IGMS Issue 49 (16 page)

The house is too quiet. Paula slips out to the garage, telling herself she'll drive somewhere louder. Instead, she sits beside the crib. She rests her forehead against the cool wood and imagines a future where their tiny garage is crowded with bikes and balls, the sporty Miata at the charging station replaced by a practical minivan. Mexico, said her Mother. Canada.

Maybe. The idea has its own wall of paperwork, tests, recommendation letters. Even if they succeed, they'll be starting over again. With soul mates, such a move would be possible. But nothing ties her to Dante but choice. She can see herself frustrated, angry, walking away.

It doesn't matter. He'll get his results soon. There are so many ways the world can break them. The idea hurts more than it should. He's supposed to be painless.

She thought she'd found stability. Now, in the dark, with the crib looming above her, her life feels built on sand. What good is any of it, if it can be ruined by a doctor's note?

Only 1.8 percent, the poster said. It took two tons of metal to tear Marcus from her.

Paula's phone has an app that connects her directly to her cohort. Every time she buys a new phone, she plans not to install it. But she always does. Some of her cohort, her own clique of soul mates, like to message back and forth. And, when she's feeling reckless, she likes to watch them.

She logs in, and the app greets her with the familiar list of names. She knows it by heart. Marcus's name is gray. Hers is blue, for unavailable. Most the names are blue. They've had time to find each other. Two, though, are still green. Lucia, in Greece. Andrew, in Michigan. The two of them chat often, idle promises to cross continents and meet.

Paula's dreamed of both of them. She's learned the Greek words for
I love you
and
Can I visit
. She's memorized the names of Andrew's four dogs.

She's written each of them dozens of messages. Almost sent them.

She taps Andrew's name and writes another.

The plane touches down in Detroit during a sobbing downpour, ruining Paula's plan to meet Andrew somewhere safe and open. She'd imagined a park, where no one would watch them or notice if she started to cry. Instead, they agree to meet at a café about twenty minutes from the airport.

She still hasn't heard his voice, and the anonymity of text leaves her feeling safe. There's no surge of emotion at his message, no want. She calls Dante during the cab ride, for the comfort of it. He is warm and incurious. He hopes her meeting goes well, and mutters a bit about inconsiderate bosses and their sudden demands. He says he loves her.

"Forever?" she asks.

"Forever and forever," he promises. He doesn't ask for her promise. For the first time, she wishes he would.

The café is almost empty, a barely lit, lurking sort of place, the tables set at careful distances. She's early, so she buys a glass of iced tea and settles in the corner. Andrew's picture showed a lean man with an impassive expression and short black hair. Studying it, Paula thought he looked like a mob enforcer. She liked his inapproachability.

Five minutes later, the door chimes. Andrew's put on weight since the picture, softening into pudgy warmth. He looks like the sort of man who makes gourmet meals on the weekends and slips his dogs kitchen scraps while he cooks. The dizzy rush of want, the sudden click of the world settling into place, she expects those. What she's not prepared for is the light in his eyes, the way he swallows then swallows again, in helpless shock. She'd forgotten it would affect him too.

"Andrew." She steps out from the table, meaning to shake his hand.

The brush of fingertips isn't enough for either of them. When she lifts her head to kiss him, it isn't a choice. The warmth of his mouth and the nervous minty taste of him are not at all like Marcus. But still, she's reminded. It is the same want that pours between them, the desire to disappear in the shadow of a beloved, just to be that much closer.

There will be no long walks or conversation. They will make love all day in a hotel bed and only after they've exhausted the desperate grasping need to be consumed will they talk. There will be no trouble at all, being approved. Their daughter will have his gray eyes and her narrow smile.

"What is it?" he asks, holding her at arm's length. She's shaking hard, only her locked knees keeping her from collapsing. She meets his eyes, sees herself reflected and reflecting him. After she lost Marcus, she spent hours standing in front of the mirror, trying to find him in her eyes, where she'd always held him.

"Give me a second." Paula wishes for Dante. For the easy peace of him. The selfishness of that want settles her.

She steps back. Andrew is reluctant to release her, but he does, his hands dropping to his sides.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I got ahead of myself."

She clasps her hands behind her back to keep herself from touching him. "It happens."

"That's right." He looks away from her for the first time and studies the floor. "You've been through this before."

She waits until he meets her gaze again. She has to make him understand what he's risking. "I tried to die, after I lost Marcus."

"I'm sorry. If I'd been there - ."

"You would have loved him too," she says. "And we'd both have been playing with razors."

He starts to shake his head, then stops.

"Do you want to tell me about him?" he asks. He touches her arm, just lightly, and her whole body shivers with it. She wants to kiss him until their flavors become so mingled she can't tell the difference.

