Xochi nodded. “It makes you look older.”
“Thank you for doing that,” Pallas said.
“Anytime.” Xochi smiled.
So pretty. Pallas gazed at her own pale cheeks and wished for Xochi’s golden-brown.
“Come on,” Pallas said. “Let’s go back to the fish. Just for a few minutes. I want to listen to our mix.”
“Are you sure?”
When they’d first entered the bathroom, all Pallas could imagine was holing up in her attic forever. But now she didn’t want that. Not at all.
“Totally sure,” Pallas said, holding the bathroom door open for Xochi. “After you.”
26
Bridge over Troubled Water
Back in the aquarium, away from the fluorescent bathroom lights, Pallas’s pale face gleamed like a pearl. Xochi grinned as she marched past the middle schoolers at the pendulum exhibit with her chin up. They watched Pallas, a synchronized head-turn, unconscious of all they had in common with the crocodile and the sharks.
The Fish Roundabout was empty again. Pallas sat next to Xochi, closer than before. A school of large flat fish cut through the water like thrown knives.
Just like Pallas, Xochi had gotten her period at twelve, waking up with blood on her legs after a dream about mermaids and kissing. She was in the water constantly that summer. Collier had gone to stay with his cousins for two months instead of the usual two weeks. His parents were starting to wonder why he didn’t hang out with any boys, but Xochi knew. Collier loved her and was waiting for the day she’d love him back.
In the water she imagined it, kisses and more, but Collier morphed into other creatures, other people. Xochi touched herself at night in bed, in the morning in the shower, in the deepest part of the swimming hole with the sun on her back and her face in the water, the pleasure proof she was perfect, needed no one.
In the evenings before dinner, she hunted through her mother’s old things. For the first few weeks after she left, Xochi’d worn an old nightgown of Gina’s to bed, the long hem snagging over the rough spots on the cabin floor. But a year later, Gina’s clothes fit. Xochi tried on her mother’s soft worn jeans and flowy Stevie Nicks tops and snapped on the Western plaid shirts Gina liked over tank tops with cutoffs and sighed at the collection of wooden-soled size-six platform sandals—too small for Xochi since she’d first tried them on at ten. At the bottom of the box were underthings. Loretta looked in as Xochi tried to adjust a flimsy lace bra.
“That’s too small, honey. We’ll get you one that fits.”
The next morning, the blood had been there. Loretta took her into Garberville, bought her three bras: two ballet pink, one white. All that fall and winter, Xochi wore them under the clothes her mother had left behind.
A pair of giant manta rays shrugged through the cool blue, unhurried by the smaller fish around them. Pallas lay back on the carpeted dais, and Xochi did the same. It was something people did in the Fish Roundabout. Once, she’d seen a woman with a baby sitting on the floor with her back to the platform, both sound asleep. The peace in the watery blue room was contagious.
A hand slipped into Xochi’s. Pallas, more reserved than any cat, had offered her paw. Xochi held it lightly, careful not to move. Behind her eyelids, dream siblings floated in the swimming hole of her youth. Hand in hand, they soaked up the sun, impossibly long hair fanning around them like the halos around the saint candles that burned day and night on Loretta’s altar.
Xochi caught a fragment of another dream from when she’d been dozing in the bathtub the day Pallas had left for LA. A stone wall above a swirling pool. The green girl and her brother with wings and tails. Blowing leaves, a blustery day. The images were jerky and slow, like cold honey dripping from a spoon. Xochi considered opening her mouth and taking them in, but she knew she shouldn’t. Maybe she couldn’t. There was pain there. Pain and power. Whatever story the dream was trying to tell, Xochi wasn’t ready to hear it. She opened her eyes.
Pallas was singing something familiar, her voice fine and high like her mother’s.
III.
