Larque on the Wing (12 page)

Well, she wasn't a woman anymore. She was a cocksure, strong-fisted, hard-ass certified pistol-toting young prick, strutting by Sky's side, and being one of those felt almost as good as what she'd been doing in the locked bathroom.

For a moment she felt profoundly grateful to Sky for being a pain in the butt: It would have been really stupid, really a waste, to stay inside and sleep on the sofa this night, this probably-one-and-only night when she was a guy.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

Sky glanced over at her with a pixie grin that plainly commented
So you 're finally getting it
. “I just want to see what goes on,” she said.

“What goes on at night.”

“Uh-huh.”

Lark remembered: bedtime had always been early, no matter what, leaving plenty of time for a small girl to lie awake and wonder. There had been manifestations of night seen by day: black-rubber graphics left by tires on gray pavement, bullet stars in speed-limit signs, beer cans, graffiti. Smashed mailboxes. Toppled tombstones. Once, a strange small object her mother would not explain, lying at the edge of the roadway in the chill morning light. Dark and immense things moved at night. The police cars were out there in the parking lots, nose to tail like horses, talking. Immense trucks rolled sidewalk to sidewalk when the streets were empty. Sirens blew. Wind blew the moon around. Shoutings flew through the dark. Milk appeared on the porch, people died, babies happened somehow. Something vast and adult and mysterious happened at night.

Sky started walking stiff-legged on her toes, then hop-scotched a few steps, then began to skip. Briefly Lark thought of asking her if she was cold. Dumb. Spirits don't get cold. The kid was happy, high on adventure, that was all. Her whole body lilted with skipping. She flung out her skinny arms as if the starlight were sunshine.

Lark noticed that she herself was not cold either.

There were no people on the sidewalks, few cars on the streets. Television shone ice blue through the shut-out-the-world slats of somebody's Venetian blinds. A mile away on the main highway a truck jake-braked like thunder. No bullets flew, but somewhere in the dark sky sounded cries that always tugged at Lark's heart: wild geese were flying. Even though she thought she would not be able to see them in the night, Lark looked up, and there they were, startlingly so, their vee gliding huge across the sky like a visitant, angel white in the citylight.

“Sky,” she whispered.

The little girl glanced up and shrugged, unimpressed. “Nothing's happening,” she complained.

The geese were moving fast, gone within a moment. In silence Lark and Sky walked on.
Okay, we're in the tree streets
, Lark noted. They passed Pine, Elm, Cherry. Bucolic names, but not one actual tree stood anywhere—these streets were stony valleys between row houses that crowded them like canyon walls, shadowed them like cliffs.

At the far end of a block were voices, men moving, the ruddy glow of a Budweiser sign.

“Let's go see!” Sky urged.

Lark already saw, between her and the neon light, a magnificent ass in motion, slim shoulders, a desperado hat—she'd know them anywhere, even in silhouette at midnight. Shadow was walking down there.

Striding, rather. Like a gunfighter heading toward the showdown. And as Lark opened her mouth to tell Sky who it was, somebody lunged out of somewhere and hit him hard enough to fold him over.

A fight! There was a real fight happening.

Well-hung young pricks can be afraid too, Lark discovered. She was in fact scared right down to her long strong bones, because what was happening to Shadow could happen to her, too, no matter how male she got. Yet some sort of trumpet call in her heart sent her running toward the danger rather than away.

She rushed forward as they hit him again—there were four of them, men in bruise-colored clothing, blue jeans, black boots, black jackets. Shadow could not do squat against all four of them. Two were holding him by the arms, and the other two were systematically beating him up.

Lark piled full tilt into striking fists. Afterward, looking back, what impressed her most was not the pain but the stench. She had not known hatred possessed an odor, a smell like a darker form of fear, so choking it made her scream—but the scream came out a fierce shout. Her body seemed to know things about fighting despite the commotion going on in her head. Evidently magic makeovers really worked. Her fists were striking as hard as anybody's—and then when the faces threatened her, the hating faces twisted way out of shape, she struck at them not with her hard-knuckled hands but with her bare upkicking feet. At the same time she cried out again, this time in delight, because she did really really know how to dance; it was all a dance, a dance of hatred, and Shadow had seen to it that she could dance so hard and so high it felt like flying. And they had let go of Shadow to attack her, he was on his feet and punching—not very well—and Sky was there, getting in the way—no, maybe not in the way after all. Maybe of some use, because the first time one of the bruise-colored men tried to whack her aside, his hand passed right through her, his face turned pale, he froze where he was, and Lark nailed him.

