Larque on the Wing (15 page)

How to get chalk? Nip into a school and steal some? No. The V.W. couldn't do that. Too venturesome, too disruptive, too frowned-upon. And Lark couldn't make her do it, because it was her body.

Fuck all this. Let's cut through the crap
.

Lark couldn't make Larque say it. Lark couldn't make the Virtuous Woman do anything so rebellious. But Lark could think. And looking out of Larque's Bambi-brown eyes at the narrow streets of Soudersburg, Larque knew Popular Street was there; it didn't matter what corner she stood on, it was right in front of her everywhere if only she could find a way to be a truthteller, to see it. Impatience would not let her search gutters for a token. If only she could—

Doppelganger it out of hiding.

This was an act Larque had never before done deliberately. But she had never before felt so desperate, either. She concentrated not on thinking, but on being. Focusing. Seeing what was true yet shunned, unnoticed, unacknowledged.

Otherness.

At first it was just a haze in the air. Still dark. In shadow. No sun shone on the awning ornaments. Their vivid colors could not quite fight the darkness; muted, they swung in midair, dangling things with neither roots nor wings, looking very exposed, like lepers, like homeless things. Then Larque could see the street. Empty. Popular Street people were not like the weary commuters who lived in the ordinary world; they did not hold day jobs, they were not early risers. The only light glowed yellow in the window of the apartment above the Bareback Rider, where Shadow lay hurt.

Larque came out of her trance with a wince of pain. She had a considerable headache, but it was worth it. At her feet lay Popular Street, as solid as she was.

Half a minute later, running up the stairs, in the door and through the hallway, she burst in on Shadow. “Look what she did to me!” she cried. “I hate this, I don't want to be like this. You've got to—”

She stopped as the Larque part of her took control again, quarreling with Lark, scolding
You are being rude, demanding, intrusive
. Two beautiful, startled men stared at her. Shadow sat propped against pillows in the bed, his dark body naked from the waist up, bruises on his torso and his exquisite face, his hands wrapped. Fully clothed in white linen, Argent gawked from a chair by his lover's side.

“What the hell?” he said. “I must have forgotten to lock the door.”

“Lark?” Shadow asked her uncertainly.

“Yes. I'm sorry, I—”

“Never mind. What happened?”

She explained, or tried to explain, too upset and inhibited to express herself very well. Shadow listened intently, sitting up to lean toward her. Argent stood up and backed away to stand against the wall. He also seemed to be intently listening, yet there was a strange, flat expression on his face.

“I don't think Mom realizes,” Larque told Shadow. “I don't think she knows she blinks things.”

“To her this is the way she sees you. Or the way she wants you to be.”

“It's the same thing.”

“Yes.” There was quiet sympathy in his eyes. He did understand.

There were mirrors everywhere in that bedroom. Larque looked at herself in one on the wall. “Gee zooey,” she protested with the strongest expletive her V.W. self allowed her. Her hair was a blond-streaked bush, she was thirty pounds overweight, and in the makeup her fifties upbringing had considered acceptable—no mascara, no eyeshadow, but gobs of red lipstick—she looked like a stuffed monkey, one of those boneless things made out of a sock. How hideous. She begged Shadow, as she had not begged him to turn Lark back to Larque, “Can you put me back the way you had me before?”

“Not for a few days.” He raised his bandaged hands in apology.

She could tell he was the kind to help if he could. It was not in reproach that she muttered, “I don't think I can last that long.” Rather, she was afraid, and her fear felt reasonable. The Virtuous Woman was strong.

In a low, careful voice Shadow said, “You might be able to do it yourself.”

She goggled at him. This was information hard to process. Before she could ask any of the appropriate questions, Argent said rather stridently, “Shad, really. Just because her mother is a reshaper doesn't mean she—”

Shadow cut him off. “She had herself with her in spirit form the first day I met her. A spirit child.”

“Sky,” Larque put in, “that was Sky, which is another problem, I don't know where she is, I—”

“I never saw her!” Argent seemed oddly vehement. Shadow peered at him.

“Nobody said you did. Why would you?”

“I—never mind.”

“—have to find her, she just disappeared into thin air,” Larque was saying.