Hand in hand, they run the forest
Hand in hand, they stop to heal
The ache of the broken man
Is Brother’s breaking
Broken blue, a desolate nest
He will not hurt Xochi again
Life, Death, Life
The way of short-lived creatures
Brother knows, but Sister is new
Unaccustomed to sorrow
She sleeps now, deep and low
Healing. Growing strong
Brother rests on cooling earth
The mudpot whispers
Sulfur and secrets
Sister stirs, magma deep
Calling Brother to dream
27
Romeo and Juliet
Leviticus tipped the driver an extra twenty for helping with his amp and slung his backpack over his shoulder. The house was quiet, the windows dark. It seemed like he’d been gone longer than a week. Long legs and sneakers dropped from the fire escape to the balcony as he reached for his guitar. Xochi. She unzipped her hoodie and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
“Hey,” he called, moving so she could see him in the porch light.
“You’re back?” She shoved the cigarettes in her pocket like a kid caught smoking. Which, technically, she was.
“Yeah. What are you doing outside my bedroom window?”
“Oh, this is your bedroom?”
For all he knew, Xochi thought he shared a room with Io. That was the downside of the family no-gossip policy. Xochi would have to ask if she wanted to know something. Which, at seventeen, might be easier said than done. Leviticus reached down for his duffel.
“Need help?” Xochi was already trotting down the stairs that led from the balcony to the patio behind the kitchen. She picked up his guitar case and headed for the kitchen door.
“That’s okay,” he said. “I was gonna bring it all up.”
He reached for the guitar, but Xochi kept it, heading for the stairs. He followed, trying not to notice how nicely her boys’ jeans fell on her hips.
“Was this back part of the house added on?” Xochi asked.
“Yeah. They made the kitchen bigger and built my room on top of it. It was supposed to be Io’s dad’s office when he was in town. He recorded demos here sometimes.” Stop rambling, he told himself. He fished in his pocket for keys. “This was the cigar room,” he said, unlocking the French doors that led to the sunporch outside his bedroom. “It still kind of smells like it. There was a tiki bar in here, too.”
“Where do you want your guitar?”
“The floor is fine.”
Xochi laid it down carefully. “No more bar?” she asked, checking out the room with its oversized lounger, Mexican rug, and reading lamp.
“Nah,” Leviticus said, putting his duffel on the chair. “Booze isn’t my weakness.”
“Should we get the amp?” Xochi asked.
“It’s heavy.”
“I’m strong.”
Xochi followed him down the stairs. They each grabbed a handle and carried the amp up in one go, leaving it beside the guitar.
“So,” Leviticus said, “why are you out here at three in the morning?”
She held out the box of clove cigarettes. “I confiscated them from Pallas the night of the party. Now I’m the worst kind of hypocrite.”
“Pallas was actually smoking?” Leviticus tried to picture it and couldn’t.
“It was theater, really,” Xochi rushed to explain. “I don’t think she even inhaled.”
Leviticus shook his head. Pallas hated cigarettes—didn’t she? But what did he know? At Pallas’s age, things could change so fast. Leviticus remembered his own transition from obedient son to disowned deviant. One minute he was hold
ing his mom’s hand in church, the next he was leaning against a wall on Polk Street with Ky. Not that his own childhood was anything like what he wanted for Pal.
“I’ve been coming out here to smoke when I can’t sleep,” Xochi went on. “Do you mind?” She shook the box. “Out here,” she said, stepping back to the balcony. “Don’t want to add to the cigar smell.”
Leviticus took off his jacket and spread it on the worn planks of the balcony floor. Xochi sat. She pulled her knees to her chest, tried sitting cross-legged, then gave up and stuck her feet out in front of her. Her legs were long, her movements coltish—just the sort of innocent-sexy detail that made him feel like a pervert straight out of Lolita.
“Innocence isn’t just about age,” Kiki had said on the way to LA. “It’s a quality of hopefulness.” She’d also said, “Don’t underestimate the governess. She may be young, but she isn’t stupid.” All true, but numbers were truer. No matter how many times you did the math, seventeen was eleven years younger than twenty-eight and five years older than twelve. Five years older than Pallas.
