Green Fairy (Dangerous Spirits) (31 page)

I attempted to extract Niki from the proceedings, but he established himself in front of one of the Justines’ paintings and proceeded to render a fanciful opinion as to the message of the painter, as if one need concern oneself with what the creator of a work of art thinks. Do we ask of the builders of the palace what message they wished to send in its design? Do we even care to learn their names? Do we ask what Mozart wished to express with his minuets? No; we simply dance, and that is all the respect we need pay the artist. The art is the gift; we are the recipients, and we make what use of the gift we will.

All around, people shuffled and looked uncomfortably at each other. Mme. Justine made a valiant attempt to humor Niki, but before their discussion could progress very far, Charles made a remark about the poverty of most artists and asserted that were the artists more well-off, their opinions would count for more.

This seemed a popular position among the younger set, but Niki’s eyes darkened, and had I been Charles, I might have feared that his claws would find my eyes. As it was, his verbal claws were sharp enough; Niki told Charles that the poorest painter had more to contribute to society than this room full of strutting peafowl, at which point I was obliged to seize his wrist and explain to the company at large that Mlle. Romanov was suffering from a fever brought on by the warmth of our springtime and the proximity to the river. And as we were leaving, I overheard Charles remark to Bertrand, “Not very feminine. There’s always something wrong with the prettiest ones,” and Bertrand reply, “Leave it to Jean to find the prettiest
boy
in Siberia.”

The ball had been ruined, father, ruined, and I daresay Niki was surprised at my fury afterwards, being still somewhat choleric from his confrontation with Bertrand. I attempted to make him understand what had transpired, how he had undone my careful work and undermined my reputation among my peers, but he stubbornly insisted that I needn’t care for the opinions of a set of careless popinjays. I found myself getting more furious rather than less, and so I called upon his other skills to ease my temperament, at which he succeeded as well as ever. I will say only that his resemblance to Bertrand allowed me to vent many of my frustrations in a most enjoyable fashion.

It was perhaps my error to leave him restrained for the remainder of the night with the promise of payment in the morning. I swear that I had every intention at the beginning of the evening of paying the agreed-upon sum, but how could I render full payment when he had behaved so abominably? He argued that he had never once let slip his true sex, which was my sole condition, and I replied that he had hardly comported himself as a lady was expected to, with Bertrand’s final comment as my evidence. Still in a temper, though subdued from my attentions, he told me that Siberian ladies were expected to have opinions about art and were unafraid to express them, a nice piece of subterfuge that might have worked had I not made the acquaintance of Maria Elena Dimitriova last year and seen for myself how perfectly proper she was.

And when I returned from using the necessary, as dawn broke over the rooftops, I found my fox vanished, my purse empty.

His mother arrived home at five after five, surprising him out of his reading. His explanation that he’d been sent home sick, bolstered by the smell of vomit that still hung around him, satisfied her. She bustled him up to his room, and if she noticed the bags on his floor or the iPod in his stereo, she did not say anything. “Stay here,” she said, “and I’ll get you some chicken—er, vegetable soup.” Her brow creased and her ears lowered.

“Mom,” Sol said, and she leaned closer. “Chicken…chicken soup is okay.”

She rested a paw between his ears, smoothing down his fur. “Sweetie, you don’t have to—”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I wanna try.” He couldn’t bring himself to tell her about the steak, but maybe chicken soup would stay down.

She found out about the steak, anyway, after looking in the refrigerator. When she came out with a glass of water and no chicken soup, she sat next to Sol on the couch and took his paw. He felt so guilty that it was hard to look at her, but she spoke softly. “Honey, did you eat the steak? Did you think you were getting sick from being vegetarian?”

“Sort of.”

“Oh, Sol.” She squeezed his paw. “You don’t need to eat meat for us to love you. Even your father.”

“I know.” He choked the words out. “I was an idiot. I thought…I thought it would be different.”

“When I went vegetarian, you know, I felt weak the first month, but after that it was okay. But I just missed the taste of meat. And I didn’t have a real reason to keep going with it.” She rubbed the back of his paw. “I know it’ll make your father happy if you eat meat again, but that’s not the reason you should do it.”

Sol shook his head. “I don’t want to be vegetarian any more,” he said. “It was a stupid thing to do.”

“It wasn’t stupid.” His mother leaned over and kissed his head. “But I’ll get you some chicken soup anyway. You feel warm.”

