Blackbird

by Averil Dean

  At least...he thought he remembered.

  He blinked into the snowstorm. On every side, the snowflakes whirled and dissolved into a fine white mist, like a cloud.

  I’m losing it, he thought helplessly.

  Kate was chattering on the seat beside him. Her voice was painfully bright, a needle in his ear.

  “I’ll bet Celia was glad to see you,” she said.

  “Got that right.” Julian laughed. “I thought there was an avalanche last night, but it turned out to be Celia’s headboard banging on the wall.”

  Eric’s racing mind skidded to a halt. A hard tremor shook his body, locked his jaw.

  Last night.

  Time had gotten slippery again. He couldn’t remember whether it was last night or some other when he’d awakened to find himself on the couch downstairs, blinking into the dying embers of the fire. He’d gotten very drunk—he remembered that. All of them sitting around the hearth, and Celia plucking out a melody on her guitar while Julian lounged back in his chair, laughing with Rory and Kate. Eric had watched with a drink in hand, but he’d kept himself distant. Once he’d met Celia’s eye and she’d smiled—a blank kind of smile like she meant it for someone else and Eric just happened to be in the way.

  He must have fallen asleep soon after. Someone—Celia, of course—had covered him with a blanket, and they all went upstairs and left him alone beside the cooling hearth.

  He’d never gone upstairs last night.

  If it was last night.

  He glanced over the edge of the chair at the crazy swirling flakes. Surely there weren’t enough snowflakes in the sky to fall this way for so long; they must be cycling around, like the inside of a snow globe, the same flakes falling and rising again—how could you tell?

  He dragged his mind back to Celia, trying to focus through the haze. But her face appeared again with that fleeting glance of impatience, that thousand-yard smile, turned away and with her eyes shut tight as he fucked her, like she was imagining someone else in his place. The memories rose like specters in the storm.

  Panic rose to bursting in his chest. He had to see her.

  Right now.

  “There’s no place like home.” Kate was laughing. Shrill peals of hilarity, driving the needle into his brain.

  As if she knew.

  As if they both knew. And thought it was funny.

  Maybe everyone was in on the joke. Maybe Celia was making a fool of him. Celia and Rory both, making fun, making other people laugh at him.

  Eric pressed his hands over his ears, rocking back and forth. The chair swung wildly through the snow. Overhead, the cable creaked in protest.

  He had to see Celia. Now, right now, right fucking now.

  He could just make out the surface of the run thirty feet below the lift. The snow was falling up, burning cold against his face.

  He swung himself out of the chair, dangling over the snow by one hand. As he dropped to the ground, he heard voices from the white mist overhead, disembodied, calling his name.

  * * *

  Julian heard Eric land with a muffled thud on the snow. The kid didn’t pause to pop into his rear binding, just slid into the whiteout without a backward glance. The snow folded behind him like a curtain.

  “Something tells me that wasn’t Eric in Celia’s bed last night,” he said.

  Kate turned to him. Her eyes were hidden behind silvered goggles that reflected his own image back to him, warped as a funhouse mirror.

  “As if you didn’t know,” she said.

  * * *

  Always afterward, with the blaze of orgasm retreating into embers, Rory expected relief. Temporary, maybe, and only physical, but there should have been some period of minutes or hours when his skin felt tougher, when his mind stopped chasing itself in circles and found a reason to rest.

  “Insanity,” Eric once said, “is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Or maybe that’s stupidity. They’re not that far apart...”

  Not that he was talking about Rory when he said it.

  Under his palm, he could feel Celia’s heartbeat, quick as a bird’s wing, her slender collarbone at his fingertips. He nuzzled into the downy hair behind her ear. The scent of her flooded his nose.

  Minutes passed with neither of them moving. Celia would always wait, as long as he wanted, letting him soften and slide away before she’d ever make a move to free herself. He traced her spine, his fingertips rasping gently against her skin. His jaw had left pink stains on her shoulders and neck, but his fingers were too rough to soothe them away. He used his wrists and the backs of his hands.

  She was waiting, patiently, not complaining about the hard floor or the chill in the air, or the work she needed to get back to, or the way he’d been just now—too hard and fast, too eager to get inside her and not at all eager to leave. She didn’t talk about Eric, but Rory wondered if she’d been with him, too, that morning, whether she was exhausted trying to keep up with them. Exhausted by the secrets they were keeping.

  Eric was their friend, after all. The three of them had been together since they were children. He remembered the first time they came here, hearing Celia run up and down the hall overhead and Eric’s footsteps racing up the steps to join her. Rory had stood in almost exactly this spot, plucking at the peeling wallpaper and failing utterly to understand what Celia saw in the place.

  To her it was magic. She said no one would ever leave a place like this.

  It didn’t seem that way to Rory. Not at the time and not now. The only magical part of the Blackbird was the girl who lived in it.