Xochi fiddled with her lighter. Her fingernails were short, the black polish chipped. Leviticus flashed to the long red nails of the woman he’d been sleeping with at Dylan’s. He’d planned to hook up with Andi in LA, but she’d set him straight the first night.
“You know I don’t care what you do the second you’re out of my sight,” Andi said, heading out the door after Kiki’s drummer. “But when you’re with me, I need your undivided attention. And you, my friend, seem pretty divided these days.”
“You have another one of those things?” He knew it was just an excuse to sit there with Xochi. His willpower was total shit.
“Really?” Xochi handed him the cigarettes and lighter.
“A week in LA will do that to you.” He inhaled the sweet smoke, light-headed and tired. Xochi looked tired, too. She yawned, proving him right. A flash of silver caught the moonlight.
“Wait.” He leaned closer. “What’s that?”
Xochi clicked the tongue stud against her teeth. “Oh, this? I got it on the Equinox. I went out during the party and ran into James. One thing led to another . . .” She stuck out her tongue.
James? On the Equinox? James had been at Eris Gardens that night for some secret tryst with Io. He must have gone to his shop immediately afterward and opened just in time for Xochi to show up. Leviticus hadn’t noticed it during their excursion through the city, but even then he’d been careful not to look at any part of her for too long. Certainly not her mouth.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“I’d never even thought about it,” she said. “My nose, maybe, but not my tongue. James was talking about Persephone, and I kept thinking about how she was punished for eating that pomegranate seed. Something about it spoke to me.”
Persephone and pomegranates. Leviticus began to see how James managed to impress Io when so many others had failed. Leviticus’s money had been on the butch lady poet who sent Io sonnets or the dandy photographer who’d been after her for years—anyone but James. Aside from being a super freak with the whole modern-primitive piercing thing, he looked like somebody’s dad. Old school. Or, no—just old. At least forty-five, maybe fifty. An old man with a pierced dick—something Leviticus knew because he’d seen photos. Huge framed photos at a gallery in New York, images he’d never be able to unsee.
Xochi’s words drifted back into his thoughts, rewound and stuck. “Wait, so one thing led to another? You mean the piercing?”
“Yeah,” she said. “What did you think I meant?”
“Sorry. Nothing. Don’t mind me.” Leviticus dragged on his cigarette to shut himself up. “Rabbit Hole did me in. Dylan says hi, by the way.” Why did he say that? The image of Dylan and Xochi was not a happy one.
“Send him my love,” she said. “From me and Bubbles both.” She met Leviticus’s eyes and held them, a lapse into flirtation that was surely against her governess code. Her cigarette had gone out. She groped between them for the lighter. He reached it first and leaned in close. As always, she smelled so good. The ones who smelled edible, the ones you wanted to roll in, to inhale—those were the ones you had to watch out for. He shifted position to put a few extra inches between them. It helped.
“So, how did the album turn out?” Xochi leaned back against the door. “Aaron said you were going to help them finish?”
“That was the plan.”
“What happened?” Her voice made Leviticus want to lay down someplace soft.
“Business as usual. I’m not used to it anymore, the whole rock-and-roll lifestyle.”
Xochi laughed. “I thought this was the rock-and-roll lifestyle.”
“What, us? Not even close. Those guys are hard-core. Hedonists all the way.”
“But so are you guys.”
“What makes you say that?”
Xochi was silent. Her clove cigarette crackled as she inhaled. “I’ve been curious about paganism, for one thing. I was surprised to find out most of you are atheists.”
“What gave you that idea?” Leviticus enjoyed the improvisation of talking to Xochi. He could never predict what she’d say next.
“Io said something about your beliefs not being literal, like you don’t believe in actual gods and goddesses. That it’s more about celebrating cycles in nature, something like that. So maybe ‘atheist’ isn’t the right word?”
