New York Fantastic

by Paula Guran

  There is no tale where we see the huntsman get his rewards. Believe me, I’ve looked and I know. But that Sunday evening I took the late train back to Penn Station. Walking underground along the platform of the Long Island Railway, I wasn’t paying much attention to what went on. In the gloom and humidity, I saw a figure of light. And when I looked your way, you pointed at the window of a car on the train I’d just gotten off.

  Inside was a commotion, a bunch of conductors and nosy citizens standing over a sleeping woman. She looked vulnerable, beautiful, her hair long and loose. I got right onto the car, told them I knew her. They seemed doubtful. So I bent over Norah and kissed her. She woke up, put her arms around my neck and said, “Prince!” And I picked her up and carried her off the train, up all the stairs, and back home.

  Who’s to say that the huntsman didn’t get to marry above his station and have three beautiful kids? What tale says he didn’t form a nice, discreet little security business, or that his wife hasn’t had a good career showing her work, teaching.

  When our oldest kid was little. I told her that story with certain things edited out. But I did mentioned the lady in the moonlight dress. When my daughter asked me who you were, I said to ask her mother.

  My wife also was raised on fairy tales. Maybe that’s what the marriage has going for it. But the book she had as a kid is different. French. There aren’t a whole lot of fairies in Grimm, in spite of the title. The French stories are choked with them. Fairy godmothers especially. Even when they’re not mentioned, you figure they’re operating behind the scene.

  For a long while Norah wouldn’t tell me much about her fairy godmother. Lately, though, she’s said a couple of things about you. She loved Louis, like I say, and this film has bothered the hell out of her. Which brings us to the matter at hand. People are stirring. Victor Sparger is about to make his entrance.

  4

  Louis Raphael got a lot of money very fast. It’s too bad. He was basically a sweet kid at the start. His stuff grows on me, like that life size picture in the movie still on the wall. The staring face is almost familiar, the words are like slogans you heard in dreams. He came out of nowhere and caught the attention of the world. Everyone wanted to be his friend. Then something else caught their attention and he was left strung out, crazy and deep in the hole. Nobody wanted to know him. Then he was dead, way shy of thirty. Now everyone wants to be his friend again.

  That particular scene is now history. The boat has sailed, the balloons have gone up, the reputations have all been made. And anyone in the future who wants to set a movie in New York in 1980 will make it look like a Louis Raphael painting. Like they use Gershwin tunes when they want to say it’s 1930.

  The downtown ethic is that if you’re not moving, you’re meat. Enter Victor Sparger. Victor was the artist who had made all the right choices, been in the right places, said the right things, donated to the right charity, bought property at the right moment. In life he had been no friend to Raphael. As a rival, he was nowhere.

  But with Louis dead, Victor saw his chance to swallow him whole. He could make sure that anyone interested in Louis Raphael would have to go through Victor Sparger.

  That’s when his real talents came into play. He tied up all the rights to Louis’ life. He enlisted the help of Rinaldo Baupre and Edith Crann. He oversaw Rinaldo’s script. And in it he is Louis best friend, his big brother, his mentor in bad times. The fact that back then Victor was busy jumping on the fingers of everybody who tried to crawl out of the hole, disappears from history.

  Rumplestiltskin, after they guess his name, stamps so hard he puts his foot through the floor and rips himself in two trying to pull himself free. Watching Rinaldo Baupre tonight, I remember his mother telling me how Marvin Splevetsky went to New York to become a poet, a famous writer. Instead he’s a supporting player the story of others’ lives. And it’s tearing him apart.

  Owning Louis Raphael’s work has given Edith Crann a certain claim to existence. She is the sum of her possessions. She accumulates because she can’t help herself. In that same way she once tried to collect the soul of a child.

