In the maids’ locker room after work, Sassy traded mezzanine duty with somebody else for the rest of the week so she wouldn’t have to go near Racquel’s shop.
Then she darted out, hunched as if she were battling a headwind, to get away from her insane place of employment. But as she approached the back door, the maids’ door, she nearly rammed into a flat emerald-green midriff. Racquel was standing there in the corridor. Waiting for her.
“Please don’t tell,” Racquel said, keeping her—his—voice low.
Sassy reared back and barked up at him, “You used the ladies’ room!”
“Shhhh! What do you expect me to do?” He ran his French-manicured fingertips down his flowing skirt. “Go into the men’s like this?”
“Hold it!”
“Can’t. I’m a coffee drinker.” He extended one long, shapely hand toward her in plea. “Sassy, please.” He was almost whispering, although the people rushing past were employees on their way home, bolting out the door, couldn’t care less about listening in. “Management doesn’t know. They’ll crucify me if they find out.”
As one who had recently been hoisted on a cross made of her own good intentions, Sassy found herself feeling a grudging sympathy. Her tone of voice lowered to a grumble. “What exactly are you, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know enough weirdness to know what I mean!” Talking with this person who blurred her ideas of gender, Sassy felt existential nausea. Seasickness. No solid footing. No bedrock.
Racquel retorted, “I’m not a child molester, if that’s what you—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, I don’t think that’s what I meant.”
Racquel took a long breath and let it out slowly. Very quietly he said, “What exactly do you need to know?”
“Why you are masquerading as a woman.”
“I like froufrou!”
They stared at each other.
“I like sequins,” Racquel elaborated. “I like velvet. Chiffon. Silk, satin, taffeta, tulle. I like high heels. I like long gloves. I like long gowns. And I most particularly like long gloves and long gowns edged with marabou. Or emu. With plumy headgear. Ostrich. Egret. Or a pheasant-feathered mask. Or a feathered choker. And I like—”
“You like fancy plumage,” Sassy said.
“Yes, dammit. Don’t you?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” He was some kind of big sissy, Sassy decided. A homosexual. She wanted to ask him in a very sophisticated way whether he was gay, but found that she felt too tired to deal with any more unwanted information today. She asked, “What’s your real name?”
“‘Racquel’ is as real as any.”
“Whatever. I’m going home.” Sassy sidestepped to walk past him.
He stretched out a hand to stop her. “You going to tell on me?” He sounded like a child caught doing something naughty at recess.
“I’ll think about it,” Sassy grumped.
“Please—”
“I said I’ll think about it!” Once more Sassy tried to get past him. Once more he stopped her.
“Please just quick tell me one thing. How did you know? Did you see through the stall wall in the john, or what?”
“I am going home,” Sassy said with great decision as she pushed past him, then hustled toward her car.
THREE
The Sylvan Tower’s Operation Catch Parakeet required a cooperative effort between Pest Control Professionals, so advertised on their pristine white coveralls, and Climb Any Mountaineers, Inc. The Pest Control people stood on balconies and unfurled what had to be the world’s longest badminton nets, but with gossamer-fine mesh, way too fine for badminton nets, really. Mist nets, they called them. Bird nets. The mountaineers rappelled down from higher balconies and conveyed the trailing ends of the unfurled nets to other Pest Control personnel on the opposite side of the atrium. Meanwhile, management sweated, hoping the media would not show up, and with them unwanted attention from the animal rights activists. And meanwhile hotel denizens, including Sassy, gathered on various levels of the lobby to watch. By the end of the day, when the Pest Control Pros and the Climb Any Mountain people had (with the aid of walkie-talkies and much shouting) done their job, giant cobwebby nets crisscrossed the atrium from treetop level on up, and already someone had markered a graffito in one of the men’s rooms, Cristo Was Here.
Then everybody went home. Except Sassy.