“I think of myself as more agnostic. Like, there could be some sort of deity, but probably not. I like this one word of Kiki’s—numinous. Like, the goddess is in everything. Everything is inherently divine. Good stuff, bad stuff. It doesn’t matter.”
“Right,” Xochi said. “Hedonism. Everything is just naturally divine, there are no distinctions, so you can do whatever you want. It’s the whole Aleister Crowley thing you guys are into, right? ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’? It’s the family motto, isn’t it? Painted on the mantel and everything. Basically the definition of hedonism.”
“I’m not gonna defend Crowley,” Leviticus said. “Aaron and Ky had a thing for him, like, eight years ago. That’s when they painted the quote, but what you’re talking about is only part of it. The rest is done in glow-in-the-dark paint, so you have to turn the lights out. The whole thing goes, ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law. Love under will.’ What do you think of that?”
Xochi’s brow wrinkled. Leviticus leaned back against the door, crossing his feet in front of him. The sky was cloudy as usual, with a ring around the almost-full moon.
“It’s equating love and will, I guess. Saying free will is different from simple desire.”
Simple desire. The words burrowed into his skull. He imagined reaching out to raise Xochi’s chin so he could see her eyes. “It’s a lot of work sifting the bullshit to figure it out—what you will, what you truly want.”
They were silent, staring at the moon.
“What if you want two different things?” Xochi’s voice was almost too quiet to hear. “Things that cancel each other out?”
Leviticus put his cigarette out with the sole of his boot. “I don’t know,” he said. “Trial and error, I guess. Experiment. Make mistakes. I don’t know. I’m working on that one myself.”
Xochi put her cigarette out under her shoe and dropped both butts into the box, not littering. She stood and held out her hand.
Touching was a mistake, but refusal would be rude. He couldn’t remember which was worse.
Her hand was surprisingly small but strong. Toasty warm. He was so tired. That was the problem. It was hard to think. He brushed a finger over her palm. Pheromones rallied, miniature cupids with arrows aimed to maim: eyes, throat, groin. A man’s vulnerable spots.
Her lips were chapped and slightly open, and it seemed there was no way out but through. She took a step forward and held his eyes for a
long moment before she kissed him. He cupped the base of her skull and pulled her closer. Her hair was soft and fine. She was tall, fit him easily, her breasts pressing against his chest. No bra, he noted, the thin cotton of their two worn T-shirts the only thing separating skin from skin.
You could tell everything about a woman from kissing her—how she’d have sex, how she’d love. How it would end. Men weren’t like this. All you could tell from kissing a guy was how he gave head. That, and how he wore his loneliness.
Xochi’s kiss had a hint of things to come, but was complicated by the piercing, a formal dance with a structured form and strong timing, bringing them together to tease them apart. She pressed against him, woodland-animal sounds escaping the cave of her mouth. Her back was hot under his hands. Her skin was so smooth. No bra strap. No bra. His brain fast-forwarded to the end of the kiss. He would take her hand. They would go to his room. He’d pull at the fly of her jeans, opening the buttons one by one. His hands slid to her waist. She pulled away.
He opened his eyes. She was breathing hard. Artemis after the hunt. But who was the prey here?
He’d thought it was her, so young. Vulnerable. Dependent on them for her livelihood. Which was why he’d stayed away, committed never to be that guy—that sleazy, selfish, gross older guy. But here he was. That guy for sure, led by his dick no matter what he’d decided. If she hadn’t stopped, they’d be in his bedroom right now.
But she had.
This was her world. Her experiment. She’d gotten her data, and now she observed him, gaze intelligent and calm.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
“I should get back.”
He watched her go. Strong legs, excellent hips. Gorgeous. She reached the attic fire escape and turned back to him before she climbed into the window.
“Good night,” she called. “Sweet dreams.”
28
Love Is a Battlefield
All of Us with Wings Page 15
