Luminous (14 page)

Consuela inhaled, trying to catch a whiff of memory; that wonderful mix of scratchy, cherry-rich tobacco smoke. Her hand moved to touch the topaz cross that was not at her throat. It was back with her skin and clothes. She let her hand fall.

She called me “angel.”
Consuela mused happily to herself.
Mom and Dad would be proud.

“To angels,” she said, and drank. It felt elegant and numbed like fire.

“To angels!” Sissy crooned in mock worship.

“To you.” Consuela tipped and swallowed. “And me.”

They spent the rest of the night sipping phantom Scotch, tying spare bedsheets around their wrists and taking turns jumping off of the stately chair, spinning and leaping and playing at being angels until they wound, tumbling, down.

—OCTAVIO PAZ

 

 

 

CONSUELA
woke tucked in a warm, cotton chrysalis on Sissy's floor. She could feel the well-laundered blanket curled around her, protecting her against noise and light. She rubbed her fingers over her smooth skull and into the sockets, her knucklebones slipping deep into her sphenoids.

She was alone in the basement. A sort of lazy trust infused her. She'd forgotten how much fun late-night talks and laughter could be. It had been a long time since her last sleepover party. It made her miss Allison something awful.

She didn't know where Sissy had gone, but she knew her own way out and spied her enormous, flowing cape of inky feathers hanging magnificently on the closet door.

Consuela politely folded the borrowed blanket, stacking it neatly on a decorative pillow lying flat upon the chair. The large computer screen was active and displaying a message in fourteen-point font:

Uncertain whether the words were meant for Sissy or her, Consuela read the strange message again. She was intrigued by the invitation, but even more by the author—the Yad. If she was going to get home, she had to meet everybody, explore every option, and the Yad was someone new.

Toeing the limp feathers aside and sliding the closet door shut, Consuela headed for little Killian O'Shea's room in Roxbury.

 

a
young man stood precariously on a stool, his hands over his head, painting a long line over the door. He was formally dressed in black vest and pants, a long-sleeved white shirt rolled to the elbows, and a white undershirt that was strangely frayed, knotted strings hanging long past his pockets. Consuela watched him slowly trail his fingers from right to left, singing softly under his breath. She didn't want to disturb him. It looked suspiciously like prayer.

He hummed to silence and cracked an eye open. “Hello,” he said.

“Hi,” Consuela said, uncertainly.

“It's a ward,” the Jewish youth said, stepping down. “To protect the boy inside against the Angel of Death, as it is said.” He wiped his fingers on a rag. It was then she realized that the ink was really blood.

“Not to die before their time,” she finished.

“Exactly. Mine is to protect firstborn sons,” he said. “You must be Bones. I'm Yehudah Rosen, also known as the Yad—” He held up two fingers smeared with blood. “The ‘hand,'” he translated.

“Nice to meet you . . .”

“I don't shake hands,” he said.

She dropped hers, recalling Sissy's warning a bit too late.

He smiled. “It's a respect thing.
Shomer negiah,
” Yehudah said politely. “I'll only touch four women in my life: my mother, my sisters, my wife, and my daughters.”

“You have a wife?” Consuela squeaked. “And daughters?” The Yad looked all of sixteen.

“Not yet,” he said. “Someday, God willing, when I return home.”

Consuela nodded, looking up at the ward. It was powerful, she could tell. She was drawn to this spot almost against her will.

“That's sort of what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said. “I'm not supposed to be here. I have to go home.”

“Well, if it's any comfort, I believe that if you weren't meant to be here, you wouldn't be,” the Yad said, adjusting a skullcap on his thick, curly hair. “Sorry, I don't mean to sound flippant. I wish I could help.” He held up a waiting palm with a shy smile. “
But
since we know that some things can cross back, I don't see why you couldn't.”

“Things?” Consuela asked. “What things?”

“Well, I have this.” He reached up and removed the hairpin that held the circle of suede on his head. She wondered if he was joking. He smirked. “No, really. We all bring something with us that can cross from this world into the next. It's usually something personally significant or associated with something personally significant. Cecily has her computer, Giovanni has his cigarette lighter, Wish has his paints.” He considered the tiny piece of wire. “Amazingly, it's come in very useful.”

She laughed. “For picking locks?”

“Only when there isn't a key,” the Yad said, looking back over his handiwork; his thoughts seemed to stir like a swirl of ink or blood. “But I've found that there is always more than one way to get at what you want.”

“Well, I want to go home,” Consuela said, surprising herself with her vehemence. She checked to see the Yad's reaction. He simply listened. “Sissy said it can't be done, but Wish said it can. V told me that intention is key and Tender tried to explain something about the power of the mind or words or whatever.” She tried to remember the shape of Tender's speech against the vacuum roar of the Flow. “He said that if you're willing to stand for something, it could become real.”

“Really?” the Yad said, intrigued. “He said that?”

“He said a lot more,” Consuela answered. “But most of it went right over my head.”

The Yad nodded. “Tender is very . . . intellectual. Although to hear him say that there is manifestation in our words, that we can speak things into being—well, that is a profound insight into the nature of truth. Words and numbers have considerable power.”

Consuela knelt down on the carpeted floor and peered up into the Yad's faraway stare. Sissy said he'd studied the Bible, or something close to it.

“So you think he's right?” she asked.

“Possibly,” he said. “I wouldn't say that he's wrong.”

The concept crushed her like a soda can.

“What is it?” he asked.

She tucked her hands beneath her knees, hunched into a ball. “So . . . did I do this?” she said, voicing something she hadn't meant to admit. “To myself, I mean? By being so . . . afraid . . . ?”
Of dying. Of living. Of doing it wrong.
Consuela couldn't finish. She massaged one bony foot, watching the tiny, round anklebones shift and slide.

