Arachnodactyl (15 page)

“Can Rose lie down?” Ikey asked.

The wide, sloppy grin on Cross’s face shriveled into a low grin, sharp and full of points. “With you?”

Ikey’s heart stuttered. He buried his gaze in the table. “I didn’t mean—”

Cross erupted into laughter again. He howled and pounded his fist on the table until the lantern jumped and the shadows around the room shivered and quaked in nervousness. Ikey worked on the courage to stand and leave, but the old reflexes held fast. He remained motionless, afraid to do anything that might remind Cross of his presence.

“Oh!” Cross gasped. “Oh, man! Sure. Why the hell not? If you can talk her into it, then you’ve earned it. But,” Cross grasped Ikey’s shoulder and gave it a shake, “you think my scotch is sour? Man, wait until you get a taste of her snatch!”

He threw his head back and howled with laughter again. He slapped his knee and thumped his fist on the table again and the pounding filled the shack like cold water.

Ikey slid from the stool. He took a step towards Cross. His fist crashed into the man’s gaping jaw.

The laughter stopped as Cross tumbled backwards. His knees and shins caught the underside of the table and flipped it up as he fell; his long, thin body acting like a lever.

The junk on the table crashed to the floor in a shower of jangling metal and shattering glass punctuated with the thump of Cross hitting the ground.

Light blossomed around the room as oil leaked from the upset lantern. Orange flames spread across the darkening ground and crawled for the front wall of the shack.

Ikey glanced at Cross, still out on the ground.

In quick motion, Ikey grabbed the lantern and set it upright. A few drops of burning oil landed on his fingers. He wiped his hand over his trousers, then yanked his shirt over his head. He whipped the flames and kicked at the dirt until the last lick of fire poofed out, except for the flame still flickering in the lantern.

The shirt was surely ruined. Ikey held it before himself and began to examine it. Something moved. He looked up in time to catch Cross’s fist.

The punch struck above his eye. Ikey’s head snapped back. Surprise and momentum carried him into the wall. As he began to slump to the ground, Cross grabbed him by the arm, yanked him up, then buried his fist in Ikey’s gut.

Ikey sank to his knees, hands clutching his stomach.

“You think just because you have one good idea, you can replace me, do you?” Cross asked. “That one good idea is the only reason I didn’t just kill you.”

Cross turned towards the damage dealt to his workshop.

“Get out of here,” Cross said.

“Why do you say such things?” Ikey rasped. “About Rose.”

“You still here?”

Ikey struggled to his feet beneath the weight of his throbbing head. He leaned back against the shack wall, his hands clutching at his stomach as if a pin secured him to the wall like an insect specimen. “If you don’t want her, I’ll take her. I’ll take her and leave right now.”

Cross turned around. Shadow obliterated his face. The lantern on the ground cast everything in blunt, angled light.

“You’ll take her, will you? Like she’s some piece of baggage? An old trunk with a stubborn lid you’ll take off my hands, eh?”

Ikey sucked in a lungful of air. “You don’t want her.”

“How do you know what I want?”

Cross crouched and picked up his bottle. It had escaped the upset unscathed. A few ounces of scotch remained inside. He wiped the lip of the bottle on his sleeve, then took a drink.

Ikey dropped his hands to his sides. “I think you have what you want.”

Cross tilted the mouth of the bottle towards Ikey. “What I want is for you to know you’re a snot-nosed hooligan who fancies himself far more clever than he really is.”

Ikey’s throat clenched. Cross’s accusation stung like one frequently made by his dad.

“You understand bunkum,” Cross continued. “You think you can tear down an engine and rebuild it, so that makes you special. You think you deserve some kind of…” Cross waved a hand in the air, “some kind of damn honor for something I can teach any kid old enough to hold a screwdriver. It makes you nothing, do you understand?”

Ikey looked away. His blood burned. He wanted to slither away, disappear through the crack under the door.

“It doesn’t matter because you’re only undoing and redoing something someone did before. You’re aping, you big bloody monkey. Clever is thinking up something no one has ever thought of before. Clever is invention. But you ain’t clever enough to get that through your thick head.” Cross leaned in toward Ikey and tapped at his temple with his finger.

“You’re like everyone else. You don’t have original thoughts. You can’t think anything someone hasn’t thought before and put in your head. And since you’ve never met anyone like me or Rose, you can’t figure out what to make of us, can you? You can only think in terms of what is already familiar to you. So why do you think I’m mean to her? Because your daddy liked to rough up your mommy?”

Ikey’s fists clenched and he pushed himself off the wall.

“Ohhh,” Cross cooed as he stepped back. “That’s it, ain’t it? Well, lad, since you ain’t smart enough to figure it out on your own, let me spell it out for you. I ain’t your bloody father.”