Her work shift was over. In the maids’ locker room she had changed out of her uniform into another sort of work outfit, carefully selected—black sweatpants, a dark turtleneck and a navy cardigan, shabby old black sneakers. Not really athletic shoes. But then, she wasn’t really athletic, which was one of the problems on her mind as she hung around the shadowy reaches of the Sylvan Tower lobby: she wasn’t up on the latest rappelling techniques. The Sylvan Tower would have made a great playground for a musketeer, a perfect movie set, but Sassy did not feel capable of swinging from a chandelier. Nor was she inclined to attempt any Tarzan-style stunts, even if she were in possession of a grapevine or a rope or something, which she was not.
Assuming that the parakeet was stupid enough to blunder into one of the nets—which seemed a fairly safe assumption, actually—Sassy meant to get it before the Pest Control people did. But how?
Chin on her folded hands on a balcony rail, her tush ungracefully protruding, Sassy brooded upon the difficulties involved.
It occurred to her that she knew somebody who might help her.
No.
But—
No. Absolutely not. She didn’t ever want to go near that weirdo again.
Fine. Then look at a parakeet in the mirror for the rest of—
Listen, things could be worse.
Sure they could. Twenty-seven, make it twenty-eight years wasted on a, what the heck had Racquel called him, a jellosnarf—
It was the warm memory of all the inspired names Racquel had called Frederick that made Sassy mutter, “Oh, good gravy,” straighten from her brooding stance, and head toward PLUMAGE.
As usual, the employees were doing the real work; Racquel loitered at the hat display, fondling a soft felt chapeau trimmed with white cut-feather flowers and butterflies, and a wide-brimmed picture hat with a pouf of feather fluff all around, and a toque with multicolored aigrette. Today Racquel was resplendent in a shimmery lavender dress with a banded sweetheart illusion neckline and a peplum.
Sassy blinked as she walked in; Racquel always seemed to affect her like neon. Sassy wondered how Racquel achieved cleavage.
“Hey, woman!” Racquel turned to her, seeming nervously glad to see her. Lavender feathers bobbed above the lacquered, marcellated crest of her hair. His hair. Sassy had trouble thinking of him in the masculine gender. He put her off-balance altogether, worse than meeting somebody you couldn’t tell which it was, and silently but viciously she wished misfortune upon his metallic-sculpted coif; just once she wanted to see Racquel’s hair move.
“Woman, yourself,” Sassy grumped.
Racquel seemed suddenly affected by a nervous twitch under his oh-so-tweezed eyebrow. “Um, talk with you outside?”
“Whatever.”
Out on the mezzanine, Sassy said to him, “Will you do something for me, sir?”
“Shhhh!” Sotto voce, he said, “If you keep quiet about me, yes, sure I will.”
Sassy was by no means sure she should keep quiet. Ever since she had found out about him, her Sunday-school upbringing had been crimping her gut muscles. She eyed him suspiciously. “Maybe I shouldn’t. Women go into your changing rooms—”
“If I’d gone to medical school, I’d see a lot more.”
“But women know when their doctor’s a man. They think you’re—”
“Shhhh!”
Sassy lowered her voice slightly. “They think you’re a woman, you hand things in to them—”
“I don’t. My staff takes care of fittings.” Hands hovering in the vicinity of his twin-peaked bosom, he twisted h
is rings—moonstone, sapphire, amethyst. His fingers were long, strong-looking, and his perfect mauve-enameled nails were decorated with tiny electric-pink primroses with glued-on faux-gem centers. “Anyway, I don’t care about seeing women in their bras or any of that.”
“You don’t?” Sassy put a freight load of doubt in her tone.
“No. I don’t. I just—I just like—”
“Uh-huh. I know. Fancy feathers.”
“Don’t get so damn superior.” For the first time some edge crept into his low-spoken tone. “You’re a cross-dresser yourself.”
“I am not!”
“Yes, you are.” He jerked his chin at her; his hair and the rest of him did not move. “You’re wearing slacks.”
“That’s not—”
“Yes, it is. It’s cross-dressing. If it’s no problem for a woman to put on pants, then why is it such a big deal for a man to put on a skirt?”