It tasted good, salty and warm, and it did stay down. It made him hungrier, actually, so he asked his mother for something more solid, and she brought him bread. It wasn’t fresh-baked, but it was still good. While she was gone, he put his bags away, and was pleased to find that his ribs didn’t hurt quite as much. He didn’t want to risk putting the iPod back, so he left it, but didn’t turn it on. Carcy’s shirt remained on the bed. Sol kept it at arm’s length so he wouldn’t smell it and hid it in the bottom drawer of his dresser, where hopefully he’d forget about it or throw it out later.

When his father came home, his mother intercepted him. Sol heard them talking downstairs and then his father walked up, his tread heavier than Sol’s mother, and opened Sol’s door. “Doing okay, there?”

He was smiling, and his ears were up. Sol kept his up as well. “Yeah. Just stomach problems.”

His father’s eye fell on the bowl by Sol’s bed. “Chicken soup?”

Sol nodded. His father’s smile widened. “Hope that makes you feel better,” he said, and withdrew.

It did and it didn’t. His stomach settled, his fever and chills subsided, but the one thing Sol could not get out of his mind was the shadow in the mirror. These dreams had started with a drop of paint, then a ribbon, a painting, and then a shadow that could hurt people, throw them into doors. Part of him was afraid to find out what would come next; part of him was excited. After reading Jean’s account of the party, he wanted to know what Niki had really said and done. Most of all, he wanted to know something the story could not tell him: whether Niki was a ghost who had a particular interest in him.

What if the absinthe magic was growing stronger? What if Niki could possibly be brought forward to live in this time. He would be happier here, where it would be easier to find work, where male dancers, even gay ones, could live fulfilled lives.

It was crazy, of course it was crazy, but after the day he’d had, he found himself clinging to the belief that it could happen. But in order for it to happen, he would need to get more absinthe, and that meant going to Meg’s house, because she was not going to bring it to school again, he was sure.

His parents came in to wish him good night around eleven, turned his light out, and shut his door. As soon as they were gone, Sol slipped out of bed, threw on jeans, and opened his window. The night was warm enough that he didn’t need a shirt.

The footholds he’d scraped in the joins of the stones of the house so many years ago were still there, though he slipped halfway down. He scrabbled at the stone for several seconds, dislodging a small chunk of limestone, and then fell to the soft dirt edging the house with an impact that caused his ribs to flare with pain again. He waited for a moment, paw pressed to the sore spot, and fortunately, the pain subsided. He brushed himself off and hurried down the hill, excitement growing with each step.

Clouds still obscured the moon, but the air smelled like past rain, not future rain. He sped past the soft glow of fireflies in the park, ran in front of the distant glow of headlights across the streets, turned toward the smell of the lake, even thicker tonight with the recent rain. The town was still, this late on a Tuesday night, streetlamps glowing, only the occasional car breaking the low scrapes and chirps of insects. Nobody Sol knew was out, or at least nobody who stopped to ask what he was doing out at eleven-thirty, which was almost what time it was when he got to Meg’s.

Sol snuck around the edge of the outdoor pool, sniffing for their scents, but only caught the warm, herbal smell of the pool, which the Kinnicks kept chlorine-free. Flickering candlelight showed between curtains at Meg’s window, overlaid by its faint reflection in the double glass. Sol bent for a pebble and flicked it at the window.

It made a crack that sounded like a gunshot. Sol cringed and ducked instinctively, even though there were no bushes to hide behind. His heart hammered out the seconds. It was impossible that Meg hadn’t heard it; maybe she’d heard it and knew it was him and was ignoring him. He reached for another pebble, but as he did, the curtains shifted to one side, and the flickering light brightened.

The window slid up, revealing Meg’s silhouette, gleams of silver sparkling around her ears. “Are you insane?” she hissed, but as she moved the candle in front of her face, Sol saw that her expression was almost pleased. “Wait for school tomorrow, we can talk about what we’re gonna do then.”

“Do? You mean for the project?”

“To get out of here. Just because your dickhead Def Match ex-boyfriend fucked us over doesn’t mean we give up, right?”

Give up? Get out of here? “You still want to go…what? Where?”

“We’re still going to Millenport, right? Look, I e-mailed my cousin, I asked if you could stay with us for a couple weeks. I’m sure it’ll be okay. Maybe you and me can find a place together.”

Millenport was more than four hours away from him now. “I don’t want to go to Millenport,” he said.

Her eyebrows lowered, her tone flattened along with her ears. “Then what? You need to talk about Dickhead some more? Come around front. And put a shirt on. Wait, on second thought, don’t bother.”