Ikey wished to explode. To erupt into a cloud of shrapnel and take out Cross and the workshop at that moment. To obliterate the accusations buried in his gut like heavy, weighted handles for Cross to grip and twist.

Ikey’s jaw ached. His fists trembled and his eyes blinked back water with increasing urgency.

Cross sneered and stepped over to the table. With one hand, he tilted it back onto its feet. He took another drink before placing the bottle on the table.

“I get it now,” Cross said and turned around. “I understand what’s going on. Your daddy was mean to you. And you never got a chance at retribution. Never got a chance to stand up to him before Daughton whisked you away, right? So you’re going to take it out on me, are you? You’re going to haul off and hit me because you never had the bollocks to hit your old man. And you’re going to save Rose because you couldn’t save your mommy. I’m right, ain’t I?”

Ikey wanted to yell and scream and tell him how absolutely wrong he was. But he dared not open his mouth. Or even unclench his jaw. He’d waver and crumble. He’d crack and fall into a pile of flaky pieces in front of Cross as the disgusting lout stood and laughed at all Ikey amounted to.

He whirled to his left and yanked open the workshop’s door.

“Go on!” Cross yelled. “Get the hell out of here. Come back when you’re ready to be a man.”

The door slammed behind Ikey, and the night yawned out before him.

I
key stormed
across the yard and slipped into the house. As the back door closed, he leaned against it and choked back a mouthful of tears. Genius wasn’t necessary to know that Cross was mean. Mean to him and mean to Rose. The things he said. Only an idiot would have thought otherwise.

Ikey rubbed his palms against his cheeks and took a deep breath, then stepped over to the sink. He turned on the cold water and listened as the slop and splash hid the noise of his ragged breath. He splashed water across his face. The coolness soothed. It peeled away the heat as it ran down his arms and dripped from his elbows.

“Ikey?” Rose asked from far off.

Ikey turned off the water and snatched the towel dangling from its peg in the dark. He buried his face in the cotton and gave a quick rub. As the towel hit the tender spot above his eye, he winced.

“Ikey?” Rose asked again. “Is that you?”

He took a deep breath. “Yes.”

“Are you all right?”

He snagged the towel back onto its peg. “Yes.”

The music boxes began a slow, sloping song in the drawing room, their tune measured by the long, cautious clips of Rose’s boots.

“What’s the matter? Is anything amiss?”

Ikey grabbed the edge of the sink. The coolness of the metal further soothed him.

Rose stopped into the doorway. “What’s that odor? Did you burn yourself? Is Cross all right?”

Ikey’s grip tightened.

“There was an accident,” Ikey said. “We knocked over the lantern. I put it out.”

“Was Cross injured?”

“No,” Ikey said. A twinge of embarrassment flickered through him.

Silence stretched out the darkness between them until it felt like Rose stood an ocean away. As Ikey parted his lips, Rose asked if Cross was drunk.

“He’s been drinking.”

Rose tsked. “I assume he’s been drinking, as I assume, until I hear otherwise, he’s also been breathing.”

“Is Cross mean to you?”

Rose’s dress whispered about her movement, her shifting posture. Ikey wished he could see it, could take in the shape and assuredness of her presence. He inhaled deeply, seeking the scent of her. He got a lungful of soap, and since she had mentioned it, burnt hair.

“Cross is fair to me.”

“Cross says mean things. About you.”

Another gulf of silence widened between them.

“I likely have nothing to say about him that isn’t in kind. Fair is fair, I suppose,” Rose said.

Ikey let go of the sink. Unmoored in the dark, he drifted in the direction of Rose, guided by her voice. He opened his mouth to speak, to provoke a response so he could find her, and he meant to tell her of his suspicion that Cross knew about them. What they had done. But he didn’t say it. If Cross had forced the information from her, he didn’t want to embarrass her.

“I would never say things like that,” Ikey said instead. “About you. I never will.”

Nothing approached him from the dark. Ikey extended his hand. His fingers hovered blindly before him and tingled to touch anything. Her words. Anything.

He stepped forward. His hand brushed against something smooth and hard. And warm. Ikey pressed his hand to it, and then Rose’s own hand came to rest on his arm, on the side of his bicep.

“Your shirt,” Rose said as the pads of her fingertips traced up to his shoulder. “What happened to it?”

The words vibrated under the tips of Ikey’s fingers. He pressed his palm against the side of Rose’s torso. It felt stiff and unyielding. He moved his hand down, and then back up a few inches. No ribs.

“I used it to put out the fire.”

Rose gasped. One hand clutched his shoulder. The other hand wrapped around his waist until the tips of her fingers landed like raindrops in the small of his back. “Are you all right? The workshop?”

