Adrienne Celt - The Daughters

“Well.” I spoke carefully. “Like what?”

“We have to decide on the rules of the world,” John said. “First of all, you’ll be gone there for a long time. Maybe it’s even somewhere you’ve been before?” His eye caught mine in a flash, then flicked away. Sounding me out. If I hadn’t noticed what he looked like, what else might I have missed? Submerged signals. Signs of displeasure when I talked about a conductor in Berlin, the broad chest of a basso profundo in Carnegie Hall.

“I go where I’m asked.”

“Yes.” John let his chair descend with a thump and I looked around, embarrassed, but no one was paying attention. “But who’s asking? A, shall we say, rich so-and-so. Debonair type, who keeps a whole storeroom full of jewels to drape around the shoulders of the women he lures in.”

“John,” I said. But he put up a hand, one finger aloft. Let me continue.

“What you see when you look at him isn’t the whole truth. But at first that won’t be what’s important, because he’ll want to look at you. He’ll give you a necklace to wear when you sing, one that clasps at the top and bottom of your throat. And there will be jewels — rubies, probably.” John raised an eyebrow at me, daring me to critique him.

I shook my head. If we were going to really go for it: “Garnets.”

“Ah, ha,” he agreed. “Even better. Garnets then. To mark each gulp.” John traced a vertical line down his neck, running over the Adam’s apple. “A row of jewels up and down, a collar of jewels at top and bottom. That will be your welcome gift.”

“Not a very good gift, if he wants me to sing.”

“Why not?” He looked wounded, and by way of explanation, I made a choking motion, hands a V on my collarbone.

“Too restrictive.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes, it is.” I could feel my blood pressure rising — a dial twisting, turning by centimeters. I wanted John to stop, to look at me and say he was sorry for letting himself get carried away. But he didn’t.

“Well, that’s just the point,” he said instead. Then he smiled. Wide. And with that smile, I felt him pull something out of my hands. The rope that tied us to shore. The mooring. “He’ll have had it designed just for you. So it doesn’t obstruct your throat, it moves with it. You see? He’s a man who likes to watch.” He took a drink of water. “Watch you sing, that is.”

I stared down at the plate of macarons, which our waiter had slipped on the table unobtrusively. They were arranged beautifully, and I picked one up but couldn’t quite bring myself to eat it. My stomach had gone off. Too much rich food with dinner. Too much wine.

“I thought the man wasn’t what he seemed,” I said. “That was your premise.”

“No, you’re misremembering.” John reached over and took the cookie from me, ate it clean in two sharp bites. “I said that what you saw of him wasn’t the whole truth. That doesn’t mean that what you saw was a lie. Just that”—he glanced towards the ceiling, considering—“I don’t know, he has lizard skin underneath. Or feathers. A reverse swan, if you will. Zeus on the outside.”

“I don’t know,” I said. Drummed my nails on the table.

“Oh?” John licked his teeth.

“You make him sound so wretched, but really, what is he? A rich man who loves music? I’ve heard of worse.”

“Well yes, but—” John mimed my earlier choking motion. “You know. His perversions.”

I shrugged. John put his hand over mine. I flattened it against the table, and he flattened his own, to keep the contact. “We’re just playing. Don’t get upset.”

“You don’t listen to yourself,” I said. “Do you?”

We looked into each other’s eyes.

“Well, I’m going to go pay the bill.” John stood up and caught the attention of our server. His voice had gone tense, his jaw set. “You come when you’re ready.”

“You don’t listen to anything,” I said to his back. “It’s no surprise you don’t get invited to tour anymore.”

He didn’t turn. Small wonder.

Outside a group of people walked by, laughing. It was spring, the city beginning to thaw. I sat still and finished the last of my champagne. Considered drinking John’s too, but thought better of it. At the front of the restaurant, John laughed with the waitress as he handed her a credit card and signed the slip. To look at him, you’d never know he was angry — would never know he’d ever been angry in his life.

The day of Finn’s party I woke up early, the sun softer and warmer in the dawn than it had been the afternoon before. I was alone but hadn’t been for long — the pillow beside me was depressed in the telltale shape of Finn’s head, and still smelled like him, dust and musk. There was a shape lodged in my throat, making it hard for me to draw normal breath. A heart, beating. A small animal, curled in a ball. I rolled into the hollow Finn had left in the sheets, masking his scent with my own.

The fire, the smoke. I’d known it would cause problems. Sinking into the mattress, I pulled the duvet up over my ears, hoping that a little more rest would clean me out. Wash away all remnants of the previous evening.

On its surface, the ranch was rustic — it told the story of a Mexican hacienda, with small orange and pink casitas dotting the land around the main estate. When I first rode into the courtyard, my gameness for adventure had stuttered, as I imagined scratchy woven blankets and hard wooden chairs. But the antique touches were just for show. One layer down, everything here had been built for comfort.

Still, I couldn’t find sleep — still, despite my bed and its deep well of feathers, despite the crisp sheets. No matter how I arranged myself, I was too aware of my body. Tiny hairs crackling on the back of my neck. Ribs abutting stomach and spleen. The memory of a finger tracing a line down my back. I felt too alive, too touched to drift off.

And then there was the issue of my throat, that shadow shape.

Get out, I thought. But it sat firm, small bean. Silent passenger.

With a sigh, I sat up, holding the blanket around my shoulders. A window beside me allowed in streams of light where a triangle of curtain had been folded back — when? Finn had wanted to show me constellations. Finn had crept out in the morning, perhaps before the sun bled into the sky.

Outside nothing tempered the landscape. Cactus and rock, bone and tree, jutted from the earth where and how they wished. Contradictions refused explanation: the sky through my window was clear, but the sand was speckled with rainwater, the scent of which lay over the morning like a shawl. What are you doing here? The question came to me from the air. And I remembered.

The stage. A real reason, a good reason, to have come all this way. To have pushed and pulled John into a fight, and then tumbled down after him, much further than I expected to go.

I pulled on jeans and a long cotton shirt, hasty dress against the wind. My plan was simple, if vague: find the right path and reach my destination. If there was a path, that is. Knowing what I did about Finn, it was entirely possible that the stage was hidden and we’d need to be led there by some sort of native guide. He liked a show. Though at least he had no trouble admitting that. No hesitation about telling you what was a performance and what was real as breathing.

As luck would have it, I slipped outside without meeting anyone else in the hacienda. An hour later and the other guests would all have been out to waylay me. Polite hellos. Curiosity. I’d have had to look at their bodies and try to map the sensations in mine to possibilities in theirs. Like coded words being translated back to ordinary meaning.