Green Fairy (Dangerous Spirits) (21 page)

“No.” Niki stretches his legs. “He has promised me money, but—”

“
Bon Dieu
.” Henri dips to his palette. “In three nights you have earned nothing? Your courtesan skills lag far behind your dancing skills.”

“He wants to take me to a ball. He promised me after.” Niki crouches, extending one leg and then the other.

“You shall be the prettiest of the ladies at the ball.” Henri sighs. “And then what? He will tie you to his bed? You exchange one dance for another.”

“The money from the cabaret, it is enough to live.” Niki sits on the bed, grasping one foot. “But for how much longer? I thought that after, I would—”

“Spare me the details. I am certain I can fill them in. Is it so bad, this life? You at least make a pretense of dance.”

“I—”

“You may enhance the tawdry with the graceful, even if the usual patrons cannot notice any distinction. In your own way, you are following your art. And this you would give up, all for the chance to eat pickled ostrich eggs and drink Bourgogne wine.”

“Cireil understands. She does not think less of me.” Niki stands and fastens the ribbons over his ears. He wanted to tell Henri his plan, but now the rat is being unreasonable and Niki thinks that if he does not allow himself anger, he will find himself overcome by tears. “One must live, no?”

“Yes.” Henri throws his brush down and turns, his eyes bright. “One must live. And art, this is where one finds life. Existence is nothing without art, as you will find,
renardeau
.”

“I am not a cub.” Niki glares stiffly back at him. “I have lived without art for a long time. I shan’t miss it.”

Henri stares, and then he straightens his back. He turns, slowly, but does not resume painting. “You will,” he says softly.

“Good-bye,” Niki says. He breathes in paint, and rat, and fox, and paint.

He is at the door when he hears Henri say, “I notice you have not mentioned love.”

“Sol.”

Someone was shaking his shoulder.

“Sol!”

He blinked, his eyes crusty with sleep.

“Hey, if you’re gonna sleep in my bed, at least take your clothes off so my parents can ‘catch’ you.”

He yawned hugely and rubbed a paw against his eyes, smiling. An oily smell filled his nostrils. “Sure, if you want. What smells?”

“Thanks.” Meg punched his arm. “Look, I’m gonna light up to chill out and I didn’t want you waking up to a room full of smoke. Also you’re drooling on my pillow.”

“Uh.” Sol propped himself up on his elbows and rolled onto his side. He wiped his muzzle. “Sorry.”

“No biggie.” Meg flipped the pillow over. “It’s raining harder. You want me to get Ronald to drive you home?”

“What are the chances he’s sober?” Sol sat up slowly, taking his time. He could still smell the thick, oily scent, even over the taste of anise in his muzzle. The lonely, hollow emotions of the dream hung in his head, battling with the feeling of well-being left from the absinthe.

Meg wiggled her paw. “Sober? Pretty good. Not baked?” She shook her head.

“I’ll walk.” He yawned again and rubbed his nose. “You don’t smell that? Smells like…like paint?”

The otter shrugged. “Still smells like frankincense to me in here, but you’re the one with the sniffer.” She got out her tin of mints and pulled a joint out.

Sol stood and walked around the room, his nose high. The scent stayed strong everywhere he went, unnaturally. It should be stronger in some places than others. If he weren’t still feeling the warmth of the absinthe inside, it would probably worry him, because scents that came from nowhere usually came from you. Smelling things that weren’t there got you a trip to the doctor.

But after one circuit of the room, the smell didn’t seem so important. What was a hallucination compared to questions of life and art? He felt the echoes of the dream not only in his nose, but in the stiffness of his legs and arms. He stretched while Meg rummaged in her desk for another incense stick.

She lit it—sandalwood, not frankincense—and Sol breathed in. The oily paint smell lingered, but weaker. He walked over to Meg and draped an arm over her shoulder, almost knocking the joint out of her paw.

“Careful!” She held the joint away from him, but didn’t shrug him off.