Ikey nodded in the dark. His left hand found the groove of her waist. It was firm, solid and sturdy like a great tree to clutch and cling to. He stepped forward.

“I’m fine,” Ikey said. “So is the workshop. I think my shirt is ruined though.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rose said and drew Ikey into an embrace. “I’ll make you a new one.”

Ikey slid his arms around Rose’s torso and settled his head against her chest. His heart thundered in his head. As he pressed the side of his face against her breastbone, he winced at the pain in his eyebrow, yet pushed his ear against the stiffness of her flat chest.

“Thank you,” Rose whispered as her hands rubbed up and down Ikey’s bare back.

Ikey trembled. Rose tightened her grip. And his ear filled with a steady
tick-tick tick-tick tick-tick
like the paper cube in the heart of the music box as it fluttered under a tiny hammer.

Ikey traced the swell of her back, drew his fingers alongside her torso, and drifted his fingertips up to her shoulder. There, they paused a second, then slid softly up the graceful length of her neck.

Rose tilted her head a bit, her neck exposed. Ikey’s fingers brushed against the swell of her jaw.

Rose let go. She stepped away.

Ikey felt as if he was falling, plummeting from a tree without Rose to hold on to. He reached out. His hand smacked against a cupboard door. It rattled on its hinges.

“I’m sorry,” Rose said. She hadn’t gone far away.

“No,” Ikey said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” His hand gripped the edge of the cupboard and he leaned against it. He had meant to.

“Why?” Ikey asked. “Why can’t I touch your face?”

Rose stood quiet. Ikey strained to hear the patter of her heart, the point of it. Did Cross stick it in there for a purpose, or was it cruel artifice? Something to mock what she didn’t have?

“Can you accept me for who I am?” Rose asked.

Ikey straightened up, drawn from the thoughts of her heart.

“Yes,” he said. “I can. I do. I think you are incredible. Amazing.”

A few more seconds of silence flowered.

“If you truly think that, then you can accept that I am faceless. If I stepped outside this home, no one would see anything of me other than this wretched body. And if I took off this veil and dropped it before me, then all would stare at my face and they still wouldn’t see it. They would see only their own pity. Their sad, oily pity collecting on my face. And I will have none of it. I will not bear it. I will not be a receptacle for their pity. I will not carry it around, bowed by its weight. My face is my own, and I don’t care to share it.”

Ikey looked down. Somewhere beneath him was the floor. And it seemed so senseless. The floor.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I won’t try to touch your face again. I only wanted to know you better. I didn’t know.”

Rose’s hand appeared on his arm again. “That’s all right. No harm was done.” Her fingertips traced down his arm until her hand wrapped around his. “I admire your curiosity. And your courage.” She squeezed his hand.

Ikey flushed and closed his eyes. Bless the dark for concealing him, for hiding his own face. If he had courage he would have stood up to his dad. He wouldn’t be here. Ikey’s shoulders slumped. He wouldn’t be here, in the dark, his hand snug in Rose’s. He wouldn’t be aware of all the possibilities held by the world and by mechanisms. He wouldn’t be here to stand around with a gnawing sensation in his gut every time he thought of asking Rose about her construction, afraid of offending her, afraid the complexity found might be more than he could understand. Afraid of the answer.

Ikey reached up and rubbed a hand over his own face. A patchy beard of several days covered his cheeks and grew around his lips. Without a mirror, without a morning routine beyond dressing and fleeing out the door behind Cross, he had neglected to shave. A stranger’s face sat under his own touch.

“Thank you,” Ikey said, his fingertips resting on his cheek. The fuzz and flesh shifted like an animal under his touch.

“How are your hands?” Rose asked. “Would you be up for another knitting lesson, or have you had enough excitement for the day?”

Ikey blushed. “I think I can handle knitting.”

Rose placed a hand on his breastbone. Ikey inhaled. His chest swelled under her touch.

“Your other shirt is clean,” she said, “and probably dry by now. I’ll fetch it if you’ll wait for me in the sitting room.”

Ikey reached out and placed his hands on either side of Rose’s torso. He drew her close and laid his head against her chest. His arms wrapped around the slightness of her as her own long, thin arms encased him and one of her hands settled into his hair and held his head against her ticking heart.

His eyes closed. Against the firmness of her body, wrapped in her long embrace, a security settled over Ikey never before known. Hidden away in the dark, secreted from the men who spoke in tones of violence, he found that nothing could hurt him in the company of this magnificent creature who showed him kindness, who admired him and desired his company.

He wanted to tell her that he loved her, but the old familiar fear shackled the words. Speaking might break the spell. Saying those words might trigger a response similar to when he tried to know her face with his fingers. There was yet so much about her that mystified him. If he wanted answers, if he wanted time to find those answers, then action would be required soon.