Blackbird

by Averil Dean

  “You really need me to tell you? Do it.”

  A quick sigh hissed past her lips. The quivering energy in his voice shimmered in the space between them and raced across her skin. She peeled off her sweater, her shirt, her jeans, her socks. She stood against the door like a criminal, dressed in only a pair of white underwear and a long black feather that hung from a cotton cord around her neck. Her braid fell heavily between her shoulder blades, its tip swaying across the small of her back.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said in a thick voice. His eyes shifted from her mouth, down her body. “I’ve been...worrying.”

  He covered her breast with his hand. His fingers trembled against her skin. His jaw flexed and snapped shut with an audible clack.

  “You’re the one who left,” she said. “I’ve been right here.”

  “With Rory.”

  “Who didn’t leave.”

  He lifted his chin, staring down at her through the dark fringe of his eyelashes. “Put your hand between your legs.”

  It was a dare, almost, the way he said it. Or a test. Excitement quivered down her spine. She slipped her fingers inside her underwear. The heat began to churn in her belly even as her skin pebbled with cold.

  Eric wrapped her braid around his hand, tugged her head back and kissed her. His mouth rushed over hers with a delicious unpredictability, slanting to get deep inside, then backing away to bite her lips and run his tongue along the edge of her teeth. His kiss was erratic, needy, his breath pouring into her mouth.

  “Say you missed me.”

  “I did.”

  “Say it.”

  “I missed you.”

  He nudged her hand away and replaced it with his.

  “You still want me.”

  “Yes.”

  He laid his forehead against hers. His voice dropped to a whisper as if he was talking to himself: “How do I know that, how do I know.” But his mouth was on her neck, his nose in her hair. He took one long shuddering breath; then he was dragging her underwear down her hips, shrugging out of his clothes until he was dressed only in the blue-black tracery of his tattoos. His lips left a cool trail down her neck as he lifted her against the wall, pulled her down on top of him.

  “You don’t want anyone else.”

  “Shh...”

  “Say it, say it.”

  “Ror—” Her brother’s name was halfway out her mouth before she could stop it. She’d meant to say, Eric, stop. Eric, don’t worry. I’m here, I’m right here, just the way you left me. But it was too late. He’d heard, and he knew her far too well to misunderstand.

  An exasperated groan tore through his throat.

  “Goddamn it, Celia.”

  His fingers tightened around her thighs. He swung away from the wall and carried her down to the bed. For a moment he held them still. The room was filled with the sound of their breath: his, deep and hollow and raspy, her own as shallow and quick as a child’s. He laced her fingers in his, the right hand, then the left, and lifted them over her head. He looked down at her and their interlinked fingers, distraught. As if she’d been the one to leave, who had to be restrained from leaving again.

  “I was lost, fucking lost, oh, God...”

  Slowly he began to slide, all the way out and all the way back. She wrapped her legs around his narrow waist and pulled him closer.

  “I’ve been here,” she wanted to say. “I’ve been here all along.”

  * * *

  Afterward, he held her beneath him, his nose in her hair. Celia kissed his damp shoulder and licked the salt from his skin. Over the whir of her own overheated blood, she could hear the cottony thud of his heartbeat hammering against her ribs.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” she said.

  His lungs swelled, and he released a long sigh that cooled her skin.

  “I wish...”

  But the wish seemed to evaporate into the silence. He shook his head in the crook of her neck and rolled away. He sat up and rubbed at his eyes.

  The afternoon light was fading; the room had gone dim. Celia found a lighter and held the flame to each of the seven votive candles clustered in a tray of river rocks beside the bed. The shadows leaped and danced across the wall.

  “You have any blaze?” Eric said.

  She didn’t answer immediately. Unconsciously she must have been waiting for something like this, because, though his request was unusual, it didn’t come as a surprise.

  “Hey?” he said.

  “Yeah, I’ve got some.”

  She and Rory had been smoking steadily, daily, in the empty hotel during the weeks Eric and Julian were gone. Stoned, they had worked for hours without stopping, in a soft delirium that made the labor seem effortless and unphysical. At night they would drift together, charmed and befuddled, until the buzz was burned away by a sexual heat too intense to sustain it. For them, weed was the sweetest of tonics. But Celia made no move now to dig the tin from her dresser drawer.

  “Well, break it out,” Eric said.

  “You know Dr. Paul said that stuff is—”

  “Fuck Paul.”

  “—poison for you.”

  “Poison. Drama queen.”

  “It’s not my word.”

  “I don’t remember him putting it that way.”

  Celia gathered up her clothes and began to pull them on.

  “It’s just weed,” Eric said. “We used to smoke together all the time.”

  “We didn’t know any better. We didn’t know what it was doing to you.”

  He sat up on the bed, propped his elbows on his knees and his head between his hands. He looked beautiful in the candlelight, dark and sensual and needy.

  “My head is just...” He curled his fingers, then jerked them away from his ears, a big explosion. “I need to calm the fuck down.”

  Celia knelt in front of him and pulled his chilled hands into hers.

  “Where are your meds?”

  “I’m out.”

  “How are you out? I filled your prescription right before you left.”