Sol breathed in the spiraling coils of incense smoke and Meg’s scent and marijuana and still, below it, oily paint. “Sorry. This is just nice. It’s just what I needed.”

She took her lighter out. “I swear, this fuckin’ project. Where else could you get buzzed and call it homework?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Okay, I’m gonna walk home.” Niki’s loneliness made Sol want to hug Meg again, to tell her how much he valued her friendship, but she was already bringing the cigarette lighter to the end of the joint.

“Mmkay.” She flicked the lighter on. “You going to be okay, walking home?”

“I’m fine. I’m chill. Everything’s good. See ya Monday.”

Even the chilly evening rain felt right. The warmth of the absinthe, though fading, kept him feeling light inside, even as his fur gradually soaked up more water. It dripped into his eyes and ran into his nose, light drops that he blew out as he walked. He kept his ears folded back and his tail curled beneath him, and he hurried along the sidewalks. The moon’s light described silver edges of the huge masses of clouds overhead. Every time he looked up, he hurried faster. The air smelled like ozone and storms, like thick and warm, as though the clouds themselves were about to break.

When he turned the corner to start up Prospect, wind rushed down to meet him. It flattened his fur, drenched it, and pushed him back down the hill as he gritted his teeth and struggled up. Even though the full fury of the storm remained in abeyance, Sol was, if not drenched, at least very wet by the time he walked in the door. He shed his jacket and wiped down his fur in the foyer, at which point his mother came out from the kitchen. “You’re soaking wet!”

“I walked home from Meg’s,” he said.

“Go dry yourself off—”

“I was going to!”

“—and I’ll get you a piece of raisin spice cake.”

He stood dripping on the floor at the base of the stairs. The cake smelled exquisite and rich. He shook his head. “I’m…no, thanks.”

His mother’s ears lowered with her frown. “Are you feeling okay?” She leaned in to smell him.

“I’m fine, Mom.” But her nose was already wrinkled, her head tilted.

“Meg was burning incense again?”

“Yeah, it has to do with our project. I’m gonna dry off and then I’m just…” He put one foot on the lowest stair. “I’m gonna go to bed.”

“Sol?” Her tone, high and worried, stopped him. “Are you doing drugs?”

“Mom.” He shook his head. The absinthe high had mostly, mostly faded. “No.”

“You smell a little like…and Meg’s parents encourage her to experiment.”

He shook his head again. “You told me how you feel about that.”

“Your father thinks…the way your baseball fell off…”

“I had two hits in the game today. Or as good as.” He wanted to ask where his father was. It was late, so he was probably in the den, because the TV wasn’t on in the living room. “Were you just waiting up for me?”

“I’m making a roast for tomorrow.”

He couldn’t smell the meat over the cake, which must be sitting out on a counter. “Sounds good. Potatoes and green beans?”

She nodded. “If that’s all right?”

“Sure.” He exhaled. “Thanks, Mom.”

His tail uncurled as he walked up the stairs, dripping behind him. He rubbed himself dry with a towel as best he could, and then tossed the towel onto his bed and flopped down on it. Back home, he couldn’t forget that he wouldn’t be getting a car, that he would be stuck here through the summer with Carcy effectively on the other side of the world. He’d be lucky to manage a bus ride for one weekend visit.

Two more months of school, two more months of being a backup on the baseball team, getting taunted by Taric and ignored by the others. Two more months of getting shit for vegetarianism, of doing homework and not having a car, of going over to Meg’s once or twice a week and texting Carcy, two more months of uncomfortable dinners with his father. Well. Five more months of those. He closed his eyes and pressed his muzzle into the pillow.

He is dancing in the line behind the ermine, two dancers away from Cireil, in perhaps the next to last show he will ever dance in at the Moulin Rouge. Perhaps. Niki’s timing has been off this whole evening, not so much that anyone but him would notice, because of what the ermine and Henri had said to him.

