Larque on the Wing (31 page)

Hoot Harootunian was not the only person in the world who loved her or who could potentially love her. Nor was he the only one she could love. If she continued with this quixotic man, it had to be by choice.

But it was not a hard choice to make. Suddenly she was not tired anymore—far from it. An important part of her physical selfhood was rioting, and she found herself swallowing before she could speak. All was indeed right with the Harootunians. “Um, Doris,” Larque panted at her friend, “I don't suppose you and Byron could take the kids and go somewhere a while?”

“Aw!” Rodd protested. Jeremy blushed. Jason grinned.

“Hello to you too,” Byron said.

“For about an hour, I suppose?” Doris teased.

“Better make it two.”

After they were gone and the boogie was banished to the backyard, that left the warthog roving the house. But as long as it didn't knock down the bedroom door, Larque really didn't care.

SIXTEEN

L
ARQUE AND
H
OOT SPENT THE SECOND HOUR TALKING
. Pressed together, skin to skin, they tried to touch heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul. It did not happen at once. True intimacy takes more prep work than sex. Like simultaneous orgasm, it doesn't happen often. But when it does, angels tear off their robes and dance naked.

“Jeremy's having trouble with algebra again,” Hoot said by way of starters.

“Mmmm. You say the sweetest things, you romantic devil, you.”

“Well, try this: did you know your car was stolen?”

“You're kidding!” Larque saw no reason to confess. If she did, they might actually get the car back—vomitive thought. “As in, all the way stolen?”

“Yeppers. Insurance is gonna pay up.”

“All riiiiight! Enough for a new car?”

Hoot laughed. “Enough for a skateboard, maybe.”

“I want a black Firebird with a sunroof.”

He rubbed her back. “We're broke, babe.”

“I'm not worried.”

“Hell, you're right. We'll get your Firebird anyway.”

“That's not what I mean. I just mean I'm not worried.”

“For what it's worth, the boys tell me Candy Ass got my job back.”

“You can quit again if you want.”

“I don't want.”

“Good. I want to quit painting moo cows.”

“Fine by me.” He kissed the handiest portion of her, which was an eyebrow. “Bleaaah,” he said, fishing a hair out of his mouth. “What are you going to paint instead?”

“Art.”

“Who's Art?”

“Guy I met. Really cute.”

“Cuter than me?”

“Impossible. Nobody's cuter than you.” This was subjectively, if not ontologically, true.

“Paint me, then.”

“I might. Racing stripes down your tush.” She fingered it. Nice. She got the feeling he liked her body, too. It was a good thing, because she planned to keep it.

“That guy Shadow,” Hoot said, as if he had been thinking of Shadow, though Larque had not, “he's kind of swishy but he's a good guy. I owe him one.”

“So do I. More than one.” It was not hard to talk about Shadow now. Larque knew he was way out of her league. Out of Argent's league too. That was the beauty of him.

“When I was mauling Candy Ass he stayed in the way so your mom couldn't blink me.”

“That sounds like Shadow.”

Out of left field Hoot said, “When I was a little kid I was always scared to death of turning into a girl. If I cried or wanted a hug or something, my father told me I was being a girl. He made it sound like the worst thing that could happen.”

“Somebody must have told me the same thing. Whenever I threw a baseball they always said I threw like a girl.”

“Huh. Well, what the hell else should you throw like?”

“It still sounded like a bad thing to be.”

“I happen to think being female looks good on you.”

“Being female is okay,” Larque affirmed. “You ought to try it sometime.”

She felt his big-boned embrace stiffen.

“There's lots of ways to be female,” Larque expanded. “I was always a tomboy, which according to Doris is someone who was a man in a former life being punished for being mean to women. But you wouldn't have to be a tomboy. I see you as kind of an earth mother type.”

Hoot bleated, “This is a joke, right?”

“Not necessarily.”

A few heartbeats of silence.

“You're still scared,” Larque remarked.

“Probably always will be.”

“That's the thing about Shadow. He's not scared of whatever's in him.”

