Green Fairy (Dangerous Spirits) (25 page)

Meg leaned forward. “What do you want to do?”

“Don’t know.” Sol waved a paw. “I’ll figure it out. What about you?”

She laughed and leaned back, resting on her tail. “Don’t need a high school diploma to be an artist.”

“Well, I don’t need a high school diploma to be…” He closed his eyes and searched for a word. “Happy.”

“So call your boyfriend. Tell him next week.”

“But I’m grounded.” It made sense when he said it, and then at Meg’s expression, Sol just started to giggle. “Right. So, what, play hookey from school?”

“Pack in the morning, leave in the afternoon. Would it take you that long to pack?”

He thought about it. “No. But…you’re serious.” She just looked back at him. “Next week?”

“You were going to leave anyway.”

“Yeah, but…” He sighed. “I was gonna talk to them at least, like, the week before.”

She didn’t need to ask who he meant. “So they could try to talk you out of it? Write ’em a note from Millenport. Call them at their jobs before you go. You can say goodbye.”

“I guess…” He was feeling more buzzed, more confident. “What about your parents?”

Meg zipped up her bag. “By the time they notice I’m gone… y’know, they wouldn’t let me go to the city, but they’ll be thrilled that I’m making my own decisions. Striking out against authority. Know what I mean?”

“Not really.”

“I’ll send them a postcard. Just be thankful you have normal parents. God.” She stood up. “Speaking of which, you’d better get out there.”

“Right. Thanks. I feel a lot better.” He stood, too. Leaving next week made more and more sense the more Sol considered it. Get out now while he had the opportunity. If someone was extending a hand to him… “I should just call him right now and ask.”

Meg raised her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything as he took his phone out and dialed Carcy’s number.  The ram picked up quickly. “Hey, Solly. I’m at work. What’s going on?”

“Sorry.” Sol couldn’t keep a big grin off his muzzle at the sound of the ram’s voice. “Listen, uh, would you be able to come get me and Meg next week?”

“Next week?”

“I know. We’re just sick of this. We need to get out now.” Meg nodded, but kept the skeptical expression.

Carcy sighed. “I work, Sol. You know, I can’t just drive four hours…hang on.” Faintly, he said, “Will that be all?” and then an amount. A moment later, after a quick, “Thanks for shopping Save-Plus,” he was back. “Sol…”

“I can’t wait to see you,” Sol said. “Please, hon.” He didn’t even feel self-conscious about the endearment, not until he saw Meg’s finger stuck down her throat, mock-gagging.

Carcy sighed. “Can’t it be this weekend, or next?”

“My parents are home on the weekends.”

“This is a big pain in the ass, Sol. You sure you want to do this?”

“I know. I’m sure.” Carcy would do it. Sol’s grin stretched wider. “I want to be with you.”

“Yeah. All right. Let me see what day I can get off here.”

Sol giggled. He wasn’t quite buzzed enough to say “so you can get off here” in front of Meg, but Carcy got his meaning anyway.

“Ha. Right. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll text you the day.”

“Love you,” Sol said, prompting another round of gagging from Meg.

She shook her head as he put the phone in his pocket. “On account of he’s going to drive us to the city, I’m not going to say anything. But God, Sol.”

“Someday you’ll find love and you’ll understand.” He wanted to skip out from the bleachers, sing his way to the locker room.

“I might say the same about you.” She raised a paw. “See you tomorrow.”

His father wrinkled his nose when Sol got in and closed the passenger door. “Spilled some chowder?”

“There was an accident at lunch.” Sol leaned back in the seat and stared straight ahead. His eyes drifted closed. The movement of the car buoyed him, floated him along the road.

“How was practice?”

The words took a moment to travel from his ears to his brain. He composed the response carefully. “Great. It was great, yeah.”

“Good.” That was it. He didn’t show any interest in anything else, which Sol resented even though he didn’t want his father to ask any more. The idea that he would only be living with his parents for another week kept intruding on his mind. It was a big change, but a necessary one, he knew that. And it was only a couple months before he would be leaving anyway. It didn’t mean that much to them, and it would make a huge difference to him. Besides, they’d grounded him—grounded him, like he was fourteen again. Well, this would prove to them that he was grown up.

He repeated that refrain all through dinner and the evening, for as long as the absinthe buoyed his spirits. His parents didn’t seem to notice his mood, but then, they didn’t talk much all through dinner (roast chicken with spinach and rice; his mother didn’t make a special bean salad for him, but they didn’t force the chicken on him either), and after dinner he went up to his room to catch up on homework. He got tired around ten-thirty and stretched out in bed with his phone. “Confession” opened, but the words blurred. He forced himself to read the first few lines.