It is not so bad, here in the cabaret, now that he thinks of leaving it. There are no patrons who watch him and only him the way Jean does, but there have been before and will be again. What worries him is that Jean is the first to have requested him for more than one night; Jean is the first to offer him money and freedom. But is it more freedom than he has now? He kicks his legs at precisely the right height, he moves his feet in precisely the right steps, and though the movement is not difficult, the dance makes his blood pump faster, each well-placed (if a half-second slow) step is a success. In moments like this, he feels as though the Dance is animating his body, as though even if he ceased moving of his own volition, his limbs would continue to describe their patterns, his body would twist and turn. He feels a part of something greater than himself.

He has felt that way with patrons, sometimes. Not with Jean, not yet, but he takes such pride in the chamois’s pleasure that it is almost as good. Jean has suffered, that is clear, at the hands of his family and his society, and that is a pain Niki is only too happy to help ease. His tongue finds his swollen lip, holding it away from his teeth. It is not so bad, he thinks. And Jean may come to learn gentleness, in time.

So it feels selfish for him to wish to continue dancing here at the cabaret. Even if he can only help one person, is that not better than simply dancing for his own sake?

He moves with the girls, back and forth. Though the ermine takes the front stage, Niki searches the audience and finds one or two patrons whose eyes linger on him before moving on. He makes note of them for after the show. Cireil taught him this, he knows, but he cannot remember a time when he did not know how to do it.

The line of dancers moves behind the curtain, gathering backstage while the ermine finishes the show alone. In the few minutes before they move out onto the floor, Niki talks quietly with Cireil.

“Did you pass the test of the dinner?” the wolf asks him.

Niki smiles. “If I have not yet been poisoned by the food, then I believe I have.”

“So, the ball. You will go?”

The fox licks at the tear in his lip. “Do you think I should?”

Cireil reaches up and turns his muzzle out of the shadow. She stares at his lip. “Were you any other girl, I would say yes.” She releases him. “But you love dance, and it shows so much in your movements.”

“I will never be at the front of a show.” Niki does not attempt to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

“No. But not through the fault of your performance. And does that matter?”

“I can make him happy,” Niki says.

Cireil smiles. “And he? Can he make you happy?” When Niki does not answer, Cireil says, “There will be others who can make him happy. But who will do that for you, if not him?”

Niki takes a fold of the velvet curtain in his paw and slides the fabric through his fingers. There is the dance, there is the performance, and there is the elegance of the club, no matter how M. Oller tries to hide it behind gaudy gold paint. “To not have to be touched again…”

“My dear,” Cireil laughs, “we will all reach that point soon enough. I say this: if you truly love him, then go to him.”

The ermine has come strutting back from her dance in time to hear this. “You’re a fool, old wolf. You simply want company in your last days here at the club.”

“My days are not so short as you might think.” Cireil’s hackles fluff around her neck.

“Ha.” The ermine turns to Niki. “You see how deluded she is, cu-cu. Listen to her at your peril.”

“And you,” Cireil says calmly, “wish only to see Niki gone so that you may be assured that M. Oller will not give him your show.”

The ermine laughs, loudly enough to draw the eyes of several other dancers. “My show? To that Siberian
môme
? Come, let us suggest it to him. I have not heard his laugh in many weeks.”

“You see?” Cireil turns to Niki, who has not dared say a word. “You must stay, if only to prove her wrong.”

The ermine waves a paw. “Stay. Go. I promise you I shan’t notice, and nor shall our patrons.” She waves a paw airily and strides past the pair of canids.

“They all hate me,” Niki says in a low voice, looking over Cireil’s shoulder at the other dancers, all turning away slowly.

“They do not,” the wolf snaps, “and so what if they did? You dance for dance, not for their love, not for your chamois’s nor for anyone else’s.”

Niki’s tongue curls around his lip. The pain flares lightly and subsides. “And for what do you dance?” he asks.

