Day awakens to an empty bed. A wavy plush white blanket coils around her leg. Sol warms her bare skin, lighting on each pore, through the digital blinds. With minor pain she sits up. Her clothes are not in the bedroom, though a panty is there on the floor. She rises, stretching once, slowly, onto her toes. A shout finds her ears through the walls. She timidly cracks the door, but sensing a movement peripherally she stops. Scarla is in the big chair in the corner of the bedroom, partly hidden under a black blanket.
She looks at Day. Shifting her bare shoulders, Scarla closes her eyes. Her short red hair, scattered but tucked still at her ear, is more like fire than blood around her cheeks. Scarla opens her eyes, on Day’s hip. “I love the architecture of your body.”
“Thank you,” she answers quietly.
“You could block out the sun.” Scarla says this in a way that implies some meaning. Her arm shifts under the blanket. Day feels vulnerable, naked, as she realizes that Scarla is masturbating. Scarla’s breathing quickens and her cheeks flush. Profanity comes again down the hall.
Frustrated, Scarla pushes back the blanket. She laughs then, shakenly. She pulls on the underwear and t-shirt there off the floor.
In the next room, Violet stands in front of the lit TV, watching the door. Day stays back, observing the tension. Scarla says, walking into the room, “What’s with all the yelling?”
Violet asks, “Where do you think he went?”
“Pretty obs. H-bomb.”
Quietly, Violet says, “He could be at Ian’s for all we know. Maybe he’s with Orion? The whole thing is just fucked. But he didn’t hurt anyone.”
Scarla reaches the door and turns around. Her eyes catch on Day. Violet follows her look, saying casually, almost smiling at her, “Hey, lion.” Day nods, lacing her arms under her breasts, holding her sides.
Scarla says, “Not lately.”
Violet looks back to her, responding, “If that’s what you want to bring up.”
“Justice doesn’t forget. Whatever.”
Violet says, “What you’re thinking of is revenge.”
Scarla is calm. “Same diff.”
Day interjects, cautious but sincere, “He didn’t do anything to Orion. That was an accident.”
Violet says, “She’s right.”
Scarla consents, crossing the room again, “If you want to know where he’s going you’ve only got to know why, which has nothing to do with what happened and everything to do with how he feels. Come on, Momma.” She looks back to the door. Sarcasm is thick in her next words, “Orion wouldn’t hurt Sayd, never. He’d cut his cock right off I mean, but just for his own good. There’s your damn justice, if there is such a thing. Maybe I over-dramatize, but you don’t understand their history, butterfly.” Despite her vocal composure her hands are shaking. She closes her eyes, standing still.
Day goes to the restroom. Sitting, naked on the cool porcelain, she pees. She shivers, stopping short. Her clothes hang on the towel rack. She puts them on though they are still damp. Squeezing her feathers through the cold wingholes, a chill runs down her back. She washes her face. Looking up, she is happy to do without the makeup on the vanity. Going back to the main room she thinks she will leave quickly. I don’t want to be a part of this anymore. Nothing can be done. Off balance a moment she holds on to the wall.
As Day comes back into the room Violet is saying, “God but the bullshit we justify our existence with! Goreporn and eighties hair, you’re telling me that’s a career? Revenge on time, I’ll say. That bitch has no sense of fairness, for sure.” She laughs. “She can hardly tell beauty from plague. David or Duran Duran. The beholder is blind. Why did I waste so many lives?” The desperation in her words is visceral, though self-aware of her own nonsense, and she grins. “It’s a valid fucking question. MTV. Turn off the TV.” The speakers cut off suddenly and the screen goes dark. Then, “Fuck off, Kit. I’ll yell at anyone I like. Don’t be a jerk. I can’t believe this fucking week.”
Scarla sighs angrily as she lights a cigarette. She says quietly, “I’ll meet you there. I always told you Harmony should have just fucked them both. No joke. That slut’s pussy is gravity.”
Violet says, almost laughing again but at the same time fighting sadness, sarcastic, “Really? You think he still ran to her? What the hell are we doing then?” After a deep breath she adds, “That’s the problem, you know. I know you know. Yes. Love is never casual. Her time is what he wanted. Her presence. Infidelity isn’t about sex. Isn’t that still at the heart of it all? Are we even true to ourselves?” She takes a step but hesitates to walk away, watching the door. “All that history between them, I know. History, now time doesn’t forget. Love brings the sunrise, Kitten. I get it.” She smiles sadly. “No, some things can’t be shared.” She pauses, then, “These prisons. Our stories.”
Day says, with more force than she intends, before she stops herself, “Love can be shared.” The others turn to her. She looks down, more shy. “Love can.”
Interrupting her, the doorknob turns and they look to it. It swings open, into the stop. Sayd comes in, dripping. His eyes shift between them, golden beneath his black hood. He stares at Day. She blushes, finding nothing adequate to say. “Morning.” She rolls her wings, slowly shrugging, just breathing. Though she is clothed now she feels nude and childish, again, in his presence.
Pulling his eyes away his intensity is no less. “Get your coats, please,” he says.
“Wasn’t she happy to see you?” Scarla taunts, then pulling deep on her cigarette.
He answers, “She didn’t have much to say.”
Violet hesitates, but says, “You didn’t do anything wrong my love. We’re all in shock. Been going fucking crazy here without you.”
He looks at her but says nothing. Turning back to the open door he throws his fist, hard, fast, slamming into the wall. With a crack the surface flexes inward. Then it pushes back, flattening, dripped with just a spot of red. He closes his eyes.
He looks sideways at Day. Standing straight she keeps his eyes. Her wings sway. “This place,” he states, his voice surprisingly warm, “Come away from this place with me.”
“Darling,” says Violet to him, desperately frustrated.
“Fuck!” he yells at her, and she cowers at the power of his voice. Effortlessly though he calms. “I can’t be here right now. I’m thinking of hitting the road. Let’s go, hey? From this whole damn city. You are welcome to come with us.” He stares at Day again as he says this. Then he turns and disappears from the door, leaving them all.
Scarla’s gray eyes flash beneath their lids. Jogging to the bedroom, when she comes back she emerges dressed, wearing her red raincoat and pulling into a pair of tight black pants. She gives Day half a smile and then so quickly is gone.
Violet puts on her socks and shoes by the sofa, leaving the door ajar as she leaves as well.
Alone, Day moves to the kitchen, where she finds a ripe golden apple in the autogarden on the sill. Seeing the rain resumed on the windows she shivers hard, rubbing her arms vicariously, and returns to the bedroom. She finds a dark red raincoat in the closet. An envelope catches her eye, on the end table, blank, but she only ponders it for a second. The tiger has taken over the bed, sleeping stretched among the white waves of blanket. Day watches its slow breathing, the architecture of its form.
“Take care of yourself,” she says.
Moving out into the storm, she stumbles into a tall gray boy in a soaked velvet hat. Day drops her fruit, unfinished. His neck in the stiff collar of his coat bears soft, fleshy gills. “Watch it, Flyer,” he says, the slits twitching as he brushes past. Standing on the curb in the rain she watches him walk away, down the road. Sayd and the girls are nowhere to be seen. Two dark-winged birdwomen glide around a corner above, at thirty feet, and cruise toward her. Almost directly overhead they split apart. One disappears from her view into the gray day behind, so she watches the other, turning her head, as she streaks out through the falling rain.
Her wings cramp under the borrowed raincoat, so she decides that she will return to Harmony’s apartment, for her own.