Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend

by Alan Cumyn

“You’re using your chest and nose and even throat muscles to get air down to your lungs. Completely wrong.” He stepped closer to her and grabbed her abdomen with his large hands. “Engage your diaphragm. Let your belly spill out.”

  She held her breath, reflexively, and then blew out, and found herself gasping for air.

  “Move my hands to breathe in. Use your diaphragm and your stomach muscles.”

  She did it, she moved his thick fingers.

  “Fine, but that was exhaling. Reverse it now. Engage your diaphragm to breathe in.”

  It was ridiculous to be standing in the dust and disarray of the shoe shop being groped by an old guy who clearly hadn’t the slightest idea how to run his business. Yet she did it—she found the large muscles below her rib cage and inhaled.

  “Now relax, use your low chest muscles to release the air. Let it slide out. Good.”

  Someone could walk in and see them.

  “Again. Move my hands. You have to keep breathing.”

  Obviously he was doing this to get her to go back to school. And she would, she would. But part of her also really wanted to keep moving his hands, to show him that she could do it.

  “How’s it feel?” he asked after a time.

  She didn’t know. She was just breathing.

  “Relax your throat, your jaw. Don’t engage your shoulders. Just let them rise and fall naturally with the movement.” He took his hands away, like her father releasing her bicycle all those years ago, when he’d first taught her to ride and she had managed a precarious balance.

  “Keep thinking about it. You’ll go back to your old habits if you don’t keep it in your conscious mind for a while.”

  Honestly, she couldn’t tell the difference. It was just breathing a different way. She had never run out of air.

  “This is how you were born breathing,” he said. “You learned to breathe shallow when you started to stress out. Just use your body the way it was designed. The large muscles for the large actions. Breathing affects everything else. When you get really good at it, it will become a whole body movement. Are you following me?”

  She was feeling better. Maybe it was just because she liked being around him for some reason. Maybe she was calming down after her run.

  “My name is Shiels,” she said, thrusting out her hand.

  “Linton,” he said, grasping it. “I’d be happy to have some of your help around this place. Just . . . be patient.”

  • • •

  Patient! She could be as patient as the next person, but really. The place had not been cleaned—really cleaned up—in years. The silly excuse of a broom just moved the dust around, the mop was a health hazard, there was no vacuum. She sorted that out, took Linton’s credit card—with his permission—and went down three blocks to Vacuum City and did not buy the most expensive model but didn’t get the cheapest, either. She had to empty the vacuum three times in the course of cleaning just the main display areas. By the time she was finished, the window washing guy was long gone but he’d be back tomorrow morning, she felt confident. People go about their lives in patterns.

  She was breaking hers. She did not miss school. She didn’t miss it! She felt, actually, a huge relief to not be hurtling down those hallways, cramming other people’s agendas into her head, or her agendas into theirs. She could be herself here, she could be simple, she could . . .

  . . . breathe.

  She could breathe here.

  Her whole body was feeling better.

  She hadn’t even known it wasn’t feeling well.

  At one point her phone vibrated and she realized she’d forgotten all about it. Someone with a strange accent was calling from far, far away asking her if she would like to have her ducts cleaned. They were having a huge sale in her area.

  “I like the idea of it,” she said, almost gleefully. “But I’d really like to try doing it myself.”

  • • •

  And then, oddly, in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of rearranging the soccer cleats display, it was as if Shiels woke up to her larger reality.

  She had abandoned the boy she was supposed to be protecting.

  Pyke was alone with her mother, the least motherly person on the planet. Probably her mother had been putting on a display. Probably as soon as Shiels had left the house, her mother had sent the pterodactyl back to the authorities. And Shiels had trusted her!

  “That’s enough for today,” she said to Linton. The poor man was on his own. No extra staff had come in to relieve him, and hardly any customers had visited. How long could he manage like that and still stay in business?

  No matter.

  “I have to get home now,” she said.

