by Paula Guran
“And that much, I can paint.”
Maeve took a sketchbook and went back to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It seemed like the right place to start, even if
she didn’t put the church itself into her painting. Full circle, somehow, to try and end the transformation in the same place she had first witnessed it.
Spring had come early, the buds on the trees beginning to limn the branches with a haze of green. The crocuses unfurled their purples in among the feet of the trees, and an occasional bold daffodil waved yellow.
And this was transformation, too, Maeve thought. More regular, less astonishing than a man suddenly enfeathered, but change all the same.
Maeve sat beneath a branch of birdsong, and cleared her mind of the magic she had been asked to make. If the bird—if Sweeney was correct, it would be there anyway.
She opened her sketchbook, and began to draw.
Sweeney walked the streets of his city. It wasn’t often that he wandered on foot, preferring to save his peregrinations for when he wore wings. But tonight, he did not want to be above the grease and char scents of food cooking on sidewalk carts, of the crunch of shattered glass beneath his shoes.
He wanted the pulse and the press of people he had never quite felt home among. They would be his home, if Maeve succeeded. Perhaps then he would feel as if he belonged.
He should have, perhaps, spent his night on the wing, the flight a fragment to shore against the ruin of his days once he could no longer fly. He would miss, every day of his life he would miss the sensation of the air as his feathers cut through it. But he would have a life.
Sweeney bought truly execrable coffee in an “I Love NY” cup, because at that moment, with every fiber of his being, Sweeney did.
“Can I ask,” Maeve hesitated.
“How this happened,” Sweeney said.
She looked up from her sketchbook. “Well, yes. I don’t want to be rude, or ask you to talk about something that’s hurtful, but maybe I’ll know better how to paint you out of being a bird if I know how you became one in the first place.”
“It was a curse.”
“I thought that was the kind of thing that only happened in fairytales.”
Sweeney shrugged, then apologized.
“That’s fine. I don’t need you to hold the pose … And I’ll stop interrupting.” Maeve bent back to her sketchbook.
“It is like something from a fairy tale. I was angry. I spoke and acted without thought, and, in the way of these things, it was a wizard I insulted. He cursed me for what I had done.
“For over a thousand years since, this has been my life.”
“I’m sorry. Even if it was your fault, over a thousand years of vengeance seems cruel.”
Tension rippled over Sweeney’s skin. He shrank in on himself, fingers curling to claws.
“What is it?”
Sweeney extended his arm. Feathers downed its underside. “I had hoped this wouldn’t happen.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Only in my pride. Which was the point of the thing, after all.” He schooled his breathing, and Maeve watched him relax, muscle by muscle. Except for a patch near his wrist, the feathers fell from Sweeney’s skin.
“May I?” Maeve asked.
Sweeney nodded.
Maeve stroked her hand over the feathers, feeling the softness, and the heat of Sweeney’s skin beneath. Heart racing like a bird’s she stepped closer and kissed him.
A beat passed, and then another.
Sweeney’s hand fisted in her hair, and he shuddered a breath into her mouth. She struggled out of her clothes, not wanting to break the kiss, or the contact.
Feathers alternated with skin under Maeve’s hands, and Sweeney traced the outlines of her shoulder blades as if she, too, had wings.
As they moved together, Sweeney was neither feathered nor mad. Maeve did not feel the panic of a body too close, only the joy of a body exactly close enough.
White feathers blanketed the floor beneath them.
Maeve looked at Sweeney. “I don’t think the painting is going to work.”
“Why?” He tucked her hair behind her ear.
“I mean, I think it will be a good painting. But I don’t think it will be magic.”
“I’m no worse than I am now if it isn’t. All I ask is for a good painting, Maeve. Anything beyond that would be,” he smiled, “magic.”
The parcel arrived in Wednesday’s post. Inside, the sketchbook Maeve had lost. In the front cover, a scrawled note: “Forgive me my temporary theft. It’s long past time that I returned this. —S.” There was also a white feather.