Another night with my darling approached, and the ball the day following that. I was in a state of high excitement for that entire day, wishing nothing more than for the sun to set. I checked Niki’s dress every hour, checked my own suit no less frequently, and took two baths—that is the day I wanted to dismiss the mouse Valoir for failing to adequately clean the bathtub, and you told me I could not.

Sol imagined Carcy that excited about seeing him, could just picture the ram checking his—well, his car. He smiled, without even realizing that he was no longer reading.

Clouds hang low in the sky and there is no moon, at least, not that Niki can see. He has no idea what time it is, only that it is not quite night and not quite dawn, that in-between time when the world is so quiet that his ears catch the ticking of the clock in the heavens. The soft white robe, made of fine cotton from the south, hangs almost weightless from his shoulders and coats his fur in a cloud. It is too short for him, but Jean liked it that way, liked how the black fur of his forearms and lower legs sticks out below the cuffs and hem of the robe, as if Niki is a child grown out of his clothes.

Few people are on the streets to see him. The dancers will not quite have left the Moulin Rouge, the bakers are only starting their morning bread. No smell but flour and the past and future rain comes to him until he enters the building, climbs past the dirt and garbage in the stairwell. One floor below his, someone has urinated on one of the stairs. His nose wrinkles as he steps over it, and he wonders if there was a time when he did not mind. He keeps the sleeves of the robe carefully away from the walls of the narrow stairwell, away from the door frame as he opens the aging wooden door.

Oil and rat reach his nose, and the rancid smell of starvation. Henri has not been eating the food Niki brought for him; a half-baguette sits on the floor near the bed and shows evidence that some of the smaller inhabitants of the room have been enjoying it. The sour smell comes not from the food, but from Henri himself, stretched out on the bed. He is not wearing a shirt, so Niki can see the ribs showing as faint lines in his short black fur.

“Tch.” He closes the door behind him. First things first: he removes the robe and sets it aside, exchanging it for an old pair of cotton trousers, worn and dirty, but with comforting weight. Only then does he walk to the bed and look down at the rat, ears perked. “You needn’t pretend to be asleep,” Niki says. “I can hear your breathing.”

Henri cracks open an eye. “I am not asleep. I am dead.”

“You will be. Why do you not eat?”

“Art is my food.” Henri rolls onto his back, stares at the ceiling. “It sustains me.”

“Here.” Niki picks up the bread, carefully gripping it around the parts that have been eaten. It is disgusting, but it is food. He holds it out. “Eat something.”

By way of reply, Henri reaches under the bed, comes out with a clear bottle half-full of a cloudy green liquid. He gulps down two, three swallows, then holds the bottle out to Niki. “Drink something.”

Niki sighs and replaces the bread on the plate. “You should not be drinking.”

“Inspiration!” Henri shakes the bottle at him. “You are leaving me for him, so come, share one last drink with me.”

The fox hesitates, but Henri’s arm, thinner than the baguette he scorns, does not withdraw. Finally, Niki takes the bottle, as much to drink as because the rat’s arm is trembling and he fears the bottle may drop and shatter.

“I am not leaving you,” Niki says. The absinthe in the bottle is un-sugared, which Henri relishes but Niki finds undrinkable. So he pads to the small shelf near the door and picks up a wooden cup. Next to the cup, behind the absinthe spoon, half of a sugar cube sits covered in dust. He brushes it as clean as he can, places the cube on the spoon on the cup, and pours the diluted absinthe over it.

“When will you be back?” Henri looks his way.

“When I can.” Niki brings the cup and bottle back to the bed, where he sits on the floor, knees drawn up, and curls his tail back around his hips.

“When he allows.”

The fox tips the lip of the cup to his muzzle, lets the warm green liquid spill over his tongue and down. Even with the sugar, the searing bitterness makes his eyes water, but he takes another drink, then sets his cup on the floor, the bottle on the bed.

“What would you have me do? Dance for brutes in fear for my life every night? End my days like—” Her name calls the image and the scent; the pain and the grief. “On the street?”

“You already know what I would have you do.” Henri sighs. He stares at the ceiling again.

“It is a rare chance, for one like me.” From the fox’s seated position, the window past Henri’s prone form shows nothing but the low, grey clouds. “There are not so many patrons who like boys, fewer who will spend the money to keep one, with all the boys by the river so cheap.”

“Of course. It is practical. In a few years you will be one of those boys yourself, and you will not command as high a price.”

Niki has never seen these boys, but he imagines them standing in the cold shadows by the Seine, desperate, lonely for any loving touch. He sees the fat purse of paper francs Jean dangled before him, enough to pay for a year of rent and bread for Henri. “I have been receiving instruction for the ball. Whom I may talk to, what I must say. I am to behave as a wealthy foreign lady from Siberia. If all goes well, then—with Jean’s money, I can do good, perhaps. I can help—people. I can support dance, and art.”

