Swansong

by Rose Christo

  Probably the only worthwhile part of the day comes during free period. I meet with Azel on the fifteenth floor and we walk down the vacant glass hallways, classroom doors standing open, metal fans blowing noisily inside. The smell of wet mold hangs in the air. This must be the Plastics floor.

  "Is your time slot today?" I ask Azel. The plastic city peeps at us from behind translucent walls. It'll be winter soon.

  "It was supposed to be," Azel says. "I got bumped back a few days."

  "Jerks."

  We round the corner. Suddenly we're standing on a long glass breezeway stretched between 15-A and 15-B. Gray clouds drift sluggishly above our heads, the ceiling reinforced, the vents invisible. Gray clouds swim around us, celestial cohabitants peeking through the walls. I almost feel as if I can reach out and push the clouds apart. I'm sure if I do, I'll find the sun's hiding place. I look down. Through the glass floor I can just make out the bulbous courtyard ceiling. It's fifteen stories below us. I swallow a pang of nerves. I feel like I'm falling.

  "Are you alright?" Azel asks.

  It feels like flying, Azel said.

  I smile. "I'm fine."

  We sit down together. Vertigo gnaws at my head. I think a part of my brain can't understand how the air keeps moving around us if the breezeway keeps standing still.

  Azel takes my hand. His fingers twine between mine, dark on light. His skin is soft, his knuckles scarred. I'm grounded.

  "When I was six," Azel says, "I burned my hand on the oven rack."

  So that's where the scar comes from. "What were you doing with the oven?"

  "I wanted to make breakfast for my mother."

  Here comes the ruddy red flush.

  "Mama's boy," I tease. I laugh fondly.

  "Every child favors a parent when they're young. Didn't you?"

  "Oh, sure," I say. "My dad. He used to take me out on the ocean all the time. Mom went bonkers whenever she found out."

  "She didn't want you on the ocean?"

  "We had salmon sharks out that way. And Dad's coworkers were all rough-and-tumble types. Not ideal for a little girl."

  "But you enjoyed it."

  "I like the ocean," I say. The more I consider it, the more the swirling gray clouds around us remind me of soft ocean slate, post-storm. The similarity soothes me. "Biologists say we emerged from the ocean during the Cambrian Explosion. There was no life on land before then. When you think about it...I don't know. Maybe there's a part of us that wants to go back to where we came from. Maybe it's only natural to love the sea."

  Azel's thumb runs calming patterns into the back of my hand. My hands are unscarred. I thought... There were a lot of things I thought. I was wrong about most of them.

  "Do you know Sinbad the Sailor?" Azel asks.

  "Sure," I say. "What about him?"

  I catch Azel smiling. It's a small smile, but it's there. "He's ours," Azel says. "The legend, the stories. They all started in Oman. They say he comes from the seaside ports of Sohar."

  "You lived by the sea?" I ask, mystified. "I thought you came from the desert."

  "I never lived by the sea myself. Half of Oman is coastal. The other half is desert. I'm from Nizwa. We sit on the edge of the Wahiba Sands. We're a stone's throw from the Emirates."

  "What's it like?" I ask. "Living in the desert."

  "Sandy," Azel reports, his tone appropriately dry.

  I give his shoulder a playful shove.

  "Nizwa is unique," Azel amends. "It doesn't know whether it comes from the past or the future. You've got those old adobe houses and terracotta riyad--manors, I mean, those are manors--I'm sure they look the same as they did in the time of the Prophet. But then there are the big corporate buildings that came out of nowhere. It's weird. You can't walk without tripping over a date tree, or some ramparts from an old fort, but if you want a video rental, it's right down the block. Either direction; it doesn't matter. And everything smells like frankincense. The people are obsessed with it. They burn it in the homes, in the streets. They put it on their clothes, their tassels, their rugs. They bathe in it. I rather think they'd put it in their coffee if it didn't drown out the cardamom."

  "Nizwa sounds cute," I say, endeared.

  "There's a Ya'rubi era castle there. Big one, very well-preserved. You might like it."

  "With a princess and everything?" I ask, laughing.

  "Why? You want the position?"

  "Could I order everyone around?"

