Chapter 16

He kneaded at her flesh, grinding hard at the knots and feeling them give way, briskly rubbing the spots where they'd been to get the blood going. Her wings flapped gently around him as he worked, not caring that his body was pretzeled into a knot of its own to reach her back, since he didn't want to break the spell to ask her to move over to give him a better angle.

He could smell her armpit and her wings and her hair and he closed his eyes and worked by touch, following scar to muscle, muscle to knot, working his way the length and breadth of her back, following the muscle up from the ridge of her iliac crest like a treasure trail to the muscle of her left wing, which was softly twitching with pleasure.

She went perfectly still again when he took the wing in his hands. It had its own geometry, hard to understand and irresistible. He followed the mysterious and powerful muscles and bones, the vast expanses of cartilage, finding knots and squeezing them, kneading her as he'd kneaded her back, and she groaned and went limp, leaning back against him so that his face was in her hair and smelling her scalp oil and stale shampoo and sweat. It was all he could do to keep himself from burying his face in her hair and gnawing at the muscles at the base of her skull.

He moved as slow as a seaweed and ran his hands over to her other wing, giving it the same treatment. He was rock-hard, pressed against her, her wings all around him. He traced the line of her jaw to her chin, and they were breathing in unison, and his fingers found the tense place at the hinge and worked there, too.

Then he brushed against her bruised cheek and she startled, and that shocked him back to reality. He dropped his hands to his sides and then stood, realized his erection was straining at his shorts, sat back down again in one of the club chairs, and crossed his legs.

"Well," he said.

Mimi unfolded her wings over the sofa-back and let them spread out, then leaned back, eyes closed.

"You should try the ice-pack again," he said weakly. She groped blindly for it and draped it over her face.

"Thank you," she sighed.

He suppressed the urge to apologize. "You're welcome," he said.

"It started last week," she said. "My wings had gotten longer. Too long. Krishna came home from the club and he was drunk and he wanted sex. Wanted me on the bottom. I couldn't. My wings. He wanted to get the knife right away and cut them off. We do it about four times a year, using a big serrated hunting knife he bought at a sporting-goods store on Yonge Street, one of those places that sells dud grenades and camou pants and tasers."

She opened her eyes and looked at him, then closed them. He shivered and a goose walked over his grave.

"We do it in the tub. I stand in the tub, naked, and he saws off the wings right to my shoulders. I don't bleed much. He gives me a towel to bite on while he cuts. To scream into. And then we put them in garden trash bags and he puts them out just before the garbage men arrive, so the neighborhood dogs don't get at them. For the meat."

He noticed that he was gripping the arm rests so tightly that his hands were cramping. He pried them loose and tucked them under his thighs.

"He dragged me into the bathroom. One second, we were rolling around in bed, giggling like kids in love, and then he had me so hard by the wrist, dragging me naked to the bathroom, his knife in his other fist. I had to keep quiet, so that I wouldn't wake Link and Natalie, but he was hurting me, and I was scared. I tried to say something to him, but I could only squeak. He hurled me into the tub and I cracked my head against the tile. I cried out and he crossed the bathroom and put his hand over my mouth and nose and then I couldn't breathe, and my head was swimming.

"He was naked and hard, and he had the knife in his fist, not like for slicing, but for stabbing, and his eyes were red from the smoke at the club, and the bathroom filled with the booze-breath smell, and I sank down in the tub, shrinking away from him as he grabbed for me.

"He -- *growled*. Saw that I was staring at the knife. Smiled. Horribly. There's a piece of granite we use for a soap dish, balanced in the corner of the tub. Without thinking, I grabbed it and threw it as hard as I could at him. It broke his nose and he closed his eyes and reached for his face and I wrapped him up in the shower curtain and grabbed his arm and bit at the base of his thumb so hard I heard a bone break and he dropped the knife. I grabbed it and ran back to our room and threw it out the window and started to get dressed."

She'd fallen into a monotone now, but her wingtips twitched and her knees bounced like her motor was idling on high. She jiggled.

"You don't have to tell me this," he said.