“Come,” Cireil says. “Let us go earn our wine.”

She says that every night to Niki, although he has never seen her drink a drop of wine. It would be nice, he thinks, to bring her to his apartment, to sit with her and Henri and talk about dance and art and life. Perhaps Henri would like to paint her. Cireil has no grey in her fur, but her ears often slide down from fully upright, and her eyes are weary. Henri would appreciate the depth in her muzzle, and Niki would appreciate the chance to talk to Cireil when he is not dressed as a female dancer.

Niki follows her out onto the floor, where they dance among the tables. Two of the dancers are immediately called to tables. Niki and Cireil dance together over to the bar, where they separate and search out the patrons who watched them during the show.

By now, the floor is familiar to him, the sharp scents of rodent, of fox, of wolf, of deer, of mustelid, all different in species but all male, all aroused to different degrees. Niki floats from one scent to another on the sharp fruit haze of wine that soaks the air. He knows how to keep his tail curled behind him just so; he knows how to place his feet and lift a leg to show his shapely thigh, feminine enough to fool even most of the sober patrons (there are not many sober patrons). He can tell, now, which tables will never be interested in him and which tables will show interest if he stays near. Sometimes it is the species: the rabbits, rats, and mice can rarely resist the allure of commanding a fox, of claiming their ownership of him with their fifty-centime notes (Niki rarely gets one-franc notes unless he goes to a private box; the well-off tables are claimed by the more senior dancers). Sometimes it is clear from the way the patrons are sitting: careless and bored, muzzles drooping over half-full cups of wine. When they have come to drown sorrows amid gaiety and debauchery, then Niki can lift their muzzles and spirits, and coax a franc or two out of them.

But the patrons who watched him during the show, those are the first he visits. Tonight, it is a short rabbit in a plain white shirt, but as Niki approaches, he sees the rabbit’s pocketwatch chain, and his spirits rise. He dances around their table, and from the rabbit and his two companions, Niki earns three fifty-centime notes, tucked into the waist of his dress. None of them even tried to reach beneath his skirt, none of them even looked askance at him, as the foxes and wolves sometimes do when they catch just a whiff of his male scent and think they must be mistaken.

He moves on. There was a table of goats in artist smocks whose eyes lingered on him, who pointed him out to each other, but they were being entertained by a ewe the last time Niki looked. Now the ewe is dancing for a pair of jackals, and the goats catch sight of Niki again. He smiles, swishes his tail, and dances toward them with little kicks. In each kick, he remembers his training, and he feels a little bit of the joy of the dance.

On the way, he passes Cireil, but she is intent on her next table, moving even without the sashays and hip-turns that she taught Niki to use. He wants to tease her about it, but there will be time for that after. He has a table to dance for.

The goats are more drunk, or perhaps just more aggressive, but not in a dangerous way. They press bills into his garter, they contrive to brush his false chest, and by now his reaction to that is ingrained: even though he does not feel it, he acts. He jumps and then coos and presses against them, then slides away, as though he enjoyed it but knew he was not allowed to. One of the goats, bold, squeezes his rump, and Niki gives him exactly the same reaction, with a flick of his tail across the chair.

He makes another three and a half francs at this table, then sees the other wolf—not Cireil—heading for the table, and graciously he steps aside, teasing one of the goats with a finger across his horns before spinning off to another table. His body feels the touch of the goats’ hands still, but he must go on; there is another hour yet to be danced.

A commotion near the bar stops him and the two dancers nearest him. They start dancing again immediately, for fear of M. Oller’s wrath, but keep their eyes on the small knot of people. Niki dances his way around to where he can see a small mink, teeth bared, staring venom at Cireil.

When he sees the wolf, he hurries to her side. “…places to put your paws,” Cireil is saying.

“I pay for my paws to go where they like,” the mink snarls.

