Dirty Wings (12 page)

When they can't stand the cold any longer they scramble out of the water, run back to the pile of their clothes. He kisses her again, serious now, his hands insistent on her skin, and who is she to say no now that she's said yes. Sex with him is already different than the handful of boys she's slept with this summer, more clumsy but also more real. He is here, with her, present in his skin, and because he is here she stays here too; this is the first sex she's had sober, she realizes, wondering as she realizes it if that's supposed to make her worry. He's greedy for her, his teeth against her shoulder, his breath ragged in her ear, and she is both startled and pleased by her own power. He pulls out of her, shuddering, and comes in a sticky welter across her stomach, and she holds him and strokes his hair and hums nonsense in his ear while his breathing slows, and when he begins to cry she is somehow not surprised. “You're safe here,” she says into his hair, “sshhh, ssshhh,” and he weeps without a hint of self-consciousness and she feels, suddenly, very old.

She pushes his wet hair out of his face, kisses his cheeks, curls her fingers in his pale palm, barely bigger than hers. He's fragile as a kitten, this lovely creature, this boy who's hers now. She will have to learn to be strong, to take care of what's been given her.

Afterward she runs back into the ocean again, washing him from her skin, and dries herself off with her shirt as best she can. If she looks half as bedraggled as he does, she looks one hell of a mess. There's sand all through her everything. She touches her hair and a dusting of sand falls into her eyes. He puts his jeans on and tucks the Misfits shirt into his back pocket and leads her back to where his bandmates and her best friend sit yawning by the remains of the fire.

“Well, then,” Cass says, looking up at her.

Maia licks her salty, bee-stung lips. “Let's go to Mexico.”

Is that resignation she sees cross Cass's face? Whatever it is, it's gone so quick she barely registers it. “No way,” Cass says, and starts to laugh. The bass player and the drummer, slower to catch on, stare at her stupidly.

“Way,” she says, and she knows she is grinning like an idiot.

“Give me the keys,” Cass says. “I'll drive.”

“I'll meet you guys up north,” Jason says to his gaping bandmates.

“What?” says the drummer.

“Like in a week or something. Maybe a couple of weeks. That cool? I'll call you when I'm back in town.”

“Oh, for fuck's sake,” the bassist says. He shoots Maia a disgusted look.

“Come on, man,” Jason says. “Our tour's over.”

“We're supposed to split gas three ways.”

“I'll give you money when I come back.”

“Sure you will,” the drummer says. “Fucking hell, dude, this isn't cool.”

“I guess we need a map,” Cass says.

“It can't be that hard,” Jason says. “I mean, you just go south.”

The bass player makes a snorting noise and gets to his feet. “Whatever. Call us when you're back in town and see if you still have a band.” He gathers up the blankets, the bottles, the odds and ends they've scattered around the fire. The drummer scowls but gets up, too. “Whatever,” he echoes, his voice valley-girling up a plaintive register.

“It was nice to meet you,” Cass says. They don't answer as they trudge away from the beach, backs set in a sulky line, but the drummer flips them off.

“Maybe you should go with them,” Maia says. Jason shakes his head.

“They're nothing without me,” he says, “and they know it. They'll never find another band like this. They'll get over it.”

“If you're sure.”

“Baby,” he says, grinning at her, “I'm always sure.”

“Come on,” Cass says, cutting him short. “Help me carry the rest of this stuff back to our car.”

When they get to the strip of roadside where the car is parked, they see the band has taken off already, leaving Jason's duffel bag and his acoustic guitar on the trunk of Maia's car. “They'll get over it,” Jason says again, still confident.

“What about your other guitar?” Maia asks.

“I had to pawn it,” Jason says, “and then Byron got it out of hock, so I guess he thinks it's his.”

Cass considers and discards a number of spiteful remarks. There's plenty of time to make him hate her. She climbs into the driver's seat. Maia goes for the passenger door, and Jason makes a noise of protest.

“Come on, baby,” he says. “Sit in the back with me.” Maia obeys meekly, and Cass does not protest her demotion to chauffeur, though her look is murderous. “Just head south,” Jason says. “Until you hit the border. And then head south some more.”