  Outside, she ran despite the stiff breeze, the uncomfortable chill in the air. Of course she did. It was uphill, and at first she felt almost as wretched as she had the afternoon of Autumn Whirl—but not to the point of puking. Not that drastic.

  She was a better runner than that, now.

  She was breathing better. When she lost the feeling of the thing, she gripped her midsection with her own hands and ran a few awkward strides like that, pushing their fingers out with her diaphragm and her belly muscles. It did seem she could get a lungful of air now. It did feel better.

  Somewhat.

  As always, she ran slowly, chugging up the hill.

  Had her mother sent Pyke back to jail while Shiels had been away?

  If not, what had they been doing together all day?

  Chug, chug, step by step, the distance slowly shrank.

  No sign of crows.

  No sign of what she was going to find.

  • • •

  Her mother. In an apron, stirring things in a big bowl, a recipe book open on the counter. A smudge of white flour on her cheek.

  Her flushed cheek.

  “Hello, sweetie,” her mother said. “How are you? Did you run somewhere?”

  “Where’s Pyke?” Shiels blurted.

  “Upstairs. Resting. How was school?”

  Shiels hurried up the stairs, her body still throbbing from her run. Pyke’s door was slightly ajar. She burst in.

  Jonathan’s head jerked guiltily toward her. He sat on the corner of the bed, showing Pyke something on his phone, which he snapped into his pocket. “Where were you today? You didn’t come to school,” he said.

  “Mind your own business,” Shiels replied. “Don’t say anything to the PD.”

  Pyke was looking at her in his way. Steam heat rushed through her, curled her toes.

  “Manniberg was asking for you,” Jonathan said. “I said you were having your period.”

  How could this juvenile idiot be her brother?

  “Thank you,” she said. “I will offer a similar level of sibling support to you someday.”

  Jonathan wiggled into his usual knuckleheaded laugh. But Pyke kept gazing at her, long and steady, as if he knew, understood, nothing else.

  Wanted nothing else but her.

  Shiels stepped toward the bed. “Why don’t you go do your homework?” she said to Jonathan.

  “I finished it in Healthy Society. We weren’t doing anything else anyway.”

  “Why don’t you go play with your skateboard boys,” Shiels said, looking always at Pyke.

  “It’s too cold out there, nobody’s into it,” Jonathan said. Shiels turned her gaze on him until finally he squirmed away.

  “Close the door, will you?”

  Jonathan left the door open. She breathed quietly—in the belly, deep and deeper—then walked to the door and shut it. Oh, how her chest filled! “How was it all alone with my mother all day?”

  Pyke smiled crookedly. He wasn’t saying, he was just looking. Looking at her.

  She approached the bed again. She supposed she should ask him all sorts of questions about his defense—was there a trial date? Had he had time to meet with Jocelyne’s uncle, the lawyer? What were they going to argue? Had they entered a plea yet?

  He must have, to have be
en released on bail. It must have been not guilty.

  A raft of questions floated into and out of her brain. Details. To be sorted out later. Now . . . now was for leaning onto the bed beside him and stroking, very lightly, his lovely beak. He seemed to like that. He closed his eyes and let out a deep, animal, purring sound—not a cat’s, really, or at least not any small domestic cat’s that she knew. Something stronger, wilder. Subdued for now.

  He looked small but felt immensely strong still. She imagined he could fly anytime he wanted to, except for the surveillance ring around his neck.

  She imagined he could take her with him.

  He smelled . . . of oysters. “Did you get enough to eat?” she murmured. “Did my mother go by the fish store?” She stroked a little more firmly now. “Is there anything you are . . . craving?”

  She couldn’t help it, she leaned closer to him until her chest, sweating and hot still from the run, pressed against the side of his folded wing.

  He nuzzled his beak harder against her hand.

  This wasn’t . . . at all . . . like being in the janitorial closet with Sheldon, which had felt like . . . practice somehow. This was . . . well, she wasn’t controlling her own breathing particularly well. Her mouth was very close to . . .

