—in a butterfly bow under her chin.

“Oh, that's
it
. You
have
to look, Sassy. Wait. A shawl—”

“No.” She started untying the hat to take it off. Racquel crouched in front of her, peering at her.

“Sassy, lighten up,” he said gently. “Didn't you ever play dress-up as a kid?”

“Not with a transsexual!” Thrusting the hat back at him, trying to stop this game that was causing her pain, she spoke more harshly than she had intended.

“Transvestite,” Racquel said.

“Whatever.”

He settled back on his fuchsia heels and gave her a hard stare. “I really irk the hell out of you, don't I? What bugs you more, that I'm a transvestite or that I'm black?”

Sassy was tired, stressed, and in no mood for self-improvement. She snapped, “Actually, what bothers me most is that your hair never doggone moves.”

His eyes opened wide, and so did his mouth, and a yawp came out, then rich contralto laughter. “Sassy,” he said, and he toppled off his cork-soled clogs, sitting on the floor, laughing some more.

Because he was laughing at her and because he hadn't taken the picture hat from her, she plopped it on top of his do, where it teetered, its white plumes bobbing and its pastel ribbons curling down over his boleroed shoulders. Sassy seldom laughed out loud, but she had to smile.

“Oh, my sweet black ass.” Still chuckling, placidly accepting of his clownish appearance in the hat, Racquel heaved himself up from the floor, stooped over Sassy and combed her limp hair with his fingers. With one hand on either side of her face he lifted her hair into stubby wings, trying to fluff it. He crouched in front of her and removed her glasses, studying her face. He set the glasses aside and smoothed her hair down again.

The feel of his careful hands on her head was heavenly. Sassy sat still, but said, “Racquel, it's no use.”

“White woman's hair? It's bad, all right, but it's not quite hopeless. My stylist—”

“It's not just the hair. It's everything.”

Still gentling her hair, Racquel asked, “Everything?”

“Everything about me. My hair. My wrinkly face. My pudgy little body. I've got nothing going for me. I'm almost fifty years old, I've been married more than half my life to a man who didn't love me, and now it's too late. Nobody's ever going to want me.”

Racquel stroked her hair into place. “Huh,” he said softly. “We'll see. We'll just see about that.”

“Hey,” Racquel said to Sassy as both of them leaned on the mezzanine railing watching dawn turn the atrium glass the colors of mother-of-pearl.

“Hey, what?”

“Hey, I just had a brain spasm. Almost a brain orgasm.”

“Lovely.”

“About your name. Like, trees are just plants and we name people after some plants, why not other plants? I mean, we name people Rose, Violet, Daisy, Jasmine, Rosemary, Heather—why not Wisteria? Or Dogwood? Or—”

“Or Sassafras, is that the idea?”

“Yes! Why does it always have to be flower names? And why does it always have to be women named after the flowers, not men? I mean, if I had a baby boy, I shouldn't have to just name him Oak or Spruce, I could name him Tulip, or Bud, or Clematis, Clem for short, why not? Why—”

“Shhh!” Sassy hushed him, clutching at his arm.

The parakeet was flying.

Like a green-yellow spark in the creamy dawnlight it flashed up from its treetop—straight into one of the mist nets.

“Ninth floor,” said Sassy rapidly, counting up to the balcony to which the end of the net was attached, seeing the parakeet flutter, struggle, thrash itself into a lump of gossamer mesh. “Quick, you run over to the other end and undo it.” She darted toward the elevator.

“How come
I
get to run to the other end?” Racquel grumbled.

“Just do it!”

When she reached her end of the net, she could see the parakeet more closely. Still struggling. Tangled nearly into a ball.

“Poor thing,” she muttered, feeling a pang in her heart. She knew all too well what it was like to feel entangled, trapped.

The parakeet fluttered once more, then settled into a frozen, panting panic. Too terrified to move. Sassy had heard that small animals were likely to die of shock when they were caught in traps. Mice rescued from cats would still die of shock. “Hurry,” she whispered to Racquel, who could not possibly hear her.

There she was—there
he
was, finally, on the far side of the atrium.

Sassy had expected that Racquel would undo the fastenings that secured the net to the far balcony. But evidently Racquel had other ideas. Racquel flourished a massive pair of shears and simply cut the thing loose.

“Whoa!” Sassy grabbed at her end as the net swung down, down—

Its trailing tendrils caught in the treetops. “Oh, no,” Sassy moaned, pulling in yards of net which piled like froth at her feet. The bird formed a small, still lump in the cobwebby mesh about ten feet away from Sassy when the net went taut.

So near and yet so far. “Come on, would you!” Sassy tugged, braced her feet against the railing and tugged harder, tugged with all her five-foot-five-inches' worth of strength.

It was not nearly enough.

“They make these things out of fish line or something.” Like an unlikely angel, Racquel was there, reaching over her shoulder to grab a double fistful of net. “On the count of three. One—two—”

Three. They both pulled at the net.

It did not tear loose, exactly. Rather, it tried to tear up the tree by the roots, and the tree made some sacrifices to save itself. Leaves stripped, twigs gave way, and the net was free.

Racquel stood back and let Sassy gather in the parakeet.

“Oh, poor baby,” she whispered. Even through the wad of netting in which it was enmeshed she could feel it trembling. “Oh, poor sweetie.” Sitting on the carpet with the bird in her lap, she began to pick at the netting, uncovering the bird's head. It stared at her with eyes that had gone silver with shock. “Hang on, honey child,” she murmured. “Just hang on a couple of minutes—”

“Oh, for God's sake, we don't have a couple of minutes. Security's probably already on the way.” Racquel crouched and took the Gordian knot approach, slicing into the net with his shears, cutting the wad of string and bird away from the rest of it. “Come on.” He ran toward the nearest service entry.

A few minutes later they were in the back room of his shop, where Sassy sat on a cardboard carton and carefully, oh so carefully untangled the bird in her lap.

She smoothed its wings and held them gently against its body as she freed them, but the parakeet seemed to have no desire to struggle against her or fly away. When she had untangled its tail and, last of all, its delicate legs and feet, it stopped trembling. It nestled in the cup of her hands as she held it against her flat chest. So low that she could barely hear it, it chirped.

“I think that bird is grateful to you,” Racquel said.