Larque on the Wing (28 page)

She knew some of her abilities. She had a feeling she could in fact put all her doppelgangers back where they came from—but not until the rebel in her would let her. Not until she truly wanted to.

She knew she could be a woman again. She might not even need Shadow to make her over. She might be able to do it for herself. If she truly wanted to. If she could make up her mind.

She knew it was not just her mind. Heart and soul had to go together on this too. Up until now she had been doppelgangering in a half-baked way, making wispy things, strewing them about, turning her back afterward, living in a limbo inhabited by the voiceless spirits of her world, her life. But doppelgangering done right had to be bone solid and true and go all the way. To do it right, she had to be a truthteller.

She knew that if she learned how to fully control her abilities—

No. The thought frightened her even more than finding that her detachable dong did not detach. Talk about really being in charge, really having choices—what about Hoot, then? Assuming she got back together with him: if she had real control and could choose when and how to doppelganger things, then there would be no more embarrassing public accidents—and, therefore, Hoot would no longer be the only man she could have married, the only one who could love her. If she wanted, albeit in a middle-aged body, she could have her choice of the available and interested men … no, God, no, it got worse. With her ability to take whatever she wanted and make a solid duplicate, she could have her choice of all the soft-eyed wet-lipped sweet-shouldered hard-bellied high-cocked taut-assed young stud-lovelies she ever saw. She could doppelganger their lustiness and leave their pride behind; she could make them docile and she could make them desire her. Would she want to stay with Hoot Harootunian?

Would she spend her life dreaming of Shadow?

It was too much to deal with. Lark went to sleep.

In the morning, before she got dressed, Lark doppelgangered Sky some shirts and jeans and boots out of hers. She made the things solid, scaled down in size from her own and, as an afterthought, she changed the color of some of the shirts to yellow, Sky's second favorite. (The kid's favorite color was red, but no proper cowboy would wear red shirts, which were reputed to spook the cattle.) When she was sure she had it right she left the new clothes lying by Sky's pillow—the girl was still asleep, her face dewy and her hair wildly strewn. Lark went into the kitchen, where she started the coffee.

“Coolsville!” she heard Sky exclaim a few moments later.

“See if they fit,” she called. How maternal. And she was pouring cereal, yet.

It occurred to her—another day, another frightening thought—that there was no pressing practical or financial need to go back to being Hoot's wife. She could doppelganger objects out of other objects and sell them. If she told them to stay real, they would stay real. She could deal in cash and barter. The tax people might never catch up with her, especially as Lark the young stud did not technically exist. In a Popular Street sort of way she could get by.

Was there a pressing need, practical or otherwise, to go back to being a woman?

The only way to deal with her life now was to take it, as Shadow would say, one crisis at a time.

“They fit great!” Wearing her new clothes, Sky pranced into the kitchen.

“C'mere, cowboy.” Lark hugged her. The kid had chosen a yellow shirt, she noticed. “You look ready for anything. Maybe we oughta go shoot some bad guys today. Hungry?”

By the time Sky was on her third bowl of cereal the others were up. About time, as it was ten o'clock Saturday morning and the shops were opening. The Bareback Rider should have been opening too.

“What's the use?” Argent grumbled when Shadow said as much to him. “The Doppelganger from Hell and Florrie the Moral should be here any minute with their faithful minions.”

“Well, I'm opening for a change.” Shadow headed toward the Magic Makeover. “Lark, practice,” he ordered as he went out.

She made an obscene gesture at his slim wedge-shaped black-shirted back, but did as he said, spending the morning dealing with the doppelganger K-Y tubes and Tupperware lettuce crisper and electric shaver and wooden spatulas still floating around the apartment, putting them back into the originals. Most of the time this worked for her now. Of course, she had no feelings about these things. It might have been harder with things she had feelings about, such as herself.

Sky was outside, showing off her new clothes up and down the street. It was no use trying to tell her to stay in; the kid was as wild as a little mustang. And anyway it was beautiful out there today, with the rainbow-colored wind catchers fluttering from the just-as-bright awnings and the Popular Street people dressed to kill and thronging in the street. Checking on Sky, Lark looked out the window often and with longing. It was like being grounded from a party. Popular Street looked the way it used to, exciting and gay.