“Was he a woman in a past life or something?”

“Now you sound like Doris.”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“More than him?”

“Differently.”

“Huh?”

“Heterosexually.” With a slow movement of her hips she demonstrated.

“Ohhhh.”

Time out.

“Hoot,” Larque told him tenderly when conversation resumed, “things aren't going to be exactly the same as before. I think they're going to be better.”

“That's going to take some doing.”

“You just wait and see.”

“If you're happy, I will be. You and your mom straightened out now?”

“As straight as we're going to get. My family's kind of a washout.” Saying it, she was thinking mostly of her father. She had accepted her mother now, but what was she going to do about Argent?

“I'll be your family,” Hoot said.

They sent out for pizza for supper. Byron's treat. Considering the rather remarkable events he had seen that day, Larque thought he would want to know what had been going on with her and his mother, and she mentally prepared a Reader's Digest Condensed version, sanitized for his protection, to tell him. But surprise: he didn't ask to hear it. His own melodrama preoccupied him. He wanted to talk about Carolyn, who had gone to the supermarket, come home with ten banana cartons, packed all her books in them, and left. “Took the
Britannica
,” Byron reported in bemused tones. Apparently Carolyn was tired of waiting for Byron's ship to come in, his bell to ding, his number to pop up. Which, exactly three days later, it finally did, via the Pornographic Publications International Sweepstakes. He had stuck his sticker to the square marked
Play Hardball
, sent in his entry, and It Had Happened. “A million dollars a year and a free subscription for life, and she won't come back to me.” Byron sounded aggrieved. “But at least I can afford to treat you guys to pizza.”

The boys were listening with their mouths agape. Jeremy said, “If I'd known that, I would have asked for extra cheese.”

“Extra pepperoni,” Jason added.

“Extra sauce,” said Rodd.

“Extra everything,” said Hoot.

Larque regarded her brother thoughtfully, considering: the reason they were all sitting in the kitchen was that the warthog had not done a real good job of getting the cake off the carpeting in the rest of the place.

“You can spring for a cleaning service for me,” she told Byron.

“Cleaning service?” He seemed dumbfounded. So did Hoot and the boys. Doris, however, appeared to comprehend immediately, judging by the way her face lit up. This must have been an occasional fantasy of hers too.

“Yes, cleaning service,” Larque told her brother. “You know, those nice people who come in and clean up after carnage. Like, if I took a shotgun right here and now and blasted your head off, the cleaning service could come in and clean up the little bits of nose and ear and eyeball and whatever.” Working for one of those firms had to be almost as weird as working in a dildo factory.

Maybe she was sounding a tad hostile. Byron flinched back in his chair, staring at her.

In a too-soft voice Larque explained to him, “You stood there and watched Mom mince me.”

“Hey, what was I supposed to do? I can't deal with Mom! When she gets like that, she freaks me out.”

She knew what he meant, and had in fact already forgiven him, but it would not be a good idea to let him know it. “Cleaning service,” she said in a flat voice. “Rewiring would be nice, too,” she added as an afterthought. A little later in the day, and they would have to eat their pizza by candlelight.

“This is emotional blackmail!” Byron yelped.

“Damn straight.”

“Okay, all right, get your cleaning service! Get your electrician! Send me the bills. What else would you like? A decorator?”

“Nah. I'll take care of that.” And while she was at it she would get some of her own art on the walls. Some of the best Larque art was yet to come. Already she could feel the ideas growing inside her, warm and insistent, like babies.

Meanwhile, until she found new markets for her new approach, income might be a little low. And there would be new-car payments to meet. “I'll let you know if I need anything,” she told Byron.

“Hey, do that.” Finally he was getting the idea. “God knows you've helped me out enough times,” he added.

“True.”

“Don't be so damn agreeable.”

“Okay.” Larque relented and changed the subject to let him off the hook. “Did Doris tell you about Dad?”

Sitting close beside Byron, Doris answered for him. “Yes, I did.”

