Blackbird

by Michael Fiegel

  I set the groceries on the table and sit down in the darkness to collect my thoughts, decide on a course of action. Time to move, time to disappear, to find myself a new garden. This one has gone fallow, it seems.

  But just then, the faucet stops running, and the bathroom door opens. I do not turn. I know exactly what is coming. I hear it in the way the killer crosses the floor softly, steps up behind me. I can feel it as the barrel of a handgun, still warm, is pressed against the back of my head, a tiny ring of black branding my neck like a kiss. I smell it in the air, rancid and bitter, pity and hatred and uncertainty. Hours stretch into minutes, minutes eternal seconds.

  Through the door, I can see the glowing stars on the bedroom ceiling fade to black.

  And then she drops the gun, the one I placed under the bed for her last night, and follows it down. Her knees strike the floor hard enough to hurt, and her head is briefly upon my lap. But I do not react, and she quickly sobs and slides off, limp arms drifting down my legs until she can fall no further, damp hair tangled around my ankles, cheek upon the floor.

  Xtian weeps.

  A Splash Quite Unnoticed

  01/01/2013

  The airport lot was relatively empty, so we had our pick of spots. Edison chose the third from the end, sandwiched between a rusty van and a filthy station wagon, both of indeterminate make, neither of which had apparently been moved for days. He slipped our old Chevy into park, the engine sputtering from the cold, but before it could die a natural death he put it out of its misery. I wanted the same done to me.

  He leaned back heavily in the seat, hands still on the wheel. Silent.

  It felt like the end of the world, sun tinting the windows pink. But even with the residual heat in the car and the sun shining down, I shivered. Feeling empty.

  I felt Edison’s gaze and looked away, staring at the side mirror. Objects were closer than they appeared. I was a wreck. Hair still wet from a last-minute shower, my face pale. My lips red, like I was stained with fresh kill. But the kill had been a week earlier, and the only blood on my lips then was my own, from where I’d chewed off the chapped bits.

  “Xtian, we have to go,” said Edison. “If you want to stay, stay. But I’m not coming back.”

  “Did you send him?” I asked.

  “What?” He somehow managed to act surprised even though he knew what I meant.

  “Did you send the man,” I repeated, choking up. “To make me have to—“

  He didn’t reply, just stared at me for a minute. If he looked anything, it was disappointed.

  “Does it matter?” he asked.

  And with that, he got out of the car and slammed the door before fumbling our bags from the trunk. I thought about dying there. It would take weeks before they found me, ripe and bloated. Unless it stayed cold out or got colder. Then I might freeze, become a big block of ice. A thing of the past, without a future to worry about. It sounded tempting.

  The trunk slammed. Temptation faded. What would I do if I stayed behind? Die? Get arrested? I had nothing here. No one. No money, nowhere to live. The only thing I had in the world was walking away. Daring me to follow. And he didn’t even need to bribe me with ice cream this time. He knew deep down I had no choice. Whether he had tried to have me killed, or simply stood aside and let someone else take a shot at me.

  Cold air slapped me in the face as I stepped out and followed him. The smell of old snow, black with grease, grabbed and refused to let go. It followed me all the way across the lot to the main terminal, slush sticking to my ankles as I dodged puddles, trailing in Edison’s wake.

  “San Francisco will be a good place to lie low for a while until things … calm down again,” he was saying, to me or himself I’m not sure. “The SFPD are notoriously behind the curve when it comes to homicide. Last year over half their murders went unsolved, well below the average of other large cities. Better than fifty-fifty odds, to start with. And that’s if you don’t know what you’re doing, if you rely on chance. Which we don’t—”

  I tuned out. He had been talking the whole time since it had happened and especially while we had … cleaned up. It was all a blur, only meaningful in retrospect. Ramming a metal rod down a barrel. Filing off a serial. Dumping bodies. Chopping off my hair, dying his. Swapping vehicles. And, of all things, moving the furniture around. I hadn’t quite understood the need, since he burned the place down anyway—along with just about everything we had owned—but he’d insisted it would cover our tracks. Hiding evidence, placing objects to suggest something that never was, never would be. Then burning it all anyway. Feng Shuicide.

