Slice Of Cherry (33 page)

“It’s not shit. And it’s not childish!”

Ilan leaned forward and snatched Baron von Big Ears from Fancy’s hand. He slipped the puppet over his own finger and made it speak. “Why do you like carousels, little girl?” he said, doing a passable Baron von Big Ears impersonation.

Fancy stared at the puppet, disconcerted by the idea that her once-friendly toy was now mocking her. “I like to ride the horses.”

“Going up and down with something sturdy between your legs,” said Baron von Big Ears wisely. “All girls like that. It’s how they practice.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, yes you do.” Baron von Big Ears dove headfirst into her cleavage.

“Stop it.” Fancy snatched the finger puppet from Ilan and said it again to his face. “Stop it!”

“I can’t.” He used his own voice. “And neither can you. None of your little toys are gone keep you from growing up.” He tried to grab the finger puppet, but Fancy hid it behind her back. Instead of reaching for the puppet, Ilan grabbed Fancy’s elbow and dragged her onto the carousel, past the horses, and brought her to a stop before the bright metal column around which the carousel spun.

As soon as Fancy saw herself, she stopped struggling, the shock of her reflection paralyzing her. She was sure the metal had distorted her image into the fun-house creature she saw staring back at her, that oversize girl in the undersize dress—a baby face, yes, but with eyes full of dark understanding.

“Do you see?” Ilan asked, letting go of her arm.

Fancy nodded, watching the girl in the mirror nodding,
wondering why no one had ever told her how ridiculous she looked, how sad and deluded.

“Do you trust me?” said Ilan gently. He put out his hand. “You said you did.”

She set the finger puppet in his palm and felt a pang as he shoved it unceremoniously into his pocket. She followed him off the carousel, tugging at her dress. Had it always fit so tightly?

“Now whyn’t you let all this go?” Ilan said, waving his arm at not just the carousel, but the entire carnival. “Just to see what it’s like. Just to see what’s beyond all this kid shit.”

She looked at the rides, which had been so much fun once upon a time, but now made her feel ashamed. The Ferris wheel fell over onto its side with a rending crash, the chains holding the swings to the whirligig snapped, and the carousel horses grew old and gray and withered like overripe fruit on their poles.

“Now what?”

“It’s up to you!” Ilan exclaimed, as though not knowing who you were was exciting. He surveyed the wasteland the carnival had become with an almost gleeful satisfaction. “Think big. What’s the one thing you can’t wait to do when you grow up?”

Fancy didn’t have to think about it very hard; she knew exactly what she wanted to do when she was old enough.

A happy-place citizen popped up on the other side of the ruined carousel and nailed Ilan in the face with a tomato.

“When you grow up,” Ilan said in a surprisingly calm voice, a tomato stuck to his forehead like a hideous, mutant zit, “you wanna throw food at me?”

“No. I wanna travel.” More people came forward from all over the happy place, hands full of tomatoes, faces full of mischief.

“There’s this thing in Spain called La Tomatina,” said Fancy as a tomato war exploded all around her. “People get together on the streets and have a huge tomato fight like this, for no reason at all except that it’s fun.” One of the wizened carousel horses nearest Fancy broke open, and a flood of tomatoes spilled free like bright red candy from a burst piñata.

Fancy knelt and scooped up the tomatoes, but froze when she heard Ilan behind her laughing, swiping the tomato off his forehead. Laughing at her. Still.

“I guess this ain’t exactly grown-up either,” she said, letting the tomatoes fall from her hands.

“Nope,” Ilan agreed, retrieving her tomatoes for her and
then grabbing a few for himself. “But it’s important not to grow up too fast.”

She kissed his cheek when he stood, tasting the tomato on his skin, but he wasn’t paying attention; he was too busy giving the massive happy-place crowd the evil eye.

He bounced a tomato in his hand. “Let’s go kick some Tomatina butt.”

Some time later Fancy and Ilan stood in her backyard taking turns hosing tomato sauce off each other.

“Why can’t I ever stay?” Fancy complained as she circled Ilan, spraying water over his chest and back. “It’s my place. Why do I keep getting kicked out of my own place?”

“Maybe when you create something,” said Ilan, taking the hose from her, “you can only enjoy it as an outsider, like God. I mean God doesn’t hang around Earth, and back when he did, it was only for little pieces of time. So maybe it’s like that for everybody.”