She took off the ice pack. "Yes, I do," she said. Her eyes seemed to have sunk into her skull, vanishing into dark pits. He'd thought her eyes were blue, or green, but they looked black now.

"All right," he said.

"All right," she said. "He came through the door and I didn't scream. I didn't want to wake up Link and Natalie. Isn't that stupid? But I couldn't get my sweatshirt on, and they would have seen my wings. He looked like he was going to kill me. Really. Hands in claws. Teeth out. Crouched down low like a chimp, ready to grab, ready to swing. And I was back in a corner again, just wearing track pants. He didn't have the knife this time, though.

"When he came for me, I went limp, like I was too scared to move, and squeezed my eyes shut. Listened to his footsteps approach. Felt the creak of the bed as he stepped up on it. Felt his breath as he reached for me.

"I exploded. I've read books on women's self-defense, and they talk about doing that, about exploding. You gather in all your energy and squeeze it tight, and then blamo boom, you explode. I was aiming for his soft parts: Balls. Eyes. Nose. Sternum. Ears. I'd misjudged where he was, though, so I missed most of my targets.

"And then he was on me, kneeling on my tits, hands at my throat. I bucked him but I couldn't get him off. My chest and throat were crushed, my wings splayed out behind me. I flapped them and saw his hair move in the breeze. He was sweating hard, off his forehead and off his nose and lips. It was all so detailed. And silent. Neither of us made a sound louder than a grunt. Quieter than our sex noises. *Now* I wanted to scream, *wanted* to wake up Link and Natalie, but I couldn't get a breath.

"I worked one hand free and I reached for the erection that I could feel just below my tits, reached as fast as a striking snake, grabbed it, grabbed his balls, and I yanked and I squeezed like I was trying to tear them off.

"I was.

"Now *he* was trying to get away and I had him cornered. I kept squeezing. That's when he kicked me in the face. I was dazed. He kicked me twice more, and I ran downstairs and got a parka from the closet and ran out into the front yard and out to the park and hid in the bushes until morning.

"He was asleep when I came back in, after Natalie and Link had gone out. I found the knife beside the house and I went up to our room and I stood there, by the window, listening to you talk to them, holding the knife."

She plumped herself on the cushions and flapped her wings once, softly, another puff of that warm air wafting over him. She picked up the tin robot he'd given her from the coffee table and turned it over in her hands, staring up its skirts at the tuna-fish illustration and the Japanese ideograms.

"I had the knife, and I felt like I had to use it. You know Chekhov? 'If a gun is on the mantle in the first act, it must go off in the third.' I write one-act plays. Wrote. But it seemed to me that the knife had been in act one, when Krishna dragged me into the bathroom.

"Or maybe act one was when he brought it home, after I showed him my wings.

"And act two had been my night in the park. And act three was then, standing over him with the knife, cold and sore and tired, looking at the blood crusted on his face."

Her face and her voice got very, very small, her expression distant. "I almost used it on myself. I almost opened my wrists onto his face. He liked it when I... rode... his face. Like the hot juices. Seemed mean-spirited to spill all that hot juice and deny him that pleasure. I thought about using it on him, too, but only for a second.

"Only for a second.

"And then he rolled over and his hands clenched into fists in his sleep and his expression changed, like he was dreaming about something that made him angry. So I left.

"Do you want to know about when I first showed him these?" she said, and flapped her wings lazily.

She took the ice pack from her face and he could see that the swelling had gone down, the discoloration faded to a dim shadow tinged with yellows and umbers.

He did, but he didn't. The breeze of her great wings was strangely intimate, that smell more intimate than his touches or the moment in which he'd glimpsed her fine, weighty breasts with their texture of stretch marks and underwire grooves. He was awkward, foolish feeling.

"I don't think I do," he said at last. "I think that we should save some things to tell each other for later."

She blinked, slow and lazy, and one tear rolled down and dripped off her nose, splashing on the red T-shirt and darkening it to wineish purple.

"Will you sit with me?" she said.

He crossed the room and sat on the other end of the sofa, his hand on the seam that joined the two halves together, crossing the border into her territory, an invitation that could be refused without awkwardness.