  He helped Celia to her feet. She lifted her face and kissed him. It was a woman’s kiss, openmouthed and generous. Her lips were cool and fresh; her arms twined delicately around his neck. It was like being kissed by a flower.

  It almost decided him. The words crowded up to the base of his throat.

  He couldn’t say it. He had to say it.

  The decent thing would be to leave Jawbone Ridge. Just get in his truck and keep driving. In the summer, on his way back to town, spent and filthy from his job with the forestry service, he’d sit behind the wheel at the foot of the mountains and think, Turn around. Go the other way. But somehow he never could do it.

  He should never have let it come to this. He should have stopped, could have stopped a hundred times. They could have gone on being family to each other, the way his mother always intended. He could have found someone else.

  But those possibilities were behind them. This was where they were, and he wanted Celia with a single-mindedness that wiped away any mental image of his life but the one that included her. His desire had become laced with a possessive greed, so powerful that he’d lain awake night after night, twisted in the sheets, pulling at his dick like he could milk out some peace of mind, some resolution at the thought of Celia in the room next door, asleep in his best friend’s arms. He’d allowed the jealousy to grow, sick with shame at his own weakness. It was unfair to change the rules, he told himself. This was how they’d always played it. He understood that. He tried to accept his role in her life. In the beginning he’d even encouraged it.

  “This is a small town,” he’d told her. “People think of us as siblings. They won’t tolerate it. Go and be with Eric. No one has to know about...this.”

  “We won’t be able to hide it,” she had said.

  But he had overridden her, patronized her. So sure always that he knew what was best for Celia.

  Now he had to admit that she was right. He couldn’t hide it. Every time he glanced in her direction, it was like looking through a mask, a parody of brotherly affection. He had to keep his eyes on her face, forget the live feeling of her nipple in his palm, the texture of her skin, the damp heat of her mouth. He had to watch with gritted teeth as Eric teased her,
kissed her publicly, while Rory could only wait and scheme and smile, smile, smile.

  What Celia felt about it he never could guess. On the surface she seemed unchanged, but he gathered small evidences in the things she said, in an indecipherable expression or sidelong glance, in the way she clung to him and cried his name. (Had she held him that way the last time? Had she come as hard? Did she want him more or less than before?) He examined every word and gesture, aware with each passing day that the unfairness of the situation had begun to rankle: he was tired of being the odd man out. He wanted to know where he stood.

  He wanted her to break a promise. It was selfish and unreasonable and unlikely. Celia didn’t break her promises.

  He’d rehearsed this moment so many times in his head, piecing together what sounded like a convincing string of words until he said them aloud, alone in his room, the reproachful hotel groaning and snapping around him as if it knew he was scheming to steal its mistress away.

  Fuck the Blackbird. Fuck Jawbone Ridge and brotherhood and promises. He had to put it out there. He needed her to himself.

  The words that had long been boiling in his chest surged upward. As they spilled from his mouth, Eric walked through the door.

  One Day Earlier

  KATE OPENED THE top drawer of Julian’s dresser. It was half-full of socks and folded-up boxers. The next drawer had things in it, too, but probably there was room to combine them. Kate hadn’t been home in more than a week, and her clothing had begun to accumulate. She’d been using hangers, tossing laundry into her duffel. Waiting for Julian to offer some space for her to settle in. But he was absentminded that way.

  She gathered up his clothes and began to shift them to the right-hand drawer.

  He wouldn’t mind. They had been dating for months now; they were a couple. Everywhere Kate went, people asked, “Where’s Julian?” and their heads would swivel around, scanning the room. She’d roll her eyes and say that they were not joined at the hip, but secretly she’d feel a warm little glow at the association. Julian was somebody, not like most of the men from Telluride. He came from generations of money, but when she asked him where it all started, he was vague. Investments, he said, not looking at her, bored as if she’d blundered into some obvious question he’d answered a hundred times before.

  That was the problem with Julian. It was so easy to irritate him and set his attention wandering.

  It hadn’t always been this way. When they first met, it seemed that Julian wanted nothing more than to make her happy. She wanted the same, or thought she did. They treated each other cordially. Never argued or took a stand on principle, never made demands, as if they were both afraid one really ugly fight would tear the whole thing apart. They built a careful stockpile of goodwill, as if saving it up against some future calamity.

  It used to be fun, being with Julian. Sophisticated fun. She was always aware of her age and his, like when they stood side by side in the bathroom mirror, or when he pulled out his wallet and paid the tab in cash, always in cash, his long fingers beautifully manicured with nails like polished rock. His age was one of the things that made him interesting. His age, and his name.

  After all, this was Julian Moss, who’d brought home the bronze on what turned out to be a fractured tibia, only five-hundredths of a second out of the lead. Julian Moss, whose calf swelled so badly afterward that he wasn’t able to put on a boot and had to sit out the rest of the Games from the broadcast booth, the start of a new career.