  "I'm sure you could."

  I'm not entirely certain what he means by that. On the one hand, he could be complimenting me. On the other hand, he could be calling me bossy.

  I doubt it's the latter, somehow.

  "Why did you leave home?" I ask. "For school?"

  "For school," Azel confirms. "Particularly this school. It couldn't be anything else. The economy's better in Oman. Crime rate's lower. Healthcare's free. So's university. Most university students are women, though. I'm not sure why."

  "Men are underachievers."

  "Do you know this for a fact?"

  "I've been studying your kind for a very long time now. I think it's safe to make a hypothesis."

  "Did you use the Scientific Method?"

  "Even better. I used the Woman's Intuition."

  "Where can I get one of those?"

  "You can't. You're an underachiever."

  Azel pulls me against him. It's meant to be the defeating argument, I think, the one where his arm's around me, and his face is Most Displeased, but Defiant, and his hair's so soft I want to lean into it. He wins. I lose.

  I don't really lose.

  "Do you miss your home?" Azel asks. "On the Bay?"

  "I--" I wither. "Only all the time," I admit. "But it's like you said. You can never go home again."

  "Never," he agrees.

  I curl up against him. He tucks my head under his chin. The planes of his body are hard. He radiates with warmth.

  "I don't want to die," I tell Azel. "But sometimes I think I do. Is that weird?"

  "No," Azel says quietly. "Everybody has those thoughts at some point."

  "Everybody? Really?"

  "Just look at the society we've built around us. How can you live in this society without wanting to escape it?"

  For a while I don't speak. My view is torn between the stark green of Azel's shirt and the slate clouds churning all around us.

  I don't feel so alone when I talk to Azel. I don't feel like such a terrible person. If Azel's in this world, I don't want to leave it.

  I just wish there were a world where we weren't such a lonely, self-destructive species. A world where Azel never lost his mother. A world where I never killed mine.

  "Do you know what I love?" Azel says. "About this world?"

  Am I that transparent? "What?"

  "The moon," Azel says. "It looks the same, no matter where you see it. You can't say the same for a sunrise or a sunset. A valley sunrise looks different from a coastal sunrise." Rayleigh scattering and Mie scattering, I know. "But the moon... The moon I saw in Nizwa was the same moon you saw on Tillamook Bay. I like that. The moon rises and the night connects us. It's the only time I feel connected to the seven billion strangers sharing the planet with me."

  I pull back from his grasp. I smile. "We're not strangers, you and I. Are we?"

  "I should hope not. Strangers don't kiss one another."

  "They do if it's Mardi Gras."

  "What is that?"

  "You've been in the US for three years, and nobody's ever flashed you?"

  "I don't want to talk about this anymore."

  I laugh. Azel's face does that twitching thing, that horrified thing, and I laugh harder. My sides hurt; my throat hurts. It feels so good. I wish every laugh were a laugh that hurts like this.

  "Can you do me a favor?" I ask, once I've settled down.

  "What is it?" Azel doesn't hesitate.

  "Always stay this sweet," I say. "No one else is like this. Probably no one on the entire planet
. It would be a waste if you were to change. There's never going to be another you."

  Azel's eyes soften. It's like watching the shifting of the cosmos, ethers and dust making way for new stars. It makes me wonder what he's seeing. It makes me wish I could see it for myself. If I could, I reason, it probably wouldn't be as special.

  "I'll try not to change," Azel says. "If you'll do the same."

  I can't imagine wanting to be me.

  If he wants me to be me, I guess I can try.

  * * * * *

  Walking home from school is a pain without Kory, who, for whatever reason, has decided to take the dive and join the astronomy club. Why an astronomy club meets during daylight hours is beyond me, but it's probably best not to ask. Azel lives farther east than the both of us and has to drop by the grade school to pick up his little sister. That means I'm alone today; and the route through The Spit is oddly disconcerting.

  I walk past the ruinous apartment projects with their archaic, peeling banners. If I think about it, I haven't traversed the city on my own ever since the car accident. Whether Judas or Azel or Kory or even Annwn, I've always had someone at my side. Maybe I'm a coward. I know I'm a coward. At least it wasn't conscious. Cowardice is never conscious.

