Grounded

by Narrelle M. Harris

  As the camera was packed away, she stood with her arms folded and gave her paintings a final scrutiny.

  ‘Your work’s lovely,’ said Reeves at her side.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you for the interview, too.’

  ‘Well, when Dell called the producer with the offer of an exclusive, we couldn’t refuse.’

  Clementine raised an eyebrow at him. ‘An exclusive?’

  ‘Yeah. She had a lot to say to camera about the vandalism and the threats you’ve been getting.’

  ‘She didn’t tell me you’d spoken.’

  ‘You were busy with your final preparation, I believe.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Clementine vowed that a future portrait of Dell would include a forked tail along with the devil horns.

  ***

  Clementine reached home by mid-morning, intending to shower once she stepped into her apartment and rested for an hour or so. She spotted Benedick in the corridor. He was standing by his open door, speaking on the phone.

  ‘I’d love to, cuz, but I’m going out tonight. Yes, really. Don’t sound so surprised.’ He was half-smiling as he waved hello to Clementine. She soon noticed his other hand was holding a bag of groceries; his drooping wing was pushed against his open door. Clearly, he’d answered the phone while crossing the threshold and become awkwardly stuck.

  Clementine decided not to help by folding his wing out of the way for him. Too intimate, even after she’d helped him under the drooping pines. Because of that, perhaps. Her fingertips remembered the softness of his feathers; the faint scent of witch hazel and mint.

  ‘Very funny,’ Benedick was saying into the phone. ‘An art exhibition, as it happens. With my neighbour. Yes.’ His gaze darted towards Clementine and away again. ‘That neighbour. All right. Lunch this week then? Look, I’ve got to go. No. Yes. I’m stuck in my doorway. Yes, stuck.’ But he was laughing. ‘Yeah, one of the hazards nobody tells you about. Right. I’ll call later.’

  He hung up and tucked his phone back into his pocket and managed at last to push the door wider and shrug his wing out of the way.

  Clementine had finally opened her own door but looked across as Benedick said, ‘That was my cousin Octavia. She somehow always manages to phone me when I’m navigating thresholds. Last time I was in the folding door at the Aranda cinema, mid-retraction.’ He seemed fond and amused. ‘She keeps telling me not to answer if I’m about to be trapped in a hinge.’

  ‘You should listen to your cousin.’

  ‘I love to listen to my cousin. It’s why I keep getting caught in hinges.’

  Clementine liked that fond smile of his. She felt momentarily envious of it, then ridiculous for the envy.

  ‘This is Octavia of the wonderful terrible jokes?’

  ‘That’s her.’

  ‘Would your cousin like to come to the opening tonight? There’s a VIP invitation list, but I’ll ask Dell to put her name on the door, if she’s free.’

  ‘Octavia would love that.’

  ‘Lovely. What name should I give Dell?’

  ‘Octavia Sasaki. Thank you. What should I tell her is the dress code? Because she’ll definitely ask. Actually, I should have asked before.’

  ‘There’s no dress code,’ Clementine said, ‘Except maybe “must wear something with your feathers”.’

  ‘Thank goodness you told me; that could have been the faux pas of the year.’

  They were laughing at the thought, but Clementine was definitely laughing more loudly than necessary—to cover up a sudden mental image of Benedick Sasaki dressed in nothing but his feathers and a grin.

  ‘I’ll book the taxi for five o’clock tomorrow,’ she said hastily. ‘That gives us plenty of time to get to the gallery.’

  ‘I’ll be ready.’

  Clementine darted into her flat, shut the door and leaned against it, partly to stop herself from going back out there and inviting Benedick in for coffee. She had no time for coffee.

  Not to mention the fact the last time she’d had his company for coffee she’d been an idiot. She had ignored him in favour of drawing the river scene, not because she needed to capture it—she saw it nearly every day—but because she’d felt suddenly tongue-tied after her nervous babbling about swimming and Little Fish.