She covered his hand with hers, and hers was cold and smooth but not distant: immediate, scritching and twitching against his skin. Slowly, slowly, she leaned toward him, curling her wing round his far shoulder like a blanket or a lover's arm, head coming to rest on his chest, breath hot on his nipple through the thin fabric of his T-shirt.

"Alan?" she murmured into his chest.

"Yes?"

"What are we?" she said.

"Huh?"

"Are we human? Where do we come from? How did we get here? Why do I have wings?"

He closed his eyes and found that they'd welled up with tears. Once the first tear slid down his cheek, the rest came, and he was crying, weeping silently at first and then braying like a donkey in sobs that started in his balls and emerged from his throat like vomit, gushing out with hot tears and hot snot.

Mimi enveloped him in her wings and kissed his tears away, working down his cheeks to his neck, his Adam's apple.

He snuffled back a mouthful of mucus and salt and wailed, "I don't know!"

She snugged her mouth up against his collarbone. "Krishna does," she whispered into his skin. She tugged at the skin with her teeth. "What about your family?"

He swallowed a couple of times, painfully aware of her lips and breath on his skin, the enveloping coolth of her wings, and the smell in every breath he took. He wanted to blow his nose, but he couldn't move without breaking the spell, so he hoarked his sinuses back into his throat and drank the oozing oyster of self-pity that slid down his throat.

"My family?"

"I don't have a family, but you do," she said. "Your family must know."

"They don't," he said.

"Maybe you haven't asked them properly. When are you leaving?"

"Today."

"Driving?"

"Got a rental car," he said.

"Room for one more?"

"Yes," he said.

"Then take me," she said.

"All right," he said. She raised her head and kissed him on the lips, and he could taste the smell now, and the blood roared in his ears as she straddled his lap, grinding her mons -- hot through the thin cotton of her skirt -- against him. They slid down on the sofa and they groaned into each others' mouths, his voice box resonating with hers.

#

He parked the rental car in the driveway, finishing his cell phone conversation with Lyman and then popping the trunk before getting out. He glanced reflexively up at Mimi and Krishna's windows, saw the blinds were still drawn.

When he got to the living room, Mimi was bent over a suitcase, forcing it closed. Two more were lined up beside the door, along with three shopping bags filled with tupperwares and ziplocs of food from his fridge.

"I've borrowed some of your clothes," she said. "Didn't want to have to go back for mine. Packed us a picnic, too."

He planted his hands on his hips. "You thought of everything, huh?" he said.

She cast her eyes down. "I'm sorry," she said in a small voice. "I couldn't go home." Her wings unfolded and folded down again nervously.

He went and stood next to her. He could still smell the sex on her, and on him. A livid hickey stood out on her soft skin on her throat. He twined her fingers in his and dropped his face down to her ear.

"It's okay," he said huskily. "I'm glad you did it."

She turned her head and brushed her lips over his, brushed her hand over his groin. He groaned softly.

"We have to get driving," he said.

"Yes," she said. "Load the car, then bring it around the side. I'll lie down on the back seat until we're out of the neighborhood."

"You've thought about this a lot, huh?"

"It's all I've thought of," she said.

#

She climbed over the back seat once they cleared Queen Street, giggling as her wings, trapped under her jacket, brushed the roof of the big Crown Victoria he'd rented. She prodded at the radio and found a college station, staticky and amateurish, and nodded her head along with the mash-up mixes and concert bootlegs the DJ was spinning.

Alan watched her in the rearview and felt impossibly old and strange. She'd been an incredible and attentive lover, using her hands and mouth, her breasts and wings, her whole body to keep him quivering on the brink of orgasm for what felt like hours, before finally giving him release, and then had guided him around her body with explicit instructions and firm hands on his shoulders. When she came, she squeezed him between her thighs and screamed into his neck, twitching and shuddering for a long time afterward, holding him tight, murmuring nonsense and hot breath.

In the dark, she'd seemed older. His age, or some indeterminate age. Now, sitting next to him, privately spazzing out to the beat, she seemed, oh, 12 or so. A little girl. He felt dirty.

