Plumage

by Nancy Springer

  In the lower-level men’s room, Sassy swabbed johns in an incandescent fury, hating herself for wearing once more the decent and obeisant poplin uniform of a maid, hating herself for meekly stepping back into this—this—she could not think words bad enough to describe this job that involved cleaning up unknown men’s bathroom mistakes and the occasional flaccid condom. At first when they had offered her “another chance” at the job, she had said no thank you. Just wanted to go home, wet clothes or no wet clothes. Leaving Frederick still looking for a cop to brag to, she had gotten as far as her car, which was glory hallelujah still there in the employee lot—but no key. Duh. Not thinking real clearly. Back inside, hiding in the maids’ locker room, she had phoned her landlord to beg a ride.

  “Where you been?” he had asked kindly. “You’re evicted.”

  Evicted?

  Yes, he’d put her stuff out on the sidewalk. No, there wasn’t any of it left. Yes, he had rented her apartment, to an exotic dancer complete with a rainbow of ostrich-feather fans. Judging by the landlord’s tone, he found his new tenant more interesting than he had ever found Sassy.

  It had taken Sassy’s bleary brain a while to absorb this, then another while to postulate some options: share a bed with her mother at the Alzheimers’ home? She almost felt incompetent enough, but not quite. Sleep in her car? Needed the key. Sleep in a Sylvan Tower broom closet? Damn, it was that or the street.

  And to sleep in the Sylvan towers she had to accept the all-too-excremental maid job.

  Moreover, there was another practicality to be considered: being employed at the Sylvan Tower, at least she had access to the locked floors and Rapunzel’s oval mirror.

  Unfortunately, it was nighttime now; the salon was closed. She was going to have to wait until daylight. But the minute the place opened—God, please let it work. She had to get back, she had to get back to the eden of lost dreams and find Racquel.

  At the thought of him, Sassy lost the rhythm of her scrubbing and stood with her johnny mop dripping on the floor, her throat aching. Poor guy, he was footsore, he had no shoes, nothing to wear, and he’d never meant to be there to start with. So far PLUMAGE seemed okay, his employees were keeping it open, but—poor Racquel, what he must be thinking of her. She had to find him and bring him back before he lost everything too.

  Briefly Sassy wondered about finding the parakeet that had gotten her into all this. But then she dismissed the thought as low priority. So she’d go around with a budgie for a reflection, so what? Racquel mattered more.

  Finding Racquel mattered even more than figuring out what to do about Frederick.

  Frederick, who was going to be back, she could just tell. Frederick, all too cordial. Frederick, smiling and clueless. Frederick, intent on what he did best: messing up her life.

  Sassy flushed the john, wishing for a brief, savage moment that Frederick’s head were in it, and moved on to the urinals, where she had to replace the sanitary cakes; eww. Why did they have to make such foul things the color of paradise sky? Sassy took care of them quickly and moved on to the wash-stand, where she was wiping the countertop when Frederick walked in.

  “There you are, Sassy,” he enthused. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  Sassy made no reply. She couldn’t; this inappropriate man’s mere presence in the vicinity racked her insides so badly, even after more than a year, that she just wanted to crawl under the sinks and hide. And she wanted to claw his eyes out, except she lacked proper claws by today’s acrylic standards, and at the same time, quite illogically as he was the one who had caused all her pain, she wanted to run to him for comfort and cry on his shoulder. And she hated her own weakness for feeling all of this yet doing none of it. She stood dabbing at the soap dispenser with a drippy old sponge.

  Frederick walked over to the urinals and stood there—for a moment, her mind going rapidly but ineffectually like a hamster in a wheel, Sassy thought that Frederick meant to use the facilities, flip it out in front of her and pee on the nice fresh cerulean-blue cake of deodorant she had put in there; how dare he? It was the crowning thought to immobilize her entirely. Her hands, slimed with soap, faltered to a halt.

  Leaning upon a urinal, Frederick scanned her and said with his best Don-Johnson boyish smile, “You’re looking good, Sassy.”

  She still hadn’t spoken a word, and she wasn’t about to start now.

  “I mean it,” he told her, increasing his earnestness quotient. “You’re looking real good. Have you done something with your hair?”