  Clementine flicked on her kettle and set out a teacup with an unnecessarily loud clink. Benedick was a gentleman and hadn’t apparently minded her lack of manners yesterday. In fact, he’d left her to her sketchpad with a commendable lack of indignation. He was in the middle of the texting conversation when she moved on to capturing the memory of him with the moth on his finger, his face open as a new dawn.

  Clementine poured hot water into the cup, realised she’d forgotten to put a teabag in it, and crankily remedied the oversight.

  Benedick Sasaki was handsome. Stupidly handsome, but not insipidly so. The wonderful angles of his face were softened when he smiled and those little dimples appeared at the corners of his mouth. His brown eyes turned from brooding to dancing on a pin. His body had mostly recovered from last year’s ordeal and he was beautifully proportioned beneath his clothes. His hands were expressive. He was altogether a very fine-looking man.

  Clementine was very tempted to find out exactly how he might look in his feathers and a grin and nothing else.

  The problem—if it could be considered a problem—was that Clementine knew how these things always ended. No matter Benedick’s current or posited loveliness, he was a former policeman, the kind of man who was used to providing help, to being needed; and she wasn’t the kind of woman who needed someone like that. She had built a life insisting on her own self-sufficiency. She was outspoken, uncowed and frequently considered strident.

  ‘Why do you always have to be so damned independent?’ one lover had snarled at her as he’d left with his suitcase. ‘I might as well be one of your paintings. You’ve got less use for me than feathers on a fish.’

  ‘I love you. I want you. That should be enough. Why do I have to need you, too?’

  He’d launched himself from her open window, just to make the point that she couldn’t follow.

  The ends of her affairs all had that theme, even when the words were different. It never ended well.

  Clementine inhaled, held her breath, exhaled. Count to ten. Keep calm. She and Benedick could be friends. Fancying someone didn’t have to mean dating someone. Friends were good. An intelligent, thoughtful, handsome friend was always a bonus. Yes. Good.

  She abandoned the tea and went to the bathroom, peeling off her clothes and tossing them into the hamper. The shower stall was huge compared to her little frame, though it was the smallest unit available when she’d refurbished the bathroom. Everything was made for wingspan.

  The bathroom refurbishment had resulted in extra sinks for her to use for her art: the deepest sink she used for staining canvases various colours. In one project, she had bleached the bones of deceased tiny shrub mice, killed when their underground nest was uprooted and collapsed by a felled tree. She’d collected the fragile remains in a handkerchief with the thought of saying something about their tiny lives and the larger ones around them.

  The Life and Death of the Prince of the Underworld, she’d called it. Some critics had labelled the work macabre; others a melancholy reflection on the fragility of life. Clementine thought it was both, and neither, and something else altogether. She couldn’t say what. If she’d known words for it, she wouldn’t have had to make art to say it.

  She sluiced her slender body, feeling very aware of it today. Her own bones were as light as any of her fellows, yet without wings she was simultaneously less and more anchored than anyone who could fly. Benedick’s wings gave him weight, strangely, but until his injury he’d spent most of his life thinking in terms of up. Now he was grounded, and that had more than one meaning. Prevented from flying but also stable.

  Like The Life and Death of the Prince of the Underworld, the life of a flier and that of a walker were open to multipl
e interpretations, all of them true at once.

  Clementine washed her hair, thinking of Benedick being both kinds of grounded. So kind and reassuring when she was freaking out about that damned letter. So warm about her art. She saw again how his expression transformed from irritated concern to one of wonder as he looked at the sketch she’d done of him and the candy moth, unaware that his right-now face and the one on the paper were a match. An expression like a sunrise, warm and awake as though everything was fresh and new.

  The image formed in her head—not a finished work but the core of it. The candy moths walking over the fine hairs of his wings, a counterpoint to the one poised on his finger as it hovered over the shutter button of the camera. Those beautiful eyes of his opened wide, radiant, eyebrows slightly raised in a kind of tender surprise. His lips parted in an unvoiced Oh! and curved in a captivated smile. Hair unruly, scattered with pine needles.