“You want to be out there, don't you? Go ahead,” Hoot grumbled from behind Lark's back. “What's the problem?”

“Come with me?” Lark invited. He was wearing borrowed sneakers and tee shirt and jeans now. He could go outside without inciting either a riot or an orgy.

“No, thanks.”

“That's the problem.” She did not want to keep going farther and farther away from him, but he was afraid. To him, Popular Street crawled with invisible cooties—but being a truthteller, Lark could not blame him too harshly for his homophobia. She was the same way, or part of her was—the part that picketed.

“Where the hell is she?” Lark exclaimed. It was almost noon, and the V.W. and the Virtuettes had not yet arrived to resume their antideviance campaign.

Sky came bounding in, demanding peanut butter and jelly. Shadow came in with her, acknowledging Lark's work with a nod but more intent on another agenda. “Where is your tight-assed alter ego?” he wanted to know.

“Ditto.” Argent came up the stairs. “It makes me nervous, not knowing what the hell is going on.”

“Maybe she stayed home,” Lark said rather sharply. “People do that sometimes, you know. They stay home.” Even though she herself disliked the V.W., she did not care for the way they talked about her.

“Is she home alone?” Shadow asked slowly.

“Probably. It's Saturday. Jason works. Jeremy and Rodd have Little League. Hoot usually takes them.”

In tones that would not have been out of place on a battlefield he said, “Then this might be the perfect time. Lark? Are you ready?”

She shrugged, at the same time feeling her heart start to pound. Is anybody ever really ready for anything?

Confront the Virtuous Woman? She was terrified.

Because she was a guy and guys are brave, because she could not say she was scared almost literally shitless, she disconnected. Her body, and what it was doing and saying, became temporarily unrelated to her mind, which went off to fly in frantic circles somewhere. A few minutes later, when she came back, she found that somehow in her absence a consensus of opinion had been reached, a reconnaisance sortie had been organized, she had her hat on—it felt too late now to doppelganger it into a brave, brash, black one—and they were all walking toward the Harootunian place. Or rather, Lark, Shadow, Hoot, and Argent were walking, and Sky was cavorting ahead.

“We'll stay back,” Shadow was briefing Lark. “You go to the door and knock. When she answers it, put her back where she belongs before she has a chance to resist. Or if the other Hoot answers, maybe you can put our Hoot back together with him.”

Lark was not sure she wanted to. Her head told her she had to go through with this, if only for the sake of her children. But her amoral heart—only time and the results would show what her heart wanted to do. And if it was all up to her, what were the rest of them along for? To watch the show? “Where are you going to be, hiding in the bushes?” she asked sharply.

They were coming around a corner, almost within sight now of the house.

“Actually, yes. That sounds like a good place to be when you're in action.”

Then he gasped, and she never got to make the snappy comeback his comment deserved, because he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her behind somebody's van. A short way up the street a little red Suzuki Samurai had pulled over, and getting out of it was Florrie, all dressed up in a sequined tee shirt and her best white polyester pants, her blue hair sprayed stiff as a crinoline, her soft old face smiling like mad.

“Oh, Christ,” Hoot moaned. He and Argent had taken cover behind the van also.

The street was parked solid with cars. Clusters of people were heading toward the Harootunian residence, across the front of which Lark could now see a white freezer-paper banner proclaiming in gold glitter script, “Trailing Clouds of Glory Do We Come. Happy 20th Born-Again Virginity, Mom!!!”

“Oh, Jesus,” Hoot elaborated. “It's the celibate mother-in-law bash. How could I forget. Must have repressed it.”

With some sympathy Argent asked, “You weren't looking forward to wishing her twenty years more of the same?”

“About face,” Shadow ordered at the same time. “Back to Popular Street.”

“Can't,” Lark said. Her mouth had gone dry.

“Why not, for God's sake?”

She looked past him, staring at the house and at her mother duck-walking happily toward it in new white sneakers. She said, “Sky's in there somewhere.”

