Dirty Wings

by Sarah Mccarry

  The studio is a low one-story triangular brown building, windowless and grubby, up by the canal. Maia eyes it dubiously, unimpressed. The door is unlocked and Jason walks in without hesitating. Inside, it’s dark, and Maia has a brief impression of a vast and cavernous space, far bigger than is possible for the tiny building to contain. She can hear water running somewhere, and the faint movement of a breeze. But someone flips a light switch and they are in an ordinary building, cleaner than she would have expected from the outside. White walls are covered with framed show posters. She recognizes a sound booth, and the recording room. Against one wall of the main room is an old upright piano that’s seen better days.

  And then Maia sees him: the man from her dreams. Not possible, but still real. He is so thin there is nothing to him but skin and bone, but dressed elegantly in a well-cut black suit and a long black coat that looks almost like a cape. He looks up at Maia through the glass of the sound booth window, and even from here she can tell that his eyes are so black there is no difference between where the pupil stops and the iris begins. They look at each other for a long time. There is something so beautiful about him that her breath catches in her throat. Next to him, Jason looks like a child. She touches Byron’s arm as he carries a guitar past her. “Who’s that?” she asks, tilting her head toward the booth.

  “That guy? Producer. Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  “He doesn’t really talk,” Byron says. She nods and lets him go.

  Jason’s all business: directing Percy and Byron, setting up equipment, fiddling with knobs and dials. Awkward and aware of the producer’s eyes following her, she wanders over to the piano. The notes are tinny and stifled; it wasn’t a particularly good piano when it was new, and it’s probably thirty years old at least. Its sound is a far cry from what she’s used to, but it’s at least in tune. She runs a few scales. It’s the first time she’s played in weeks and her whole body opens up. She plays the first chords of the Ravel, but it feels like a travesty on this piano, and so she plays Chopin instead, the Nocturne in D-flat Major, imagining Oscar sitting behind her, murmuring It does not do to be fussy with Chopin. Chopin makes her think of homesickness, a kind of lost-ness, though Oscar despises that kind of sentimentality and scoffed at her when she told him so. But yearning, at least, is something she understands.

  She plays now for the last weeks, the mystery of where she is going, the mess she’s made of her own life. She plays for Jason, for herself, for Cass, the last chords moving up the keyboard as light and sorrowful as leaves falling, her hands coming to rest on the final notes, her heart easing a little. She shakes her head, coming back to herself. When she turns around the band is standing behind her, watching her. The producer has opened the door of the sound booth and is leaning against the frame. She meets his flat black gaze.

  “Man, that was really beautiful,” Byron says, his voice catching. Maia smiles to herself at the thought of these scruffy, sullen boys, with their dirty flannel shirts and their metal records, made maudlin by Chopin. That’ll teach you, she thinks. She cannot look away from the producer.

  “I told you,” Jason says, his voice tinged with triumph. She wonders why it was that Jason was so set on her coming here. She’d told him, of course, that she played, but he’s never heard her, has no idea how good she is. She’d never have suggested herself that she come, though it’s what she told Cass she wanted. To play like them. To be part of something, of making something, larger than herself. To create instead of just repeat, instead of just transmit. Here’s her chance, now, but the actual possibility of it, the reality of it, fills her with a cold terror.

  They start with a song she knows. Jason gave her their four-song demo tape when they first met, and she’s listened to it a hundred times by now. “I wrote all these songs for you before I met you,” he’d said, and he’d been so serious that it hadn’t even seemed a corny thing to say. They play the song once through without her, and she listens carefully for the ways the melody fits together with the bass, the places where there is room for her. But though she can identify the chords, the notes—if they asked her to, she could transcribe the whole song—she cannot see her way in. Its parts are knitted together with a bond she can’t unravel, and the weave of it has no place for the delicate threads of her. I can’t just make stuff up, she thinks, panicking. I don’t know how, I’ve never done it, I never should have said yes to this—and the sound of her own fear fills her head, until there is no music left in her at all.

