Plumage (7 page)

“I'm grateful to
you
,” Sassy said humbly. “Thank you. I wouldn't have been able to—”

“No problem. Hey, stay up all night with a crazy woman, destroy property, risk my sole source of income, why not?”

“Look, don't ever let me blackmail you again. I won't tell anybody about you. I promise.”

“Hey.” Racquel grinned.

Sassy smiled back and stroked the parakeet. She liked the feel of its smooth feathers, its lightweight warmth against her chest.

“What now?” Racquel asked. “You going to take that bird home?”

“I guess so.” It seemed like the logical next step. Insofar as anything about her situation could be called logical.

“You want a box?” Racquel began to poke around his back room, looking for one.

With the parakeet cuddled to her chest, Sassy wandered out into the shop. With no lights on, but with the early daylight filtering in through the display windows, it was a place of platinum shadow, a tarnished-silver mystery in which feathers fluttered and rustled like living presences whispering.

A thought occurred to Sassy. “Racquel,” she called.

“Yo.” He appeared with a smallish cardboard box in hand.

It had been a long night of waiting, with plenty of time to talk. After all that talking, Sassy found to her surprise that she trusted this weirdo more than anybody else she knew.

That was just it. He was a weirdo. He was unlikely to pass any judgments on
her
.

She said, “Racquel, do me a favor.” As if she had not asked enough of him already. “Look at me in the mirror and tell me what you see.”

“Huh?”

“It's too hard to explain. It won't take a minute. Just look.” Stroking the parakeet nestled against her chest, Sassy walked a few steps to stand in front of one of PLUMAGE's floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

She gasped.

A resplendent ten-foot winged presence, an angel—no, a great eagle made of thunderstorm—no, a plumy winged tree with a serpent of lightning in its branches and the face of a—God, Sassy couldn't say what it was, its wings and feathering all colors of fire and cloud and rainbow, she was shaking too hard to speak or think, and its featherleaf hands reached toward her and its eyes blazed like ten thousand sunrises and—it called to her, a great melodious cry—

In answer to its cry the parakeet in her arms turned and yearned toward the mirror, gave a wild screech and took wing as if flying to a long-lost love. But somehow Sassy had not let go, and she flew too. Faintly she heard Racquel call, “Sassy!” but it didn't matter. The bird-presence's sunrise eyes offered to take her in, the parakeet's flying carried her toward them as if on a river of light, and she did not understand what was happening or where she was going but it was all right. Nothing in her entire life had ever felt so right.

Then she felt Racquel grab her arms.

That strong grip stopped her like hitting the end of her bungee. There was a slingshot effect, and the parakeet flew loose from her hands, and everything was confusion. She struggled, thumped down, and found herself sitting on the floor of Racquel's shop still facing the mirror. But there was nothing in it except her blue budgie. It looked distraught.

“What—” Sassy gasped.

“You were heading right into the mirror.” Standing over her as if to grab her again if necessary, Racquel sounded stupefied.

“What—did you see it?”

“See what? I saw you dive into the mirror.
Into
it!” Racquel's tone had not changed.

“I wanted to,” Sassy murmured, staring without moving.

“You half disappeared. How did you
do
that?”

“I wanted to.” Sassy struggled to her feet. “Where's my parakeet?”

“Good God, like I care about your parakeet?”

“Where is it?”

Racquel didn't answer, but Sassy knew the answer.

“In there, right?” She pointed at the mirror.

Whatever “in there” meant.

Racquel took a deep breath. Putting wide pauses between the words, he said, “I—want—to—go—home—now—please.”

When in doubt, sleep. Sassy went home and slept as if she had been knocked on the head.

FOUR

Sassy, being Sassy, took her perplexity to the library, bypassing the main reading room, now given over to videos, and finding haven in the reference section, where books reigned. Into the computer she entered:

SUBJECT: MIRRORS
.

Subject not found
.

SUBJECT: REFLECTIONS
.

Subject not found
.

