“My name,” Leviticus said. His voice caught. “Chapter and verse.”
Xochi shook her head. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Lucky you,” he said. His smile was sad. “It’s a Bible verse. The book of Leviticus. It was my first tattoo. So I wouldn’t forget where I came from.” Xochi gripped his wrist hard, like it was bleeding. She pressed the pain away, feeling it fade as his hand warmed. She raised his wrist to her lips. Moving from the ottoman to his lap was effortless. She blinked and she was there, straddling him on the sofa.
They kissed and kissed, her lips raw from the stubble on his face, her hands tracing the shape of his arms, his back, his chest, pulling his shirt over his head. Her body was alive with purpose. His hands were on her back, her breasts. He was kissing her collarbone, his tongue lighting a path from her neck to her ear. His hand was on her stomach, moving down. Small, bright sounds escaped her mouth to float in the firelit room. Xochi arched against his fingers, suspended in honeyed geometry, cell after cell of kaleidoscope sweetness. Once, with Collier, there had been a hint of this, but Evan had made sure it died, vodka soaked and ruined like her blue homecoming dress. After that, when Xochi could sleep at all, she dreamed of wandering through a bombed-out city trailing hacked-off body parts and bits of soul.
Now desire cast a spell calling the pieces back. Her lips were hers as they brushed his earlobe. Her teeth were hers as she bit his neck. Her blood hummed with heat, furred yellow bodies gathering, incited. Their numbers doubled, tripled, moon-veined wings fluttering in mutiny against their virgin queen, swarming out of her mouth and nose and belly button as she came, her face buried in the perfect scent of Leviticus’s neck.
As the pleasure receded and her body reset, her mouth followed the curve of his bicep, lazily tracing the tattooed outline of an outstretched wing, a yellow eye, a taloned foot. An owl, a large, noble owl with a ribbon in its beak. Greek characters flowed down the ribbon in blue: “ΠΑΛΛΑΣ.” She recognized the symbol for pi. It’s a “P,” she realized. P for Pallas.
She was back in reality, straddling his lap with her messy hair and ragged fingernails and unbuttoned jeans. Leviticus looked as stunned as she felt. But there was something else, a little smile. Because he knew how to make women do this. It was probably one of the things he did best.
Xochi was surprised at how easy it was to disentangle her limbs from his. When she was on the opposite side of the sofa, she understood she’d been wrong. Like an art project she’d done once in school, pressing paper against paper, an image transferred from one to the other, her arms and legs and hands were fundamentally altered, imprinted and changed. She buttoned her jeans and hugged her knees to her chest.
Leviticus was lifting up the quilt, hunting for his shirt. Xochi imagined taking his hand, leading him to her bed. Reading every single word tattooed on his skin. He pulled his shirt back down over his head. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Her mind groped for something she couldn’t quite place. Cigarettes. When had she started smoking so much?
“Is there something I can do?”
You’ve already done it, she thought. “No,” she said. “I just need a second.”
“Can I use your bathroom?”
Xochi nodded, thinking for a split second of her messy room, but that was the least of her problems now.
“Don’t go away.”
Don’t go away? Where would she go? She was trembling again. How had this happened? She saw herself straddling him, their bodies in rhythm. She saw the strip club, women gyrating in the darkness, her mother’s back in the spotlight, pale hair cascading down.
She saw the guitar propped against the side table. She took it and strummed. The tuning was slightly off. Humming to find the right notes, she fiddled with the pegs, higher on one string, lower on another. She strummed a chord, satisfied.
“Thanks for the tuning.” Leviticus sat on the opposite side of the sofa. “I didn’t even know you played.”
“I haven’t in a while.” Every time she’d tried in Badger Creek, Evan found her. She’d trained herself away from it so well, even in this house full of music, she’d never thought to mess around at the piano or pick up a guitar. But it felt so good, stretching her fingers to shape the chords, the notes vibrating against her belly almost like she’d never been away.