  “Now this time, you come in,” Jason says.

  “I don’t think I can,” she says.

  “Just try it,” Byron says. “You can just play with the melody for now if that’s easier.”

  Maia shakes her head but puts her hands on the keys. “Okay,” she says, her voice tiny. They begin the song again. She waits. Here. No. Here. No. Here. Her sweaty hands freeze on the keys. I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I don’t make things. I don’t know how. I don’t know how. The injustice of it: She is a better musician than any of them, than all three of them put together. They finish playing. She will not look at them, refuses to see whatever it is that’s in their eyes. Pity or disappointment or contempt. Why did you do this to me? she thinks at Jason, furious. Why did you think this was a good idea?

  “We’ll start again,” Byron says. “Just come in whenever you’re ready.” They play through a third time and she sits at the keyboard, her hands frozen into claws. She considers playing the Chopin again, over them, to drown them out with what she knows. They finish, begin again. When they start to play the song for the fifth time she pushes the bench away from the keyboard and walks out the front door.

  She sits on the sidewalk for a long time and cries. Wishes for Cass, for Oscar, for her car so she could at least get out of here. She hears soft footsteps behind her. Jason, she thinks. What on earth am I going to say to him? But it’s the producer.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  His voice is so low it’s almost as though she hears it inside her.

  There is no need to be sorry. I know what you are capable of. I have been listening to you for a long time. He squats on his haunches next to her, the movement graceful. He reaches out with one bony finger, traces the salt trails across her cheek. His touch is cool. She closes her eyes. He strokes the side of her cheek, his fingers lingering at the corner of her mouth before returning to the curve of her cheekbone, the touch lulling her into a haze. So beautiful. he says. So few among you are this beautiful, I had forgotten. I had forgotten. His fingers come to rest at her mouth, his thumb tracing the line of her bottom lip. A slow warmth spreads through her.

  “I had a dream about you.”

  Did you? His tone is neutral, maybe a little bemused. Do you like this band?

  “I married the singer.”

  I could lend them a bright future. Do you wish such a thing?

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  All the riches of this earth can be yours, child, and the world below. Would you follow him anywhere?

  “Jason? I promised him,” she says, a little dazed. It is as if he can see into the heart of her, this stranger from her dreams. He cups her chin with his hand and looks into her eyes.

  Would you follow me instead?

  “I said no,” she says. “You know I can’t. You know.”

  He smiles. I will see you again, he says. He stands slowly, taking his hand away, and she wants to cry out in protest, but though her mouth opens no sound comes out. She cannot move her head as he walks away. Her muscles have gone liquid, her body soft and unresponsive, the whole of her molten. She brings one hand to the corner of her mouth, feeling the icy burn of his touch, as though he has branded her. When she is able at last to stand she climbs shakily to her feet, opens the door of the van and crawls inside, curls up on the backseat and falls asleep immediately. She dreams of a dark forest full of dead white trees, a black palace standing in the middle of an empty plain, the producer’s hands mov
ing slowly across her body with deliberate grace. His mouth at her throat, his voice in her head, the soft coat wrapping around her, and then darkness.

  She wakes up on the drive back to the house. Someone has put a blanket over her. They’re talking in low, elated voices. “That last take, man,” Jason says. “That was fucking perfect. That was perfect.”

  “This album is going to be something,” Byron agrees.

  “It’s going to make us famous,” Jason says. “It’s going to make us famous.”

  “Too bad about Maia.” Byron.

  “She’s fine,” Jason says.

  “She’s really good,” Byron says.

  “She can’t play for shit with other people,” Percy says.

  “I don’t want to hear it, man,” Jason says.

  She sits up, pulling the blanket around her shoulders. It smells of cigarette smoke and boy, and she thinks all the way back to that first night on the beach, the five of them. What if she’d just fallen asleep, instead of going down the beach with Jason? What if in the morning they had all gone their separate ways, and none of this had happened? Where would she be now? Her cheek still hurts where the producer touched her. She wants Cass, desperately. She can’t play for shit with other people.

