Archive-name: Casual/wildbird.txt

Archive-author: 

Archive-title: Wild Birds





    I expect nothing.  The sun is hot, the light ugly.  I walk, when

I can, in the shade of shopfronts.  My face is tight.  I hope for

nothing.  I see women whose money has made them old.  Bright scarves

shame their skin, creamy powder clogs their eyes' fine wrinkles, heavy

earrings, chokers, bend down their necks.  Sweat drips from my fingers, and

am I like them?  I see men whose eyes make me old.  Taut, vicious boys in

suits glance at me once, but not again.  Slow, dreamy blacks with

deep-creased hands hold my gaze, and their faces don't change at all. 

When shoulders brush my shoulders I feel bruised.  The lunch hour crowd

returning from work in its good, painful shoes nearly crushes me, could

have trampled me on the pavement.  Assholes with ponytails and twittering

shopgirls clatter up behind me and past, busy, sexless and quick.  I

stop walking.  I didn't see him.  Sure, who would want to?  Filthy bum.

Smiling.  Things in his mustache.  Why look at a thing like that? 

Why look at a thing like me?



	"Lady?  Find the Lady?"



	"No."

   

	"Three chances to find the Lady, lady.  Double your money.  Little money

down."



	"No."  I'm still standing there.  He's reaching up.  The cracks in

his fingers are black, his fingers are yellow.  Filth-yellow. 

Gray-yellow.  Dirtier than money.  I put money in them, smooth money too

old to rustle.  It's gone like that.  He's all business, now, he doesn't

smile.



	"Three cards, lady."  He lays them out.  "Which one's the Lady? 

Which one's the Queen of Joy?"



  	I point, not with my hand.  My small foot, five white piggies,

crushed to a point, points at the middle card.  My blue shoe, my blue-green

office shoe points for me.  It matches my scarf, my bag.



	"No, lady, not the deuce, we want to find the the Lady.  Show me

my pretty Lady, I know I lost her somewhere here."



	I haven't looked, my eyes are just above his head, it could be any

card.  He doesn't have to cheat to fool me.  I point again, twitch to the

left.



	"No, my lady, we want something softer than diamonds.  Not the

seven.  Find the Lady.  Try, lady."



	I look.  He's looking back.  His lost eyes only show their

blackness, white and iris gone in folds of old skin.  He's sweating, same

as me, same as everyone, water glinting in his ruined cheeks, his neck. 

He's not all that old.  Maybe forty?  Less?



	"I guess it must be the third card.  That one."



	"You, lose, lady, not there, not that one.  So much for double

your money.  Too bad.  Thought you were a lucky lady."



	I'm still standing there.  I wanted to see her.  He shuffles up

the cards, glances up the street, forgets me.



	"I want to play again."



	"How's that?"



	"I'll play again."  I hold out money.  "Three chances.  Double my

money.  I'll play."



	"Tell you what."  The money's gone. "I like you, lady.  Why don't

I show you where she lives."



	Impossible to look at that face, or look away.  Gray, street color,

and the inside of the mouth like a wound, like a flayed thing.  The wet

stone eyes again, lost, unreachable; broken, unfixable. And the body. 

Squat, smashed.  The fat, blunt fingers, clever at small things, tricky.

The swollen legs and shapeless trunk.



	"I like you, lady."



	"Show me the Queen."



	It doesn't surprise me.  The instant before, I know exactly what I

asked for, what I'm getting, and his hand is on my shin.  My leg jerks,

but not away.  His fingers are like smooth wood.  They catch on my panty

hose.  He strokes, lightly.  



	"There's the Lady.  There's the Queen."



	My own face twists.  Water breaks from my eyes like glass chips. 

What could make me want this?  What, ever?  There are people in the

street, am I this lost?  Am I this far from safety, from

cleanness, white sheets?  I hope he will reach higher.  I hope his thick

thumb finds my dirty, wrinkled part.  I hope he presses softly in, past the

labia's weak protest, deep.  My shoulders shake, desperate, and I gasp and

choke.  He strokes, still gentle, up, under my pretty skirt's stiff rim.  



	"That's my pretty Queen of Joy."



	Desperate, I stare up the street.  If one face sees me I will

become sane, will know I am being groped by a bum and lose myself in

disgust.  But no one looks.  I realise I am completely safe.  No decent

eye will see this ugliness of the street.  By this mad act I have

become the city's filth, as invisible as my starving attacker.  He tugs

down my cotton panties, twiddles with my hair.  I could dare to moan.  I

moan.  The louder I am, the deafer the walkers become.  Only prurient tourists

hear.  I sink to my knees, and he finds the open place.  Filth.  His

fingernail leaves traces of contagion in my softest flesh.  Vile.  He

slides all the way out, shows me a bunch of three fingers, shoves that in.



	He has his own cock out now, and his stroke with himself is

faster, more casual than with me.  It looks exactly like the last cock I

saw, dark-headed, small, twisting a little away from him.  I am so full now

that I feel my body is half his.  His fingers move independently inside me,

rubbing against each other like a clutch of brother snakes.  Then the

fourth slides in.  Its nail catches, a little stab.  My teeth grind, the

water on my face is half tears, half spittle.  I cry out as if for

childbirth or death.



	After I come I stay, with him inside me.  I watch him, and he

looks down at himself, at the site of his own pleasure.  He leaves his

hand sunk in me, moving a little, and pumps up and down on himself.  I

look.  I want to see this act when desire is finished.  I try to know

exactly what grossness I have done.  I try to relearn disgust.  I can't. 

When his semen flies, two drops land on my skirt.  I touch one.  His cries

are strained and quiet, and he slumps against the grey wall, then looks up

at me.  Now he smiles, and, God, I see his browning, narrow teeth.



	"You're quite a lady, Lady."



	He takes his hand out of me, but I still don't stand for a while. 

I raise the hand that touched his semen to my mouth.  My damp hand

shakes.  No one walks past.  Though no one looked at us, still we have

cleared the street.  I struggle up, survey the ruin of my hose.



	"Well, Lady, I sure hope to see you.  Hey?"



	I go.  I leave my purse.  My face is wet and red, my feet stagger. 

I try smiling at a girl I pass.  Terrified eyes flick away.  Good. 

The invisibility's still working.  I'm inhuman for the duration.  The sun

hits my body, the stink of trash fills my lungs, and I walk faster and

faster.  At the corner I turn, and I must know this street but it looks

different.  I put my head down and watch my blue-green shoes click on the

pavement.  I turn another way, half run, half drag.  I can't say where I'm

headed.  How could I possibly go back to work?  How could I possibly hope

to find home?

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