  Unbelievable. The jackass was hitting on her.

  Hitting. On. Her.

  God have mercy. Next he’d be telling her she’d lost weight.

  “You look younger. Have you lost some weight?”

  Christ, Sassy’s mind cried out like a bird of paradise, what has become of my soul? Why can’t I just throw the sponge at him?

  Frederick lost his shy-boy smile and began to look puppy-dog hurt that she hadn’t responded. “Look, Sas,” he said, gruff yet vulnerable like Bruce Willis, “you know it’s not easy for me to say, but I—I’m really sorry if I hurt you.”

  If? IF?

  Sassy’s chest, on the rack of mixed emotions, screamed so loudly that finally her mouth moved, if only to whisper. “So what’s happened to Binky-poo?”

  “Huh?” Frederick affected a moment of nonrecollection. “Oh. The Bink transferred to Mexico.”

  Now he was doing the other Bruce Willis, showing no emotion. Sassy’s grip tightened on the sponge till it spurted. The jerk. He’d left her for the wispy-blond chickie-poo and now the chickie had pooped the coop or whatever it was chickies did when they left, his anorexic sweetie was gone and he didn’t even care?

  Of course she, Sassy, wasn’t showing much emotion either.

  Oblivious to her clenched hand, he stepped closer to her. “The Bink was just a physical thing,” he told her, keeping sincere eye contact just the way they had taught him in management class.

  Just physical? Just? It had been years since he’d shown any physical affection for her, Sassy.

  “You, uh, you’re more than just a squeeze. I mean, I married you. That ought to mean something.”

  Sassy’s mind shrilled with sarcasm. Yes, it certainly ought to, it did mean something to some of us. Snappy comebacks, right when she needed them; damn it, why could she not speak?

  “What I mean,” Frederick said, standing too close, speaking gravely to the top of her head, “getting married, that’s not for temporary even if sometimes you think so, you know?”

  Sassy blinked several times rapidly, trying to wake herself up from this—was it a nightmare or a dream? In his boneheaded way, Frederick seemed to want her back. Back to familiar life. She could have a home again and know who she was. Be a wife again.

  “I’d like it if you and me could get back together,” Frederick said as if he were proposing a pleasant social evening.

  But—but instead of joy, Sassy felt an ache like a red-hot stone nesting in her chest, so hard and stinging it made her stir her mouth to whisper again. “You threw out twenty-seven years …”

  “But I did hang in for a long time,” Frederick said, nodding. “Why don’t we try again, huh? Another twenty-seven, what do you say? We could go away for a couple days. Go up to Allentown, hit the factory outlets, get you some new sweaters or something.”

  Earnest about the factory outlets, he had stepped even closer to Sassy, close enough to touch. Sassy wanted to press against his obtuse, cushy chest and cry. She wanted a home instead of a broom closet. She wanted him to take care of the bills. She wanted his warm lumpen weight snoring in the bed next to her at night again.

  She also wanted to take the johnny mop and ram it right down his throat and ditto the sponge up his nose for good measure. And she wanted him to reach out for her but she had the weird feeling he was more likely to grab her by the hair. And if he did either of the above she wanted to slap his face just as hard as she could. She wanted to kick him wh
ere it would hurt. Afraid of her own feelings more than anything, she stepped back, and the blue budgie sitting on air in the mirror caught her eye; it perched bolt upright and cigar slim, its round head turned toward Frederick in silent screaming alarm.

  Frederick’s advance had placed him in front of the mirror also. Sassy glanced at the place where his reflection should be.

  Then she blinked. Then she stared.

  “Or some shoes,” Frederick added. “Whatever you want. C’mon, Sassy, what do you say?” urged Frederick in his best Santa-Claus tones.

  “You have no bird,” Sassy blurted. She saw no reflection in the mirror where he should be. Nothing at all.

  “Huh?”

  She looked at him. “You have no bird,” she repeated loudly and clearly because evidently he hadn’t heard her. “None whatsoever.”

  Not even a budgie. Jeez.

  The life of a homeless person was looking better every minute. Sassy slapped her wet sponge back into its bucket on the cart and wheeled on out.