“One crisis at a time. Please.” Shadow turned back to her. “Do you want to try to find the boy Lark again? He's in you, we know that. I don't actually create anything. I can only pull out what is already in a person.”

Inside every aging person was a young person kicking and screaming all the way. Inside every woman was a young person yelling to be free? A boy? Maybe. “I see.” Larque nodded hard. Then she shook her head. “No, I don't see. What do you want me to do?”

“How did you make Sky?”

“I—I'm not really sure.”

“Well, don't think about her right now, anyway. Think about the person you want to be. Think only of the other Lark. Make him happen. What you do and what I do are not so different, except I do it with my hands, you with your eyes and mind. And you manifest a double, but I do not. My doubles are within the same body, so they remain solid, do you see? Otherwise, it is the same process.”

Upset and finding it hard to think, Larque was lagging far behind most of this. “Um, like making one of my doppelgangers on purpose?” she said.

“Is that what you call your spirits, doppelgangers? Yes. Like that. Except—” To make sure she was hearing him, Shadow sat up straight and admonished her with his tarnished silver gaze. “Except for this: while he is coming into being, inhabit him, do you see? So he will be solid. That is the most important part. You must choose to be
in
him rather than having him be separate from you.”

Like making a doppelganger
, Larque thought hazily,
but stepping into it
.

“Try it,” Shadow told her. “I think you can do it.”

“Wait,” Argent said. “I'm not sure this is wise.”

Larque barely looked at him. “I can't stand being like this. I have to try it.” Already her gaze was focused on creating an image of herself younger and stronger and harder and thirty pounds lighter, a good-looking self with cheekbones and kick-fighter skills and eyes that saw truly, a self that really really knew how to dance. A self who had left her breasts in the top dresser drawer at home, a self with a fascinating toy dangling between her legs. Lark.

The image wavered in the air between her and the water bed, gauzy, just barely casting its reflections in the many mirrors, just barely standing on the deep-pile, pale gold carpet. What good was it doing her there? Then with a surge of desperation Larque remembered Shadow's instructions to inhabit the Lark she made. But maybe it was not yet too late. She lunged—not in body, the Virtuous Woman would never do anything so precipitous. Her shaved, pantyhosed legs stood still. But the rebel soul and outlaw spirit inside her leaped for life. A naked, chilly moment in midair—

“Whoa!” Shadow exclaimed. “Don't!”

And then she was there. Argent said softly, “Too late. She's already done it. She's split.”

Two visitors stood solidly on the pale gold carpet now, one pudgy middle-aged woman and one lean, very attractive teenage boy. Lark looked at herself in a mirror, bounded off the floor and yelled, “Holy shit, I did it!” As soon as she touched down she turned to Shadow. “Hey, dude, thank you!”

Slowly Shadow said, “Don't thank me. This is not exactly what I had in mind.”

“It's fine! I'm fine. What's the matter?”

Larque the Virtuous Woman stood with her pillowy bosom heaving as she wildly looked around at mirrored ceiling and water bed and Shadow, bruised and half-naked in it. And at Argent, standing by Shadow now to touch his bandaged hand. “What is this?” she burst out. “Where am I?”

“Chill, woman,” Lark told her happily.

She didn't. “Perverts!” she cried, taking half a dozen scurrying steps back from Argent and Shadow. “Deviants! What am I doing here? Where is my husband? I want to go home!”

Lark's grin faded fast. “Don't talk about Shadow and Argent that way.”

“Do you hear me? I want to go home!”

“So go already!” Lark retorted before she realized what she was saying, where this woman lived. Her home was the Harootunian residence. Her husband was Hoot.

Except maybe for the skirt and the perm and the slathering of lipstick, the V.W. looked just about like Larque Harootunian, premakeover.

The V.W. stamped her foot ineffectually on the thick carpet. “But I don't know where it is! I mean, I don't know where I am!”

Lark stood with her mouth open, trying to come to one of those really son-of-a-bitch decisions.

“You let me out of here immediately,” the Virtuous Woman ordered in teary tones, “or I will call the police.”