  We couldn’t stay. And we could never go back.

  How could I have …

  “Stop crying,” he said, and I only then realized I was. But to hell with him. If you couldn’t cry at an airport, where could you?

  I studied the carpet pattern while he checked the luggage, which didn’t take very long since it was very early and there was hardly anyone else using our airline (probably why he’d chosen it). Before I knew it we were nearing the security line, and I could almost sense him tense up a bit. Not that he was concerned about the TSA—far from it. I think maybe he was concerned that this would be a good opportunity for me to throw a tantrum, get separated from him, and then be forced to rat him out. The thought never crossed my mind, though. I would have incriminated myself, too. My guilt outweighed his by a lot, just then.

  “Homeland insecurity,” mumbled Edison as we finally approached the checkpoint.

  He sounded responsible, somehow. I wondered how, before I thought to wonder if. I was beginning to get a sense of what he was doing. What they were doing. In DC, with the subway. On the lake. Maybe even with me, and the man trying to kill me. It was about change. Acting, to cause a desired reaction. Edison saw himself as an agent of change. For all I knew, he had been involved in 9/11, in causing all of the change that came about afterwards.

  It didn’t take long to get through security. Edison knew better than to have a fit, assert his rights, and have it all filmed for YouTube. He went quietly, as did I. Shoes off, jacket off, plastic bag of toiletries in the gray bin, into the scanner, arms overhead while they collect your nude photos, move on through and hope they haven’t stolen anything. We didn’t have a lot to lose. Besides Edison’s laptop—he got real nervous when that hit the scanner—all I was carrying were a few bits of clothing and some shampoo. Everything else I had owned had died in the fire, with the sole exception of my brand new 23, fired just once, which had been disposed of in the river. Practically an arsenal down there by now. Fish mafia.

  As it turned out, the only snag we hit was my shampoo; it was like point-three ounces over the limit so they confiscated it, in case it was plutonium or something.

  “Give them something obvious to take, and they’ll assume it’s all there is,” said Edison, once we were well clear of security. “Give them the illusion of power and control, and you’re the one in control. Misdirection and lies.”

  Little did they know that for all their security, we walked among them. I imagined all the things we could do. That we had done. That I had done.

  “They’re not there to stop terrorists anyway,” he said once we were clear of security, on our way to our gate, two hours early.

  “What?” I asked.

  “They have never prevented a single terrorist incident,” he replied. “The TSA fails to catch fake weapons and bombs the majority of the time. But that isn’t really their fault, because their job is not to prevent terror. Their job is to remind us to be terrified.”

  Their job, and Edison’s too, I thought.

  • • •

  We ate terrible chicken fingers and fries, both tasting of freezer burn, and watched the news to see if we’d made the cut. We hadn’t. We browsed the gift shop, bought a five dollar bottle of water and two puzzle books we’d never use, then walked the concourse twice. There was too much time and then suddenly too little, and before I realized it we were getting called for
boarding, and it was too late. For anything. Just like before, something was ending just before it had stopped beginning. I’d always had lots of beginnings and endings, but never quite enough middles to make a story out of it. Comma, after comma, after comma.

  And now a period. It felt unnatural.

  Edison pulled me onwards, my left hand clutching his right in a death grip as we waited for our group number to be called, and I was suddenly afraid that if I let go I’d fall. A cold little corpse on the tarry tarmac … on the sticky floor of a fast food restaurant.

  When it was our group’s turn to board, Edison stepped forward to get in line immediately, but I stopped. I expected him to just drag me with him, but instead he stepped us out of line, sat me down next to the window, and looked me in the eye. There were six of him, so I blinked the tears away and focused on the one I knew best.