“I am certain your lover has chosen you because of the good you can do with his money. Will he tie you up before the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, as well?”

I can help people, Niki repeats stubbornly to himself, and he takes another drink of absinthe. The bitter wormwood makes his tongue curl, but the drink warms him. “I will find a way to bring money to you, one way or another.”

Henri waves a paw. “Money is not what I need.”

Niki stands, looks down at the rat. “To make art, one must continue to live.”

“And when one can make art no longer, then what?” Henri reaches for the bottle. He drains it in two swallows and holds it up in the air. “When inspiration is gone, then what?”

“Inspiration never truly leaves the artist.” The bottle is between Niki and the window; grey clouds show through the clear glass. The sky outside is the same color as when Niki entered the building.

The rat’s arm wavers. The fox reaches out, takes the bottle before it drops, and sets it on the floor. Henri turns to the window and stares out. “It may be gone for so long that it amounts to the same thing.”

Niki looks at the easel, where the portrait of the female mouse appears to be finished. “I have spoken to M. Oller. He will buy that painting from you.”

“I did not offer to sell it.”

“No. I did.”

Henri closes his eyes. “He has not seen it.”

“I described it well.”

Dawn may be here in a moment, or an hour. Henri turns back from the window and then shakes his head from side to side. “So it may hang in his gaudy hallways next to the pornography whose only purpose is to prime his patrons before you come to pump out their francs? So that your chamois’s friends may walk past it and think to themselves that the breasts are not as big as on the painting next to it? Is this the gallery worthy of my talents?”

Niki shakes his head. “Even the Dutchman sold his work, you will recall.”

“And he died insane.”

“Do you revere him so much?” Niki stares; the rat turns away. “It is money,” Niki says softly. “It buys bread, it pays Mme. DeGris for the room.”

Henri fixes him with a reddened eye. “Of course. Selling art as sex for money. It is your life now, is it not? I should not find fault with your haste to push me down the same road. Learned behavior, the Pavlovian reward. Your countryman, eh?”

“I do not know a ‘Pavlovian,’” Niki says.

“Is it so ingrained now?” Henri asks. “Do you hear the rustle of francs and pull your trousers down without knowing why? Let us experiment.” He turns his head lazily to one side, then the other. “Did you bring any francs? My hoard appears to be missing.”

Niki rubs his eyes. His paw comes away moist. “At least I will survive,” he says. “At least I will not lie in bed starving within easy reach of food because I picture myself slave to some higher calling that does not know my name.”

“Art never knows your name.” Henri’s voice gets stronger. “You must know its name. You must cry at its feet as you mewled to your mother, you must beg its attention for just one moment so that you may push the grandeur in your mind out onto the canvas. It is fickle, it cares nothing for you, and you must give it your all for that one moment, in the hope that the one moment will be followed by one more.”

“And how is that different from Jean?”

The rat sits up, coughs. He glares at Niki. “You knew, once. You talked about the dance, about how you would dance your dance and how some noble patron would take note of you and would lift you up to the ballet, and even if he didn’t,” he coughs again, harder, “even if he didn’t, all that mattered would be that you were being allowed to dance. And now, now look at you. Away all night being bent over silken sheets and down blankets.”

“Love is as important as art.” The protest is weak, but it is all he has.

“Tell me, does the pillow taste better when it is finely threaded cotton?”

Niki kicks the small plate with his foot, tipping the vermin-nibbled hunk of bread and its crumbs to the floor. A shower of white crumbs sprays over the black fur of his foot. “It tastes better than empty air.”

Henri wheezes. He looks directly at Niki. “
Liar
.”

Niki sets his jaw. He marches to the easel and takes the painting of the mouse. “I will bring this to M. Oller,” he says. “In that way perhaps at least something of you will survive the month.”

“If all you wanted was survival, you could have become a soldier of the tsar. He would not have used you as harshly, nor promised you so many illusions.”

“I have no illusions!” Niki’s fingers grip the canvas so hard that one of his claws digs into the edge. “I know the life I go to—”

“Then go!” Henri’s yell is scratchy. His claws dig into the bed. “Go to your noble who cherishes the lovely facade of you and cares nothing for the soul that withers and dies within. Go, and leave me here. You do not see art, you do not live art. You have given up.” He falls back onto the bed. “I have nothing more to say to you.”

“Eat something,” Niki says. “I will bring fresh bread tonight.” The crumbs of the stale bread still show on his fur; he leaves them there, not attempting to shake them off.

Henri makes no response. His eyes stare up at the ceiling, reflecting the sky filled with dark clouds. Dawn must be approaching by now, but one would not know it. Niki leaves the building and closes the door, the painting clutched safely under one arm.