right at theedge, where it gleamed sharp in the click-clack of the passing highwaylights.
He was transfixed by it, and the car drifted a little, sprayed gravelfrom the shoulder, and he overcorrected and fishtailed a little. Shelooked up in alarm.
"You brought the knife," he said, in response to her unasked question.
"Couldn't leave it with him," she said. "Besides, a sharp knife ishandy."
"Careful you don't slice anything off, okay?"
"I never cut anything *unintentionally*," she said in a silly-dramaticvoice, and socked him in the shoulder.
He snorted and went back to the driving, putting the hammer down, eatingup the kilometers toward Huntsville and beyond.
She fed him slices of apple and ate some herself, then rolls of ham withlittle pieces of pear in them, then sips of cherry juice from a glassbottle.
"Enough," he said at last. "I'm stuffed, woman!"
She laughed. "Skinny little fucker -- gotta put some meat on yourbones." She tidied the dinner detritus into an empty shopping bag andtossed it over her shoulder into the back seat.
"So," she said. "How long since you've been home?"
He stared at the road for a while. "Fifteen years," he said. "Never beenback since I left."
She stared straight forward and worked her hand under his thigh, so hewas sitting on it, then wriggled her knuckles.
"I've never been home," she said.
He wrinkled his brow. "What's that mean?" he said.
"It's a long story," she said.
"Well, let's get off the highway and get a room and you can tell me,okay?"
"Sure," she said.
#
They ended up at the Timberline Wilderness Lodge and Pancake House, andMimi clapped her hands at the silk-flowers-and-waterbeds ambience of theroom, fondled the grisly jackalope head on the wall, and started runninga tub while Alan carried in the suitcases.
She dramatically tossed her clothes, one item at a time, out thebathroom door, through the clouds of steam, and he caught a glimpse ofher round, full ass, bracketed by her restless wings, as she poured intothe tub the bottle of cheap bubble-bath she'd bought in the lobby.
He dug a T-shirt and a fresh pair of boxers to sleep in out of hissuitcase, feeling ridiculously modest as he donned them. His feetcrunched over cigarette burns and tangles in the brown shag carpet andhe wished he'd brought along some slippers. He flipped through bothsnowy TV channels and decided that he couldn't stomach a televangelistor a thirty-year-old sitcom right then and flicked it off, sitting onthe edge of the bed, listening to the splashing from the bathroom.
Mimi was in awfully good spirits, considering what she'd been throughwith Krishna. He tried to think about it, trying to make sense of theday and the girl, but the splashing from the tub kept intruding on histhoughts.
She began to sing, and after a second he recognized the tune. "WhiteRabbit," by the Jefferson Airplane. Not the kind of thing he'd expecther to be giving voice to; nor she, apparently, for she kept breakingoff to giggle. Finally, he poked his head through the door.
She was folded into the tub, knees and tits above the foamline, wingsslick with water and dripping in the tile. Her hands were out of sightbeneath the suds. She caught his eye and grinned crazily, then her handsshot out of the pool, clutching the hunting knife.
"*Put on the White Rabbit!*" she howled, cackling fiendishly.
He leapt back and she continued to cackle. "Come back, come back," shechoked. "I'm doing the tub scene from *Fear and Loathing in LasVegas*. I thought you were into reading?"
He cautiously peeked around the doorjamb, playing it up for comiceffect. "Give me the knife," he said.
"Awww," she said, handing it over, butt first. He set it down on thedresser, then hurried back to the bathroom.
"Haven't you read all those books?"
Alan grinned. "What's the point of a bunch of books you've alreadyread?" He dropped his boxers and stripped off his T-shirt and climbedinto the tub, sloshing gallons of water over the scummy tile floor.