  “Why did you do it?” he said, softly. Then he handed me my ticket, turned, and got back in line to board the plane. It wasn’t a long line; we were the last group called, and before long, he was on board, and I was alone.

  How could he just leave me? What would the flight attendants think? That he had abandoned me? Would he get in trouble?

  Why did I care so much?

  Numb, I turned and stared at the plane through the window, considering the past, pondering the future, seeing only my own face staring back. He had let me go. I could go. I could run, leave the airport. But to where?

  Wrong question; the question was why. Why did I do it?

  “You all right, sweetie?” asked an airline attendant in a sweet “unaccompanied child” voice; I guess I looked more my own age that day, maybe on account of the tears. I nodded as I read her name tag—Samantha—then turned back to the window so I could look myself in the eye. I looked for answers but saw nothing but my own reflection, breath fogging the window.

  Edison had left me the gun, but I had used it. Defensively, sure. But not consciously. Instinctively. Amidst the fear there had been a spark of rage that had driven it all, made me do it before I realized I had done it. No, you can’t do this to me. I won’t let you. Nothing so clear as that, of course, but that nonetheless. And that’s what frightened me the most. What I was capable of. Not because it was something I chose to do. But because it was something I was.

  And now I could get on that plane and fly away, and no one would stop me. I would get away, quite literally, with murder (or something close enough to count, for me). There would be no punishment for my sin. If it was a sin at all. If it mattered at all.

  I had questions. And the only answers were on that plane. With Edison.

  Samantha stepped closer, no doubt growing annoyed at the delay, and I smiled at her.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Just saying goodbye.”

  I turned back to the little window, leaned forward, and kissed the girl in the glass, tasting her cold lips. Then I picked up my bag and boarded the plane.

  I left Christian behind, crying in the fog.

  SFO

  Murder Of Crows

  09/15/2013

  San Francisco had the best food in the world—Asian, European, Mexican, Antarctican (is that a thing?)—yet we still ate nothing but “American beige” at diners, fast food joints, hot dog carts, pizza places, same as we could have eaten anywhere else. I don’t actually think Edison liked it; I think it was to make some kind of point. Eat your own dog food or you are what you eat—something like that.

  I looked down in disgust at the rectangular thing in my hand and forced myself to swallow. Wondering if this is what I was becoming.

  “You wanted fish,” he said.

  “I wanted sushi,” I said, tossing the sandwich back on its tray. Edison immediately picked it up and took a bite like he hadn’t seen food in weeks. That day he kind of looked like a hungry homeless person: scruffy gray beard, lanky gray hair tipped with black, tattered jeans, and a loose sweater full of holes. I barely recognized him.

  Which of course was the point. As always.

  “What?” he asked, swallowing. Caught me looking at him.

  “Nothing,” I said, finger-painting on my food tray with ketchup.

  “No, not nothing. What?”

  “What do you think people see? When they look at us, I mean.”

  He chewed thoughtfully for a few moments, then took a drink of coffee. He winced as he sipped. Hot? Bitter? Probably both. Coffee wasn’t a beverage for him; it was penance.

  “Why do you care?” he asked. Not the answer I was expecting. I thought about it.

  “They probably think I’m your daughter. Adopted maybe. From some foreign country in Europe. Or some place with castles. I used to be a princess. Heir to the thr—”

  “Stop stalling and finish your sandwich,” he said. “You are nothing but skin and bones.”

  “No,” I insisted. “I’m ten percent bones and fifteen percent skin and fifty percent water.”

  I may not have been attending school—if I had, I’d have been graduating from junior high that school year—but that didn’t mean he was letting me off easy. He’d gotten me a new iPad in lieu of a laptop, so there were plenty of free ebooks to pore over. There was also a grimy little thrift store around the corner from our place in the Mission District, and there I spent hundreds of dollars, a quarter at a time, on real books that smelled like basements. Only a few were trashy novels. The majority were text books: chemistry and especially biology. I now knew that babies had 300 bones, I had 206. I knew human thighbones were stronger than concrete, but it only took eight pounds of pressure to dislocate a knee. Seven pounds of pressure to rip off an ear. Et cetera. Probably not stuff I would have learned in eighth grade.