"Do you like kids?" she asks.

He looks puzzled. "Sure. I always figured I'd have a daughter."

It's what she thought he'd say. What he'd have to say, or how could they be as they are?

"No," she says. She has to force her voice to rise. "No. Go to Greece. She'll love you, there."

"What?" He doesn't sound hurt yet. He doesn't believe her. "No, no. I've got you. I want you."

She wants Marcus. She wants a brown-skinned daughter with gray eyes and a wild laugh. She wants to get drunk on Andrew and still hold the cool clarity of Dante. She wants to disappear and she wants never again to have to go hunting herself in the memories of a before.

"You don't love me." The familiar, comfortable line.

Now
he's
shaking. "Please," he says. "Don't."

But she has to. "You don't. Not yet."

She will leave only the narrowest of cracks in him. He would sort through her shards, if she allowed it, and put her back together in their shared image. But she has grown comfortable. Dante has sanded down the corners of her broken pieces. Shattered a second time, there would be nothing left of her but sand. She kisses him on the forehead, the way she would have kissed their gray-eyed daughter.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I can't."

And because their hearts are beating in a shared, wounded rhythm, he can't argue with her. She lifts his fingers to her lips, kisses each of his knuckles.

"Because of last time?" he asks.

"Yes. I thought it might feel new. Safe. But love doesn't change." She nuzzles his palm and his fingers linger on her cheek.

"Let me give you a ride to the airport."

She shakes her head. "Give yourself a ride. Go to Greece. Or contact one of the couples, if you're comfortable sharing. It's worth it. You know that now."

"But not you?"

"Not me." She leaves her iced tea half-finished on the table, and he doesn't try to follow her out.

On the plane, she researches Mexico's immigration policy. She emails Dante's grandmother, mentions that she'd like to visit again.

Andrew has already emailed her. She deletes it, unread.

The results will come. Dante will cry, when he reads them. It is such a fantasy of his, the idea of loving her. But he'll stay. She lets herself believe that. They'll talk about Mexico. She'll study Spanish. Their daughter, of course, will speak it beautifully. And they'll be happy, there.

Perhaps, sometimes, he'll look at her and wonder what he's missing. She'll get emails from Andrew, and sometimes she'll read them. But they'll work through it.

He is the best thing she's never loved.

My mother selected her wings as early morning light reached through our balcony shutters. She moved between the shadows, calm and deliberate, while downtower neighbors slept behind their barricades. She pushed her arms into the woven harness. Turned her back to me so that I could cinch the straps tight against her shoulders.

When two bone horns sounded low and loud from Mondarath, the tower nearest ours, she stiffened. I paused as well, trying to see through the shutters' holes. She urged me on while she trained her eyes on the sky.

"No time to hesitate, Kirit," she said. She meant
no time to be afraid
.

On a morning like this, fear was a blue sky emptied of birds. It was the smell of cooking trapped in closed towers, of smoke looking for ways out. It was an ache in the back of the eyes from searching the distance, and a weight in the stomach as old as our city.

Today Ezarit Densira would fly into that empty sky -- first to the east, then southwest.

I grabbed the buckle on her left shoulder, then put the full weight of my body into securing the strap. She grunted softly in approval.

"Turn a little, so I can see the buckles better," I said. She took two steps sideways. I could see through the shutters while I worked.

Across a gap of sky, Mondarath's guards braved the morning. Their wings edged with glass and locked for fighting, they leapt from the tower. One shouted and pointed.

A predator moved there, nearly invisible -- a shimmer among exploding gardens. Nets momentarily wrapped two thick, skycolored tentacles. The skymouth shook free and disappeared. Wails built in its wake. Mondarath was under attack.

The guards dove to meet it, the sun dazzling their wings. The air roiled and sheared. Pieces of brown rope netting and red banners fell to the clouds far below. The guards drew their bows and gave chase, trying to kill what they could not see.

"Oh, Mondarath," Ezarit whispered. "They never mind the signs."

The besieged tower rose almost as tall as ours, sun-bleached white against the blue morning. Since Lith fell, Mondarath marked the city's northern edge. Beyond its tiers, sky stretched uninterrupted to the horizon.

A squall broke hard against the tower, threatening a loose shutter. Then the balcony's planters toppled and the circling guards scattered. One guard, the slowest, jerked to a halt in the air and flew, impossibly, backwards. His leg yanked high, flipping his body as it went, until he hung upside down in the air. He flailed for his quiver, spilling arrows, as the sky opened below him, red and wet and filled with glass teeth. The air blurred as slick, invisible limbs tore away his brown silk wings, then lowered what the monster wanted into its mouth.

By the time his scream reached us, the guard had disappeared from the sky.