“Oh,” I said. I had been looking forward to slipping out of my clothes, the bandages. “I don't know. I'm feeling a little tired.”
George clicked the last lock shut and turned back to me. “At least walk with me,” he said. “And see how you feel in a bit.” He raised his eyebrows up and down.
“I am an old woman, George,” I said, smiling now. “I can't be showing up at barbecues.”
He grabbed my hand, folded it up in his. I pulled away, instinctively, but he held tight. “It's a beautiful evening, Lil. At least take a walk with me. Okay?” The sky behind him was silver, and the sun spilled through. “Hey. I'm letting you set me up. I don't ever let anyone set me up. Ever. You owe me.”
He looked right at me, his dark eyes pinning me to the spot, to the sidewalk in front of the store. He senses things, I thought. I watched him standing there, so beautiful with his dark hair flipping about. Almost like Theodore.
“Come on,” he said, pulling me by the hand.
It was nice, walking with George. I closed my eyes for a second, feeling my hand in his, imagining I was a young woman walking these streets with someone like Theodore, just a regular young woman on a summer afternoon, heading to a barbecue with her beau. I giggled.
“What is it?” George was watching me, a half smile on his face. “What are you thinking about?”
“Oh, nothing,” I said, quickly shaking my head, embarrassed. “Just remembering something.”
“Tell me,” he said, dropping my hand and gesturing in the air. “You've been working in the store for a few years now, and I know hardly anything about you or your life. You should tell me some things, don't you think? It's good for the soul.”
“What do you want me to tell you?”
“Well,” he said, swerving around a woman pushing a stroller and then veering back to me, “why don't you tell me what you were remembering? You always seem to be remembering. Right?”
I felt self-conscious suddenly and was grateful for the movement of the streets, the people. “I just was remembering how things used to be,” I said. “Being young. How different things were.”
He smiled. “I know. You need to get out more, Lil. Don't you think? Not that I should talk.”
I looked at him and saw he was being sweet. “Maybe.”
“I remember a lot, too,” he said. “I mean, I spend a lot of time remembering the past. It's not healthy, but I do it.”
“What do you think about?” I asked. I looked at him differently then, and it was as if I had a way in: I saw him as strange, a little melancholy. The thought popped into my head: He needed to fall in love. He would fall in love. With her.
“I don't know,” he said. “When I was young, I thought I'd be a poet or a writer. I was going to write novels hunched over an old typewriter, move to Paris or something. That kind of thing But now look at me.”
“What do you mean, look at you? You're doing so well!” I thought of the bookstore: its crowded shelves and musty smell, its glittering cases, filled with treasures. I couldn't think of anything more beautiful.
“The store's okay, but I guess I just thought my life would be … bigger. Bigger than what it is now.” We were crossing Fourteenth Street, heading up toward Chelsea. The city felt fresher, more open. “You're coming with me, aren't you?” he asked. “We could both use some time among people, don't you think?”
I smiled. “Yes,” I said. I looked around, at the wide street, the people, the fading sky. “Yes, I could.”
“Great,” he said. “I've got to drop something off real quick first. Do you mind? I promised my friend a book for one of his clients.”
“Okay.”
We turned onto Twenty-third Street. He gestured to our left, and I looked up at a brick building with lacy wrought-iron balconies jutting out, a HOTEL sign swooping down.
“He's just in here,” he said. “Has his own gym, if you can believe it.”
George pulled me through the swinging doors and into a lobby, where various people were scattered about on the mismatched couches and clashing paintings hung on the walls. He led me past the desk and to the right, past an elevator and through a creaking doorway, then up a set of mar-bly white stairs with filigreed iron banisters. We reached a landing, and the stairs swung around and kept going
On the next floor, George led me down a corridor, with more hallways shooting off it. We stopped in front of a black door and walked in.