Fancy thought that over as she yanked the pink ribbons from her hair and tossed them away. “How come every time you get the hose, you keep it aimed at my bubbies?”

“Cuz they’re tomatoey. Like,
really
tomatoey.”

“But look at all the tomato on my legs. In my shoes. And I still feel it in my hair.”

“You’re right,” he said, watching her strip off her patent leather shoes and ruffled socks and toss them into the woods. “You’re a mess. Why don’t you just strip down all the way? I don’t see how else I could possibly get you clean.”

“You can start by aiming that hose somewhere besides my bubbies!”

“I want to,” Ilan explained, regretfully, “but I can’t. See, the wetter I get your dress, the better I can see through it. And since you’re refusing to strip for me, well, you do the math.”

Fancy tackled Ilan to the muddy ground, laughing. “You’re a big, fat pervert, Ilan Turner.”

Ilan was laughing too. “Yup. And you rolling me around in the mud ain’t really helping the situation.” He rolled her onto her back and kissed her.

“Why do we always end up with you on top of me?”

“You ask the best questions, Fancy.” He rolled them over again and put her back on top, astride him.

She sat up and bounced a few times, experimentally. “This
is
better than a wooden horse.”

“Whoa, there, cowgirl.” Ilan pushed her up a bit and
unzipped his pants, and Fancy had a weird feeling that Ilan had unzipped his pants for her before, which was ridiculous. It became even more ridiculous when he removed a cherry tomato from his boxers.

Fancy laughed and clapped her hands, as though he’d just performed a magic trick for her. “What else you got in there?”

“One or two things,” he said modestly.

She reached into his boxers to see for herself. “
Three
things,” she shrieked, as he squirmed beneath her. “Maybe.” She squeezed. “Does this count as one or two?”

“Fancy, is that you?” Madda appeared in the kitchen window. “I been calling you—” Madda stopped at the sight of Fancy and Ilan frozen on the ground.

Fancy was prepared for anything. Ever since the letter incident Madda had been snappy and cross with her and Kit, but Fancy wasn’t prepared for Madda to smile at her.

“Your hands cold?” she said, pointedly staring at Fancy’s hand burrowed inside Ilan’s pants.

“I’d turn the hose on you,” Madda said, nearly laughing as Fancy scurried off Ilan, “but looks like you beat me to it. Turn that thing off and stop wasting water.”

Fancy shut off the hose. “We were just—”

Madda waved her hand. “I’m not so old I need to have
that
explained to me. How you doing, Ilan?”

“Great, Miz Lynne.” He was on his feet, readjusting his pants and looking everywhere except into Madda’s eyes. “Fabulous, really.”

“Don’t you think you oughta be getting your fabulous self on home now?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am. I was just thinking the same thing.”

Fancy stood beside him. “I’ll walk him to his car.”

“You do that.”

Fancy and Ilan slunk off toward the driveway, faces burning. Madda’s good humor about the situation should have been a relief, but Fancy found it inexplicably irritating.

“I’m
never
gone live this down,” she said after they reached the Oldsmobile.

“Aw, let her enjoy herself. Her baby’s all growned up.” Ilan plucked at her wet, muddy dress and sighed wistfully, looking her up and down. “I know
I’m
enjoying it.”

That Saturday, Fancy stepped out onto the roof of the Pinkerton Hotel. The rain had stopped, but the clouds still hung ominous and low in the sky. She walked to the edge of the roof,
past big metal vents and whirring fans, the black shirtdress she’d stolen from Madda’s closet molded to her figure by the wind. She leaned her elbows on a wide, damp ledge and looked out over Fountain Square.

Low, towering clouds made the houses below look like toys. Here in the flatter, comparatively treeless part of Portero, Fancy didn’t have to look up through trees to see the sky—it was all around her.

Ilan had told her to wait for him up here. Kit was still on her road trip with Gabriel, but would be back tomorrow. Fancy was glad Ilan had called her and wanted to see her. Otherwise she would be moping at home. Madda had been right. Having friends did come in handy sometimes.

In a little while Ilan showed up with a dinner cart that he had swiped from the kitchen. He was still in his red bellhop uniform, a welcome spot of color in all the gray.

“You’re gone get fired.”