  Son of a gun, Sassy thought. Son of an iron ironic cannon on Fort Custer or somewhere, the Sylvan Tower was hosting a fashion convention, and one of the cutting-edge Paris couturiers had taken it into his head to attempt pow-wow chic. In other words, plumage. Variations on the fan-shaped feather bustles worn by fancy dancers at Native American events. Exotic, elegant, pencil-thin models strolled a runway in the second-lobby-floor ballroom, and watching from the back, Sassy saw glorified turkey tails affixed to “the head” (worn with a prairie-style broomstick-pleated muslin frock and Mediterranean cork platform heels, as the announcer pointed out), shooting à la Flash Gordon from the tips of “the shoulders” (with fawn-colored slubbed silk accented with genuine porcupine quilling and fourteen-karat gold jingles authentically imprinted to simulate snuff-can lids), worn like canary-and-turquoise concave wings (with Pueblo-inspired quilted vest and faux-fur-fringed anklets), and occasionally even where a bustle belonged, on “the derriere” (of synthetic-doeskin miniskirts, mostly, with beaded headband and spike heels and for God’s sake don’t try to sit down). Elegantly seated on fake fur thrown over the hotel chairs, the convention attendees took notes and applauded each successive model more enthusiastically than the last, oblivious to the activity in the back of the room.

  Standing in back, however, Sassy took it in: the Native American protest. A few members of the something-or-other nation, Sassy missed which one, were there in business suits trying to point out misappropriation of their people’s heritage and traditions. “… crassly insensitive commercialism,” one of the Native American men was saying to a bored-looking TV reporter when Sassy started listening in. “My people are tired of being exploited by European culture.” Mercifully, he skipped the long history thereof. “Even if it were done with respect—but I see no respect here. I see cultural rape.”

  Only half-listening, Sassy noticed with bemusement that he did not look like a television Indian at all. Neither did any of the others. They looked like people, that was all. Their skin color was not red; it was mostly dun or indeterminate. One of the women had blond hair. One of the men had the high cheekbones and black-braided hair Sassy would have expected, but one of them had brown curls, and the spokesman was bald, round, and looked like a mid-level CPA.

  He said, “The eagle feather is not a fashion statement to be mocked; it is a sacred adornment of the kachinas, by whose permission my people have been permitted to borrow, not own, the eagle feather for our ritual dances. If—”

  The news reporter perked up and lifted his microphone. “You say the feathers are supposed to be worn for dancing?”

  “Yes. But not ballroom dancing.” Why was a formal dance called a ball? Sassy wondered, and her mind veered for a moment into thoughts of basketball, volleyball, elegant couples in black tuxes and gowns spiking it over the net. “… ritual based on the mating dance of the prairie chicken,” the Native American spokesman was saying.

  Sassy gave him her full attention. So did the reporter, motioning to his cameraman to wake up.

  “Could you show us?” he asked.

  “Certainly,” said the man with stony dignity. He glanced around at his companions, who nodded. One man turned to a tray on a stand, removed the water glasses from it, and began to pound out an exceedingly basic rhythm with his hands; a few heads in the fashion-show audience turned. Then more, as the balding man in the business suit crouched and began a slow, shuffling dance.

  The others joined him. Together they circled, bent and swaying, to the drummer’s muffled rhythm. People stared, and the TV reporter and the cameraman looked very happy with their news bite; they looked as if they wanted to laugh. But Sassy felt no inclination to laugh. She felt her nape hairs prickle with awe and a recognition she could not name. She could almost see the drooping wings, the tails fanned in display, the naked pathos of shuffling scaly feet, claws dragging in the dust, the eyes half-lidded, the heads abased in self-abnegation.

  She wished Racquel were here. Where was he? Damn, he belonged here with her, now. She didn’t care whether he wanted, as she did, to dance the prairie-chicken dance, or whether he might be more interested in the beanpole of a model pirouetting at the end of the runway in her Venetian chopines, her stick-slim Navajo-patterned skirt, her squash-blossom silver jewelry and the sequined vermilion feather peplum surrounding her waspish waist. She didn’t care whether he wanted to dress like that; indeed, she rather expected he might, being Racquel. She liked his plumage. She missed him.