For a fleeting but furious moment, Sassy longed for a real card catalog. Lacking that, she took to the nonfiction stacks. “Subject not found, indeed,” she muttered as she eventually located
Joy of Mirrors
in the home-decoration section. An hour's further trolling turned up chapters on mirrors in
Ghosts, Fetches and Ghouls, Jung for Dummies
, and
Everyday Magic
.

“Last week it was birds,” said the laterally challenged woman at the desk, bemused by this selection.

“It still is, kind of.”

“I heard there's a lady in the high-rises has fifty birds in her apartment.”

“Mm,” Sassy said, and she took her books home. Over the next several hours she learned that glass mirrors first appeared in Venice in the thirteenth century. She learned that mirrors were used for divination. She learned that mirrors were sewn on clothing to turn away the evil eye. She learned more than she ever wanted to know about Snow White, Alice Through the Looking Glass, and Narcissus. She learned that, to the Greeks, a dream of seeing one's reflection in water was an omen of death. She learned that all over the world folk were afraid of reflections and mirrors; the reflection was considered to be the disembodied soul, and could be stolen. She was reminded that a broken mirror is bad luck, that mirrors in a sickroom should be covered or turned to the wall, and that if you look too long in a mirror you're likely to see the Candyman, the Devil, or your husband-to-be, depending on your choice of superstition.

“Same thing,” Sassy muttered.

She learned nothing, however, that enlightened her regarding her own situation. After she was finished reading, she went into the bathroom, pulled down the blind, and stared at the darkened mirror for some time. But only her beady-eyed blue budgie stared back at her.

The minute Racquel saw Sassy set foot on the mezzanine, he ducked into an empty fitting room and stayed there. Racquel had made up his mind that he was going to have nothing further to do with Sassy. That woman was just too weird.

The PLUMAGE fitting rooms were top of the line, as befit a classy boutique; they had real doors that locked, and they were not a whole lot smaller than some people's apartments, and they were carpeted. No pins in the carpeting, either. While he was waiting for Sassy to go away, Racquel kicked off his shoes, then checked his look in the full-length mirror, then put on the red velvet/gold kidskin ankle-strap heels again and checked some more. He loved ankle-strap pumps, twenties-style. He loved the Big Babe Hollywood look. Rita Hay-worth, Jayne Mansfield, Hedy Lamarr. Drop-dead glamour. When he was a kid living in the ugliest block in the city he had loved his mama's Sunday dresses and hats, by far the bitchin'est thing in the house or the nabe. He still thought Mama had great taste though he hardly ever saw her anymore. He wished she would come in and shop sometime; he would give her a great discount. Maybe the best thing about having his own shop was that he could get really quality plumage wholesale. Today he had on the gold spiral earbobs with cockatiel danglies, the gold lamé slit sheath with cardinal-wing capelet just covering the shoulders, the gold-and-scarlet quilled—

Somebody knocked at the door.

“I'm not here,” Racquel said, assuming it was one of his “associates” with a stupid question about money or something. Dumb girls, when would they ever learn to think for themselves?

“Racquel,” said Sassy's plangent voice.

Oh God. The woman had the nose of a terrier. She'd tracked him down.

“Go away,” he said.

“Racquel? I need to ask you something, please.”

“Whatever it is, the answer is
no
.”

“Racquel—”

“Go
away
.”

Sassy's tone developed a deckle edge. “May I remind you that I could tell certain things about you—”

“You said you weren't going to do that anymore!”

A long pause. Then in a very soft voice Sassy said, “Oh. That's right, I did.”

Such was the pathos in Sassy's murmur that it made Racquel open the door and stomp out. “
What
is it this time?” Looking down on Sassy, Racquel scowled at Sassy's limp hair. Gray. No, kind of taupe. The color of a squirrel, for God's sake. It figured. Racquel had never met a squirrelier person in his life.

“I need to ask you a favor,” Sassy said meekly to Racquel's chest.

“I
know
that! Spit it out!”

Sassy explained her request. Thank God the woman had the sense to keep her voice down so the staff wouldn't hear. Racquel stiffened as he listened. When Sassy had finished, Racquel burst out, “Why
here
?”

“I've tried all kinds of other mirrors. They don't work.”