  My head feels light by the time I reach the overpass. I round the corner. I start down the block, past the wide drugstore parking lot where the mean-looking boys from Pacific West get together to play football. I hear their scuffling sneakers, their shouted expletives. I walk faster. I don't make eye contact.

  The Fifth Fourth Bank looms at my side like a jailhouse, giant and steely, windows barred shut to meticulous detail. Why bother having windows if you're going to treat the windows like they broke a law? Money means more than human life. You don't see apartment buildings safeguarded like their contents are precious. Only two people on this planet are required to care about what happens to you. It's weird. Both of mine are gone.

  I sit down on the curb. It might not be the best idea, but my head is throbbing with pain. I cradle my head between my hands. I rub my temples with my fingertips.

  The charm bracelet. It's missing from my right wrist.

  "Not again," I mumble. I can't bring myself to panic. This is reality now. I lose things. I forget things.

  Except I didn't. The charm bracelet jingles quietly around my left wrist. I see it when I turn my head, the swan hanging safely from the silver-gilt chain.

  To begin with, I'm left-handed. I can't think of many things I can do properly with my right hand. Clasping a bracelet shut isn't one of them.

  Maybe the bracelet fell off my wrist sometime during the day. Maybe someone--Kory, Azel--picked it up and put it back on for me. That's the type of thing I would forget. I forgot meeting with Jocelyn's parents after she died. I forgot the accident that killed her.

  The swan's wings are spread out in flight. Not folded. Not tucked in at her sides.

  I fumble for the cell phone in my pocket. My skin slicks in a cold sweat, the pain in my skull quickening, tightening.

  No. I take my hand out of my pocket. Jude's off work today. I'll see him when I go home. Only two blocks now. I only have two blocks to walk.

  I stand.

  The bracelet's on my right wrist. The swan's wings are folded. Her neck is arched.

  The city spins around me, taunting and cold.

  I break into a run.

  * * * * *

  "Jude," I say, throwing open the apartment door. "I think I'm really--"

  Jude stands in the sitting room with a woman I don't remember seeing before. Both turn around at the sound of my arrival. I step inside the apartment, skittish. The lock clicks shut as the door swings closed behind me.

  "Hey," Judas says. "Parole officer stopped by."

  "Oh." Oh. I start to relax. "Right. I--"

  I step into the sitting room. I reach out to shake the woman's hand. She grasps my hand with a quick, dark grin. She lets go.

  "Marguerite Modesto," she says.

  "I'm Wendy."

  She looks out of place in her neat gray suit. She looks like she'd be more comfortable in a nightclub, in fishnets, her hair purple and spiked. She--

  She looks so familiar. A twinge of weak pain dances behind my ears, across the tip of my spine.

  "I'm just gonna have a chat with your brother," Modesto says. "That okay?"

  "Of course..." But didn't we--?

  "Good girl," Modesto says. She claps me on the shoulder and I jump, caught unawares. She laughs at my reaction, her teeth gleaming and white.

  They're kind of sharp, I think. They remind me a little of a shark's.

  * * * * *

  "What were you saying?" Judas asks.

  We congregate in the kitchen once his parole officer leaves. It's almost four o'clock. I still haven't decided what to make for dinner.

  "What?" I ask, confused.

  "When you came in," Judas says. "You looked like you were worried about something."

  "Oh." I think about the charm bracelet. I think about the parole officer. "I don't..."

  "Somebody bothering you? One of the kids in the building?"

  "No. No, nothing like that." Spinach frittatas. I pull myself over to the refrigerator. Modesto. Marguerite Modesto--

  "It's almost four," Judas says, with the air of someone who just woke up from a long, confusing nap. "Go take your statins."

  I whirl around. I hurry out of the kitchen, into my bedroom. There's a fresh bottle of water on my bedside table. I'll thank Judas later. I hope I will.

  I return to the kitchen and find Judas with a book open, reading glasses on his eyes. He looks up when I approach him.

  "Take your statins?" Judas asks.

  "I--"

  I went into my room. I saw the bottle. I know I did.

  "Wendy?"

  I can't remember. I can't remember if I took the medicine.