  A short time after Alycia disappeared, Mrs. Crann started sporting a nasty little smile. It reminded me of poison apples and long comas. I worried about the kid. Tonight, though, Edith seems nervous. In the story, the queen’s spell is broken, Snow White wakes up and falls in love. The Wicked Queen is invited to her wedding and can’t refuse to go. For the wedding, iron slippers get heated over a fire. When the queen sees them, she can’t help herself. She puts them on and dances until her heart bursts. Did today’s mail bring Edith her invitation to Alycia’s wedding? Norah and I just got ours.

  Like I said, my wife grew up with a different book. Sometimes the stories are different versions of the ones I know. I’ve been reading them to my kids. As much of an education for me as for them. The other night, I sat down with the four-year-old and read him one I’d never looked at before, the French “Little Red Riding Hood.” In the story I remember, she was Little Red Cap.

  I’d already been asked to do this gig and certain things about it bothered me. But I couldn’t have told you what. As I read, though, I began to understand exactly what was wrong. Then I got to the end of the story and there was no huntsman who happens to be passing by. He’s the one who rushes in, cuts open the belly of the wolf and saves the kid and her grandmother. In my wife’s book, they get eaten and stay eaten.

  It’s one of the big hunter parts in the stories and it’s not in the French book. All they have is some piece of smart-ass poetry telling us not to talk to strangers.

  That bothered me until I remembered that no fairy godmother appeared dropping clues in “Rumplestiltskin.” But you were there. You’re not in “Little Red Riding Hood” either. So I figure since you showed up today it may mean there’s a place for me in this version of the story.

  Now there’s a buzz in the room. Victor Sparger, unshaven to just the fashionable degree, walks among us in a two thousand-dollar workman’s jumpsuit. He’s smiling and sleek. The way you look, I guess, after you’ve swallowed someone whole. And I don’t know how I’m going to cut open this particular beast.

  See him one way and Louis Raphael was no innocent child. He’d come off the street and that part of his life never left him. Another way of looking at it, though, is that nobody is more trusting than a street person who puts his life in strangers’ hands again and again. Or than the artist who shows everybody in the world his riches. Almost asking to be eaten whole.

  As I think about that, your hand moves, a wand flashes like a laser. Something moves behind Victor and I realize the eyes in the Raphael painting have shifted. They stare, haunted, trapped, at Victor Sparger. The graffiti now says, “In Prison There Is Nothing to Breathe.” And the face is Louis Raphael’s.

  Everyone: Rinaldo and Edith, the murderers and the Chinese drag waitresses, the battle hardened Downtown circuit riders who you can bet have seen a lot, turn toward Sparger and say things like, “Oh Victor, what a big film you’ve got!”

  Sparger smiles, false modesty and vindictive triumph on his face. And he replies, “All the better to eat you with.” Or words to that effect.

  Then people see the staring face, read the words on the the picture above Victor’s head. You nod to me that this is the moment and I reach into my pocket. They say that a Swiss Army Knife can kill in a dozen ways. I’ve made it a point to learn none of them. But for this it’s perfect. I step forward and make a single cut across the front of the still. And, simple as magic, out leaps the one trapped inside.

  Even in his cursed form, the man recognized New York as a city of the mad. Living there—thriving there—took a particular form of acceptable madness.

  PAINTED BIRDS AND SHIVERED BONES

  KAT HOWARD

  The white bird flew through the clarion of the cathedral bells, winging its way through the rich music of their tolling to perch in the shelter of the church’s walls. The chiming continued, marking time
into measured, holy hours.

  Maeve had gone for a walk, to clear her head and give herself the perspective of something beyond the windows and walls of her apartment. She could feel the sensation at the back of her brain, that almost-itch that meant a new painting was ready to be worked on. Wandering the city, immersing herself in its chaos and beauty would help that back of the head feeling turn into a realized concept.

  But New York had been more chaos than beauty that morning. Too much of everything and all excess without pause. Maeve felt like she was coming apart at the seams.

  In an effort to hold herself together, Maeve had gone to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. There, she could think, could sit quietly, could stop and breathe without people asking what was wrong.