"Where are we going?" she said, rolling down the window and shouting over the wind as they bombed up the Don Valley Parkway. The traffic had let up at Sheppard, and now they were making good time, heading for the faceless surburbs of Richmond Hill and Thornhill, and beyond.

"North," he said. "Past Kapuskasing."

She whistled. "How long a drive is it?"

"Fifteen hours. Twenty, maybe. Depends on the roads -- you can hit cottage traffic or a bad accident and get hung up for hours. There are good motels between Huntsville and North Bay if we get tired out. Nice neon signs, magic fingers beds. A place I like has 'Swiss Cabins' and makes a nice rosti for dinner."

"God, that's a long trip," she said.

"Yeah," he said, wondering if she wanted out. "I can pull off here and give you cab fare to the subway station if you wanna stay."

"No!" she said quickly. "No. Want to go."

#

She fed him as he drove, slicing cheese and putting it on crackers with bits of olive or pepper or salami. It appeared that she'd packed his entire fridge in the picnic bags.

After suppertime, she went to work on an apple, and he took a closer look at the knife she was using. It was a big, black hunting knife, with a compass built into the handle. The blade was black except right at the edge, where it gleamed sharp in the click-clack of the passing highway lights.

He was transfixed by it, and the car drifted a little, sprayed gravel from the shoulder, and he overcorrected and fishtailed a little. She looked up in alarm.

"You brought the knife," he said, in response to her unasked question.

"Couldn't leave it with him," she said. "Besides, a sharp knife is handy."

"Careful you don't slice anything off, okay?"

"I never cut anything *unintentionally*," she said in a silly-dramatic voice, and socked him in the shoulder.

He snorted and went back to the driving, putting the hammer down, eating up the kilometers toward Huntsville and beyond.

She fed him slices of apple and ate some herself, then rolls of ham with little pieces of pear in them, then sips of cherry juice from a glass bottle.

"Enough," he said at last. "I'm stuffed, woman!"

She laughed. "Skinny little fucker -- gotta put some meat on your bones." She tidied the dinner detritus into an empty shopping bag and tossed it over her shoulder into the back seat.

"So," she said. "How long since you've been home?"

He stared at the road for a while. "Fifteen years," he said. "Never been back since I left."

She stared straight forward and worked her hand under his thigh, so he was sitting on it, then wriggled her knuckles.

"I've never been home," she said.

He wrinkled his brow. "What's that mean?" he said.

"It's a long story," she said.

"Well, let's get off the highway and get a room and you can tell me, okay?"

"Sure," she said.

#

They ended up at the Timberline Wilderness Lodge and Pancake House, and Mimi clapped her hands at the silk-flowers-and-waterbeds ambience of the room, fondled the grisly jackalope head on the wall, and started running a tub while Alan carried in the suitcases.

She dramatically tossed her clothes, one item at a time, out the bathroom door, through the clouds of steam, and he caught a glimpse of her round, full ass, bracketed by her restless wings, as she poured into the tub the bottle of cheap bubble-bath she'd bought in the lobby.

He dug a T-shirt and a fresh pair of boxers to sleep in out of his suitcase, feeling ridiculously modest as he donned them. His feet crunched over cigarette burns and tangles in the brown shag carpet and he wished he'd brought along some slippers. He flipped through both snowy TV channels and decided that he couldn't stomach a televangelist or a thirty-year-old sitcom right then and flicked it off, sitting on the edge of the bed, listening to the splashing from the bathroom.

Mimi was in awfully good spirits, considering what she'd been through with Krishna. He tried to think about it, trying to make sense of the day and the girl, but the splashing from the tub kept intruding on his thoughts.

She began to sing, and after a second he recognized the tune. "White Rabbit," by the Jefferson Airplane. Not the kind of thing he'd expect her to be giving voice to; nor she, apparently, for she kept breaking off to giggle. Finally, he poked his head through the door.

She was folded into the tub, knees and tits above the foamline, wings slick with water and dripping in the tile. Her hands were out of sight beneath the suds. She caught his eye and grinned crazily, then her hands shot out of the pool, clutching the hunting knife.