  “Hey, babe,” Jason says. “You awake?”

  “Yeah,” she says.

  “Just in time to celebrate, then,” he says.

  No one brings up what happened at the piano with her directly. For that small mercy, she’s grateful. They stop at a liquor store. She looks out the van window at the rain-streaked parking lot. It’ll be fall again soon. If she wants to go to New York, she has to decide. Her mouth feels swollen, bee-stung. She licks her lips as if she can taste his skin there. She thinks of the pomegranate Cass fed her on the beach in Mexico, the sweet-sour tang of the bloody seeds, bursting with juice in her mouth. The sharpness of it on her tongue like a promise. I will see you again. “Please,” she says aloud. The air around her stirs; a brush of something against her face, soft and dry, like wings. The heat at the heart of her throbs.

  The boys come running out of the liquor store, whooping and kicking their heels. They pile into the van, opening the first bottle before they even get the door closed, passing it around. At the house, Maia touches Jason’s shoulder before he goes inside. “I’m going to go see Cass,” she says.

  “Bring her over here,” he says magnanimously. Maia knows their enmity is mutual. But he’s kingly now, triumphant. They are already talking about music videos, shooting in LA. She wonders what the producer said to them while she was asleep, to make them so certain.

  “Sure,” she says.

  In the car on the way to Cass’s she listens to the tape Cass played for her on the way to the beach, that first night with Jason. The singer’s rich, unearthly keen fills the car. A candle flickers at the front window of Cass’s house. Maia knocks and lets herself in. Cass is sitting on the floor, a tarot spread laid out in front of her, a pint bottle of whiskey at her side. She raises her head. “I was going to go out,” she says, “but I had a feeling you might come.”

  “You need a phone,” Maia says, stealing a sip of Cass’s bourbon.

  “We need a lot of things.”

  “Come back to the house with me?”

  Cass narrows her eyes. “I don’t think Jason will be that happy to see me.”

  “He told me to invite you.”

  “He did?”

  “They recorded their album today. I think he’s feeling generous.”

  “You’re really selling me on the idea now,” Cass says, but she’s smiling. “Come here. Have a cigarette with me first.”

  Maia sits cross-legged on the floor, her knee overlapping Cass’s thigh. She rubs one hand up the length of Cass’s broad back as Cass rolls two cigarettes, lights them, hands her one.

  “I tried to play with them today,” Maia says.

  “When they were recording? How’d that go?”

  “I couldn’t do it. They played the same song over and over again and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even play a fucking chord.”

  “You’ve never tried playing with other people before,” Cass says. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  “There was this other guy there. The producer. He made me feel better about it, I guess. I ran out of the studio, Cass. It was really bad. But he came outside and—” And touched me, Maia thinks. He touched me, and I can’t stop thinking about it, and I might be going crazy. “He had these eyes. Like, all the way black. You know what’s weird? I think I dreamed about him.”

  Cass freezes under her hand. “What do you mean, you dreamed about him?”

  “Before. When I used to play that Ravel piece, the one I played for you? I fell asleep one night at the piano when I was practicing and dreamed about this guy who told me he’d been listening to me. And then today, in the studio, I felt this…” Maia trails off.

  “You felt what?”

  “I don’t know,” Maia says. “Is he someone you know?”

  “No.”

  “Are you not telling me something?”

  “No,” Cass says again. “No, it’s nothing. It’s nothing.”

  Maia is silent for a while. “I haven’t gotten my period since I met Jason.”

  “Oh, baby. That’s not good.”

  “No,” Maia says.

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re probably just late.”

  “Probably.”

  “If you’re not,” Cass says. “Whatever you need. I’ll go to the doctor with you.”

  “Have you ever—you know. Done that?”

  “Sure,” Cass says. “It’s not that bad. It’s over really fast. The doctor was kind of a jerk. But the nurse held my hand.”