  Midwinter was cold enough to flush her cheeks as she walked to the cathedral, but Maeve couldn’t bear being inside—large as the church was, she could feel the walls pressing on her skin. Instead, she perched on a bench across from the fallen tower, and pulled her scarf higher around her neck.

  Maeve sipped her latte, and leaned back against the bench, then sat up. She closed her eyes, then opened them again.

  There was a naked man crouched on the side of the cathedral.

  She dug in her purse for her phone, wondering how it was possible that such a relatively small space always turned into a black hole when she needed to find anything. Phone finally in hand, she sat up.

  The naked man was gone.

  In his place was a bird. Beautiful, white feathers trailing like half-re membered thoughts. Impressive, to be sure, especially when compared to the expected pigeons of the city. But bearing no resemblance to a man, naked or otherwise.

  Maeve let her phone slip through her fingers, back into her bag, and sat up, shaking her head at herself. “You need to cut down on your caffeine.”

  “You thought what?” Emilia laughed. “Oh, honey. The cure for thinking that you see a naked man at the cathedral isn’t giving up caffeine, it’s getting laid.”

  “Meeting men isn’t really a priority for me.” Maeve believed dating to be a circle of Hell that Dante forgot.

  “Maeve, you don’t need to meet them. Just pick one.” Emilia gestured at the bar.

  Maeve looked around. “I don’t even know them.”

  “That’s exactly my point.” Emilia laughed again. “Take one home, send him on his way in the morning, and I can guarantee your naked hallucinations will be gone.”

  “Fine.” Maeve sipped her bourbon. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  Surprising precisely no one, least of all the woman who had been her best friend for a decade, Maeve went home alone, having not even attempted to take one of the men in the bar with her. She hung up her coat, and got out her paints.

  Dawn was pinking the sky when she set the brush down and rolled the tension from her neck and shoulders.

  The canvas was covered in birds.

  Madness is easier to bear with the wind in your feathers. Sweeney flung himself into the currents of the air, through bands of star light that streaked the sky, and winged toward the cloud-coated moon.

  Beneath Sweeney, the night fell on the acceptable madness of the city. Voices cried out to each other in greeting or curse. Tires squealed and horns blared. Canine throats raised the twilight bark, and it was made symphonic by feline yowls, skitterings of smaller creatures, and the songs of more usual birds.

  Not Sweeney’s.

  Silent Sweeney was borne on buffeting currents over the wild lights of the city. Over the scents of concrete and of rot, of grilling meat and decaying corners, of the blood and love and dreams and terrors of millions.

  And of their madness as well.

  Even in his bird form, Sweeney recognized New York as a city of the mad. Not that one needed to be crazy to be there, or that extended residency was a contributing factor to lunacy of some sort, but living there—thriving there—took a particular form of madness.

  Or caused it. Sweeney had not yet decided which.

  He had not chosen his immigration, but had been pulled over wind and salt and sea by the whim of a wizard. Exiled from his kingdom in truth, though there were no kings in Ireland anymore.

  On he flew, through a forest of buildings built to assault the sky. Over bridges, and trains that hurtled from the earth as if they were loosed dragons. Over love and anger and countless anonymous mysteries.

  Sweeney tucked his wings, and coasted to the ground at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The ring of church bells set the madness on him, sprang the feathers from his skin, true. But madness obeyed rules of its own devising, and the quietness of the cathedral grounds soothed him. He roosted in the ruined tower, and fed on seed scattered on the steps after weddings.

  He had done so for years, making the place a refuge. There had been a woman, Madeleine, he thought her name was, who smelled of paper and stories. She had been kind to him, kind enough that he had wondered sometimes if she could see the curse beneath the feathers. She scattered food, and cracked the window of the room she worked in so that he might perch just inside the frame, and watch her work among the books.

  Yes. Madeleine. He had worn his man shape to her memorial, there at the cathedral, found and read her books, with people as out of time as he was. She had been kind to him, and kindness was stronger even than madness was.

  Maeve stood in front of the canvas, and wiped the remnants of sleep from her eyes with paint-smeared fingers.