“Xochi?” His tone reminded her of Bubbles that night in Aaron’s van. If only there were whiskey and cigarettes this time to help the medicine go down.
“Are we going to talk about it?”
“We should.”
She kept her eyes on the fretboard, noodling around. “You start.”
“Okay. I made a list.”
“You did what?”
“I was sitting here thinking about you.”
“What about me?” A smile tugged at her mouth. Stupid girl.
“What to do about you. So I made a list. Pros and cons.”
“Let’s hear it. Cons first.”
He paged through a slim black notebook. “You know the first one,” he said. “I keep thinking about her with Ky this morning. That girl needs to wage some serious teenage warfare. It would be different if she had friends her own age. But she doesn’t. She only has you.”
“Which makes me a traitor.”
“I don’t know what it makes me, aside from a shitty father. An asshole, I guess. A creep.”
“She loves you.”
“We all love each other.”
The way he said it, Xochi knew he meant her, too. He was so earnest, sitting there with his list and his glasses, handing her the keys to the castle. Xochi wanted to take them, but she couldn’t.
“So what’s next?”
“You sure you want more?”
“Pallas is the deal breaker. But go on. I’m curious about this list of yours.” She gave his ankle a little shove with her foot.
“Well, I have a policy. An age limit. You fall well under the minimum.”
“Which is what?”
“Five years younger. So twenty-three.”
“All right,” Xochi said. “That’s bad. Or it sounds bad. I get that. But age is relative, isn’t it? I might be less experienced than you, but I’m not convinced you’re more mature.”
“I’m sure you’re right. A mature person probably wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place.” Leviticus took a drink of water, then handed the glass to Xochi.
“We’re both in it,” Xochi said. She drank some water, wishing again for a cigarette. “What’s next?”
He didn’t look at the notebook this time, but right at her. “Just . . . the way it is with us.” His hand twitched. He wanted to touch her. She could feel it, a feather against her cheek. “It’s intense. I put it in the pros column, but I was thinking. I wouldn’t wish myself on a beginner. You don’t deserve that.”
Xochi tucked her feet under the cushion separating them. “You’re making a lot of assumptions. I get that you don’t want to be an asshole, but it’s not your job to decide what I deserve.”
Leviticus looked down at his hands. “There are some things you learn with time. And you said it yourself, you work for us, live in our house. In principle, it seems wrong.”
Xochi exhaled, suddenly exhausted. “I get that we can’t do this. I’m not saying we should. But I don’t know if age is as big a factor as you seem to think.”
Leviticus sat on his end of the sofa, not answering. He retrieved a throw pillow from the floor and held it to his chest like a shield. The fire hissed, coming back to life. Xochi picked up the guitar and started to strum.
“We agree on the most important thing,” he said.
“We do.” Xochi nodded. “Pallas comes first.” She found a chord that reminded her of a song one of the strippers had danced to. She hummed the melody to herself, picking out the notes.
“‘I Put a Spell on You’?” Leviticus asked.
“Yes.” Xochi laughed. Leviticus rolled his eyes, a move stolen straight from Pallas.
“Good taste,” he said, smiling.
I heard it today, Xochi wanted to say. In the strip club where I found my loser mom. She tried the chords again, but couldn’t get the rhythm right.
“It’s heavier,” Leviticus said. “Like a regular blues, but in three. Or like a waltz with a heavy accent on the one.”
“Here. Just show me.”
He took the guitar and began to play, slowing down and stretching the notes like taffy, his voice making it hard not to touch him again. When the song was over, he offered her the guitar. She shook her head. It was all she could do to stay on her own side of the sofa.
“Don’t stop playing yet. Okay?”
“Okay.”
He leaned back and got comfortable, guitar resting in his lap. He ran through snippets of blues songs, union anthems, Irish ballads, singing where he knew the words and humming when he forgot them. Sound filled the space between them, a substitute for touch. Xochi curled up in the corner of the sofa. Hot tears dripped from her eyes, a benign process unconnected to distress. The damp spot they made on the pillow smelled sweet, just like honey.