“Aye aye, captain,” Cass says, and she starts the car.

THEN

Maia's mother goes out of town for the weekend. For a conference, she says, though Maia suspects the conference is a panel of two. Cass's defiance is catching; the first thing Maia does, when her mother has driven off in her shiny black car, is track Cass down on her corner and invite her over again.

“Come with me,” she says. It's a chilly April afternoon, the kind of damp and foggy day that makes you think spring is a foolish delusion. They're huddled up under an awning, watching people walk by. Cass rolls a joint, brazen as daylight. Maia smoked pot with her for the first time a few days ago. She liked the way it made her feel, blurry and loose. She played well that night, her fingers moving smoothly, her thoughts wiped clean.

“To your house? Again? That didn't go so well the last time.”

“My mom is out of town.”

“Sure, then,” Cass says, touching her hand. “Let's go.”

Her father is shut away in his study, a dollar-store Fitzgerald lost in his world of cocktail parties and limpid-eyed women in silk dresses gazing sadly into their drinks. As long as they are quiet he'll never even notice. Maia is anxious, at first, to impress upon Cass the necessity of stealth, but Cass seems to understand without prompting and even takes her boots off at the door. “Cool if I take a shower, princess?” Cass asks. Maia gives her soft white towels from the stack in the hall closet and points Cass to the bathroom. “Shit, girl, you got a bathroom of your own?” Cass says. “Plush life.” But there's no rancor in her voice. While Cass showers Maia paces her room anxiously, her socked feet silent on the carpet, her pastel walls offering her no answers. Now that Cass is here Maia has no idea what to do with her.

Maia is so engrossed in her thoughts she does not notice the water shut off, and she starts when the door between her room and the bathroom opens. Cass stands on the threshold, wrapped in a towel, her short hair standing on end. “Oh my god,” she says. “You don't even know how good it feels to be this clean. You got some fancy soap in there. Can I do laundry, too?”

“The cleaning lady usually does it,” Maia says.

“Is that a no?”

“No, I just—” Maia falters, embarrassed. “I don't really know how to use the washer,” she admits.

Cass laughs. “Good thing for you I got all kinds of background in domestic servitude. You think I can borrow something while I wash my clothes?”

“Yeah,” Maia says. “Yes.” She turns to her dresser to hide her consternation. She rummages through neatly folded sweaters, pressed khakis, socks knotted in pairs and smelling of fabric softener. “I think these will fit you. We're about the same size.” She offers a pair of pants and a button-down shirt. Cass drops her towel on the floor without a hint of self-consciousness and pulls on the pants and shirt over her still-wet skin. Maia flushes crimson and looks away. “I have underwear, too,” she mumbles.

“All good,” Cass says, “I'll just wait until mine is clean.” She goes back into the bathroom and laughs at her reflection. “Shit, princess,” she says through the open door. “It's like Halloween in here. Nobody will believe this is me.”

Still blushing, Maia peeks around the doorframe. Cass looks like she is about to apply for a job at the mall. “You're me,” Maia says shyly.

“Not much chance of that,” Cass says amicably. Maia blinks. “You got some life here,” Cass adds. “All boxed up in this pretty house like Sleeping Beauty. Your mom ever let you out?”

“Not really,” Maia says. “But I don't know where I would go if she did.”

“Oh, come on,” Cass says. “All kinds of places. You ever even been to a show?”

“A show of what?”

“Music,” Cass says. “You know? A
‘rock concert'
?” She makes quotation marks with her fingers.

“I play music,” Maia says.

“Not music like that. Like punk music.”

“I don't know what that is.”

“You
are
like something out of a fairy tale. Let me wash my clothes and I'll see what I can do.”

Maia shows Cass the laundry room and watches, fascinated, as Cass piles the contents of her backpack into the washing machine, adds soap, turns the dial. “See?” Cass says. “Easy. You could do your own.”

“I never had to,” Maia says.

“You wouldn't last five minutes in the wild.”

“I would too,” Maia says, nettled.