“Boogerhead,” Sky told him, and she launched herself at another one, soaring up—Lark hadn't known the doppelganger could do that. The man's face passed through the small girl's skirted belly, and he screamed like a steam whistle.

After that it was over quickly. They cleared out, all four of them, and the street lay empty except for Lark and Sky and Shadow, who was leaning against the bar's brick wall, hugging himself and softly groaning.

“You all right?” Lark asked him. Stupid question. Of course he was not all right. He couldn't even look at her. “We'd better get you to the hospital,” she said.

Shadow shook his head. “Change the sign,” he whispered.

“Huh?”

With great effort he lifted his head, tilting it toward the corner. “Change—the sign,” he told her, forcing out the words past pain. “Chalk—in my pocket.”

She stared at him, realized there was no time to stand there staring at him, and moved to do what he said without yet understanding how or why. Slipping her hand into the jeans pocket he indicated with a stiff motion of his fingers, she found a cat's-eye marble, a wooden ring, a penny, and then the chalk. She started to feel shaky in reaction to the fight. Fought the feeling off and headed toward the corner, thinking,
What sign? Change it how?

“Do you know what he means?” she called to Sky.

The little girl had picked up Shadow's hat, which had been stepped on, shook the dirt off it and stuck it on her own head, prancing around. She gave no sign of having heard, but just looking at her, Lark grinned. Making contact with the kid, now she knew. The green street sign said in white letters
POPLAR STREET
. She chalked in a single simple stroke, a U.

An odd twinge, a sort of atom-by-atom dislocation, flowed through her body as everything changed. The whole street was a different place now, bright-colored and full of life and lit up like Christmas. New Wave music poured out the open door of Araby, near which Shadow leaned. In the middle of the street, Sky danced, a goblin in broad-brim hat and oversized oxfords. With the chalk still in her hand Lark was standing by the corner shop, the Bareback Rider.

Propping himself upright with one hand against the wall, Shadow tottered toward her. Lark ran to help him, slinging his other arm over her shoulders.

“Where do you think you're going?” she demanded.

“Home,” he panted.

“Where's that?”

He didn't answer. No need. Popular Street had people on it even in the night, and they knew him, and somebody had already run to knock and shout at the door. Hurrying toward them came the tall man in pearl and silver, the white-hat cowboy, calling out, “Baby, what happened?”

“Gay bashers,” Shadow told him in a tight voice.

“Fuck it, how many times have I told you to go around, use the sign at the other end?” Supporting Shadow on the other side from Lark, he sounded more distressed than angry. “But nooo, you've got to strut right past them. Proud bitch. No fucking sense. How bad is it?”

“Just—shut up and help me.…”

They were already helping him, up a stairway to the apartment over the Bareback Rider shop. Inside, Lark got an impression of track lighting and lots of good-quality Western art—some early Doolittle prints, maybe even a Lougheed or two. Something about the art and the scrupulously dust-free feather-and-silk-flower arrangements raised an odd clamor in Lark's heart, an ache she could not account for. But there was no time to stop and examine the art or the feeling; Shadow was leaning heavily on her shoulder. She supported him the few necessary steps farther to the bedroom and its king-size water bed, where she and the white-hat cowboy eased him down on top of what looked like an expensive Navaho blanket. White Hat did not seem to care if it got bloodstained. He seemed half-panicked. “Get some ice!” he ordered Lark.

She found some in the clean, clean kitchen and made up two packs in plastic bags. When she brought them to White Hat he took one without looking at her, intent on Shadow.

“What hurts the worst?” He had unbuttoned the injured man's shirt and was running his hands gently over his ribs, looking for damage.

“I—I'm mostly just shaken up, Argent.”