“He sounds even freakier than Mom,” Byron complained. “Why can't we have a normal family?”

“Normal would be boring,” Larque said without much zest. The thought of Argent had taken the good pizza-and-family feeling right out of her. Dad should be here, sitting in her kitchen and eating, every once in a while.

She could keep trying to get through to him.

A bird could keep beating itself against a plate glass window, too.

She had to keep trying. Even though it was no use.

Chattering, her family had not noticed she had gotten quiet and was staring at the flower-print plastic tablecloth. Neither did they notice the visitor.

Nor did Larque, until he knocked.

Her eyes lifted, and there he stood just outside the latched screen door: an old man, very bald, with excess weight sagging around his middle. White hair, what was left of it. Round chin. Small, worried mouth. Eyes anxious behind bifocals. More than anxious. Scared.

Ryder O'Connell.

“Daddy,” Skylark whispered. “Dad!” she screamed. Tears started down her cheeks as she ran to let him in.

Doris and Byron were married in September. She and Byron, Doris claimed, had been Heloise and Abelard in a past life, which, if true, had been kind of hard on Byron and explained a lot about him. Who Byron's ex and her ex had been in their past lives, Doris did not say. She and Byron talked a lot about their former incarnations but did not discuss their former marriages much. Anyway, this time around, incarnation, marriage, whatever, it was going to work for both of them, Larque felt sure of that. Doris knew exactly what she was getting into in regard to Byron's weird family, and she was weird enough herself to hold her own. Also, she had talked him into going to Gamblers Anonymous for his mail-sweepstakes addiction.

It was a small, fire hall wedding. The bride wore gold silk pajamas and looked glowingly beautiful. She carried a bouquet of wild roses. Larque wore a tuxedo shirt with her boots and black leathers, and held the flowers for her friend.

Ryder O'Connell was there, handing Byron the ring, very nervous.

Florrie was there, and as it turned out, Ryder need not have worried. After the first blink, she simply did not see him at all.

Shadow was there.

It was not unusual for Larque to see Shadow. She had helped him pick out his new hat—a broad-brimmed flattop black brushed-felt Resistol, very classy. She showed him her art sometimes, or stopped by his shop to chat on her way home from her flying lessons. (Learning to pilot small aircraft was as good as being a cowboy.) Her father, though no longer at home on Popular Street, was still living with Shadow in a Soudersburg apartment, and things seemed to be good between the two of them—Larque felt happy for them. But both she and her father had noticed how distant Shadow seemed a lot of the time, how the lean lines of his face and body seemed a little more taut, the darkness of his eyes a little more clouded. Sadness seemed too strong a word, but Shadow was thinking about something. Thinking a lot.

After the wedding, at the dip-and-carrot-sticks reception, he came over to Larque and just stood there. Hoot shook his hand, then went off to get himself some more coffee. One thing about Hoot, he could be pretty tactful for a Dutch person.

Shadow stood by Larque, hat in hand, very silent.

Gently Larque teased him, “Something on your mind besides all that gorgeous black hair?” But he did not smile.

His voice very low, he said, “I've got to ask you to do something for me.”

“Sure. What is it?”

“It's complicated. I can't tell you here.”

She studied him, startled to realize he had lost weight. “Something's bothering him,” her father had told her, but it was worse than that. Something with big bloody spurs was riding his heart. The darkness in his eyes frightened her for his sake.

“Let's go someplace, then,” she suggested.

She waved at Hoot on her way out and hollered across the room that he and the boys should get a lift home. He nodded and waved back. What they had was solid as a monolith these days; she could trust him not to worry about her, or not too much. “Popular Street?” she asked Shadow.

“No.”

In her black Firebird she took him back to her house, which would be empty for an hour or so yet. She sat him at the kitchen table and started to make coffee. “Don't,” he said. “I have to do this before I lose my nerve.”

Whatever he had been thinking about, he had reached a decision. She sat down with him. “What is it?”

His voice almost a whisper, he said to her, “I have to know who I am.”