Pretty Birds

by Scott Simon

  “And then?”

  Jackie tugged on her scarf. “Up to higher minds, dear.”

  “Molly in the hedges?”

  “A possibility, I suppose. Let her get twenty yards across and make her a nice little news story. The Serb girl who dies running toward the outstretched arms of her old Muslim teammate.”

  Jackie flicked a last ash onto the floor and leaned down to squish out her cigarette. When she sat up, she held the smashed butt daintily in the palm of her hand, like a dried rose. “But Jacobo here reminded me: the airport is not some windblown West Bank settlement,” she went on. “Anybody shot crossing the runway comes into the hands of the U.N. A lone girl running across to join a siege who gets brought down by a shot from the Bosnian side? I’m not sure we could explain that. Or blame it on the Frenchies. Of course, they might oblige us. That’s how the Blue Helmets get their target practice—plinking desperate people trying to dash across the runway. But I’d say that if your friend makes it across—this yellow jacket in the Hornet’s Nest—she’s part of this family. Until higher minds decide we have to put her in our own trunk.”

  MEL BROUGHT IRENA a coarse old U.S. Army blanket and a pack of Marlboros to make her time in the room more comfortable. “What the fuck,” he said. “Sit, lie down. Ashes on the floor, fine, what the fuck.”

  He closed the door. Irena declined to try to open it—she didn’t want to learn if it had been locked. But when Mel returned within ten minutes, she looked up as she heard a bolt thrown from the other side. Mel was bearing a plate with four American soda crackers, four packets of grape jelly, a plastic bottle of water, and an ironstone mug of tea, the bag trailing a string that he had looped around the handle.

  “You get hungry, you want more, what the fuck, let me know,” he said.

  “And how would I do that, Mel? Dial room service? Can’t seem to find the phone. Stroll on down to the café? I seem to be rather sealed off from the world in here.”

  “Knock, what the fuck, I’ll hear you,” he said.

  Irena had her snack and had stretched back on the blanket, rolling half of it around her, when she heard the lock slid back and looked up to see the door open on a man with an orange horse’s tail of hair hanging over his shoulder.

  “Molls!”

  He had a magazine rolled in his meticulously kept right hand, and a fresh cup of tea in his left. “Sorry it’s not something stronger, love. Later. Got to stay alert, both of us, for whatever.”

  Irena sat up against the wall and Molly sat just across from her, lotus style, pushing his knees into place. He had brought along The Face from November 1992, with Marky Mark on the cover.

  “Don’t know him,” Molly said. “But a well-cut piece of stone, as we say.”

  “Rap star, Molls. Rock is a setting sun. Get with it.”

  Molly rocked forward slightly and seemed to keep his voice trained on the earthen floor.

  “This ground will chill your gonads,” he said. “Robben Island style.”

  “Just to keep an eye on me, they say,” said Irena. “Until.”

  “Until. Say the word, love,” Molly said quietly into the dirt. “I’ll take you out of here. I protect the striker.”

  “I should stay. I did nothing wrong.”

  “Neither did Socrates. He could have used a mate like me.”

  “How long did Mandela stick it out on Robben Island?”

  “About as long as you’ve been on the planet, I think. But you’re supposed to be sprung as soon as your pal shows at the airport.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  Molly could only shrug. A shrug from a man sitting in the lotus position makes him rock slightly, like a duck waddling ashore.

  “I’ve been running the play through my mind, Molls,” Irena said. “If she doesn’t show, it looks like I was used all along.”

  “It might.”

  “Jackie. The Mexican—whatever he is. They must worry if I’m a dupe—just a dupe—or a viper in our breasts. So to speak.”

  “They have to worry about everything.”

  “The locked but unguarded door. Mel coming in, playing housemaid. This could all be a setup, to see if I run. You, too, Molls.”

  “They only rent me, love. They haven’t bought me.”

  Molly got to his feet, taking care not to step on Irena’s blanket or, Irena convinced herself, stand and speak too close to the incessantly burning bulb.

  “If you want a deck of cards, let Mel know,” he said. “I have one. I’ll be over. They’ve taught me some grand games here, where you can win points by bluffing.”