#
When I was two years old,
(she said, later, as she reclined against the headboard and he reclinedagainst her, their asses deforming the rusted springs of the mattress sothat it sloped toward them and the tins of soda they'd opened toreplenish their bodily fluids lost in sweat and otherwise threatened totip over on the slope; she encased him in her wings, shutting out thelight and filling their air with the smell of cinnamon and pepper fromthe downy hair)
When I was two years old,
(she said, speaking into the shaggy hair at the back of his neck, as hissore muscles trembled and as the sweat dried to a white salt residue onhis skin, as he lay there in the dark of the room and the wings,watching the constellation of reflected clock-radio lights in the blackTV screen)
When I was two years old,
(she began, her body tensing from toes to tip in a movement that he feltalong the length of his body, portending the time when lovers closetheir eyes and open their mouths and utter the secrets that they hidefrom everyone, even themselves)
When I was two years old, my wings were the size of a cherub's, and theyhad featherlets that were white as snow. I lived with my "aunt," an oldRussian lady near Downsview Air Force Base, a blasted suburb where theshops all closed on Saturday for Sabbath and the black-hatted Hasidsmarked the days by walking from one end to the other on their way totemple.
The old Russian lady took me out for walks in a big black baby buggy thesize of a bathtub. She tucked me in tight so that my wings were pinnedbeneath me. But when we were at home, in her little apartment with thewind-up Sputnik that played "The Internationale," she would let my wingsout and light the candles and watch me wobble around the room, my wingsflapping, her chin in her hands, her eyes bright. She made me mashed upcabbage and seed and beef, and bottles of dilute juice. For dessert, wehad hard candies, and I'd toddle around with my toys, drooling sugarsyrup while the old Russian lady watched.
By the time I was four, the feathers had all fallen out, and I wassupposed to go to school, I knew that. "Auntie" had explained to me thatthe kids that I saw passing by were on their way to school, and that I'dgo some day and learn, too.
She didn't speak much English, so I grew up speaking a creole ofRussian, Ukrainian, Polish and English, and I used my words to ask her,with more and more insistence, when I'd get to go to class.
I couldn't read or write, and neither could she. But I could take apartgadgets like nobody's business. Someone -- maybe Auntie's long deadhusband -- had left her a junky tool kit with cracked handles andchipped tips, and I attacked anything that I could get unplugged fromthe wall: the big cabinet TV and radio, the suitcase record player, theSputnik music box. I unwired the lamps and peered at the workings of theelectric kitchen clock.
That was four. Five was the year I put it all back together again. Istarted with the lamps, then the motor in the blender, then the toasterelements. I made the old TV work. I don't think I knew how any of it*really* worked -- couldn't tell you a thing about, you know, electricalengineering, but I just got a sense of how it was *supposed* to gotogether.
Auntie didn't let me out of the apartment after five. I could watch thekids go by from the window -- skinny Hasids with side-curls andFilipinos with pretty ribbons and teenagers who smoked, but I couldn'tgo to them. I watched *Sesame Street* and *Mr. Dressup* and I began tosoak up English. I began to soak up the idea of playing with other kids.
I began to soak up the fact that none of the kids on the TV had wings.
Auntie left me alone in the afternoons while she went out shopping andbanking and whatever else it was she did, and it was during those timesthat I could get myself into her bedroom and go rooting around herthings.
She had a lot of mysterious beige foundation garments that were utterlyinexplicable, and a little box of jewelry that I liked to taste, becausethe real gold tasted really rich when I sucked on it, and a stack of oldcigarette tins full of frayed photos.
The pictu
res were stiff and mysterious. Faces loomed out of featurelessblack backgrounds: pop-eyed, jug-eared Russian farm boys, awkward farmgirls with process waves in their hair, everyone looking like they'dbeen stuffed and mounted. I guess they were her relatives, because ifyou squinted at them and cocked your head, you could kind of see herfeatures in theirs, but not saggy and wrinkled and three-chinned, butyoung and tight and almost glowing. They all had big shoulders andclothing that looked like the kind of thing the Hasids wore, black andsober.
The faces were interesting, especially after I figured out that one ofthem might belong to Auntie, but it was the blackness around them thatfascinated me. The boys had black suits and the girls wore blackdresses, and behind them was creased blackness, complete darkness, asthough they'd