  Clementine dried herself quickly, wrapped her hair in a towel and grabbed her larger workpad to block out the shapes of the painting. She hadn’t painted a portrait in a while. Perhaps Benedick wouldn’t mind posing for her, so she could capture the finer details. She had a prepared canvas she’d earmarked for a study in rainbow-coloured centipedes (so many legs!) but this would be much better.

  ***

  After he’d stowed away the few groceries—milk, bread, coffee—Benedick opened his laptop and looked through the photographs he’d taken under the drooping pines.

  He chose a picture of a candy moth resting on a pine branch for his new desktop wallpaper, but only because he thought the picture of the candy moth resting in Clementine’s hair was too intimate on so short an acquaintance to have on his computer.

  Yet it was that second picture he adored. He’d managed by chance to get the setting mostly correct for the light and the distance for a soft-focus portrait of Clementine and a moth. He had captured Clementine’s large gold-and-brown eyes, her fringe, and the pink-and-orange moth resting on her crown of glossy black hair. Clementine seemed unaware of the moth, but her eyes were crinkled with an unseen smile. Perhaps she was amused by the moths she’d seen on his wing. Whatever had made her happy, Clementine Torres was absolutely breathtaking.

  Benedick determined to give her a copy of the picture, along with the seven or eight other photos that weren’t blurry or poorly framed. He had a lot to learn about photography. Perhaps she’d allow him to take pictures of her so he could practise.

  His earlier despondency seemed distant and alien. Now Benedick was thinking of taking up photography. He was thinking of how he might learn more about the world at ground level. It wasn’t a career, but for the first time since he’d learned he’d never fly again, he was interested in something beyond all the things he couldn’t do. Where the future had been a question mark and darkness, there was now a candy pink moth, a pair of bright eyes and a new question.

  What can I do, then?

  He was tired to the bone of people who meant well talking as though a miracle cure was just around the corner; or who avoided the topic of his future at all, as though everyone tacitly agreed he didn’t have one.

  So what was he going to do? Nature photography. Portrait photos, maybe. A hobby. A start. Wings weren’t necessary for art. Clementine wasn’t the only proof of that. Octavia was a photographer. She might be able to give him tips.

  That reminded him, he had to call her about the invitation to the opening.

  Octavia was squeakingly excited to come to the exhibition.

  ‘No need to dress up to the wingtips,’ he told her as she was panicking about getting a last minute appointment at a salon. ‘Clementine said as long as you’re wearing pants they’ll let you in.’

  Octavia’s excitement became a hoot of laughter. ‘Clementine, is it? First name basis already!’

  ‘She is my new neighbour,’ Benedick insisted.

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘She’s very bright. Good company.’ She held my wings so I could climb under a tree to look at ordinary wonders. ‘Very generous with her time.’

  ‘She does a lot of art therapy work with disabled children at KiwiKids,’ Octavia told him. ‘And she’s done a lot of advocacy work on accessibility and issues like representation and medical accountability. Actually, I think she was involved in that café on the river—what’s it called …?’

  ‘Takahē Café,’ Benedick said with a laugh. ‘It’s named after another flightless bird from Aotearoa. Clementine included it in the mural she did for them.’

  ‘Oh, I saw pictures of that in the press when the café opened. How do you know …?’

  ‘It’s right near Avalon Towers. We had coffee there yesterday.’

  ‘Coffee? Ooh, la!’

  ‘Very funny. It was just coffee.’

  ‘Of course it was. You’ve only just met.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘She’s pretty though, isn’t she?’

  Benedick heard an echo of Marca’s considering.

  ‘I love her hair,’ Octavia continued. ‘And how she dresses! All those cute little frocks with the tassels and the feathers. It’s like she’s drawing attention to the fact she doesn’t have wings and doesn’t give a cold, salty crosswind what anybody thinks about that. I hope she wears something like that to the opening. Oh damn I’ve got to find something to wear! Something better than just “as long as it’s pants”!’

  ‘Tomorrow then,’ Benedick laughed. ‘Six o’clock at the gallery.’

  He rang off and stared at the candy moth on his computer background. Then he called up the EchoLocater search engine and typed ‘Clementine Torres’ into the enquiry field.