Fervidly Racquel hoped it didn't work here either. “Look,” he said, “what I thought I saw—it must have been because I'd been up all night. You get tired enough, you hallucinate, you know?”

“No,” Sassy said.

“That parakeet's long gone. Probably zipped under the ceiling tiles or into the ventwork or something. Probably dead by now.”

Sassy gave him an opaque look that contradicted him more clearly than words.

He could feel his jaw begin to tighten with frustration and subliminal fear. He could
not
have seen what he had seen and she could not be asking what she was asking; it wobbled all sense, all logic, all sanity. He burst out, “Would you
please
explain to me what it is with you and that parakeet?”

Sassy considered, then shook her head. “No.”

“Woman, you owe me a hint at least. What's the deal? Did the bird swallow the Hope diamond or something?”

“No, not the Hope diamond,” Sassy said with just a hint of a smile.

Racquel was later to learn that when Sassy got that Mona Lisa look on her face it meant that Sassy was putting him on. But he didn't know that yet. He concluded that, okay, he was indeed in the middle of some sort of a warped Nancy Drew mystery, and yes, the parakeet did convey something of great value in its little birdy gut.

He gave a hefty sigh. “Okay, whatever,” he grumbled. “If it works, at least I'll be rid of you. Tonight?”

Sassy looked thanks at him, her hazel eyes appearing huge, childlike, behind those industrial-strength glasses of hers. “Yes. Tonight.”

Not knowing what to expect, Sassy dressed in layers—T-shirt, sweatshirt, windbreaker, shorts under her sweatpants—and wore her most comfortable shoes. She carried two tote bags tightly packed with basics: graham crackers, peppermints, Deep Woods Off, bread, store brand sharp yellow cheddar cheese, deodorant, granola bars, socks and undies, peanut butter, knife, ibuprofen, Kleenex, a spray of millet with which she hoped to entice the parakeet (all the books said they loved millet), wallet/money/credit cards, Boku Seven Fruit juice in the box, plastic tablecloth by the way of a tarp, Peterson Field Guide.

Although it was eleven at night when she arrived at PLUMAGE, Racquel awaited her still dressed in that same awful gold dress with dead red birds on the shoulders, and those same vampish red shoes. How he could bear to wear that monkey suit and those stiletto heels a moment longer than he had to, Sassy would never understand.

“I
love
your luggage,” Racquel said, eyeing her tote bags.

Sassy refused to acknowledge the sarcasm. “Thank you.” She brushed past him and headed for the mirror.

The shop spread around her hushed and shadowy, as before. The feathered collars and capes rustled and whispered as before. She stood in front of the same dimly glimmering mirror as before.

Only her blue budgie looked back at her out of the dark glass. Stupid bird. Sassy was starting to think that maybe she ought to give it a name. Hold a mirror up for it to look at and see if it would chirp. Teach it to talk or something.

She sighed and set her bags on the floor; it didn't look as if she'd be going anywhere real soon. Of course it couldn't be simple; why should anything be simple? Maybe it depended on the phase of the moon or something. Maybe it was because of menopause, or something she ate.

Maybe she'd imagined the whole thing, like Racquel wanted to believe. Maybe she was crazy.

No. There was a blue parakeet looking back at her—

Even crazier. Racquel was right. He—

But he had never answered her question, that other time. “Racquel,” she asked him again, “what do you see in the mirror?”

“What do you mean?” He slouched closer, his handsome brown face expressively blank. He seemed to be in a sour mood this evening.

“Just tell me. What do you see?”

“I see you, backwards. What the hell should I see?”

But Sassy barely heard him, for in the dark depths of the glass something swirled—Sassy gasped. It was not a resplendent presence this time, just an intimation, a movement, something lifting into flight between feathery trees, a long flow of hair or mantle or pinion, a comely head turning away. Something about that starlit glimpse made Sassy yearn as if for eternal love. She cried out and lunged after it, hands outstretched, fingers questing.

She dived into the mirror as if into a pool of limpid water, and like water, the mirror closed behind her.

Perched silent, unable to sing, too dejected even to search for food, Kleet contemplated his utter failure. For a short while there had been shreds of hope. But he had left hope behind in the hardair world.