M. Oller appears, somehow, at Cireil’s side as the wolf says, “The club has rules.”

“I have money,” the mink says, and the appearance of the polecat does not diminish his fury. He shakes a pile of notes at M. Oller. “What did I buy these notes for if not to take my pleasure?”

“I do apologize,” M. Oller says. “Please tell me what’s happened here.”

“He—”

M. Oller holds up a paw to silence Cireil. Niki shrinks himself to hide behind the wolf. If M. Oller notices him, he will send Niki away to continue dancing, and Niki wants to remain to support Cireil. Fortunately, the polecat does not seem to notice the fox. “Sir,” M. Oller says to the mink, “please go on.”

“I was enjoying the dance,” the mink says. He glares at Cireil, yellow eyes narrowed. “I pulled this whore into my lap, and she was enjoying it, don’t try to deny it.”

Niki bristles on Cireil’s behalf. The wolf’s tail curls beneath her but otherwise she maintains her dignified stand. She does not respond. So the mink snarls at Cireil. “And then I placed some notes in her garter, like always—”

“Not in my garter!” Cireil snaps, and again M. Oller must hold up a paw. He indicates for the mink to go on. Niki sees the effort it takes for Cireil’s ears to remain even partially upright (“never flat,” they are instructed by M. Oller, “never down”).

“And she struck me!”

The wolf draws in a breath, lifting her muzzle. “I—”

M. Oller turns to Cireil, cutting off her protest. “Did you strike a patron?”

“No.” She meets his stare, then drops her eyes. “I struggled to get off his lap. My elbow may—may have brushed his muzzle.”

“You bruised it!” The mink leans forward, showing his eye to M. Oller. “See where it is already swelling?”

Niki can see nothing under the mink’s eye, but M. Oller considers. Before he can speak, Cireil leans close to him and whispers something into his ear. Niki ‘s large ears bring the hiss of the last few words to him, carried by Cireil’s desperation and hurt. “…
inside
me!”

The polecat’s eyes widen. The professional respect he always carries for his customers drops from him in a moment. “Did you?” he demands, and Niki sees that the mink does not need to ask what M. Oller means.

“My fingers slipped.” This sullen admission from the mink is followed by anger, a pointed claw at Cireil. “She begged for it! She rubbed herself against me—”

“Our dancers are encouraged to include our patrons in their dance.” M. Oller’s voice is as cold as winter, as cold as the trains from the east in January.

“Dance! Filthy foreplay, more like. Why do—”

With all the grace of M. Oller himself, the two boars who provide security for the club appear behind the mink. Each one grasps an arm. The patron is shocked into silence, and then as he is forcibly pulled through the crowd, he unleashes a stream of invective. But, Niki thinks, he has not the experience nor passion of a Siberian father whose cub wants to dance.

M. Oller straightens the sleeves of his waistcoat. “Go backstage,” he says to Cireil. “You are finished for tonight.”

She bows her head and walks back through the bar. The patrons and dancers part before her, allowing her the space to walk. Some dancers touch her shoulder or back; Niki would like to, but he is too far already, and M. Oller is staring at him.

“And you,” he says, “you are not dancing.”

Niki bows his head rather than speak, and lets the dance spin him through the crowd as the patrons slowly resume their conversations. He is heartened to hear them speak of the mink as a “boor” and a “lout,” but he cannot keep the sadness from his throat as he watches Cireil’s noble bearing in her march to the stage door.

He dances for another hour, but the mood in the cabaret is sour, the patrons tentative. The mink is discussed many times in Niki’s hearing. By the end of the hour, he has heard a wine-slurred badger mutter that “they will throw someone out for the crime of appreciating the dance,” and a thick-set marmot warn a friend, “don’t put a finger on them or you’ll be on the street,” with a jerk of his thumb. Niki wants to correct them, but the rules of the club also state that the dancers are not to engage the patrons in conversation; they must wait for the patrons to engage them. So he dances and attempts to entertain the badger and marmot, knowing that they will not be putting any bills into his waistband.