  IRENA HELD OUT The Face after Molly departed and unseen hands threw the bolt back into place. She looked over the cover photo of Marky Mark. It was black and white. Marky Mark was stripped to his waist and crouching into a sprinter’s stance, which emphasized his shoulders nicely. The cover asked, “Is He the New Madonna?”

  Omigosh, Irena thought, I was never meant to see this. There’s already a new Madonna and I’ve scarcely heard of him.

  IRENA WAS SLEEPING lightly when the door bolt came undone in her head. She looked up as she awakened. Jackie was in the doorway, tapping the right toe of her flats into the hard dirt floor, clasping both ends of her shawl against her throat, smoke snaking through her fingers and shimmering like a lace veil over her face.

  “Sorry to disturb your slumber,” she announced. “Your friend has just shown. At the airport. Informed sources—which is to say, the Norwegian Air Force mechanic we supply with magic mushrooms—say that a U.N. food plane is landing in thirty-two minutes. We expect her to try to cross behind it. I expect you do, too. Take a pee and rinse your hands, dear. The play has begun.”

  34.

  WITHIN FIVE MINUTES, Irena, Jackie, Jacobo, and Molly had jammed themselves into the congested confines of an old white brewery Lada, with the idea that any vehicle marked with the brewery’s emblem was familiar to the Blue Helmets stationed near the airport and would draw no suspicion.

  Molly drove with deliberate but unremarkable speed. Irena sat next to him. She was the tallest; the group had an investment in the soundness of her legs. Jackie squeezed herself into half of the small backseat. Jacobo, despite his status as guest and the group’s elder eminence, had to put his head between his knees in the other half of the seat. Irena offered to hold his blazer on her lap, carefully folded and preserved from stress. Most of the ride was spent in apprehensive silence, until Irena noticed the deep green silk lining of Jacobo’s blazer and ran her fingers over its smoothness.

  “This is really lovely,” she turned back to tell Jacobo.

  “Thank you.”

  “British?”

  “Italian.”

  “Show me, show me,” Jackie demanded.

  Irena turned up one of the lapels, lined in the same sumptuous green.

  “That’s really beautiful,” said Jackie. “I wish I could have a dress in that material.”

  “I’ll see to it myself,” said Jacobo. “When all of this is over.”

  “Men make so many promises like that these days,” Jackie sighed.

  “Am I free or condemned?” Irena asked.

  “Neither,” Molly and Jacobo rushed to assure her in patently shocked tones.

  “Both, of course,” Jackie amended.

  By the time Molly had steered the Lada to a halt outside the runway hedges, the group was fighting to subdue their laughter.

  IRENA MADE A point of falling into step beside Molly and his rangy, veldt-stalking strides.

  “You on your own here, Molls? I mean, utterly?”

  Molly was already scouring the runway. With his slender neck rising and his red tail hanging, there was something as isolated and elegant as a giraffe in his impassiveness. “There’s a lad inside the bushes, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “He has an M-14 oiled and ready. If that’s what you mean.”

  “Just because?”

  “Because we can never tell what may transpire,” said Molly, finally tur
ning around but speaking into Irena’s shoulder. “We don’t want to be caught without—whatever.”

  Irena brought her mouth over Molly’s left shoulder. His horse’s tail was freshly gathered into place with the red band from a beer-packing crate.

  “Does she even get a chance, Molls?” she asked. “Or am I just the cube of cheese in your trap? Do you just wait until you can see her blond curls dancing and bring her down like the abandoned baby wildebeest—is that what you mean?”

  “No such orders, love,” he said evenly. “No such intentions.”

  “But then—” said Irena, “would you even tell me?”

  Irena could hear Jacobo’s extravagantly soled shoes grinding into the gravel and twigs just outside the hedges, and Jackie’s voice going on about his silken green blazer lining as she parted a bough of branches to look out on the field.

  “I don’t know,” said Molly. “It’s just a suppose. As I say, no such orders.”