She flipped through the pages and wondered what Sweeney had seen that convinced him her art was magic, the kind of magic that could help him. Whatever that thing had been, she couldn’t see it.
Maeve kept the feather, but she slid the notebook into a fresh envelope to return it to Sweeney. Even if she couldn’t give him freedom, she could give him this.
That done, Maeve took down all of the reference photos of mystical, fantastic birds that she had printed out and hung on her walls while painting the show for the gallery. She closed the covers of the bestiaries, and slid feathers into glassine envelopes, making bright kaleidoscopes of fallen flight.
She packed away the shadow boxes, the skeletons, the figurines, reshelved the fairy tales.
The return of the sketchbook had reminded her of one thing. If there were any magic she could claim, it was hers, pencil on a page, pigment on canvas. It came from her, not from anywhere else.
The only things Maeve left in sight were a white feather, a photo she had downloaded from her phone of a naked man perched in a tree, and the sketches she had made of Sweeney. Finally, she hung the recent sketches from the cathedral. She would have to go back there, she thought, before this was finished, but not yet. Not until the end.
At first, Sweeney thought it was the madness come upon him again. His skin itched as if there were feathers beneath it, but they were feathers he could neither see nor coax out of his crawling skin.
His bones ground against each other, too light, the wrong shape, shivering, untrustworthy. Not quite a man, not wholly a bird and uncertain what he was supposed to be.
The soar of flight tipped over the edge into vertigo, and he landed with an abrading slap of his hands against sidewalk.
And then he knew.
Maeve was painting. Painting his own, and perhaps ultimate, transformation.
Dizzy, he ran to where he had first seen her, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Maeve hated painting in public. Hated it. People stood too close, asked grating questions, offered opinions that were neither solicited nor useful, and offered them in voices that were altogether too loud.
The quiet space in her head that painting normally gave here became the pressure of voices, the pinprick texture of other people’s eyes on her skin.
She hated it, but this was the place she had to paint, to finish Sweeney’s commission here at the cathedral. The end was the beginning.
On the canvas: the shadow of Sweeney rising to meet him, a man-shape grayed and subtle behind a bird. Sweeney, feathers raining around him as he burst from bird to man. A white bird, spiraling in flight, haunting the broken tower of the cathedral, a quiet and stormy ruin.
The skies behind Maeve filled with all manner of impossible birds. On the cathedral lawn, women played chess, and when one put the other in check, a man in a far away place stood up from a nearly negotiated peace.
Behind Maeve, Sweeney gasped, stumbled, fell. And still, she painted.
This time, it felt like magic.
The pain was immense. Sweeney could not speak, could not think, could barely breathe as he was unmade. Maeve was not breaking his curse, she was painting a reality apart from it.
Feathers exploded from beneath his skin, roiling over his body in waves, and disappearing again.
He looked up at the canvas, watched Maeve paint, watched the t
rails of magic in her brush strokes. In the trees were three birds with the faces and torsos of women, sirens to sing a man to his fate.
The church bells rang out, a sacred clarion, a calling of time, and Sweeney knew how this would end.
It was not what he had anticipated, but magic so rarely was.
Maeve set her brush down, and shook the circulation back into her hands. A white bird streaked low across her vision, and perched in front of one of the clerestory windows.
“Maeve.”
She turned, and Sweeney the man lay on the ground behind her. “Oh, no. This isn’t what I wanted.”
She sat next to him, took his hand. “What can I do?”
“Just sit with me, please.”
“Did you know this would happen, when you commissioned the painting?”
“I considered the possibility. I had to. Without the magic binding me into one spell or the next, the truth is I have lived a very long time, and I knew that death might well be my next migration.”
Sweeney’s next words were quieter, as if he was remembering them. “No one chooses his quest. It is chosen for him.”
Sweeney closed his eyes. “This is just another kind of flight.”
Maeve hung the finished painting on her wall. Outside, just beyond the open window, perched a white bird.