I was surprised by the incongruity of the scene: a gym, radiating healthfulness, stuck amid the crumbling, faded beauty of the rest of the building. The array of workout and weight lifting equipment, the heavy fan blowing air through the room, the mirrors on the walls, a woman riding one of the bikes and a man sitting in an elaborate machine with his arms stretched out on either side of him.
I wanted to cry out with delight. In New York you could find almost anything behind a closed door.
“Hey!” A muscular blond man walked up and slapped George on the arm. “What's up?”
“Not much,” George said. “Heading up to Jennifer's with my friend Lil. I brought your book.” He pulled out a copy of Tropic of Cancer from his bag and handed it to the man. Then he looked at me and winked. “First edition,” George whispered.
“Thanks,” his friend said, taking the book. “I'm Mark, by the way. George always hooks me up. My client's going to go crazy over this. How are you doing?”
“Good,” I said.
“Lil works with me,” George said. He looked at me. “Mark's a trainer.”
“Oh, yeah,” Mark said, to my surprise. “I've heard about you. George says you've straightened the place out.”
“He does?”
“Hell, yeah,” Mark said.
“He is very generous to say that.” I kept watching the man on the machine. His arms spread out like wings, in and out. “What's he doing?” I asked. “What is that machine?”
“Oh, you can do all kinds of stuff on that. Right now he's working on the muscles around his shoulder blades and upper arms.”
“It looks like he's flying,” I said.
“It's a great exercise, a great machine. You want to try it?”
George laughed, rolled his eyes. “He never stops. He's like a preacher.”
“It wouldn't hurt you to use it, either, my friend.” He looked at me. “I'm always trying to get him in here, but he's always coming up with some lame excuse.”
“I'm not exactly a jock,” George said, shrugging.
“You're telling me,” Mark said. “Lil here could probably run you into the ground.”
I was excited suddenly. I was changing, and I wanted to see what my body could do. “I'll try it,” I said. I had a vision then of myself: Hair flowing like autumn leaves, my body smooth and soft. Young again.
George looked at me in surprise. “I'm impressed,” he said. “You might actually shame me into doing a push-up.”
When the man on the machine finished a minute later, Mark led me, carefully but firmly, over to the looming contraption. He motioned for me to sit, then stood above me and pulled down the arms of the machine, locking them in place. From them he pulled out two long cords with handles on the ends and motioned for me to put my hands in.
“Go on, take these. Grab hold,” he said.
I slipped my hands through.
Mark cupped his palms around my hands. “I'm going to let go,” he said. “Just hold this here, keep holding it. Don't let go. I'm not even putting weight on this, okay?”
He released his grip then, and I felt a strong force pulling on me from either side. The pressure of it slid up my arms, burned up to my shoulders. I could feel my wings rustling behind me and pushing into my skin.
“Pull,” he said, leaning into me. He tapped my forearm, the fleshy part underneath, and I moved my arms, following his lead until they were stretched out on both sides of me.
“Good,” he said. He stood back and watched me, keeping his hands out, hovering on either side of me. “Now press back
in again, to where you started, and do it again. You're doing great.”
I let the pain of it rip through my arms and into my blood. It moved into my back now, the burning, stretching from my shoulders and down my spine. It hurt, but it felt wonderful, too. I was using muscles I hadn't used since I'd been able to fly.
It flared up in me in a second: the desire to fly.
Sun streamed in through the window, reflecting onto the mirror in front of me. I glanced up, but I could not focus in. All I knew was the stretch of the cord, the scraping sound of it pulling back and forth.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and a moment later the movement stopped. My body became solid again. I looked up. It was only then that I noticed the feathers drifting in the air, fluttering down to the floor. Mark's eyes met mine. The sound of the bike had stopped. The burning ran up and down my arms.
“It really is like you're flying, isn't it?” he whispered.
“Yes,” I said.
George walked over then. “You have enough yet, Lil?” he asked, rubbing his hands together and then slapping Mark on the back. “I think you've tortured her sufficiently.”
I looked back at Mark, who just stared at me. “Good job,” he said. “You should work on those muscles, get them going. Come by anytime.”