  JACKIE HAD IRENA step through a section of the hedges like a curtain. She had on her old gray West German army jacket from Grbavica, and her Air Jordans. When she heard Jackie’s beautifully modulated urgings from behind—“Unzip it now, dear. Just give a tug”—she gave the zipper a yank and the jacket billowed and parted. Her red basketball jersey flapped below, snapping like a signal flag in the wind along the runway.

  “I have a fix on your friend,” Molly called out from the hedges. “Our friend.”

  Irena paced out steps, five to the right, five to the left, taking care that her red jersey was visible with each turn.

  “Hair down. As you prophesied,” Jackie called out next. “Damn blondes usually do.”

  Irena began to pace a longer tread, ten steps right, ten steps left, turning her trunk so that her red jersey shone from her knees to her neck.

  “Bird to the east,” Molly called out from his hedge after Irena had taken half a dozen such tours.

  “What the hell does that mean?” she barked back. “Don’t speak in song lyrics.”

  Molly’s voice came through the branches and flutter of leaves with a laugh. “Plane coming in, love. To your right.”

  IT WAS A white-winged U.N. plane with a black beak and a silver belly, its whine rising as it rolled closer, almost sluggishly, on fat black wheels. Four or five Blue Helmets bobbed against the flat slice of orange sun sliding down toward the far end of the field. Irena could begin to make out the blue emblem on the tail of the plane, abstract fingers stretched across wreaths and stalks.

  Amela had leaped out early. Irena, Jackie, Molly—they had all missed it. Irena saw her corn-silk curls flouncing above one of the tires; she seemed to be running in a crouch, with the same strolling pace as the plane.

  Irena didn’t shout out to Molly, Jackie, or the lad who had brought the rifle into the hedges. But when she froze in her treads, it was as good as painting an arrow from her gaze onto the field. To her left, Irena heard the heels of Blue Helmets begin to stamp and crackle across the runway. She saw Amela hunched behind the nearest tire. As the tire turned, Amela set herself into a fast-break crouch, and took a step to her left, then a quick, compact stride forward. She sprang up to run, and sawed off two, three strong steps and then fell forward. The plane rolled on. Amela lay still.

  Irena could see a pale spill of curls sprawled across the ground. She shouted, “Bastards! Bastards!” into the hedges behind her and shot forward onto the field, her black-and-red shoes scoring and grazing the gravel, her shoulders floating and blood boiling in her ears.

  IRENA FELL ONTO her knees above Amela. The left shoulder of Amela’s jacket bulged with blood, dark as plum jam. Amela’s head had come down on her chin—Irena could see the scraping—but she had turned her head to the side and was blinking dirt from her blue eyes to look up at Irena.

  “Bastards! Bastards!” Irena hissed. She put a hand lightly over Amela’s enormous wet blue eyes.

  “It came from behind,” said Amela. “My bastards.”

  Amela twisted around to look up at Irena, who had brought her hand gently against the curls cushioning her right cheek.

  “They’ve been watching me,” said Amela. “Yesterday, they captured me as soon as I crossed back. They said they already had my parents.”

  Amela gasped and squeezed her eyes shut, then seemed to will them open again. “I bargained. I told them what I knew about the play. I’m sorry. I figured what I was told must be wrong anyway. The man who whispered it to me—he was only trying to impress me. They said, ‘Okay, Amela, if you’re so sure, we’ll put your own pretty little ass on that perch tonight.’ ”

  Irena put her hand lightly against Amela’s chin, as if she were touching a wound.

  “They have been waiting. For a year.” Amela blinked and took in a breath. “For an excuse. They forced themselves on me. Two at a time. They kept saying, ‘So you want to be a Muslim girl.’ ”

  Irena held Amela’s face with both hands now, carefully, as if she were picking up a fragile old flower bowl. “Last night,” she asked. “You were one of the shooters?”

  “Three of us. Two to watch me. But I didn’t shoot at anyone. You aim at a spot.”

  “I know.”

  “A spot, a target. I shot into a blue curtain.”

  “Three people died,” said Irena.

  “I’m sorry. So have my parents—I’m sure.”

  “So you made a bargain with those bastards for nothing.”