  “I mean I’m out. I’m done with that shit. It doesn’t help me, just makes me docile and stupid as fuck.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “How would you know? You don’t know what it’s like inside my head.”

  “I know you.”

  “Yeah? Sometimes I wonder.”

  Celia opened his hands and pressed her face between them, a kiss in each palm. She ran her thumb along the tattoo of her name on his wrist. “You’re tired. Lie down for a bit before dinner. Tomorrow I’ll call Dr. Paul’s office and get you in.”

  “Fuck Paul...”

  He lifted his chin and looked her in the eye. His irises were so dark that she couldn’t find the pupils.

  “Do you remember Mr. Sully?” he said.

  Celia frowned, puzzled. “The bowling guy?”

  When Celia was fourteen, Red Sully, of Sully’s Sinks and Drywall, had learned that his wife was cheating on him and had beaten her to death in their home, using the bowling trophy that he, his wife and her lover had won together the week before at a tournament in Montrose. As children, Celia and Eric were sickened but also consumed by the dark humor of the crime. Eric had acted it out as Celia fell about in guilty laughter: I got your strike, baby! Right here!

  “I’ve been wondering about that,” he said. “Who do you think was the better bowler? Husband or lover?”

  “I don’t know. Probably the lover.”

  Eric nodded slowly. “Yeah, I think you’re right. The bowling score probably sent the poor bastard over the edge.”

  * * *

  Dinner at the Blackbird was served in the kitchen at the long wooden table, which had been there so long its legs
had sunk into the floor, as if the pine planks were soft as dough. Every afternoon, Celia made a huge pot of chili or stew, using whatever vegetable happened to be in season or was lingering in the refrigerator from the previous night’s dinner. Sometimes she made enchiladas or tamales, or lined up individual crocks of timbales and served them with whole roasted sweet potatoes and a pot of honey butter. She aimed to have something ready in the kitchen by six o’clock, when the lifts had closed and the skiers had made their way back up the hill with their gear, had changed clothes and poured themselves a glass of wine. But she knew from experience that it was better to have something that could be eaten at room temperature or kept warm on the back burner so people could come and go.

  Kate was disdainful of the amount of time Celia spent in the kitchen.

  “What was the point of that bra burning back in the day, if all you want to do is wait on a pack of ungrateful men?”

  “I’ve never owned a bra,” Celia said. “And they’re not ungrateful.”

  “Maybe not, but I’ve never seen Eric with a spatula in his hand.”

  Celia had never seen Kate with a spatula, either. Usually, as now, she held a wineglass and sat at the kitchen table with the bottle near to hand. But Celia never asked for help. Cooking was a meditation for her, and she much preferred to do it on her own.

  “You never will see it,” Celia said. “He’s a terrible cook.”

  “Because you spoil him.”

  “He spoils me, too. We do what we’re good at. It doesn’t need to come out even every day.”

  “If you say so. One giant step backward if you ask me.”

  “Why? This is what I want to do.”

  Kate shook her head.

  Celia gave up trying to convince her. People either saw or didn’t see, and she’d never been much good at arguing a point.

  In any case, she’d never seen the kitchen as a likely battleground for the war of the sexes. Her father had been a wonderful cook. He taught her to make gumbo and jambalaya and big pans of spicy étouffée. One of her earliest memories was of his knife flashing up and down over the cutting board as he reduced a pepper and an onion to glistening confetti, then let her stir it into the pan with a long wooden spoon.

  “Careful, chère, you don’ wanna barbecue your fingers,” he’d say.

  But it was too late; she’d touched the side of her hand to the hot pan and started to cry.

  “Oh, now,” he crooned. “Now, now, now, let’s see what the trouble here is.”

  He sat her on the counter and inspected the wound.

  “Hoo-eee, that’s a nasty one, pop chock. Give ’er here.”

  He held her hand in his under cool running water. As her tears dried, she could hear her father’s thick mutterings in fragments at her ear: Big dumb couyon...she too little and that pan too hot...ain’ got the sense God gave ya...

  He bandaged the burn and set her up on the counter, far from the stove. She wanted to tell him it was her fault. She’d been clumsy; he was not to blame. But the words wouldn’t come. Instead she scooted, a little at a time, until she was near the heat once more.

  He shook his head and shifted a knife to the other side of the stove. “Gonna spend all my days getting sharp things outta your way. I see it clear.”

  But it hadn’t worked out that way.

  * * *

  “So it’s killing me, man,” Rory said to Eric. “How was Alaska?”

  Celia took her seat at the table and poured herself a glass of red wine. She sat gazing into it, already flushed and woozy from what she’d had with Kate. She could hardly make it through a day anymore without being helped along by weed or wine. She’d worried over it once to Eric, but he had only shrugged: Do what you need to do, baby. Ain’t no use feeling the pain.

  “Good,” Eric said.

  Rory tore off a heel of bread while he waited for the lasagna to come around. “Good? You just skied the Chugach, and you’re telling me it was good?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “Come on, man. I can take it.”

  “Nothing to tell. Alaska is outstanding. We skied and ate and partied, and now we’re home.”