“Oh, there's a streak of trouble in you a mile wide, for sure. But you have no skills. What if the world ended and your house blew up tomorrow? Or if there was, like, a zombie apocalypse? You'd be up shit creek.”

“Not if I was with you.”

“Well,” Cass says, and Maia is astonished to see that it's Cass who's blushing now. “That's probably true. We don't have to watch the washing machine for it to work. You got anything to eat?”

 

 

Later, when Cass has eaten six peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and her clothes are tumbling in the dryer, she commandeers Maia's phone and pulls a grubby notebook out of her bag. She dials several numbers in rapid succession, muttering a mysterious series of instructions, and finally hangs up in satisfaction. “Show tonight at the Greenhouse,” she says. “It's kind of far, but we can walk there from here.”

“The Greenhouse?”

“This punk house over in Ballard. I don't know, some kid had a big garden there for a while and the name stuck. You in?”

“What do I do?”

Cass laughs. “You just go, princess,” she says. “You like the music, you can dance around a little. Get drunk. Whatever.”

“What do I wear?”

“That, my girl, is a good question. Maybe not your loafers. You have any clothes that don't make you look like the head of the Young Republicans?”

“Not really,” Maia says.

“In that case, let's go shopping.”

Cass makes Maia reckless. She takes the keys to her dad's Mercedes without asking, drives them to the Ave. Cass reclines in the passenger seat, her booted feet on the dashboard, somehow as ferocious in Maia's clothes as she is in her own uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt. “Let's go somewhere actually cool,” Cass says, and takes her to a vintage store they've never been in. A bored-looking girl with bright-dyed hair and a nose ring leans on the counter, chewing gum. The music is loud, an addictive beat that makes Maia twitch, but the singer's voice is deep and sad. “Joy Division,” Cass says.

“What?”

“The band. Joy Division.”

“It's good.”

“Yep.” Cass flips through shirts on hangers, organized by color, pulls things out and holds them up against Maia, talking to herself. If something meets with her approval she hands it to Maia, until Maia's arms are piled high. Worn-thin T-shirts, jeans ragged and artfully blown out at the knees, even a pair of leather pants. “No way,” Maia says, and Cass laughs.

“Come on,” she says, “live a little. You have the legs for them.” No one has ever in her life told Maia she has the legs for anything. She is not entirely sure she even knows what this means.

“Thanks?” she says. Cass is rummaging through a pile of sweaters on a shelf with the fixed intensity of a bloodhound. The girl at the register watches them with interest.

“What are you, like her personal shopper?” she calls.

“She's getting a makeover,” Cass says.

“You need one,” the girl says. “No offense. You look like you fell into the fucking Gap. You guys want help? I'm bored out of my mind. I could show you where the cool stuff is. Some of it is in, like, piles.”

Maia nods. The girl emerges from behind the counter. She's wearing tiny plastic shorts and fishnets, and each wrist is sheathed in a jangling cuff of stacked bangles and charm bracelets. Her nails are painted alternating black and bright pink, and a black swoop of eyeliner extends her eyes like a cat's. Maia realizes she is staring, but the girl doesn't seem to mind. “I know you, right?” she says to Cass. “Why are you dressed all weird? I didn't recognize you. I'm Judy. Remember me? We did coke in a bathroom at Camilla Winter's party in like ninth grade. I'm pretty sure. Did you go to Northside? I hated that school. Oh my god, I puked for like
ever
at that party, I swear to god every time I drink tequila I practically puke up my entire small
intestine.
”

“Maybe,” Cass says, still looking through the sweaters. “I'm around.”

“Or wait, that wasn't you. That was Patricia Taylor, and then right after that she got that thing where you don't eat, you know that thing? Like, anorexia. We all thought she was just doing a ton of speed and then she was in the hospital all of a sudden and our first period class had to make her get-well cards and it was so weird because we all thought she was a total bitch but obviously you couldn't, like, put that on the card, like oh hi Patricia sorry you're in the hospital but the whole universe
hates
your guts, can you please stay there for, like, ever. I could never not eat, oh my god, I could probably do that thing where you make yourself barf afterward but not eating would be so hard. I know how I know you, I totally got it. You're Rusty's girlfriend.”