  Amela’s legs twitched slightly. She looked down, startled to see her legs move without her so willing them. She clenched her eyes shut again. “Got me here,” she said.

  Irena rolled onto her knees and put one hand under Amela’s chest, the other below her hips. She had just leaned back to lift Amela into her arms when a flat, sick thud struck her chest and began to soak her red jersey.

  THE BLUE HELMETS, having overseen the safe passage of the U.N. plane from one end of the runway to the other, were fifty yards away and clomping quickly over the fine-gauge grit and gravel. But Jackie had leaped out first. She had kicked off her shoes and was tearing holes into her black hose and pulling her black jersey dress above her knees with her one good hand to race across the flat, scratchy field to beat the Frenchies to where the girls lay. Molly had thrown down his gun. He had vaulted through a break in the hedges and run over a bristly bush, and his knees were speckled with small green needles as he pumped his arms and legs across the field.

  Two Frenchies, red-faced and huffing, faced Jackie across the girls’ still bodies.

  “Let us have them,” she said in English—sharply, like a command.

  “One is still breathing,” said a pink young face from under a blue helmet. “We have to bring her to the hospital.”

  “We’ll bring them to our hospital,” said Jackie. “You have to pass through a Serb checkpoint. They will make you wait until she bleeds to death. You know that.”

  The young soldier looked down at the girls. Irena had fallen back with her right arm still under Amela’s chest. They must have reminded the boy of two children scrambling in a sandbox.

  “We didn’t shoot them,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “We have orders.”

  Jacobo, his feathery shoes scuffing in the dust and grit, pulled up, puffing, just behind Jackie, who held the Frenchies back with a snap in her voice.

  “They have died to be together. Let them.” The young soldier who had spoken turned around to look back at the rest of the runway. Five or six Blue Helmets were lashing down the wheels of the U.N. plane, and a couple had their rifles raised on alert while the plane’s silver tail yawned open and bodies clambered on board for boxes and sacks. The young Frenchman turned back to Jackie, waggling the black snout of his rifle under her chin.

  “Quick as you can,” he said quietly. “Get them out of here.”

  The two soldiers turned their backs and brought their rifles up into their arms. Molly bent down and carefully unstuck Irena from her embrace and held her against his chest,
trying to stanch the bleeding by clinching her body close. Jacobo put his arms under Amela from the other side and brought her body across his shoulders, her face slumbering on a soft blue Italian lapel. The men began to run off the field, Jackie trailing in her stocking feet. She heard a young voice behind her, one of the Blue Helmets calling over her quick, sharp footsteps.

  “God give them peace,” he said.

  35.

  SHE DROWSED AND drifted in and out of awareness. She could remember people turning her onto her belly, finding veins in her arms, putting tubes inside her. She remembered the hot, sour breath of people speaking in hushed voices close to her head, lights blaring, lights doused, a night or more passing. She came around gradually. She began to feel itching just below the skin of her chest and shoulders. When she moved her head from side to side against a pillow, it felt as if sharp glass were being jostled inside. She finally raised herself onto her elbows.

  She remembered that her clothes had been rolled off or cut away, and finally saw the scratchy, thin white smock that had been stretched over her front. She felt the urge to pee, and just feeling the urge sent her pee down a tube and gurgling into a red rubber bag. She swung her feet over the edge of the bed. She saw that the walls of the room were a stale yellow, like old butter. There was sun sieving in through a single small window to the left of the bed. She settled her bare toes onto the frayed orange carpet. She reached out to take hold of the piss tube as she lowered her feet. She thought she could feel the grit of cigarette ash and food crumbs. She felt suddenly thirsty. Her stomach cringed and yelped. She craved a cigarette. She bent over to look through the window to see the time of day, the street she was on, and whether there were clouds, and saw her face, with short, blunt brown hair, looking back.

  She took halting, scuttling steps over to a door and pushed it open onto a blue hallway. There was a man in a white T-shirt and blue jeans drowsing in the flicker of a candlelight, a copy of The Face with Marky Mark crouching on the cover overturned on his knee.