The Yad squatted across the hall and crossed his arms in thought. She felt oddly honored by his silence, his not rushing to answer or joke. His was a long, careful contemplation. She had never considered her thoughts that important before.

“Perhaps you have it backward,” he said finally. “Perhaps this power was within you all along and only now manifests itself in the Flow.” He pointed at her skeleton almost without meaning to. “Before, it came through your thoughts and dreams and fears. As one of the Flow, you become yourself, pure and simple. Literal. Black fire against white.”

Consuela examined the floor. “Joseph Crow said something like that,” she muttered. “Wish, too.”

“There are many ways to say the same truth,” said the Yad. “And Wish wears a lot of them.”

A moment of silence stretched like the line of blood burning over the door.

“I'm sorry. I'm staring,” the Yad said. “It's rude.” She hadn't realized that he had been. He grinned ruefully. “I've never seen anything like you. When Cecily told me, I'd thought maybe a dybbuk? But you're not a ghost. More like an angel. An anti–Angel of Death—an Angel of Life.” Yehudah dug a knuckle in his cheek, tilting his head as he grinned. “I wonder if the hand that stayed Abraham's might have looked like yours? If it was one of us sent to make known that it was not Isaac's time to die?” he said. “An Angel of God.”

Consuela chuckled, strangely flattered. “You know, you're the second person to call me ‘Angel' today.”

The Yad smiled. “Maybe, then, it's true.”

She didn't feel very angelic. Mostly she felt scared, a tittering nervousness that stayed buried as long as she was moving. As long as she could hide in her skin. Like this, she felt naked—all guards down. In some ways, she felt stronger, braver; yet in others, totally vulnerable. She missed her old skin, folded, lonely and abandoned in her room.

She scratched the patella floating in the shadow of her knee.

“Don't you worry that you'll never get back?” she blurted. “Never get to find your wife and have kids? Grow up? Have a life?”

The Yad stood up slowly and Consuela straightened, too.

“We are granted the life given to us,” the Yad said. “It is up to us to choose what to do with it.” He inspected his ward as if it underlined his words. “The Rebbe said, ‘Instead of “Why me?” think, “What should I learn from this?”' If this is my life, I'll live it to the best of my ability and know in my heart that it is enough.”

He wiped at his hands as he and Consuela walked down the hall, which faded into the nothingness of the Flow. It bent and wobbled like a soap bubble to admit them.

Consuela stopped, glancing back, her heel on the threshold between two worlds. There was something she'd forgotten—a nagging tug like a half-remembered tune, an unfinished sentence, the feeling of something unintentionally left undone. She hovered on the hardwood, uncertain of what it was.

“It was nice meeting you.” The Yad waved as he turned aside.

“Same here,” she said vaguely. “See you later.”

Alone and unable to place the source of her unease, Consuela reentered the Flow.

 

SHE'D
retrieved her feathered skin, trailing it like a Brazilian wedding dress, and tucked it into the garment bag before dressing herself in flesh. Consuela returned to the closet. The black, iridescent feathers had settled darkly against fire, air, and liquid light. It was a tight fit. This was becoming less a fashion statement and more a bizarre haute couture collection.

Consuela touched each one briefly and wondered how many skins she'd eventually have. Maybe she should pack her normal clothes into her winter chest to make more room? There'd be no reason for dry cleaning in the Flow. No reason for laundry. No reason for clothes without skin.

She smoothed the sleeve of her favorite blouse, the one she wore to church on Sundays, dimly realizing that her fingers were trembling. She stared at them as if they belonged to someone else.

11:19.

Something sane and solid snapped. She collapsed to the floor, coughing jagged sobs.

The sentence wouldn't complete itself before drowning behind a wall of fresh tears. Consuela curled up in misery, alone and scared to death.

She thought she'd become powerful as Bones—invincible, elemental—but she was weak, a fake, more vulnerable than ever. She wasn't dead, but where was she?

She lay on the floor, keening, praying, overwhelmed by skins and mirrors, bloody smears and toothless wishes, eyeless prophets and handsome angels. Her skull throbbed, her ribs shuddered, she could feel each vertebra pressed against the wall. Even in her own skin, she could feel the power inside her—the truth of who she was. She could sit in her room and her skin and pretend, but there was no escape. Consuela hugged herself small.

// I'm sorry. //
The choral voice whispered from somewhere overhead, echoing in the central air ducts like Mozart playing downstairs. V was somewhere, whispering to her heart.
// Try to sleep. //

“I can't . . .” She shook her head, blubbering. “I can't . . .”

// I know, //
the voice hummed.
// It will get better. Sleep. //

She couldn't. She couldn't stop crying. It sounded so sorry, her disembodied angel.

// I promise, //
the violins hummed on steel wires.
// I'll help you. I promise. //
The litany became a song. Consuela stared at herself in the full-length mirror.

She edged closer, uncurling across the carpet. Still sobbing, she reached out her hand and pressed it against the glass. Another hand materialized beneath hers, surfacing in the silver, mirroring her reflection—she couldn't feel it, but could see the echo of it there.

“V.” The name slipped beneath her tears.

Their fingers shifted slightly and threaded through the glass, his becoming real as they settled against her skin. Consuela cried harder, in release and relief, pulling him through. V emerged, crouched to meet her, and folded her in his arms.

She cried helplessly into his shirt. His arms enfolded her like a heavy cloak, a kind, protective wall against the outside world. Her hand bunched in his sleeve, she clung to him like a child. He stroked her hair. Her breathing faltered, choking on sobs.