  “Couldn’t we be friends?” he asked as I picked at my food. “Why must it be family?”

  “Because you’re o— of a more advanced age than I am.”

  “Well, this is San Francisco,” he said. “We could be co-workers. You could be my intern.”

  “No, you could be my intern. Boy, fetch me more coffee. Fetch. Woof.”

  “I suggest friends and you spin that into pets?”

  “The politically correct term is animal companions. Hey, how about that?”

  “Companions? That’s the best you can come up with?”

  “I saw a video this morning where a monkey and a dog were playing,” I said as I fished for my cell. But then I remembered it was turned off and the SIM was in my pocket, because he didn’t want them tracking us everywhere. “Never mind.”

  “I’ve seen it anyway,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that monkey was trying to abduct the puppy. That’s not exactly companionship or friendship.”

  “So?” I asked. “We get along and you abduc—”

  He hissed before I went any further, but I had already stopped. Was doing math in my head.

  “What’s today?” I asked.

  “Wednesday,” he said, checking his burner phone. “The fifteenth. Why?”

  “We missed it,” I mumbled. “Last week was when … the day you …”

  “Oh. Guess I forgot,” he said. “Not much of an anniversary dinner, is it?”

  For a moment it all came spilling back. I don’t know why that year stung more than others, but it did. I could see the coins on the floor, feel my sticky hands, taste the blood in my hair. Then he spoke and brought me back.

  “Hey, let’s go,” he said. “Partner?”

  I looked him in the eye, blinked back tears. Yeah. It sounded right. It was better than monkey, anyway.

  • • •

  She is silent as we walk to our car, a blue Honda this month. Blue is currently her favorite color. She remains silent as she squirms herself cross-legged into the front. No socks, backless canvas sneakers on the floor, tight blue jeans that match the tips of her three black pigtails, a blue halter top hanging loosely from her thin frame. Ninety pounds. More a child than I sometimes pretend. Hardly malnourished but wren-like and light for thirteen, though not her height—five-one, barely, last time we checked. I
t concerns me she might not be eating enough. Which is ironic, since I tried to kill her last year.

  Of course, neither do I want her to drift too far in the other direction. It is no secret that childhood obesity rates started to skyrocket the same year Happy Meals came out. A third of kids get a quarter of their vegetables as french fries, ten percent of their calories from soft drinks. A third of America eats fast food every day. Fifteen percent serve it, or will, at least until the robot uprising. Not that any of this matters since she never eats a full meal when we go out.

  Xtian turns towards me as I start the car, but I can tell she is not looking at me; I can see the focus in her eyes shift as she stares at, not through, the window, watching the scene behind her head from within the reflection behind my head. Children inside the restaurant, laughing behind the golden arches on the window. She wants friends. Or thinks she does. I know better.

  The distant look on her face makes me second-guess myself. The truth of the matter is I had not forgotten what today was. I had plans for tonight. Special plans, made a few weeks ago, that involved a few calls to some people I have not talked to in a while. I had planned to acquaint her with one of the San Francisco Bay Area cells. I want to get us both back in the loop, where we can be involved again. Her glance at the children playing makes me wonder, though. Is that what she wants? To be a child? To play, to go home and eat ice cream and take a bath and read one of her books? And if so, is that what I should let her be?

  No, I decide. I should not let that happen. That would be a waste. Of her. And me.

  And so I turn the car left instead of right, as we leave the parking lot. She can tell almost immediately we are not heading for home since I get on 101, but she says nothing until we are on the Bay Bridge, just past Treasure Island. Only then does she ask where we are going.

  “To meet some …” What?

  “Friends?” she asks.

  “No,” I say without hesitation. “Not even close.”