The songs shifted to moody lullabies—Nick Cave, Marianne Faithful, Tom Waits. Leviticus played until the fire burned out, until the room got cold, until the sun rose and Xochi fell asleep.
IV.
Sister rises from the mud
Greets the golden moon
A song trills the forest
Deep cold water
She finds a bowl of moonlight
Hot kisses glacial cold
Everything is pleasure
Seismic, Sister shakes
In the city Xochi cries, love not
Birdsong. Sister’s mouth opens
On her tongue, a sun-furred queen
It is time to return to the city
To find the woman in the moon
Heat deep, Brother rises
His tears taste like Sister’s
Golden, broken and sweet
32
You’re a Big Girl Now
Pallas pulled Io’s cashmere sweater tighter around her nightgown. Her fever had left her hollowed, but in a nice way, like she was a wind chime or a shell. She sat at her mother’s dressing table, fiddling with the tops of perfume bottles as Io braided her hair.
“Your face is changing,” Io said, a finger against Pallas’s cheek.
She’d certainly gotten taller. And heavier. Earlier, when Leviticus had come to check on her, he’d given her a piggyback ride to Io’s room, panting by the time they’d arrived. She knew she was too big to be carried now, but it was nice that her dad did it anyway.
Io leaned over and dabbed perfume behind Pallas’s ears. Pallas longed to slip her arms around her mother’s narrow waist, to bury her face in Io’s long, wavy hair. But she stopped, afraid of the metal she might feel through her mother’s shirt.
“I got my period,” Pallas said.
Io paled. “When?” she asked, too casually.
“A few days ago. After I got back from LA.”
“Did you . . . know what to do? Do you need anything?” Io was starting to look weepy. Xochi had tried to explain why Pallas should tell her mom. It was important somehow, she could see now.
“I got blood everywhere, but it turned out okay,” Pallas said. “Xochi was with me.”
Io met Pallas’s eyes in the mirror. “If you ever need anything or just want to talk, you can come to me. You know that, don’t you?”
“Mom?” Pallas said. “Please don’t tell anyone else. I mean, Kiki is fine. And Bubbles. But none of the guys. Not even Dad. Okay?”
“Of course. Girls only. You wouldn’t want . . . a moon ritual, would you? Some girls do them.”
Pallas smiled. “Probably not. I’ve never been a very good witch.”
Io laughed. “Not every witch is woo-woo.” She kissed the top of Pallas’s head. “Are you sure you don’t want to come for sushi? We can bundle you up and take a taxi.”
“No, thank you. Pad’s spaghetti sounds better.” Also, she wanted to give her parents time alone. In the few moments Leviticus had stayed after unloading Pallas onto Io’s bed, there had been a gentle playfulness between the two of them, like a cat and dog making friends through a fence.
“All right, then,” said Io, holding out her hand. “I can’t carry you, but may I escort you to dinner, my lady?”
Pallas held out her hand. “You may.”
33
Age of Consent
Xochi woke in the dark, the embers of her dream already dying. One final image lingered—Gina as a jewelry box ballerina, dancing on a strawberry whipped cream cake. The clock read 7:15 p.m. She’d been asleep all day.
She turned on her reading lamp to find a battered guitar case on the floor beside her bed, a rolled piece of paper tucked into the handle. Xochi leaped for it, carefully unfurling the thin parchment paper. Written in a slanted hand between cursive and print, it read:
Dear Xochi,
I’m so sorry for the mixed messages I’ve sent. I hope you’re not confused or hurt. I don’t want to lose your friendship or your trust. Please accept Prudence as a token of my sincerest admiration. Be good to her and think of me when you play.
Leviticus
The previous night coursed through her body. Xochi let herself imagine a hotel room, a stolen night with Leviticus. But how much could possibly be enough? They’d have to check out eventually, and then what? Back to Eris Gardens?