  “Shiels!” her mother said, striding into the room. “Maybe you should have a shower, dear!”

  A strange smile. Her mother was bearing a large tray of oysters on crackers.

  “He just loves these,” her mother said, and practically pushed Shiels off the bed. “And he needs building up. While you . . . You must have a lot of organizing you need to do.”

  Shiels stumbled upright. Her legs felt liquidy.

  “How are your applications coming, dear?” Her mother held a cracker poised just inches from the pterodactyl’s spear-like beak.

  But Pyke did not snatch anything. He waited, patient, subdued even, while she fed him like a child.

  • • •

  Shiels’s Chesford application was due now, if she wanted to be considered for early acceptance. Lorraine Miens would look at the first of the thousands of files coming in, Shiels felt sure—she would read them with a fresher mind, more hopefully.

  But was that what Shiels wanted now? She couldn’t even seem to bring herself to go to class anymore. If she didn’t finish her senior year, then the whole question of college applications was moot.

  Yet—she was happy cleaning an old running-shoe shop. She liked hanging around Linton, improving his business. She liked running, as slow as she was. She liked feeling her body. Learning to breathe.

  It did feel better dealing with a lungful of air.

  I am challenging all my old assumptions, she wrote on her laptop. So much is changing, every day, I can hardly imagine how much I will learn under the tutelage of one of the great thinkers of our age.

  Blatant flattery. Probably Lorraine Miens threw out those applications without reading any further.

  I feel like every movement is strangely bursting with life, she wrote.

  • • •

  In her dream that night she was on the pterodactyl’s back, clinging, her arms around his muscled neck, her legs dragging behind. It was morning, chilly, she should have worn gloves, she thought, but where she was now, above the clouds, it felt warm, almost watery. Blue sky. As Pyke pumped his gorgeous wings, she could feel the depth of his breathing—his whole body seemed to turn into a long, magnificent, organic oxygen processor.

  But that wasn’t it.

  She was breathing with him. In time. His rhythm was her own. As he moved his body—the arc of the wings, the undulations of his core—she moved too. She was mounted on him, after all; she would have to move with him or else they’d crash back to earth.

  Where were they going? It didn’t matter. The wind was warm and wet upon her face. She felt herself intertwined, pulsing . . .

  That was enough.

  She awoke clutching her pillow with a layer of sweat between her body and the bed. It was still dark, the house seemed cold. For a moment she closed her eyes again and willed herself onto the pterodactyl’s back once more. But she couldn’t quite make it happen.

  The house was still. Her feet slid coldly onto the floor. She went down the hall to the bathroom, peed quietly, then sat still, feeling her breath. She was using her abdomen, as Linton had suggested; in less than a day she had changed something as fundamental as the way she nourished herself with oxygen. It did feel calmer, more peaceful. Almost entertaining—to listen to herself breathe!

  She got up, wondering which way her feet would turn her body—right, back to her bed, or left, toward Pyke’s room?

  She decided not to make a decision, to let her feet dictate, if that was possible. Just as an experiment. She would simply breathe, and her feet . . .

  Went straight, almost into the wall.

  She smiled, turned left. Opened the door quietly and stepped in. Her mother was not there, this time. Only Pyke, sleeping quietly. She just wanted to look. She liked being near him. Where was the crime in that? It felt almost like she was floating to his bedside, that all of this was an extension of her Pyke flying dream.

  Maybe it was?

  She sidled onto his bed. Her body felt the chill of the night. His beak was tilted away from her. There was no reason to reach for it, but if this was a dream—it was starting to feel more and more like a dream—then there was no reason not to reach for it either.

  She just liked to stroke it. She liked having its power in her hands. He didn’t wake up, not at first, but he seemed to settle into her hands as if this were exactly what he wanted.

  Her feet were so cold from the floor, it only made sense to draw them up, to snuggle inside the sheets. Since this was . . . this could have been . . . a dream.