“Christ, don't shit a brick.” Lark knew she had to do it, got her good-looking butt in gear, and moved. “I'll take you home.” She grabbed her former self by the arm and propelled her streetward before the V.W. could insult Shadow and Argent any further. “Sorry about the narrow mind,” she said hastily over her shoulder before she closed the apartment door behind her.

Once away from Popular Street, the Virtuous Woman calmed down and put her energies into walking as quickly as she could, which without shoes was not very. Lark strode along beside her, blessedly strong and young and male again, booted again and quite silent. Thinking. Feeling an odd pain in the vicinity of her heart.

“Where did I lose my shoes? Oh, I just want to get home again!” the V.W. exclaimed.

Lark said in a soft, taut voice, “You take good care of Hoot and the boys, you hear?”

“Of course.” The V.W. merely nodded at her, and Lark realized this airhead did not have the faintest idea who her guide was, or the curiosity to find out. The V.W. had been raised to accept passively almost anything that did not violate her taboos.

Lark realized also that the pain inside her was partly hunger. Forget heart—it was gut. She was starving.

“I know where I am now!” the V.W. exclaimed happily.

“Rub some of that lipstick off your mouth,” Lark told her.

Tamely she obeyed, and she seemed neither surprised nor perturbed that Lark continued walking beside her. When they came in sight of the house, though, she said hastily, “Thank you very much,” and ran pattering ahead.

Dismissed, Lark stood behind the neighbor's bushes, watching.

Both cars were in the Harootunian driveway, including her Chevette with the dead battery. Hoot must have gone to get it, maybe with the aid of a buddy who owned jumper cables, and now he was busy with the battery charger and an orange extension cord, looking under the hood. Lark could see his ample bluejeaned rear end sticking out of the car's jaws. In a moment he shuffled back and stood up, and then she could see his face. He looked terrible, and not just because he had gotten grease on his forehead like a black bruise. His eyes were bloodshot, and he seemed to have lost five pounds overnight.

“Oh, poor baby,” Lark whispered. She had been thinking of him as angry at her, and her answering anger had been keeping her going. But looking at him now, she saw no anger—only pain. The man was hurting.

And then he caught sight of the Virtuous Woman hurrying toward him, and his face lit up like sunrise.

“Larque!” he exclaimed. “Oh, thank God!” Despite the car dirt on his hands—and Hoot was fussy about things like that—they embraced. He held her for a long time. “I was getting worried,” he said.

“Why?” the V.W. inquired.

He thought it was a straight-faced joke, stood back and started to laugh with happiness. Then the boys came stampeding out of the house. “Mom dudette!” Rodd yelled. “You're back!” Jeremy hugged the V.W. around the waist. Jason ambled up to her with teenaged dignity and said, even though he could not possibly mean it, “Good going on the hair, Mom. Awesome.”

“You guys better get to school,” Hoot urged. He wanted his wife to himself.

The boys headed down the street, coltish, shoving at one another. “Watch where you're going!” the V.W. called after them. “Don't get run over.” Okay, it appeared as if she would do a good job. Now she was giving Hoot an adoring glance, one of those Nancy Reagan melting looks. And Hoot was giving her one of his presexual hugs, the kind in which the hands stray downward. End of show: the two of them went inside.

In the shrubbery, Lark waited a few minutes, an odd menagerie of small sharp-nosed animals gnawing inside her belly. Jealousy, heartache, hunger. When she considered that it was safe to do so, she moved to feed at least one of them, trotting out of hiding and around her house to the back door—unlocked, as she expected. From the silence downstairs and the soft noises overhead, she surmised that Hoot and the V.W. were in the bedroom, also as she expected. Moving quietly, Lark raided the kitchen for food. This was one home where she felt fully entitled to do so. She grabbed a loaf of bread and a cardboard bucket half full of Kentucky Fried Chicken from the fridge. Biting into a drumstick (Extra Crispy, her favorite) as she went out, she softly closed the door behind her.

Oh. Hoot, you doofus. So easy to fool
.

Lark felt hurt, yet relieved. Hoot was rescued from unhappiness now. The V.W. would keep him pacified while she was away.

Beyond that, who could tell what was going to happen? She loved him. Love—what an inadequate word to describe the bond made of months and years and decades of day-to-day living. He was her husband.