Xochi pulled the guitar from the case and held it against her body. Memory filled in its curves: Xochi handing the guitar to Leviticus, his smile when she’d tuned it. Evan used to look like that when they played together. He’d been so sad after Gina left, but when they sat on Loretta’s porch with their guitars, he would smile at Xochi, thoughts of Gina faded to a minor moon.
Wait a minute. Xochi was supposed to be thinking about unrequited lust, but here she was, back on the farm. She climbed into bed, laying the guitar down beside her, tuning pegs on the pillow. It smelled like incense, probably the scent of Leviticus’s bedroom.
Xochi must have seemed like such a bargain to everyone at Eris Gardens—no past, no problem. She almost laughed, imagining the moment her Trojan horse of a mom showed up to loose her dysfunction cannons on Eris Gardens. If Ky thought he had a reason to hate Xochi now, just wait until her whole messy past rolled up in tight jeans and a tube top, ready to rumble.
And what about Xochi? She’d certainly created some drama of her own. And was it mere coincidence that her subconscious produced Evan when she thought about Leviticus? The parallels came together—two handsome musicians, two absent blondes. It meant something, but Xochi wasn’t sure what. There were differences, of course. Gina and Evan were nothing like Io and Leviticus. No, the common denominator was Xochi.
She read the letter again, this time noting its formal tone, clearly meant to distance her. Message received. She’d keep the guitar, though.
She got up, walked to the bathroom, and stood in front of the mirror. Tired eyes looked back at her, black in the weak overhead light. She touched her breasts. They were small for her frame. It was fine to be tall and have hips if you had big boobs to match. Then you were statuesque. Her hand went to her belly. Even when she held her breath, it curved outward slightly. She touched it, imagining what Leviticus felt. The skin was soft, the flesh squishy. An image presented itself: Andi, her shirt lifting when she hugged Leviticus with her toned arms and six-pack.
Xochi splashed her face with water. Her skin was washed out from winter, but it would turn brown with some sun. Her cheekbones were high, but her cheeks a little too round, her nose “cute” rather than beautiful. Big dark wide-
spaced eyes and long lashes were her best features. She also had nice lips, full and small. A rosebud mouth—that was what Gina used to call it.
Xochi was attractive. She knew that. But it was a soft kind of pretty—pleasant, but not interesting. Nothing like Io. Entire magazine spreads were dedicated to her atypical, birdlike beauty and perfect ballerina body.
Xochi thought of Gina onstage, her thinness resembling Io’s. Was she onstage now, flying around the pole? Or was she at home, an apartment somewhere in the city? Did she have another man now? Another kid? No, not likely. Gina had never wanted that. She hadn’t even wanted Xochi.
Back in her room, Xochi buckled the guitar into its case. She picked up the note, the ivory paper and black ink reminding her of Leviticus’s tattoos. She folded her regret away with his words, smaller and smaller, a postage-stamp secret burrowed in her underwear drawer. Avoiding the mirror, she pulled on pajama pants and headed downstairs.
The kitchen was noisy and crowded. Pallas sat perched on a stool at the counter. Pad wanted her to eat garlic bread for her immune system and Kylen was teasing her about drinking wine for her health. Xochi stood in the doorway, trying not to look like she was searching for Leviticus.
“Hey, Xochi,” Pad said. “Can we feed you?”
“Sure! That garlic bread smells great.” Xochi joined Pallas at the counter. “How are you feeling?”
“So much better. I should be back to my old tricks by tomorrow.”
“Right—reading philosophy, writing letters, knitting. You know, you’re a Victorian spinster trapped in a twelve-year-old’s body,” said Kiki.
“Kiki, you seem better.” Xochi hoped she sounded casual. “How’s Io?”
“She says she’s better, but Lev took her out for sushi to seal the deal.”
Xochi shivered. Furred husks rose in her throat, wings turned to dust. She poured herself a glass of wine. When she looked up, Kylen was staring.
“Bubbles and the boys are going to a party,” Kiki said. “Why don’t you go with them, Xochi? It’s a wild scene. You should experience it at least once.”
All of Us with Wings Page 18