  “And the Isthmus? What was that like?”

  “I didn’t ski it.”

  “Oh. Why’s that?”

  Eric shrugged, moving the food around on his plate. From outside came the rumble of a truck engine and the clashing of gears as it negotiated the switchback turn up the mountain.

  Julian broke in from across the table, his cheek round with a bite of bread. “It was gnarly. You’d have to be psychotic to ski that mother this season.”

  “You must have been bummed, huh? You’ve been wanting to hit that all year.”

  Julian swallowed, and his eyes slid sideways to Eric.

  “What I said was, I didn’t ski it.” Eric spoke without looking up.

  Celia frowned. These cryptic silences were unlike Eric—unlike all of them, for that matter. She glanced at Rory. He met her eye and gave a tiny shake of his head.

  “Well,” Kate said brightly. “What else happened today?”

  “I heard about the Catapult,” Julian said to Rory.

  “What about it?” Kate said.

  “Snowboarder went down,” Rory said. “Banged up her knee.”

  “Jesus, don’t be modest when there are women in the room,” Julian said. “Have I taught you nothing?” He turned to Kate. “This girl went over the side edge of the run, you know, that rocky part between the trees left of Three? Bumbled right through the markers and landed ass-up in the worst possible place, dangling half off the cliff. Freaky place to land, really. The guys had to get out the ropes and climbing gear to pull her out.”

  Kate’s eyes were wide. “Wait, that’s like fifty feet down right there. How the hell did she manage to get into such a mess?”

  “No idea,” Rory said. “I left it to Gary to give her the safety lecture.”

  “So how did you get her out?”

  Rory poured himself another glass of wine as he explained, with hand gestures and repeated proddings from Kate—who was further along in the night’s wine consumption than the rest of them—how the complicated rescue was accomplished. Celia smiled and nodded along, but her gaze kept slipping sideways to the end of the table, where Eric sat quietly listening, his eyes expressionless and fixed on Rory.

  “That took a lot of courage,” Julian said. “You’re a brave man, my friend. I don’t think I could have done it.”

  “I was scared shitless, if you want to know the truth.”

  “Courage isn’t the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.” Julian raised his glass. “There’s your Moss-ism for the day. Here’s to you, man.”

  Eric raised his glass with the rest of them, but his expression remained flat.

  “To Rory,” he said. “Master of fear.”

  * * *

  After dinner, Eric went upstairs to make some phone calls. Celia cleared the table, shooing Rory away with Julian and Kate—an action she immediately regretted.

  Fragments drifted in from the conversation at the fireplace.

  “...not for the faint of heart,” Julian was saying. “I think you would have liked it, though. You’d have torn it up.”

  Celia couldn’t hear Rory’s reply, only his tone. He was as puzzled as she was about Eric’s tepid response to Alaska.

  “He doesn’t have your cojones,” Kate said.

  “He did fine,” Julian said. “He just lacks confidence. It slows him down, makes him question his decisions. And I think the avalanche freaked him...”

  “Avalanche?” Kate said.

  Celia eased closer to the door in order to hear Julian’s reply.

  “...milk run at the Lady, when Eric picked out a side
line to the one the rest of us were skiing. I got to the bottom, and there’s Eric schussing down the mountain, this huge cloud of snow behind him, you could hear it groaning...oh, I know, the kid is fast...yeah, totally fine, but his eyes were big as saucers...freaked me out, too, which probably didn’t help...”

  Celia heard the rumble of Rory’s voice.

  “...a better boarder than I will ever be. Must be something else...”

  “I don’t know, man. I’ve seen a lot of skiers in my day, and I’ve come to think physical courage is a good measure of the man. You have that...”

  Celia finished the dishes and stood at the doorway. Rory’s face glowed with firelight, and, though he was shaking his head, it was clear that he was flattered by Julian’s appraisal. Possibly even agreed with it.

  She went into the room, wiping her hands, a slow anger building inside her. The pleased expression slipped from Rory’s face. His smile became uncertain, a little embarrassed.

  “Come sit down,” he said.

  “Actually, I was thinking I might go around to the Adelaide for a swim,” she said. “Why don’t you come with me? I’m sure Kate and Julian would appreciate some time to themselves.”

  “I’d sink to the bottom,” Rory said, patting his stomach.

  “I’ll go with you,” Kate said. “They’ll still be here swapping ski stories when we get back.”

  Celia hesitated. Julian looked at her with an amused half smile on his face, as if he knew she didn’t want to leave him alone with Rory.

  You can’t play this game, his expression said. You don’t even know the rules.

  * * *

  “Oh, thank God it’s empty,” Kate said as they kicked the snow off their boots and opened the glass door to the pool house of the Adelaide Lodge. “Last week this place was crawling with kids. They were screaming so loud I’m amazed they didn’t shatter the roof.”

  As they stepped inside, the humid air swallowed up the steam from their breath and filled Celia’s lungs like a warm broth. A thin vapor rose from the smooth surface of the pool. She tossed her towel over the back of a terrycloth-cushioned chair. Its heavy iron legs screeched against the pool deck as she pulled it away from the table and sat down to unlace her boots.