  Judas takes his glasses off. He stands up. "I'll count the pills."

  "Don't." I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

  "Don't worry. Stay here."

  I sit weakly at the kitchen table. I want to rip my head open with my fingernails. Maybe that'll stop the memory lapses. Maybe that'll stop the pain.

  Judas comes back a few minutes later. He hands me a chalky white pill. I take it in a shaky hand. I put it in my mouth. He hands me the water bottle and I drink from it. I swallow.

  "It's fine," Judas tells me.

  It's not fine. He shouldn't have to put up with this. I shouldn't have driven the car that day.

  I don't want to cry anymore. I really don't.

  I wish somebody could fix me.

  Judas sits with me at the kitchen table. Neither of us speaks. Words like Escape keep flashing across my mind.

  "Dinner," I manage to say.

  "We'll order something."

  He didn't ask for this. He didn't ask to raise the brain-damaged little sister he hadn't seen in ten years. He doesn't complain. His face is a subdued bas relief of freckles and scars. A Tragedy in three acts.

  Here we are. Act Three.

  "You're not the only one who's broken," Judas says.

  I know. I've thought about that before.

  "How do we get un-broken?" I ask. Two murderers sitting at a kitchen table. It sounds like the punchline to a really bad joke.

  "We don't," Judas says.

  I was afraid of that.

  Judas stands up. I follow him with my eyes. He grabs his keys off the kitchen table. He rakes his knuckles through his cloudy gold hair.

  "Changed my mind," Judas says. "We're going out."

  * * * * *

  The bus is bumpy when it trails across US 101. It comes as a strange relief to see the terrain devoid of buildings and--for the most part--cars. The bus is all but empty, too. The only other passenger is a little old lady sitting behind the driver.

  I gaze out the window at my side. The road is gray with shadows. The sky is silvery-blue with budding clouds. It looks like rain. It can't be rain. It doesn't rai
n as much as it should anymore. Meteorologists say it hasn't snowed in thirteen years. I remember snow, I think. I remember the white drops stark against the off-white sand, the way they coated the steely ocean waves in icy stardust. I remember tilting my head back and watching them drift like messengers from a seamless pearl of a sky. I was three, maybe four. Maybe it was a dream.

  I know where we're going today. I won't pretend otherwise.

  "You alright?" Judas asks.

  I smile at him. "It's weird," I say. "The cars scare me more than the bus does." I keep an eye out for them on the road. They zip past without purpose, intermittent.

  "Wanna get papaya tonight?" Judas asks.

  "Sure."

  The road snakes and curves. The exits pass us by. I can see jagged, weather-beaten rocks on the other side of the interstate railing. I think we just passed Cape Meares. I think about Dad dressing up as Santa Claus. I think about Mom with her marzipan tortells and pistachio torrones and--of course--her lemon pies. Funny how she bakes those just fine, but not cakes. Baked. I forgot.

  The whole trip only takes about thirty minutes. We're still in Tillamook County. We get off at the bus stop in Tillamook Town. My stomach lurches with nerves. I attended grade school in this town. I got my checkups here, my booster shots. It's a sleepy little village without any apparent structure or planning. The colonial white houses with their gable roofs slope down toward the distant sea. From where I stand I can see the ocean, blue waves rippling like a rough sapphire under cloudy autumn skies.

  We walk. We walk past the pharmacy and a diner called Nebraska. I always wondered at that, a diner called Nebraska in a state called Oregon. We walk down the incline, bushy cattails brushing our legs. I can hear the surf growing closer, whispering in my ears like a long-forgotten friend.

  "Fishing town," Judas remarks.

  I know what he means. The air reeks strongly of Chinook salmon. It's an unmistakable, unforgettable smell, acid and metallic. It gets in your pores and down your throat. It makes your hackles raise. I love that smell. I'm probably nuts.

  The rough ground underneath us gives way to soft sand, mineral-white, as smooth as a cotton blanket. A weak white sun shines on the glittering ocean waves, soaking them in various shades of cobalt and royal blue. Mariners stand around the ageless wooden wharf, their boats docked safely at the berths. Dad's boat was aluminum, a custom job, with a trolling motor and an outboard motor. I used to help him clean it after school.