  It was good work. She had gotten the wildness of the feathers, and the way a wing could obscure and reveal when stretched in flight. She could do a series, she thought.

  “I mean, it’s about time, right?” she asked Brian, her agent, on the phone. “Be ambitious, move out of my comfort zone, all those things you keep telling me I need to do.”

  “Yes, but birds, Maeve?”

  “Not still lifes, or landscapes, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Well, not worried exactly … Look, send me pictures of what you’re working on. I’ll start looking for a good venue to show them. If it doesn’t work, we’ll call this your birdbrained period.”

  It hadn’t been the resounding endorsement of her creativity that Maeve had been hoping for, but that was fine. She would paint now, and enthusiasm could come later.

  She could feel her paintings, the compulsion to create, just beneath the surface of her skin. She gathered her notebook and pencils, and went out into the city to sketch.

  Sweeney perched on a bench in Central Park, plucking feathers from his arms. He had felt the madness creeping back for days this time before the feathers began appearing. Sure, he knew it was the madness. His blood itched, and unless that was the cursed feathers being born beneath his skin, itchy blood meant madness.

  Itchy blood had meant madness and feathers for close to forever now, hundreds of years since the curse had first been cast. Life was long, and so were curses.

  Though when he thought about it, Sweeney suspected curses were longer.

  Pigeons cooed and hopped about near the bench’s legs, occasionally casting their glinting eyes up at him. Sweeney thumbed a nail beneath a quill, worried at it until he could get a good grip. The feather emerged slowly, blood brightening its edges. He sighed as it slid from his skin. Sweeney flicked the feather to the ground, and the pigeons scattered.

  “Can’t blame you. I don’t like the fucking things, either.” Sweeney tugged at the next feather, one pushing through the skin at the bend of his elbow. Plucking his own feathers wouldn’t stop the change, or even slow it, but it gave him something to do.

  “The curse has come upon me,” he said. Blood caked his nails, and dried in the whorls and creases of his fingers.

  And it would. The curse would come upon him, as it had time and time again, an ongoing atonement. He might be occasionally mad, and sometimes a bird with it, but Sweeney was never stupid. He knew the metamorphosis would happen. A bell would ring, and his skin would grow too tight around his bones, and he wo
uld bend and crack into bird shape.

  Sooner, rather sooner indeed than later, if the low buzz at the back of his skull was any indication.

  “But just because something is inevitable, doesn’t mean that we resign ourselves to it. No need to roll over and show our belly, now.” Sweeney watched the pigeons as they skritched about in the dirt.

  There were those who might say that Sweeney’s stubbornness had gone a long way to getting him into the fix he was currently in. Most days, Sweeney would agree with them, and on the days he wouldn’t, well, those days he didn’t need to, as his agreement was implied by the shape he wore.

  You didn’t get cursed into birdhood and madness because you were an even-tempered sort of guy.

  “You guys all really birds, there beneath the feathers?” Sweeney asked the flock discipled at his feet.

  The pigeons kept their own counsel.

  Then the bells marked the hour, and in between ring and echo, Sweeney became a bird.

  Dusk was painting the Manhattan skyline in gaudy reds and purples when Maeve looked up from her sketchbook. She had gotten some good studies, enough to start painting the series. She scrubbed her smudged hands against the cold-stiffened fabric of her jeans. She would get take out—her favorite soup dumplings—and then go home and paint.

  The bird winged its way across her sightlines as she stood up. Almost iridescent in the dying light, a feathered sweep of beauty at close of day. Watching felt transcendent—

  “Oh, fuck, not again.” In the tree not a bird, but a man, trying his best to inhabit a bird-shaped space.

  Maeve closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened them again. Still: Man. Tree. Naked.

  “Okay. It’s been a long day. You forgot to eat. You have birds on the brain. You’re just going to go home now”—she tapped the camera button on her phone—“and when you get there, this picture of a naked man is going to be a picture of a bird.”