  The News tab gave him story after story about her advocacy work, critics’ commentaries on her exhibitions, some of her more outspoken soundbites about flightless rights, as well as the rights of those with other kinds of disabilities. The Shopping tab linked to galleries and art shops selling prints of her work. The Images tab was full of Clementine in gorgeous dresses, her dark hair cut in its glossy bob and adorned with jewels and feathers, or in colourful but less sequinned gear for her work with art groups. One or two of the images captured her in the trousers and shirt ensemble, with twigs in her hair. Benedick thought he liked those the best.

  Then he thought he had better stop EchoLocating his next door neighbour before it got creepy.

  Still, he did one more search on the Takahē Café, the architect Orpha Calleano and the work she and Clementine had done to make the café such a success.

  He wondered if he ought to bring the camera to the opening. If he was going to make it a new hobby, he should really start carrying it around and using it. Octavia never went anywhere without hers.

  The candy moth on his screen caught his attention. It was a good picture, but he’d liked it best when he was watching the moths without a filter. The camera had captured the moments, but the moments had been distanced by the placement of a lens between his eye and the world.

  At Takahē, he’d been happy to put the camera down and just watch Clementine as she worked. Even when he’d been texting Marca, he’d been very aware of Clementine’s concentration, her dark hair and beautiful face. A photograph of Clementine was nowhere near as wonderful as Clementine herself just being in the world.

  Benedick shook out his feathers and decided to examine his wardrobe for suitable attire. The exhibition opening’s dress code was flexible, but that was no reason not to look his best. If Clementine was going to wear one of those bead, tassel and feather numbers, he wanted to be sure to look good too.

  Chapter Seven

  Clementine didn’t know how she expected an ex-policeman to dress for an exhibition opening at a prestigious private gallery. Jeans or a conservative suit, perhaps. She hadn’t expected a smart, charcoal-flecked deep red Emilio Pucci double-breasted jacket over a matching long charcoal skirt, flecked in deep red. The skirt was starched—it was designed to hold its shape during flight—the overlap at the front cutting away to reveal B
enedick’s shapely calves and feet encased in gleaming black boots. He’d left his groomed wings and hair unadorned, and a single gold ear stud sat in his left earlobe.

  ‘Well, look at you!’ she said, instantly wishing she hadn’t. She sounded like an idiot. Or someone’s mother.

  Benedick grinned. ‘I scrub up with a bit of effort. I didn’t want you to be ashamed to be seen with me. You look fantastic.’

  Clementine hadn’t meant to go to so much effort herself. She always looked a little glamorous for openings, of course, but her fingers had led her to her little black feathery frock—tight in the bodice, high in back and low in the neck to show off her throat, which was wrapped in a black velvet choker dusted with sparkling red and white diamantes. The back of the sleeveless dress was discreetly padded to add the warmth that wings would normally have supplied. The skirt of the dress flared out in layers of black tulle tipped in frosted grey. On her head was a black cap, dusted in the same red and white diamantes and with a froth of black feathers jutting up at a jaunty angle.

  Her glossy black hair in its sharp bob swung at her jaw. Dextrous application of eyeshadow and rouge highlighted her naturally dramatic features, and her feet were shod in black slippers with bright red toes and heels.

  By the time she thought she’d overdone it, she’d run out of time. It was a relief as well as a surprise to see Benedick looking so utterly splendid too.

  He’s no right to look so gorgeous. How am I supposed to remember not to get involved when he looks so … involvable?

  ‘Good enough?’ Benedick asked, when she’d stared for a little too long.

  To eat. ‘You’ll do.’ She followed that with a flash of a grin, far more insouciant than she felt, and they were on their way.

  On the main thoroughfare, Clementine flagged down a taxi. She stepped on board the wide tray and offered her hand to Benedick, who had to duck slightly to keep from bumping his head on the canopy. They sat on the bench seats for the short ride, Clementine hanging onto the seat firmly: without wings to help keep her balance, it was a bit rocky, although she was used to it by now.