“Please.” He smoothed her ribbonless, windblown hair from her face and kissed her. “I’ve got the dirt on too many people at this hotel. Did you know the manager gets high with the laundry staff? It’s like a soap opera in there. Me sneaking food up on the roof to my girlfriend won’t even register.”

Fancy’s eyes went wide at being called his girlfriend so casually. But she didn’t say anything. “What did you bring?”

“Fruit. Sopaipillas. Tomato salad. Mint julep.”

“Really?” Fancy had never had mint julep before.

“They
call
it mint julep.” He sat beside her and poured them each a glass. “But look at it. It ain’t supposed to be bright green like that.”

Fancy tried hers. “Oooh, it’s good, though.”

They sat with their backs against the ledge of the building and drank and nibbled in silence a few moments before they began talking. Light things at first, like whether the rain would hold off, but they quickly moved on to heavier topics, sinking into them with a sense of relief.

“I don’t understand how all these people are so thirsty for Daddy to die, just because he killed their people, like they think it’ll restore a balance. Like how people burned women in the old days whenever a cow got sick or whatever? One person’s life can’t replace fifteen or however many other lives. One person’s life can’t even replace
one
other person’s life. People ain’t interchangeable like that.”

“If you like people so much and think they’re so precious, why do you kill them?”

“I didn’t say they were precious; I said they’re not interchangeable. Like if I wanted to kill you, killing Gabriel wouldn’t satisfy that. Or if I did kill you, and then Gabriel killed me in revenge, it wouldn’t satisfy him, because he wouldn’t want to kill me. What he’d really want would be to bring you back to life, and killing doesn’t create life. That’s all I mean. If you’re gone kill somebody, you should at least know why you’re doing it.”

“Why do
you
do it?”

“To feel whole. Kit said that once. That it wasn’t about being good or bad—it was about being complete. She was right.” Fancy shrugged. “That and sometimes I just get mad. Either way.”

“You don’t want to kill Gabe anymore, do you?”

“Not all the time.”

Ilan made her look at him. “It’s like what you were saying. Killing Gabe won’t give you your sister back. It’ll probably drive her even further away. You gotta let her do her own thing.”

“I don’t get why Kit doing her own thing means she’s gotta shut me out.”

“People always shut off parts of themselves, even from people they love. Some things should never be seen. Unlike your bubbies.”

Fancy laughed. “Why you wanna see
them
?”

“Oh, the questions you ask, Fancy.”

“They’re not even interesting. They just jiggle around.”

“Jiggling is interesting.”

“No, it’s not.” She pressed her palms against her breasts, reassuring herself that they were nothing special. “Sometimes when I get the curse they swell like balloons, and then when I touch my nipples it hurts.”

“Do you touch your nipples a lot?” asked Ilan, more intrigued than ever.

“Sometimes. Kit’s nipples only poke out when she’s cold. Mine poke out
all the time
. Not sure how to make ’em go down. It’s more stupid than interesting.”

“Do you know what the word ‘interesting’ means?” Ilan asked, unbuttoning the shirtfront of her dress. “Because I don’t think you do.”

Fancy suddenly remembered her dream. “What does ‘Ilan’ mean?”

“Tree.” He gasped. “A front-snap bra? For me? You’re so thoughtful, Fancy.” She giggled as he moved behind her so that she could sit between his legs with her back against his front.

“
Happy
tree?”

“Just tree,” he said, and then his hands were on her.

Fancy closed her eyes. “My doctor touched my bubbies once. She stroked them like that. I can’t remember why.”

“She probably thought they were interesting.” She felt his smile against her temple. “What about Fancy? What’s that short for anyway? Frances?”

“Francine. Means free.”

“And happy?”

“Not usually. I kind of feel happy right now, though. Tree and free.”

A drop of rain fell on Fancy’s mouth. She licked it off. She felt akin to the clouds, the trouble brewing within them, the darkness. The rain that fell on her made her shiver, like extensions of Ilan’s hands, tickling her knees and smacking her toes.

“Fancy . . .”

“Um?”

“
Are
you happy? Like, way down?” His hands drifted down to her belly as if to illustrate.

Fancy shook her head, unable to remember the last time happiness had infiltrated that deeply inside her. Had it ever?

“I think that’s why I like you.” He kissed away a drop of rain from Fancy’s neck. “I see you and think, if anybody’s more
unhappy than me, it’s her. If anybody would understand and not judge, it’d be her.”