The Plume

He was standing on the corner, just strumming his guitar….

That was the first time she saw him, but she was too involved in buying a feather to pay attention to a skinny raggedy man, playing for dimes and quarters, while the reality was nickels and pennies…and not too far you can get on that.

It was weeks later that they crossed again, she with a bruised face, maybe a broken nose and a fifty in her pocket. The air was damp from the night and the river, and she was beyond caring. She came toward him like a moth approaches flame, full of wondering what the hell it is, and unable to decipher any answer at all, and equally unable to break the hold of the light. It was the music.

The john had grudgingly given her the fifty after she'd gotten shrill and loud about the sum since she normally got a hundred…he had been unceremoniously brutal, slapping her repeatedly across the face while he stroked his cock. She figured it came to two dollars a slap. Deduct the cost of the torn jacket and the panty hose, and she was in the red, with no prospects until the bruises healed.

When she'd started the shrill complaint about the money, he grabbed her by the arm and swung her toward the stairs, letting her go flying so she rode down them on her back. The jacket just one more casualty, having caught on a protruding nail when she brushed against the wall as she slid.

And now she was standing in front of a loser without a hope or a dollar bill. The music was soft, as if it was being played for the musician only, and she was being allowed to eavesdrop on a private conversation. She reached into her pocket, and fished out the fifty. Blood money. She dropped it into the case at his feet. He finally looked up at her. He was smoking a joint, and offered her a hit. She took a drag, sucked it in, holding the smoke deep in her lungs, while staring out across the street…still disconnected.

He waved the joint away when she passed it back to him, bent over the case, laid the guitar in it, paying no attention to the fifty, clicked the locks on the lid and stood, all in one motion. He offered her his arm, and said, "where to?"

As they reached the second floor of the apartment building, he grew aware of the tapping of her stiletto heels on the small black and white tiles of the floor…the way she seemed to be a beaten drum in an echo chamber. Just before the third floor he stopped her on the stairs. Standing behind her, looking at the torn nylon encasing her legs streaked with blood, he reached down and took one of her shoes off, held her foot so she was standing there like a crane, and placed a kiss in the hollow of the arch.

On the fifth floor, she turned to a door, took the keys from her purse, and walked into the apartment, without looking back at him. She heard the click of the lock, and the security chain slide into place. He was a quiet walker, and she felt him behind her before he spoke, asking if he might take a shower.

He came into the kitchen naked and un self-conscious, seating himself in front of one of the plates full of eggs and potatoes. They ate in silence, and didn't look up at each other until he finally raised his eyes, assessing the damage. All he said was, 'better put some ice on that."

After a while she rose from the table, and took his hand, leading him to the bedroom. He lay down on his belly, stretched so long and thin, like a white stripe on the red sheet. He heard her in the bathroom running the water, and he thought he caught the sound of a muffled sob…a woman crying into her bath towel…classic scenario.

He was half-asleep when she came back, and stood beside the bed. She carried a long ostrich plume, soft as a cloud. She ran it slowly down the length of his body. Over and over she slid the plume down his back from neck to feet in one direction. He slept.

Somewhere around three in the morning he came out to the living room with a towel wrapped around his waist. He reached toward her and said, "you'd best come to bed now, it's late." She followed him, and folded herself down beside him.

In the morning, she wakened to the scent of his skin, and his long warm arm laid across her like a shield.

Years later, after his songs had begun to sell, he bought her a fur jacket, and a pair of silk stockings.

For S.J.

*fic*