Of Drag Kings And The Wheel Of Fate Part 22

Finally, Joe cleared his throat. He looked at Rhea, who gazed down at the pattern the steam made rising from her teacup. He glanced at Taryn, who raised her eyebrows, and shrugged. Joe nodded in understanding and took a long sip of his tea. He then hurled the cup at the back door. The cup traveled between Rhea and Taryn in its flight, dragging their eyes with it. It met the door with a crash, shattering.

"I've had enough of both of you," Joe said, his voice surprisingly calm. "Before Goblin and I moved in, this house belonged to you two. Don't argue with me, I have sense enough to know it. I love you, Rhea, and you are like my own child, T. But there is an ocean of unsaid words between you, and it's drowning everyone else near you. And you are both too stupid and arrogant to start speaking. So Rosalind and I are going to take a walk. If you have the conversation that you need to have while we're gone, fine. But I'm done making it okay for you not to speak." He took Rosalind's arm, ignoring wide-eyed stares from both Rhea and Taryn. "Shall we?"

Rosalind looked at Joe, then glanced at her lover. The shock was plain on Taryn's face, but she didn't look panicked. "Yes. I think we shall."

Joe turned on his heel and walked down the hall, his stride measured and deliberate. Rosalind looked back over her shoulder at Taryn, but Taryn's eyes had moved to Rhea. It was like looking in on a moment from the past. It was something she wanted to be a part of, but she wasn't. Rosalind took a deep breath and matched her stride to Joe's. They would have to do this themselves, if they chose to.

At the foot of the steps Joe paused and exhaled, his chest and shoulders moving like a man setting down a great weight. The sadness that had clung to him since the auction hadn't abated. She saw his face, for a moment, give in to it, saw the gentleness of his demeanor crack. The grief came through, water from a broken pitcher. He raised his head and looked at her, unguarded. "I want to go right back in there and make it okay for both of them. Part of me thinks they'll kill each other without a referee."

"Me too. n.o.body ever stages emotional upheavals for a convenient hour. So, where would you like to walk?" Rosalind said, doing her best to sound sunny and cheerful.

Joe laughed. It was just a small laugh, at first, but then the laugh caught in his throat, doubled itself, and continued. It reached out and picked Rosalind up, who then had no choice but to be borne along. "There's probably a support group for us," Joe said, drawing air back into his lungs.

"Yeah. Overly sensitive partners of emotionally repressed women."

Joe c.o.c.ked his head and raised his eyebrows. "Are you attracted to the brooding artist type? Does the thought of spending long hours talking to yourself while your lover barely grunts sound familiar? You know better, but does one look from a pair of moody eyes, one look at a pair of pouting, sullen lips send you quivering into ecstasy? Join OSPERW!" He started walking down Mariner, toward Allen Street.

"We'd need a better acronym. How about Overly Sensitive Partners, Repressed Emotional Youth?"

"OSPREY? It'd work for you, your boy is brooding on the edge of adulthood. I don't have the same recourse. Rhea is a consummate adult. So much so that she forgets she ever was a child."

They turned the corner on Allen Street. Even in the dead hours of a Sat.u.r.day night, when the time of being drunk gave way to the time of hangovers, when dawn was more than a distant threat, Allen was alive. "You want to get a beer? We could go to Nieztsche's," Joe said, looking off to the left.

Rosalind shook her head. "No, the thought of entering another bar tonight is too much. I don't think I've had five minutes sleep. Coffee, maybe?"

"The Towne it is," Joe said amiably.

They grabbed a table by the window, looking out on the corner of Allen and Elmwood.

"I don't know what it is with Buffalo and Greek diners. I'm starting to feel like I grew up in Greece," Rosalind said, looking at the menu.

Joe pointed at the framed posters hanging on the wall. "Then you remember the Acropolis."

"Oh, sure. Used to go there every afternoon. You get used to these things."

Her eyes wandered to the poster hanging to the left of the Acropolis. It was the head of a statue of a young man, superimposed on a landscape. It wasn't the same statue as the tattoo, but there was no mistaking the deep-set eyes, the lion's mane of hair. She looked on Alexander and saw Taryn.

Whatever was happening in the kitchen of 34 Mariner would change Taryn. The knowledge Rhea had been sparing her was out in the open now. Rosalind's mind pictured a quick succession of images-Taryn crying, shouting; Rhea on her feet, fighting just as hard. She wondered what it had been like between them when Taryn had been younger, and angrier. The Taryn she knew now had a sense of humor, a sense of irony, coupled with her intensity.

What had she been like when she was all raw emotion? Rosalind remembered the photograph of Taryn at seventeen, the rage that simmered just under the surface, as visible as the shape of her bones under her skin. She wondered how much Taryn hadn't told her about those years, and if she could have spared her any of that buried pain.

The waitress came by, and Joe ordered coffee while Rosalind stared at the wall. She was silent until the waitress came back and plunked white mugs down in front of them both.

Joe shot a glance at the poster, then back to Rosalind, who dropped her eyes. "They'll be all right," Joe said, his voice rising on the end of the statement, mutating it into a question.

"That obvious?"