  Julian was wonderful. Everybody thought so. He’d put his fingers to his temple and lean in confidentially, as if the conversation you were having was the most important one he’d had in years. He gave you a full-on spotlight of attention, dark brows furrowed, his eyes moving slowly over your face as if memorizing it as part of some crucial inventory.

  In return, he expected to be listened to. Early on he had told her, with that slow, half-pleading smile of his, “I like my own way, you know, Katie.”

  Well, that was all right. She always tried to give in, agreeing automatically and without complaint. And for a while that seemed to work.

  Sweet little Katie, he called her. That’s what she tried to be.

  But lately he seemed to feel they had enough goodwill to last them. He began to spend it on cheap shots, unguarded glances, eye rolls that stopped just shy of full circle so that she could never be sure whether he meant them in anger or loving impatience. His lips had taken on a permanent sneer of amusement—or disdain, it was hard to tell. He said cryptic things that he refused to explain, as if it didn’t matter what Kate read into them, only what he meant to himself. His moves in the bedroom were less playful, and he seemed constantly distracted, like Kate was in the way. Yet he used to be a considerate lover. Even the first time, hushed and hurried in a frigid stairwell, he had taken the time to make her come. He was experienced, patient, dominant. He’d bought her lingerie and sex toys, said it was all a game he wanted to play with her, that some women took it too seriously but he was glad to see that Kate was not one of them.

  Now nothing she did was right. Last night was awful. Awful! The things he wanted her to do...

  Tears of self-pity sprang to her eyes. She wiped them away with the heel of her hand.

  It could be nothing. Could even be the start of something good. Maybe this was a last line of defense in what Kate’s mother called “terminal bachelorhood.” Maybe Julian just needed a little push, something from Kate to let him know that she would agree to whatever he had in mind. She told him, offhandedly, in the course of conversation, that she loved to travel, though she was perfectly content here in Telluride. She thought marriage was great but was also up for cohabitation. She didn’t mind his age. She liked children, though she didn’t think her life would be incomplete without them. Loved sex but was happy to give an unrequited blow job. She laughed at his jokes; she sang his praises.

  Really, thinking about it, she was perfect for Julian Moss. Why, then, did she get the feeling he was slipping away?

  As she got to the back of the drawer and the last handful of clothing, she stopped, staring at what she’d found.

  She stood that way for several seconds, her pulse pounding in her throat. Then stiffly, methodically, she began to put his clothes back into the drawer, exactly as she’d found them. She let herself out of the room and closed the door behind her.

  * * *

  The lights kept flickering on and off.

  Celia lifted her face and let the hot water stream down her neck, rinsing away the soap and shampoo. She screwed her eyes tight shut. She didn’t want to think about what new problem might have arisen with the wiring in the past thirty minutes, what new task she’d have to lay on Rory and Eric. She laid her hands against the walls as if the Blackbird might be soothed and stop its twitching.

  The lights flickered again, and the room fell into darkness.

  “Really?” she said.

  She’d been looking forward to a few extra minutes to work out the strain in her shoulders and legs, the knotted bruise-like ache in her thumb that flared at the end of any long day spent with a paintbrush in her hand. But the old claw-foot tub was oddly shaped, treacherous even with the lights on, and the steam felt dense and pressurized in a darkness as complete as this.

  She turned the faucets and pushed back the shower curtain. Water streamed with a metallic patter around her feet as she reached blindly for a towel.

  The lights came back. Celia flinched in surprise and nearly fell, grabbing at the towel rack to steady herself.
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  Eric had come into the bathroom. He was leaning against the chipped tile counter, one hand in his pocket and the other on the light switch.

  “Jesus,” she said. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry.”

  She stepped over the edge of the tub, wrapped the towel around her body and tucked it under her arm. Eric took a second towel from the rack and started to dry her hair, gathering it in one hand to squeeze the water to the tip. His face in the mirror was thin and haggard, a specter moving through patches of fog. Over his fingers, the four tattooed letters he’d gotten years before: , now sideways and reversed by the mirror. .

  A moment later his reflection was swallowed completely by the steam.

  She turned to face him.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” she said.

  His eyes shifted to meet hers—wide, beautiful black eyes, the whites as pure and smooth as milk. He opened his mouth and closed it again, deciding what to say. There were harsh lines like cuts running down between his eyebrows.

  “Eric—”

  “Tell me something. I want you to tell me something and be honest.”

  She nodded. The steam burned at the back of her throat.

  “I want to know if you’re happy here,” he said. “With...with all of this.”

  “Of course I am. This is what I always wanted.”

  “What you always wanted. I thought you promised me an honest answer.”

  “Maybe it’s a little more—”

  “A lot more. What I’m asking is whether you’re happy.”

  “I am.”

  The steam had gathered along his eyebrows and beaded at the tips of his lashes. He tilted his head.

  “I can’t tell,” he said. “I just never can tell whether you’re telling me the truth.”