Sassy had no idea. “Uh,” she hedged, “uh, but, I’m not masquerading—”
“I have to. If people wouldn’t get so hysterical,” Racquel grumbled, “I could go in the men’s room.”
This debate was making Sassy feel a bit dizzy. Stress. Just let it go, she decided. Perhaps for the worst reason, because she wanted his help, Sassy found herself believing Racquel. He was gay, she told herself. He wasn’t attracted to women. He wasn’t going around with a happy dick under that dress. Okay. Whatever. “All right,” she grumbled, “okay, fine. I’m a cross-dresser too. Here’s what I need you to do.” She explained it to him.
“Are you crazy?” he exclaimed.
Not for the first time, Sassy considered this issue. “Possibly. I’m not sure.”
“Why do you so badly need to capture this parakeet?”
“That’s my business.”
His metallic-mauve-shadowed eyes widened. “You’re not out for revenge, are you? You’re not going to poop on it or something?”
“Just never mind. Are you going to help me, or do I go to Silly Willy?” This was the self-deluded boss man whom Sassy had seen reflected in a mirror as a lyrebird.
Racquel’s broad shoulders sagged. Plaintively he asked, “May I at least go home and change first?”
“Please do.”
Sassy felt her position of power over another human being hanging unfamiliar and exhilarating in her chest as she leaned on the mezzanine railing and waited for Racquel to return. Blankly staring, she was not really watching for the parakeet, not yet—but there it was. Perched in the nearest tree. Staring back at her.
It had a brilliant yellow head with an orange mask over the eyes. A green body with blue primaries on the wings. A bright yellow butt. A few yellow markings on its long pointed tail. No striations. None of the usual teardrop mottlings around the throat. It looked like a parakeet—no-necked, big-headed, high-browed yet clownish—but its coloration and markings were nothing like those of any of the parakeets in any of Sassy’s books.
Of course, with all the new variations the breeders kept coming up with, this was understandable. “Some sort of sport, are you?” Sassy queried it.
The parakeet gazed back at her.
She was not expecting a response. Her questions were rhetorical. “You really are watching me, aren’t you? I mean me specifically. You’re hanging around me.”
The parakeet cocked its head. Perhaps it chirped at her. In the echoing atrium, it was hard to tell.
“You’re stalking me,” she told it. “That’s not nice.”
The parakeet shifted uncomfortably on its perch. Its dainty vermicular toes, Sassy noticed, were mauve, like Racquel’s makeup.
“You did mess up my reflection, didn’t you?”
The parakeet dropped its gaze, looking down and to one side.
“I think you understand every word I’m saying,” she told the bird. “You and I need to talk.”
“It’s not going to move until daybreak,” Racquel complained to Sassy. “We might as well go home.”
Perched opposite the fifth-floor balcony from which they watched, the parakeet made a hunched silhouette against the dimmed, midnight decorator lighting: with its head facing its tail and its beak tucked between its wings, it slept.
Even though it didn’t move, Sassy watched it intently. “How do they do that?” she muttered.
“What? Sleep standing up?”
“Crank the head around 180 degrees.” Effortlessly. And sleep that way.
“I was watching a robin one time,” Racquel said, a droll quirk in his voice, “just kind of watching it hop around, and I said to myself, How does that thing get around on only two legs?”
Sassy laughed. She was trying to maintain a brisk and businesslike stance toward Racquel but she couldn’t help it; she had to laugh. Get around on two legs, indeed. And there he stood in platform clogs. Fuchsia open-toed platform clogs with gold-braid trim. And gold-braided scarlet toreador pants. And a scarlet bolero. Racquel’s idea of changing his clothes for a covert operation did not seem to include either practicality or subterfuge.
“They’re going to wonder what we’re doing if we keep standing here,” Racquel said. “We might as well go home—”
“They wouldn’t notice us at all if you weren’t dressed like a road flare!”
“They would too. They’d spot the glare off your glasses a mile away.”
“Not as bright as that getup!”
“What did you want me to wear,” Racquel complained, “a chador?”
“You could have come as yourself and nobody would know who you were.”