"Staring at Alex? A bit." Joe wrapped his hand around the coffee cup, covering it. "I'm as bad. Old habit, from when Goblin was young. I couldn't stop worrying about her. Not her physical well-being. She was fearless and bulletproof. But how she felt, how she saw the world. Was I doing a good job as a mother? Would she have the tools she needed in the world?"

The distraction, for Rosalind recognized it as such, was very welcome. Joe was as adept as Ellie at pulling the conversation off into interesting sidelines, to keep the emotional mora.s.s distant.

"Joe, can I ask you something?"

"Sure, Ros."

"How did Goblin react when you transitioned?"

Joe leaned back in his chair and smiled wryly. "She was young. Her dad and I divorced pretty early on, and he moved in with his male lover, so she was used to a more unconventional family life. I think she was eight, no, nine. She was nine when I started on hormones. I sat her down and had a talk with her about everything, and asked her if she wanted to live with her dad. I told her I was going to change how I looked on the outside, to match how I felt on the inside, but I was still the same person, and I loved her. Know what she came up with?"

Rosalind shook her head.

"If I was going to be a man now, why couldn't I date Daddy again? Ah, the vision of youth," Joe said, and smiled.

They sipped their coffee slowly and tried to distract one another with amusing stories. Rosalind found herself telling Joe about her college days in Ithaca, about her marriage, things about her past that had, until now, seemed outside of her interaction with the household at 34 Mariner. It was as if she'd been born the moment she'd come home with Taryn, and it was strange to remember the entirely different life she'd had before meeting Taryn.

"So T was your first. I admit, I wasn't expecting that."

"I look...experienced?" Rosalind asked, surprised.

"No. But you don't seem like a tourist either. You seem very comfortable, not only with the punk kid but also with how she lives. Her family. We can be a pretty odd bunch."

"I don't think there's another family I'd like to belong to as much. I don't think I could live with going back to my old life." Rosalind looked down at her coffee mug, overcome with what she was saying.

It was Joe she revealed this to, a man as easy to talk to as any she had ever met, but still someone who had only known her a short time. She felt a touch, like the ghostly resting of a hand on her shoulder, and looked up. Joe was across the table and hadn't moved, but the look in his eyes was strange, unfocused.

"You won't have to," he said. A brief shudder went through his frame, as if a chill draft had caught him. He reached for his coffee cup clumsily, his hand knocking into it before recognizing it.

"What's it like?" Rosalind asked gently.

His eyes blinked, then fixed on her. He was at home in his skin again, his attention returned to her. "Like someone shouting in both ears while banging iron skillets together. Kind of insistent." He rubbed a hand across his chin. "I spent years ignoring it. It was like ignoring a migraine. Or a door-to-door salesman."

"The whole household seems to be...gifted," Rosalind said carefully.

"Something in the water?" Joe said and grinned.

It eased Rosalind's fear. She smiled at him in return. "Come on, it does seem a little unusual."

"Not really. We attract each other. Everyone has some ability. Some people are closer to the surface with it. And there is the queer thing." Joe signaled to the waitress, who was pa.s.sing by with a coffee pot.

Rosalind waited until she'd left again before leaning on the table and almost whispering. "What queer thing?"

Joe sighed. "You know any Native American history?"

"Only what I learned in school, the basics."

"Okay. You've heard of the berdache? Rotten term that the French used, but it stuck."

"Yes. Men who dressed and lived as women."

"I like the term two-spirited. Transwomen, we'd say now. There were women who dressed and lived as men, as well, in many tribes. Most, I think. Anyway, the nations usually respected their two-spirited people. They were often shamans, healers. Some handled the wealth of the tribe, were considered especially lucky. They had a hard road to walk, so they had powers in compensation. Usually a vision at adolescence signaled the beginning of a path such as that. You with me?" Joe paused and looked at her.

"I think so."

"Some of these people were what we'd call gay. Some weren't. But they all had some measure of power from the unique path they followed."

"So there's a propensity toward being...gifted," Rosalind said slowly.

"Yeah. It seems to show up more readily. And people with gifts are always drawn to Rhea's house. It's like a big magnet." Joe set his cup down with a spin.

"So it's perfectly normal if I start hearing things," Rosalind said. She'd meant it to come out light, funny, but it sounded serious to her ears.

"I'd expect you to start seeing things."

Rosalind raised her eyebrow.

Joe reached across the table and took her hand. "Don't sweat it. It usually shows up pretty early in life. Harder then to tell if you have a reputable source or the 7-11 clerks of the Great Beyond. But if you do start hearing things, you can always tell them to go to h.e.l.l. Ouch, poor word choice. Go to Cleveland. They'll leave you alone. Just be as stubborn as they are."

"Stubborn." Rosalind's voice layered a wealth of meaning into the word.

Joe appeared to catch the layers. He sighed and leaned back in the chair. "Been about an hour. Think it's safe to go back?"

"If the immovable object and the irresistible force haven't slaughtered each other by now, they probably won't."

Joe threw a handful of bills on the table. "So, which is yours?"

"Irresistible force," Rosalind said, with a smile that would scandalize a nun.

"Shouldn't have asked. I'm getting too old to keep hearing about kids' s.e.x lives."