So Shadow's lover's name was Argent. They had to be lovers. Lark had not wanted to face it, when Shadow had asked her if she could see him truly, that he was gay. He was so beautiful she had wanted to think some woman would have him someday, even though it could not be her. But if he had to be gay, it seemed right that this also-beautiful young silver-haired man should be his lover.

And if Shadow was gay—then he was like her. Dimly, with her burning heart more than her mind, she began to understand why she had always liked gay men. They suffered, were persecuted, they were outsiders in a world where studbuck male heteros held all the power, they did not count, they were Other—the way women were.

Beautiful Shadow—if she did not love him already, she would someday.

“You're sure nothing's broken?” Argent was examining Shadow's battered hands now, and his lacerated face.

“Pretty sure.”

“Damn lucky.” Argent laid the ice pack against Shadow's black eye and bloody mouth. “Did you get kicked in the balls?” he demanded.

“No.”

“Anywhere?”

“No. They didn't get me down.” Shadow seemed to feel better now. Perhaps being fussed over by Argent made him feel better. “I—it could have been a lot worse, Argent.” Shadow's glance shifted to Lark, who was standing there watching as shamelessly as Sky had watched her earlier in the evening. She flushed, suddenly aware of herself as an intruder, but now Shadow was speaking to her. “Thanks,” he was saying. “You saved my ass. What's your name again? Robin?”

“Lark.”

“Lark. I'd shake your hand, but mine's pretty sore.”

It was swollen and sprained from punching. She could tell, because her right hand felt the same way—the ice she was holding felt good on it. She hunkered down beside the bed and put the pack on his hand instead. “Thank yourself. What made you put martial arts into me?”

“I figured—pretty boy like you—ought to have some protection.”

“Then you ought to have some too.”

“I can't—do it for myself.”

“He's getting tired,” Argent put in. “Don't make him talk.” The platinum-colored man was staring at her intently. “Your name's Lark?”

“Right.”

“Short for Skylark?”

“Yeah! How'd you know?” Hardly anybody ever made that connection.

“I used to know somebody named Skylark.” He moved his handsome shoulders, shrugging off the thought, and lifted the ice pack away from the injured man's face. “Shadow,” he said to him, “you should just lie there and go to sleep. I'll bring you some ibuprofen or something.”

Plainly, though spoken to his lover, it was a dismissal for Lark. She got up and let Argent usher her out of the room. “His name really is Shadow?” she blurted.

He seemed not to hear her for a moment, but pulled a feather from one of the vases in the hallway and twirled it between his fingers. Watching the gemstone sheen of his eyes, she understood: he was preoccupied, he wanted to get rid of her, but he was a truthteller, so he could not lie to her by simply saying yes. “The most recent one, right,” he told her finally.

“He's going to be okay, isn't he?”

“I hope so. Thanks for all your help.”

“You're welcome.” She barefooted down the stairs and let herself out into the street, tasting an odd cakemix of emotions: worry about Shadow—would that exquisite face ever be the same? And worry about herself: obviously Shadow would not be able to put her back into any form acceptable to Hoot for a few days, maybe more. Yet joy, for the very same reason. She liked being the way she was. More than liked it. Being strong and venturesome and not afraid of the night made her soul spread its wings and sing and sweep like the wild geese through the darkened sky. It felt profoundly right.

Sky, that snot, would be happy there was a reprieve, if only for a few days.

Though it was very late, there were still people on Popular Street, mostly young people laughing in small groups. There was still music wafting out of Araby.

In the middle of the street lay Shadow's hat, which looked as if he was going to need a new one. Lark walked over and picked it up, though not with any thought of returning it. She was wondering where Sky had gotten to. Nosy as the kid was, it was strange that once she got tired of dancing she had not come in to see how Shadow was doing.

Lark scanned the night in every direction, and didn't see Sky anywhere.

SEVEN

S
HADOW JUST WANTED TO SLEEP
. T
HERE WOULD BE NO
memories, no revelation of his hidden past; they had not assaulted his head hard enough for that. Yet he found himself undisappointed, oddly satisfied by his own suffering. Tonight his sleep would be exhausted and serene.