  As the dance ended, Sassy found herself face-to-face with the black-braided man.

  “Do prairie chickens mate for life?” she asked him.

  He stared but gave her no answer.

  The cop caught up with her in the employee lounge, as she sat at the sticky table staring at the snack tray and wondering whether she dared to filch a packet of animal crackers, whether the security camera was really just a dummy the way some of the maids claimed.

  There he stood stiff as a brick on the other side of the table from her, and it was the same flat-faced no-neck cop she’d knocked over popping out of the mirror last time, which surprised Sassy. If she’d bothered to think about him at all, which she hadn’t, she would have thought he’d have passed the entire Missing Persons of Sylvan Tower embarrassment off to some other cop by now. Judging by his expression, she bet he’d tried.

  He took refuge in the usual formalities to begin with. “Mrs. Hummel?”

  He knew quite well who she was. “I’m not married,” she said, surprised by the anger in her own voice.

  “Um, Miss Hummel. I’m investigating the disappearance of—”

  “Of me.”

  Her interruption jarred her out of his routine. “No, not this time. Nobody filed a missing persons on you.”

  Lovely. “But Frederick said you’d been asking him about me.”

  “In regard to your known association with another missing person. Mr. Shelton.”

  “Who?”

  He pressed his lips together, puffed out a disapproving breath, then said, “Mr. Devon Shelton. The proprietor of the PLUMAGE boutique.”

  “You’re looking for Racquel?”

  “He goes by that name,” said the cop with acid in his tone, yes.

  “He’s on the other side of the mirror. Uh, she is.”

  “I am aware that Mr. Shelton is a transvestite,” said the officer stiffly. He had not sat down. He wanted no part of any of this. “I spoke with his family.”

  “Is that who filed the missing persons report?”

  “No.” The single flat word.

  God, did he have a lover after all? “Who did, then?”

  “His assistant manager. Miss Hummel—”

  Sassy sat up straight and peered at the cop. “But you talked to his parents? Are they worried about him?”

  “Miss Hummel—”

  “Just tell me this one thing and I’ll answer your questions. Please. Do they care about him at all?”

  The cop sighed and loo
ked at the floor. “The mother does. Maybe,” he muttered. “Miss Hummel.” He glared up at her. “When did you last see, um, Racquel?”

  “It’s hard to say. It feels like several hours, our time. But then, it was day there and it’s night here. It might only be a few minutes.”

  He stood with his tablet poised, but his pen hovered motionless. His flat face showed some whitening around the nostrils and mouth.

  “He was right beside the oval pool,” Sassy added.

  “Oval pool? What oval pool? Where?”

  “I told you. On the other side of the mirror.”

  “Miss Hummel—”

  “Not the one you broke,” she explained. “Any mirror will do, except it has to be oval. And large enough,” Sassy added as an afterthought. Her mind was circling like blue butterflies over cow dung. Frederick. Where to sleep, how to get something to eat. A mother with a son she’d named Devon. It didn’t matter. Racquel, stranded in the forest of lost dreams. Cops looking for him.

  “Do I understand you correctly, Miss Hummel? You are saying—”

  Sassy’s circling mind settled on a scary thought, oh Lord, Racquel, and she interrupted again. “Did you tell the hotel management about him?”

  The cop’s fleshy cheeks had gone watermelon-pink, in pinto contrast with his whitening nose. “I’m the one asking the questions, thank you. You say you saw Racquel, uh, Mr. Shelton only a few minutes ago. Do you know where he is now?”

  Sassy said quite truthfully, “No.”

  “No?”

  “I wish I did.” She needed a friend just then, and the feeling rippled in her voice.

  Nevertheless, the cop glared. “Miss Hummel, I’d appreciate your cooperation.”

  “I am cooperating!” Sassy wondered why she was not afraid of him. Too bummed by everything that had happened, probably. Too flattened. Wooden. Compared to the turmoil Frederick made of her insides, this cop was nothing. A cream puff.

  “I ought to take you downtown.”

  “Go ahead!” At least then she’d have a place to sleep. “You know I’m telling the truth,” she added. “You were there when we came back—”