WE WALKED back up Eighth Avenue. Every cell in my body was alive and pulsing. I could feel my shoulders, still in that movement. I reached up my arms and stretched them back.
“Sore?” George asked.
“A little,” I said, dropping my arms to the side. “I was not expecting that today.”
It was a restless energy moving through me. The world was so bright. I was tired, I realized, of spending night after night in my apartment, watching television, eating, being alone, punishing myself.
“Sorry,” he said. “I hope that wasn't uncomfortable for you.” He was shy suddenly, unable to meet my eyes.
I looked at him, surprised. “No,” I said, touching his arm. “I loved it. Thank you.”
“I'm glad,” George asked. “Are you okay, though? You look like you're not feeling well.”
“Yes,” I said, turning back to him. But he was right; I didn't feel okay. I felt as if my arms and shoulders were on fire, as if I wanted to tear down the street, screaming at the top of my lungs.
George just looked at me, squinting his dark eyes, and then swerved to miss a tall young man elbowing past.
We walked up the blocks, silent. There was a gnawing inside me that was becoming a steady ache, and I kept hearing the scraping back and forth of wire and metal, feeling that pull in my back.
I watched an old man walk by, cradling a small dog in his arms. A young Asian couple were wrapped together like lettuce leaves, their arms around each other's waists and their hands touching. I wondered how they managed to move.
I shook my shoulders, stretched out my arms. The whole day seemed to have shifted over and tilted on its side. As we passed the Fashion Institute, a blond woman with her hands full of shopping bags rammed into me, one of her bags pressing into my thigh. I found myself reaching out and smacking it away as she passed.
George laughed. “I hate this part of town,” he said. “And we're not nearly in the worst of it. People everywhere. You can't even move.”
I did not want him to see how out of sorts I was. My shoulders ached no matter what I did. I extended my arms in front of me and pulled them back. I loosened the tension in my back, shook myself out.
A clump of feathers drifted into the air and fell around us. One landed on George's cheek, and he brushed it off, barely noticing.
“You ever been inside the Garden, Lil?” he asked. The round dome of Madison Square Garden loomed up ahead. “My brother got comp tickets to a Rangers game last year, and we sat up in those boxes up top, these suites with couches and refrigerators. It felt like you could reach down and touch the ice from up there.”
“No,” I said. “I don't think I've done that.”
I shifted again and noticed more feathers popping into the air. My heart lurched after them.
“You like hockey?”
“I guess,” I said. One of the feathers landed in a woman's long dark hair. I was tempted to reach out and pluck it off. I had no idea what George was talking about.
“I love it. I'm not much of a sports guy, but I love hockey. We used to play as kids, my brother and I, when the lake behind our house froze over. Great times.”
“That sounds nice,” I said. “Your brother and you.” I tried to hold my shoulders still, clench in my muscles, but my body was absolutely at odds with me.
“We had a lot of fun as kids,” he said. “I think about going back there now.”
“Back where?” One of my wings began to unfold.
“Illinois,” he said. “That's where we grew up, though our family is from New York, and we always had the business. Let's cross. She lives right there.” He pointed to a tall apartment building across the street. I looked around frantically for somewhere to hide. We were only a few blocks from my apartment, but I wouldn't make it till then.
I will be okay, I thought. I just needed to be alone. To unclench my wings and stop the pain coursing through me.
We stood at the corner of Thirty-third and Eighth Avenue, staring out over the traffic at the post office across the street, with its long columns and leisurely sweep of steps. I could barely breathe. Sweat dripped from my hair and down my forehead. My other wing unclenched. Cars whizzed past. About a hundred yellow taxicabs with their lights blinking. The drone of the cars, the honking, the sounds and the yelling and the whoooosh as they zipped by over lanes and lanes of traffic …
I want to fly, I thought then. I have to fly. My muscles were burning. My wings coming undone.
