The Weight of Feathers

She stared at him. Her hands stayed still, holding his shirt. The wet fabric dripped into the metal sink.

He shouldn’t have said it at all. Saying it with his shirt off just made it worse. Why not unbutton his fly while he was at it?

He grabbed for something to change the subject to, but everything he landed on made it worse. The pattern on her dress. How the ends of her hair had gotten in the way, and were wet from the tap. Her hands working the fabric of his shirt in a way that made him wish he was still in it.

She wrung out his shirt and handed it to him. “Just hang it up. It should be good.” She put the club soda and the other half of the lemon in the fridge. The citrus smell made the air feel thin and clean.

He had to leave. Standing there with the wet shirt in his hands would make him look even more comme un con than he already felt.

You’re beautiful. It’s just true. His own words hovered in the air like dragonflies. Even when he went out the back door to hang up his shirt, he could hear the humming of their wings. He had no way of knowing if she wanted to swat them away or open her hands to let them land.



Pájaro viejo no entra en jaula.

An old bird is difficult to catch.

“Lace.”

Lace woke first to Clémentine’s voice, then to the pain in her arms.

“Lace.”

Clémentine held her hands, stopping her from clawing her own skin.

Lace sat up. She remembered the dream of that cotton-candy sky, how it fell, scalding everything.

“You’ve scratched yourself open,” Clémentine said.

A few dots of blood speckled Lace’s sleeves. Clémentine tried to roll them up, but Lace pulled her hands away.

“You should clean those.” Clémentine handed Lace the things she needed to shower.

Hot water still hurt. It drummed heat into Lace’s back, scratched at her cheek. It came on like the sting of touching dry ice. It made her brace her hands on the wall tile.

So she flipped the shower to cold and shivered under the tap. Beads of water clung to her body, icing her back and her breasts. The chill stayed, her lungs and heart cooling like fruit in the aguas frescas.

The sound of the water made her think of Cluck’s voice, him saying, “You’re beautiful” under the soft rush of the kitchen faucet. She wished, as hard as she wished for her skin to heal and close, that she’d been looking at him when he said it. His face would’ve told her what those words meant. If he felt sorry for her, or if wondering what might have happened in the front seat of the truck, absent his cousins’ laughter, bothered him as much as it bothered her.

A shudder rattled through her as she dried off and pulled on her clothes. Dresses only, as long as she was here. No more skirts and tops. If her shirt rode up in the back, her escamas might show.

She did her makeup the way Nicole taught her. A thin layer, then another. Then blush, lip color. Her hair soaked the back of her dress, sticking it to her skin. She balled it up to pin it on her way down the hall.

The sound of coughing startled her. Her hands opened, and whips of her wet hair hit her back.

She followed the sound farther into the hall. It had the deep, hollow echo of a hard cough. She could hear it starting and ending in the lungs, pinching the heart and pressing against the rib cage.

Lace found the room the coughing came from. The wooden door was cracked, letting her see the old man standing among the mismatched furniture. A plain bed and a dresser with vine-shaped carvings along the edges. Yellowing doilies on everything. A wooden bead rosary dripped off the nightstand.

He held a white handkerchief to his mouth, the cough shaking his body.