“Huh?” In general, Racquel seemed like a genuinely easygoing—guy or whatever, but now he became somewhat wrought. “Huh? What did you say?”
“I said, just come as yourself.”
“To what self do you refer?”
“Oh, never mind. Wear whatever you like. Wear a belly-dancing outfit,” Sassy grumbled, “made of feathers.”
Racquel stared at her, his expression smoothing. “You know,” he said slowly, “that’s not a bad idea.”
Sassy rolled her eyes.
“You really don’t want to go home and get some sleep?”
“No.” There was a downhill dynamic to these things, Sassy knew from years of sour experience. Go home, go to sleep, and set the alarm clock for four in the morning to get back to the hotel lobby. And then oversleep? And then rush around like—no, thank you. “I’m staying. I don’t know when the Pest Control people might show up.”
“You still haven’t explained to me why you’re so fanatical about rescuing this parakeet.”
Sassy stared straight at the bird in question and said nothing.
“Well, listen. If we must hang around, we could go into the shop for a while.”
Not a bad idea. It would get them out of management’s sight, yet keep them close to where Sassy wanted to be. “Okay.”
Racquel led the way, and trailing behind him, Sassy watched his hornbill flap along beside him in the mezzanine mirrors. Odd. Maybe it was because she had never been in the hotel at such a shadowy time before—but in the darkly gleaming glass she seemed to see, not mirror-image mezzanine behind the hornbill, but forest. She glimpsed the plumy movement of foliage, the snaky outlines of vines in the shadows, the silhouettes of unknowable flowers folded for the night. She could almost hear the rustling of ten-foot ferns, the breathing of trees, the silences and echoing cries of night birds. Her chest yearned. She wanted to be there.
Then she blinked, and her sleepy mind woke up in alarm. What was she thinking? What did she imagine she was seeing? She looked again, and saw the reflection of ficus-on-steroids trees.
Racquel led her through a service door into the labyrinthine, windowless, and blessedly mirrorless guts of the hotel, the gray cinder-block corridors employees used but of which guests were seldom aware. When they reached a steel door marked PLUMAGE, Racquel unlocked it and motioned Sassy in. He did not turn on the lights.
Dim, the shop felt larger than it was. Deep, like—like a forest
again. Feather capes and boas hung like willow leaves, swaying in the breeze of Sassy’s passing. She liked the way they responded to her, almost as if they were alive.
She breathed deeply of their dry spicy scent and sank into the leather chair where patient husbands were supposed to wait. Her feet were tired after a long day, even though she wore silicone-padded uglishoes to clean. Racquel, however, who wore four-inch heels all day, did not sit down, but roamed the shop with hands lifted like wings, his long fingers questing. He plucked a teal derby from the hat stand, strode over and plopped the topper on Sassy. He crouched in front of her and adjusted it at a coy angle.
“Fetching,” he said. “Very fetching. Look at that little pointed chin. You have a face born for hats, Sassy.”
He brought a feathered pillbox and tried it on her instead of the derby.
“No,” he murmured, “you’re more of a farouche type.”
He went off again and returned with a highland bonnet trailing pheasant feathers. He crouched and settled it gently on her.
“Oh, that’s charmante. Très charmante. Come look in a mirror, Sassy.”
She shook her head, her chest aching. Drat, she loved hats; why had it been so long since she had bought a hat? But she knew she would see nothing in the mirror except a blue parakeet.
“Why not? Don’t you like it?”
“I’m tired. You try on hats.”
“Can’t. That’s the only thing I don’t like about my look. I can’t wear hats.”
“Because of all the hair?”
“Yes, because of all the hair.” He removed the pseudo-Scottish bonnet and returned with a plumed picture hat worthy of a Renoir. Sassy loved it. She couldn’t help leaning forward to accommodate the brim as Racquel placed it on her head, precisely adjusted the angle, and tied the silky ribbon—robin’s-egg blue—in a butterfly bow under her chin.
“Oh, that’s it. You have to look, Sassy. Wait. A shawl—”
“No.” She started untying the hat to take it off. Racquel crouched in front of her, peering at her.
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