"*Put on the White Rabbit!*" she howled, cackling fiendishly.

He leapt back and she continued to cackle. "Come back, come back," she choked. "I'm doing the tub scene from *Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas*. I thought you were into reading?"

He cautiously peeked around the doorjamb, playing it up for comic effect. "Give me the knife," he said.

"Awww," she said, handing it over, butt first. He set it down on the dresser, then hurried back to the bathroom.

"Haven't you read all those books?"

Alan grinned. "What's the point of a bunch of books you've already read?" He dropped his boxers and stripped off his T-shirt and climbed into the tub, sloshing gallons of water over the scummy tile floor.

#

When I was two years old,

(she said, later, as she reclined against the headboard and he reclined against her, their asses deforming the rusted springs of the mattress so that it sloped toward them and the tins of soda they'd opened to replenish their bodily fluids lost in sweat and otherwise threatened to tip over on the slope; she encased him in her wings, shutting out the light and filling their air with the smell of cinnamon and pepper from the downy hair)

When I was two years old,

(she said, speaking into the shaggy hair at the back of his neck, as his sore muscles trembled and as the sweat dried to a white salt residue on his skin, as he lay there in the dark of the room and the wings, watching the constellation of reflected clock-radio lights in the black TV screen)

When I was two years old,

(she began, her body tensing from toes to tip in a movement that he felt along the length of his body, portending the time when lovers close their eyes and open their mouths and utter the secrets that they hide from everyone, even themselves)

When I was two years old, my wings were the size of a cherub's, and they had featherlets that were white as snow. I lived with my "aunt," an old Russian lady near Downsview Air Force Base, a blasted suburb where the shops all closed on Saturday for Sabbath and the black-hatted Hasids marked the days by walking from one end to the other on their way to temple.

The old Russian lady took me out for walks in a big black baby buggy the size of a bathtub. She tucked me in tight so that my wings were pinned beneath me. But when we were at home, in her little apartment with the wind-up Sputnik that played "The Internationale," she would let my wings out and light the candles and watch me wobble around the room, my wings flapping, her chin in her hands, her eyes bright. She made me mashed up cabbage and seed and beef, and bottles of dilute juice. For dessert, we had hard candies, and I'd toddle around with my toys, drooling sugar syrup while the old Russian lady watched.

By the time I was four, the feathers had all fallen out, and I was supposed to go to school, I knew that. "Auntie" had explained to me that the kids that I saw passing by were on their way to school, and that I'd go some day and learn, too.

She didn't speak much English, so I grew up speaking a creole of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and English, and I used my words to ask her, with more and more insistence, when I'd get to go to class.

I couldn't read or write, and neither could she. But I could take apart gadgets like nobody's business. Someone -- maybe Auntie's long dead husband -- had left her a junky tool kit with cracked handles and chipped tips, and I attacked anything that I could get unplugged from the wall: the big cabinet TV and radio, the suitcase record player, the Sputnik music box. I unwired the lamps and peered at the workings of the electric kitchen clock.

That was four. Five was the year I put it all back together again. I started with the lamps, then the motor in the blender, then the toaster elements. I made the old TV work. I don't think I knew how any of it *really* worked -- couldn't tell you a thing about, you know, electrical engineering, but I just got a sense of how it was *supposed* to go together.

Auntie didn't let me out of the apartment after five. I could watch the kids go by from the window -- skinny Hasids with side-curls and Filipinos with pretty ribbons and teenagers who smoked, but I couldn't go to them. I watched *Sesame Street* and *Mr. Dressup* and I began to soak up English. I began to soak up the idea of playing with other kids.

I began to soak up the fact that none of the kids on the TV had wings.

Auntie left me alone in the afternoons while she went out shopping and banking and whatever else it was she did, and it was during those times that I could get myself into her bedroom and go rooting around her things.

She had a lot of mysterious beige foundation garments that were utterly inexplicable, and a little box of jewelry that I liked to taste, because the real gold tasted really rich when I sucked on it, and a stack of old cigarette tins full of frayed photos.