When the “walk” signal finally came on, we crossed the street and entered the building. It seemed to take hours for us to move from the front desk, where the doorman called up and announced our arrival, past the lines of mailboxes, to the elevators. Feathers were popping into the air in whole clumps. I could feel the tingle of air against my skin, rushing up my back. The tickle of feathers. The ache in my muscles, yearning for release.
George caught a feather in his palm and spread out his fingers. “Look,” he said, his voice full of wonder. “How strange.”
I nodded and clutched my stomach. A spurt of feathers leaped into the air, then began to drift slowly down.
“My God, Lil,” George said, peering in at me. “You don't look well at all.” He reached out to touch my shoulder.
“No!” I said, reeling back from him. He looked down at his palm and then back at me. He had touched a wing. I had felt his hand on the feathers and bone.
I looked at him, but the ache in my back was too strong for me to focus in.
“I think we need to take you to the hospital, Lil,” he said. He reached into his bag. I shut my eyes, and a steady line of white flared in front of me. My wings strained at my shirt. I was tensing my muscles so hard against them that I could feel them knot and pull, twist into circles and back out again.
I opened my eyes to see George, sheet white, his cell phone in his hands. “I'm calling an ambulance,” he said. “Right now.”
Just then the elevator doors opened and a small blond woman walked out carrying a gym bag.
“Please,” I said, terror bubbling up in me as I pushed into the elevator. I clutched my stomach. “Let's just go up there, okay? I feel nauseous, that's all.”
George stopped for a second, then snapped to attention, following me into the elevator and frantically pushing the button. “Only eight floors,” he said. “Hang on.”
We stood together, not talking, staring at the illuminated line of numbers on top of the door. I stepped back and felt a wing hit the wall behind me.
“Almost there, Lil,” George said, startling me. He was afraid to even look at me. Confused by the white feathers swirling in the air, all around us. I watched them land quietly on his black shirt, like snowflakes drifting down,
and I felt my wings loosen more.
The doors opened finally, like an enormous sigh. George grabbed my hand, and we ran down the yellow hall, trailed by feathers and by the strange bony shapes pushing out from my back, straining my shirt, which had already begun to tear.
The running seemed almost to be the final straw. I was in searing, unbearable pain. And yet this was the closest I'd come to flight in years. I felt the feathers unfurl and my feet strain to leave the ground….
George stopped and started banging on the door. I held on to the wall to steady myself. A moment later a young woman answered. I could not even see her, just the shape of her and the shapes of several people behind her, scattered about, but I could feel the shift from friendliness to horror, the people gathering around and crying out, and then George pulling me through a hall and into a bathroom.
“Leave!” I cried, twisting from his grasp and pushing him out of the room. The moment I slammed the door shut, I heard a terrible rip. My bandages and shirt finally gave way, and my wings sprawled out on either side of me. I held out my arms and shimmied from the shirt, then sunk to the floor. My wings were like two separate bodies dancing above me. I heard them wreaking havoc: Sweeping along a shelf filled with cosmetics, which tumbled to the floor. Pushing past the plastic shower curtain and slapping the tiled shower wall. I glanced up, reached up to make sure the door was locked.
And then I was on my knees, retching into the toilet and letting out huge, racking sobs that used up all the air in my lungs and left me gasping.
“Lil!” I heard. Banging on the door.
“I'm okay,” I gasped. “I'm okay!”
I fell back down and pressed my cheek to the tile floor. I heard another crash as my wings somehow unhooked a shower tray filled with shampoo and bath salts.
And then, quiet. I closed my eyes and let everything fade out, concentrating only on my body, releasing the pain and relaxing every muscle. My wings fluttered frantically, then finally settled and stilled. My muscles unclenched. The searing pain began to fade down to a dull throb. I wanted to fly so badly, from such a deep, deep place, that I ached and moaned with it. But the immediate pain was gone. Then the unbearable desire to fly moved to someplace buried within me, tamped down, back in its place. My wings were out and open, slowly flapping to and fro. The tile was cold against my cheek. The relief flowing through me was almost overwhelming.