  “It might be kind of cool, to have a kid,” Maia says. “I could have a girl.”

  Cass laughs. “I don’t think you get to pick.”

  “I know. But if it was a girl, we could raise her together. We’d make her so cool. You could tell her what music to listen to and I could teach her to play the piano. She would be so brave. She’d do whatever she wanted with her life.”

  “Maia. Or you could just do that yourself. With your own life. You’re seventeen.”

  “Almost eighteen.”

  “You don’t need to live your dreams through someone else.”

  “I know,” Maia says.

  “Do you?”

  “Sure,” Maia says, looking down at her lap. “But it’s Jason’s. If it’s a baby. It’s his baby.”

  “It’s not a baby,” Cass says, “and if it were, it’s yours.”

  Maia pushes one finger against the floorboards. Cass wants desperately to brush her hair out of her eyes, kiss the place where the line of her neck meets her shoulder. She looks away instead. “Jason’s not like other boys,” Maia says. “He’s fragile.” Cass shakes her head. “You’re strong,” Maia says. “He’s not strong. I think having something to take care of—I think it would change him. Be good for him.”

  “That’s a terrible reason to have a kid.”

  “Better than whatever reason my parents had me,” Maia says. “Since it turned out they didn’t want me.”

  “You don’t know that that’s true, Maia. You don’t know anything about them or why they gave you up. If you have a baby now, it’ll change everything.”

  “Maybe that’s what I need.”

  “You’re already strong.”

  “Not like you,” Maia says quietly.

  Cass sighs. “Come on,” she says, standing up. “I feel like getting drunker. Let’s go back to Jason’s.”

  “Cass? I love you.”

  “I love you too, princess.” Cass pulls Maia to her feet and pushes her toward the door, avoiding her eyes. “Come on.”

  THEN

  What Maia does tell her father, in the end, is only slightly less than the truth: that she aced her audition, which she did. He’s so pleased he hums
in the taxi on the way to dinner. This time, they eat at an Italian restaurant with real tablecloths and cloth napkins, and no one tries to talk to her in a language she does not know. She pokes at her linguine with her fork, takes sips of the glass of wine her father ordered for her. Something her mother never would have done. She wonders what else would happen, if she spent more time with her father alone. The last couple days have suggested there’s a whole person hiding somewhere inside him, a stranger who blossoms when he’s on his own soil. He is chattering to her about where she will live in New York, how he will come visit her, how her whole life is about to begin. She’s coming down off the speed and the crash is dulling her senses, leaving her leaden and depressed, but her father doesn’t notice. She excuses herself to go to the bathroom and locks herself in the low-lit marble-tiled room. It’s tasteful, a wicker basket of real towels next to the sink. She splashes her face with water and stares at herself in the mirror for a long time. When she gets back to the table her father is regaling the waiter with tales of his genius daughter, the pianist. The waiter is doing his best to appear interested.

  “Dad, stop,” she says, sitting down, and the waiter, seeing his chance, murmurs something and flees. She lets her father talk for the rest of the dinner, in the taxi back to the hotel, in the elevator up to their rooms, and when at last she shuts the door on him that night he is still talking, still telling a story that has nothing to do with her. That night she dreams she is walking with Cass along an oily black river that winds through a forest of white-barked and leafless trees, both of them looking for something that is just out of reach. But what it is they seek, she cannot say.

  Back home, she goes through the motions of her life as if nothing has changed, but something irrevocable has shifted inside her. A month passes, and then another. She practices, goes to Oscar’s, reads her geometry textbooks in her room. Her roots grow in. She wears the grey shirt she stole in front of her mother, and her mother says nothing. She starts wearing the New Order shirt, the torn jeans. More clothes she gets with Cass. Tattered cutoffs with black tights. A sweatshirt with holes where her thumbs poke through. Still her mother says nothing, her silence a war of attrition that Maia, too, can keep fighting. Her house is becoming more unbearable by the day.