  Then she was wrapped in his wings. She couldn’t believe how quickly it happened, yet it was completely tender and caring. The movement was enveloping, not painful. She was wearing her old pajamas. Nothing could . . .

  Well, she had thought she was wearing them, but—she couldn’t feel them. The world seemed to have turned skin to skin, (skin to fur!) and Pyke’s heat was urgent now. She was on top of him but wrapped inside him too, inside his wings. It wasn’t the same as flying on his back—as the feeling from the dream—but it wasn’t terribly different, either.

  He started to rock. She felt . . . intertwined. She breathed deeply. Everything seemed to be happening with her whole body. She thought she should stay quiet, but it was difficult to hold herself in. It was just a dream, after all. It was—

  She woke, or at least she opened her eyes. Pyke’s rigid beak was rubbing gently against the side of her neck. His eyes were closed. He seemed to be in another world, about to—

  She pushed herself free. “God!” she said, as if a deity might have been in the room, might have been responsible for hypnotizing her and leading her into the beast’s bed. Maybe some ancient god, responsible for duping mortal beings.

  She bolted from Pyke’s side.

  She couldn’t speak, couldn’t look at him. She stumbled into the dark hallway. Where were her pajamas? She gathered them quickly. Where was her room?

  “Shiels—are you all right?” Her mother was standing in the gloom by the door to the master bedroom, her own robe pulled tight.

  “Just—I had to pee!” Shiels said.

  In a moment she was back in her own room, back in her bed, shivering in the cold.

  XXIX

  At breakfast the next morning the silence was crushing. Even Jonathan seemed to be soothing his spoon along the edge of his cereal bowl in an effort to make no noise. Shiels’s mother gazed into her tablet screen with the intensity of a cat waiting for movement in the shadows. She was dressed as if made up for work. Her face, especially, seemed overly prepared, perfected.

  “So what’s on the agenda for today at school, Shiels?” her father finally said.

  Shiels took her eyes from her mother’s composed figure. “Just an ordinary day, I think,�
�� she said.

  “What’s next on the social calendar? What’s the council working on?” he pressed.

  The council seemed like a piece of clothing she used to wear.

  “Shiels really needs to focus on her college applications,” her mother said. “And getting every ounce out of this semester’s grades.” She turned to her daughter. “You’ve done enough on the social and political front, dear.”

  Jonathan left the table and clattered his bowl in the sink. Shiels’s mother snapped her head to look at the boy and said, “Could you please rinse and put it in the dishwasher, honey?” Shiels saw in profile what she hadn’t noticed before in the slightly different light. Her mother’s nose seemed . . . more prominent than before. Slightly, slightly darker than the rest of her skin.

  “I’m going to stay home with our guest again today,” Shiels’s mother said. When Shiels’s father raised his eyebrows, she said, “He’s making a lot of progress, so this won’t be forever. I know I have a practice to sustain.” She glanced back at her tablet screen again, and her nose looked perfectly normal.

  Just heavily made-up.

  Shiels finished her bowl of grapefruit pieces sliced into yogurt and sprinkled with granola. When she gazed up again, her mother was looking directly at her. “Tell me you will have a draft of your personal essay done by tonight so your father and I can read it over.”

  Blink, blink. “I’ll do my best, Mother,” she said.

  • • •

  On her way to the running-shoe shop (and away from the high school she now seemed allergic to), Shiels tried to breathe from deep within her, in time with the slap-slap of her feet on the chilly pavement. Though bright, it was cold enough to snow again. It felt like winter’s army had quietly surrounded the city, was bunkered down not yet attacking but preparing for a long siege.

  Her mother and Pyke?

  Unimaginable! And yet . . .

  Makeup or not, you cannot hide a purple nose for long.

  • • •

  The window washer agreed to wash the front window of the running-shoe shop for ten dollars not five, because it hadn’t been cleaned in decades, probably. Shiels paid, since Linton was not yet there. When Linton did arrive, the front glass gleamed in the sun. He stared at it for a moment but did not seem to recognize exactly what the change might have been.