“I don’t want to talk! I just need to get back into the dream.”

“The dream, your fucking dream again.” She glared at him. “You know what, Sol? When you go hide in your dream, reality keeps going on around you. It doesn’t stop. You want me to go to Millenport without you?”

“I found a painting in my house. It’s real, I saw a…”
A ghost
. He couldn’t make himself say the word.

“So I could be gone tomorrow, and you’d never see me again, and you wouldn’t give a shit as long as you have your dream.”

Sol shifted his weight. The ground below his feet was damp. “Meg, come on. You’re not going…you’re being a drama queen. I’m just asking for help here.”

“So am I,” she snapped. “What are you going to do for me?”

“I’ll…” He groped for something. “I’ll finish the project work. I don’t have baseball now, I’ll write up the reports, I’ll do all the work. Please, I just need to get back to the dream.”

Her eyes narrowed, the reflected light in them vanishing. “You’ll finish the report,” she said. “Fine. That’s great. You think that’s what I wanted to hear from you?” She disappeared from the window, and returned holding the bottle up. “Here, you want it so bad, take it. Don’t worry about the report. In fact, don’t worry about talking to me again. I’ll figure out my own way to Millenport.”

She threw the bottle out onto the grassy verge leading up to the cement around the pool. Sol looked up at her, taking cautious steps toward the bottle. “Thanks, Meg,” he said. “I’ll do the report, I promise.”

She stared out and after a moment said, “Fuck off,” and closed the window. A moment later the curtains swept back across it.

Sol’s tail swept back and forth over the ground. He stayed in his crouch, eyes on the bottle. Meg hadn’t meant it, of course. She was upset, and she always said things she didn’t mean when she was upset. Anyway, there wasn’t anything he could do about it now except take the bottle. If he tried to rap on her window to apologize, she’d ignore him.

So he padded forward and closed his fingers around the bottle. He tucked it under one arm, the green liquid splashing around inside it, and ran home.

Climbing up to his room without dropping the bottle proved the most difficult part of the whole experience. He scrambled up, switching the bottle from one arm to the other, sometimes holding the neck in his teeth; he nearly dropped it once and had to wait a full minute for his heart to stop pounding, pinning the bottle between his chest and the wall. When he reached his window, he put the bottle inside and then clambered in himself, shut the window, and stood there just looking at it.

His desk lamp shone down through the green liquid, still restless from its journey. Sol brushed his fingers down the side of the bottle. He fidgeted from one foot to the other, tail wagging faster, watching the magical reflections, emerald on his fingers.

It occurred to him that he would need a glass, water, and sugar, and that only two of those three would be found in his bathroom. He padded quickly to his door, listening to any noises in the hallway. His parents were still awake, but usually they went to sleep around midnight. Could he wait ten minutes?

He got back into bed and tried reading more of “Confession,” but the next bit was Jean talking about his luncheon the following day with his friends and how they teased him about picking up unstable ladies that acted like boys, and Sol couldn’t focus properly on it. He read the same paragraph over and over again, and when his eyelids started drooping, he had to close the book. There was a shooting game on his phone that he could play for a little while without getting bored, and that kept him awake until finally, at quarter past midnight, he heard his parents climb the stairs and go into their room.

Quickly, he crept out of his room and down to the kitchen, where he poured some sugar and water into a glass and hurried back upstairs. It wasn’t going to be quite the same as when Meg had done it, but he felt sure it would work.

In minutes, he had a glass full of cloudy green liquid. There wasn’t much left in the bottle, but Sol thought he’d only need the one more. “Prepare to accept the gift of the Green Fairy,” he breathed out, and without taking another breath, brought the glass to his lips.

He hadn’t added enough sugar, or maybe he’d added too much absinthe. The drink stung his tongue, bitter anise crowding in with the herbal flavors, leaving the chemical-anise aftertaste. Sol swallowed, drank the rest, then placed the glass on his desk. He breathed in and out, trying to relax as he stripped to his boxers and got back into bed. Warmth, familiar and welcome, blossomed in his stomach and worked its way up to his chest. He closed his eyes.

A feeling of well-being and calm followed the warmth. Everything was okay, it was going to be fine. His parents still loved him, and Meg would forgive him, and in a week he’d be playing on the baseball team again, and Taric would get in good with the wolves and stop bothering him…

Where had that thought come from? Sol yawned. He would sleep, he would dream, and in the morning something would happen. Something, anything.