Unusual companions join an older Cubano musician at his nighttime gig at a children’s care facility.
SALSA NOCTURNA
DANIEL JOSÉ OLDER
People say that all musical geniuses die in the gutter, and I’ve made my peace with that, but this is ridiculous. Anyway, it’s a boiler room, but let me start at the beginning: the whole gigging around at late night bars and social clubs really began drying up right around the time the great white flight did a great white about-face. Mosta my main night spots shut down or started serving cappuccino instead of El Presidente. Two of my guys moved to Philly. Things were looking kinda grim, to be honest with you. I mean, me, I knew it’d work out in the long run—it’s not that I’m an optimist, there’s just certain things I do know—but meanwhile, the short run was kicking my ass. Kicking all our asses really.
So when my son’s girl Janey came to me about this gig at the overnight center, I had to pay her some mind. Janey’s a special kid, I gotta say. I couldn’t ask for a better woman for Ernesto either. She keeps him in line, reminds him, I think, where he is from, that he’s more than that fancy suit he puts on every morning. And she makes us all laugh with that mouth of hers too. Anyway, she comes to me one morning while I’m taking my morning medicina with my café con leche and bacon, eggs and papas fritas. I always take my high blood pressure pills with a side of bacon or sausage, you know, for balance.
“Gordo,” she says. My name is Ernesto too, just like my son, but everyone calls me Gordo. It’s not ’cause I’m fat. Okay, it’s ’cause I’m fat. “Gordo,” she says, “I want you to come interview at this place I work on Lorimer.” You see what she did? She made it look like I would be doing her the favor. Smart girl, Janey.
I eyed her coolly and put some more bacon in me.
“They need someone to watch the kids at night and later on maybe you can teach music in the mornings.”
“Kids?” I said. “What makes you think I want to have anything to do with kids?”
There’s two kinds of people that really are drawn to me: kids and dead people. Oh yeah, and crackheads on the street but that hardly counts because they obviously have an agenda. Kids seek me out like I’m made of candy. They find me and then they attach themselves to me and they don’t let go. Maybe it’s because I don’t really buy into that whole “Aren’t they cute” shit, I just take ’em as they come. If I walk onto a playground, and I swear to you I’m never the instigator, it’s like some memo goes out: Drop whatever game you’re playing and come chase the fat guy. Family events and holidays? Forget it. I don’t really mind it because I hate small talk, and if there’s one thing about kids, they give it to you straight: “Tío Gordo why you so big?”
And I get real serious looking. “Because I eat so many children,” I say.
Then they run off screaming and usually, I give chase until I start wheezing.
It beats How’s the music business? and Oh, really? How interesting! Because really and truly, I don’t care how everyone’s little seed is doing at CUNY or whatever.
I’m not bragging but even teenagers like me. They don’t admit it most of the time, but I can tell. They’re just like overgrown, hairy five year olds anyway. Also, notoriously poor small talkers.
Janey told me exactly how it would go down and exactly what to say. She’s been doing this whole thing for a while now, so she speaks whitelady-ese like a pro. She had this Nancy lady down pat too, from the extra-extra smile to the cautious handshake to the little sing-song apologies dangling off every phrase. Everything went just like she said it would. The words felt awkward in my mouth, like pieces of food that’re too big to chew, and I thought that Nancy was on to me right up until she says—That sounds terrific, Mr. Cortinas.
You can call me Gordo, I say.
It’s called a non-profit but everyone at the office is obviously making a killing. The kids are called minority and emotionally challenged but there’s a lot more of them and they show a lot more emotions than the staff. It’s a care facility but the windows are barred. The list goes on and on, but still, I like my job. The building’s one of these old gothic type numbers on the not-yet-gentrified end of Lorimer. Used to be an opera house or something, so it’s still got all that good run-down music hall juju working for it. I show up at nine p.m. on the dot, because Janey said my sloppy Cuban time won’t cut it here so just pretend I’m supposed to be there at eight and I’ll be alright. And it works.