The kid had last been seen veering toward the Harootunian front door.

Lark had once almost bought herself a tee shirt printed with a cartoon penis wearing a condom helmet and declaring, “Cover me. I'm going in.” It was a line she had always wanted to use, full of gallantry, hand grenades, the risk of dismemberment and painful death. And facing Florrie felt no less dangerous than facing gunfire. Now, however, when Lark had a suitable occasion to say, “Cover me,” she didn't think of it. She just said, “You guys stay here.”

They didn't obey, of course. They all trailed after her, with Shadow protesting in the fore and Argent complaining in the rear as Lark strode up the street, up the walk, and into the trap she had once called home.

Florrie must have blinked the inside of the house for the occasion of the party. The place was bigger than it should be, and there was now a vestibule, which there had not been before, monitored by a pearl-draped Barbara Bush look-alike in a Leslie Fay dress who wanted Lark to sign the guest book. Better play along or she might call a bouncer. Lark stalked over to the thing.

“Little Joe Cartrite,” the most recent entry declared in a childish scrawl. Verification had been achieved. Sky was in there, all right.

Lark scrawled “Maverick” and went on in without removing her hat. The place was full of more people than should have been able to fit in, many of whom looked as out of place at a decorous gathering as she did. Florrie retained a strange assortment of friends from her many spiritual metamorphoses. It was hard for Lark to remember, but the size of the crowd reminded her: Florrie was perceived quite differently by people who did not have to be her daughter. Serene, sunny, friendly toward all (because anyone she encountered was, Q.E.D., Very Nice), pleasant to be with, the little old charmer was well liked, even beloved. So brave, the way she stayed cheerful no matter what. Wasn't it darling, the way she fluttered her eyelashes.

Looking around, Lark did not see Sky, but caught a glimpse of her mother's sequined shortness in the enlarged living room. The place was decorated as if for a tacky wedding reception, with cerulean-and-white crepe paper twists hanging in cloud-bellied swags from the ceiling. Jason and Jeremy and Rodd, looking miserable in suits and bow ties, were offering trays of what Hoot used to call horse ovaries. Candy Ass and the V.W. were in there too, working the crowd, smiley-nice.

Lark ducked the other direction, toward the dining room, where an orangely refulgent woman stood none too steadily on three-inch heels, dipping white sparkling grape juice from a punch bowl into plastic disposable stemware.

Doris looked up. “Lark!” she stage-whispered. “What are you doing here?”

“What the hell are
you
doing here! Have you seen Sky?”

“I wouldn't miss this for anything.” The important question hadn't registered; this was not unusual for Doris. “Get a load of that cake.”

Taking up the entire dining room table, it was the mother of all cakes, its colossal presence such that Lark stood momentarily stunned and nonfunctional, gawking at it. A colonnaded structure, it was built in Dantesque tiers connected by confection-decked stairways leading to a lofty summit inhabited by oversized sugar white angels with too many wings. The thing was wired for electricity, with tiny bulbs arranged like stars in the bottom of each tier to illuminate the one below. Moreover, it incorporated a pump to carry its own private supply of white grape juice in a transparent plastic tube up the middle of the whole creation to culminate in a lighted fountain at the apex. Skewered carousel-horse–style on the columns supporting all this grandeur were swans, doves, lambs, and lesser angels, the kind with a normal number of wings. Harps in hands, the latter were positioned upright, with the columns disappearing under their robes and reemerging at their heads, as if they had sticks up their asses. With mouths wide open, the angels looked pained, and Lark could not blame them. She felt similarly pained herself, ineffably screwed.

“HAVE YOU SEEN SKY,” she asked Doris urgently.

“Omigod.” Doris looked around, wide-eyed. “She's not in here, is she?”

Somebody screamed, and it wasn't even Lark. In the next room people shrieked and yelled.

“Evidently.” Lark ran toward the commotion, pushing her way through too many decorously clad dowagers. Once again a male body was just what she needed. Her broad shoulders wedged little old ladies aside like nothing.

“Oh, Christ,” she muttered when she could see.