They set up a little desk for me by a window on the fifth floor. Outside I can see the yard and past that a little park. I find that if I smoke my Malagueñas in the middle of the hallway, the smell lingers like an aloof one-night stand till the morning and I get a stern/apologetic talking to from Nancy and then a curse-out from Janey. So, I smoke out the window.
It’s a good thing that most of the kids are already sleeping by the time I arrive, because even as it is I can feel my presence course through the building like an electrical current. I can’t help it. Occasionally a little booger will get up to make a number one or number two and not want to go back to bed. I make like I’m gonna slap ’em and they scatter back to their rooms. Soon they’ll be on to me though.
A little after midnight, the muertos show up. They’re always in their Sunday best, dressed to the nines, as they say, in pinstriped suits and fancy dresses. Some of them even have those crazy Spanish flamenco skirts on. They wear expensive hats and white gloves. While the children sleep, the muertos gather around my little desk on the fifth floor foyer and carry on. Mostly they dance, but a few of them bring instruments: old wooden guitars and basses, tambores, trumpets. Some of them show up with strange ones that I’ve never seen before—African, I think—and then I have to figure out how to transpose whatever-it-is into the piano/horn section arrangement I’m used to.
Look, their music is close enough to what I’d write anyway, so either they’re some part of my subconscious or it’s a huge supernatural coincidence—really, what are the chances? So either way I don’t feel bad jotting down the songs. Besides, I started bringing my own little toy store carry-along keyboard and accompanying them. Course I keep the volume low so as not to wake up the little ones.
There’s a jangle to the music of the dead. I mean that certain something that’s so happy and so sad at the same time. The notes almost make a perfect harmony but don’t. Then they do but quickly crash into dissonance. They simmer in that sweet in-between, rhythm section rattling along all the while. Chords collapse chaotically into each other, and just when you think the whole thing’s gonna spill into total nonsense, it stands back up and comes through sweet as a lullaby on your mami’s lips. Songs that’ll make people tap their feet and
drink melancholically but not realize the twisting genius lurking within until generations later. That’s the kind of music I make, and the dead do too. We make it together.
Tonight was different, though. The muertos didn’t show up. They never scared me. If anything they kept me company in those wee hours. But this, this silence, made me shiver and feel like I was both being watched by a thousand unfriendly eyes and all alone in the world. I looked down that empty hallway. Tried to imagine my brand-new-long-lost friends making their shadowy way up towards me, but it remained empty.
Just to have something to do, I made the rounds. Each troubled young lump in its curled up spot. Some nights when I don’t feel like doing my music, I read their files. Their twisted little sagas unwind through evaluation forms and concerned emails. Julio plays with himself at meal times. Devon isn’t allowed near mirrors on the anniversary of his rape. Tiffany hides knives in case the faceless men come back for her. But night after night, they circle into themselves like those little curlup bugs and drift off into sleep.
One bed, though, was empty. The cut out construction paper letters on the door spelled MARCOS. A little Ecuadorian kid, if I remembered his file right. Untold horrors. Rarely spoke. The muertos being gone was bad in a supernatural, my-immortal-soul kind of way and Marcos being gone was bad in a frowning-Nancy-in-the-morning, lose-my-job kind of way, and I wasn’t really sure which was worse. I turned and walked very quickly back down the hallway. First I spot-checked all the rooms I’d already passed just in case little man was crouching in one of the corners unnoticed. But I knew he wasn’t. I knew wherever Marcos was, there would be a whole lot of swaying shrouds with him. Remember I told you sometimes I just know stuff? This was one of those things. Besides, I don’t believe in coincidence. Not when kids and the dead are involved.
When I got to the end of the hallway, I stood still and just panted and sweated for a minute. That’s when I heard the noise coming from one of the floors below. It was just barely there, a ghost of a sound really, and kept fading away and coming back. Like the little twinkling of a music box, far, far away.