"I'm hardly a kid."

"You're younger now than the day I met you, Ros. And your handsome boy is older. You're good for each other."

They walked in companionable silence back down Mariner. Joe paused on the steps, and Rosalind saw that his hand trembled on the k.n.o.b. She reached out, set her hand over his, and squeezed. He smiled his grat.i.tude, and they opened the door together.

It was silent in the house. Rosalind had expected some noise, conversation, shouting perhaps. But the hallway was as still as a painting, the light from the kitchen indicating that it was still inhabited. Wordlessly, Joe and Rosalind peered around the corner and looked into the room.

Taryn knelt on the floor, holding out her right hand. Rhea sat in front of Taryn, her head bent over the hand, her back to the doorway. Rosalind had the oddest impression that Rhea was reading her palm. It took her a moment to recognize what Rhea was doing. There was blood down Taryn's wrist, a brown stain that extended to her elbow. Rhea had a pair of tweezers in hand and was plucking bits of gla.s.s from the gory ma.s.s of flesh that had been Taryn's hand.

Taryn gave no indication that she felt any pain as Rhea worked free a sliver of gla.s.s two inches long. Rhea worked with an intensity, her hair covering Taryn's arm when she looked into the wound. Taryn had a look on her face that Rosalind would have sworn was pride. Her eyes never strayed from Rhea while the fragment was pulled out of her hand, sending forth a fresh jet of blood. Rhea dropped it into a bowl, next to her knee.

It was too much for Rosalind to watch in silence. "Taryn," she said, stepping into the room.

Taryn raised a smile to her of reflected pleasure from Rhea's ministrations. "Hey. Didn't hear you guys come in."

"Honey, you're bleeding. What happened?" Rosalind asked, kneeling down at Taryn's side.

Rhea snorted, and went back to searching the wound.

"I'm okay," Taryn said easily.

"But what happened?" Rosalind asked, watching Rhea pull forth more shrapnel with practiced ease. A s.h.i.+ver went through Rosalind at the sight. Something about her, and blood, and the binding of wounds. It spoke to something ancient in her. She should be sewing up the rents in that flesh. It was her responsibility.

"I punched a window," Taryn said sheepishly.

Rosalind took a shard of gla.s.s from the floor. It was shaped like an arrowhead, the edges trimmed with unwitting precision by the force of Taryn's blow. There was a spot of her blood left on it, a jewel on the transparent cutting surface. Rosalind imagined that it still felt warm from the contact with Taryn's flesh.

Whatever had pa.s.sed between Rhea and Taryn, whatever storm had flared and died, there was a kind of peace in the kitchen now. Rosalind could feel it, even though the sight of Rhea easing gla.s.s darts out of Taryn's mangled hand was anything but comforting. The sight of Taryn accepting the ministration of Rhea spoke volumes. Her head was tilted to the side, an odd smile tugged at her lips. There was familiarity in being cared for, after a blooding, by Rhea. The anger that had lived in the air around Taryn was quieted, perhaps by the familiarity of Rhea's attention.

The sight caught on Rosalind's attention like the ghost of a memory, something she hadn't seen herself, but had heard so often as to relive it with each telling. She knew, for example, that Rhea would come across a splinter deeply buried in the flesh between Taryn's thumb and forefinger. That the effort to remove it would only drive it deeper, that fresh damage would be done to that ravaged flesh before the gla.s.s worked free. Rosalind knew this before it happened.

She knew how Taryn's face would give away nothing of the pain, how Rhea's eyes, fixed on extracting the gla.s.s, would miss the subtle tightening of her lips. Only when a new jet of blood came forth with the wound would Rhea look up and see a glimmer of Taryn's pain.

Joe came over with strips of cloth. He turned Taryn's hand over, examining it for debris. "I think it's safe to wrap it up. I don't want to hurt you."

"Let me," Rosalind said automatically.

Joe handed her the cloth without a word and moved out of the way.

Rhea remained kneeling next to Taryn, her eyes critical on Rosalind as she bound the wound. Finally, as Rosalind wiped away the rivers of blood left on Taryn's forearm, Rhea nodded in approval. "You've done this before."

Rosalind glanced at her. Had she? She couldn't recall. But her hands knew. They moved with an efficiency that her mind couldn't trace.

"I think we've all had enough for one night. I'll clean the rest of this up in the morning." Joe stood and held out a hand to Rhea. She took it, using his strength to pull herself up.

"Yes. Good job, Rosalind. You have good hands," Rhea said to her.

Rosalind felt a surge of pride, out of proportion to the event. It mattered that this woman had acknowledged her caretaking of Taryn. The mantle was being pa.s.sed.

Taryn stood, examining her hand. "I look like a mummy."

"There are worse things. I will see you in the morning." Rhea set her hand on Taryn's shoulder. For a moment she hesitated, letting that contact be all there was between them. Rosalind thought she could see the moment the decision was made, as Rhea leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. "Sleep well." Rhea looked hard at Rosalind. "Pleasant dreams."

Taryn was silent as they climbed the stairs to the third floor. She sat on the bed, cradling her bound hand, eyes half lidded, as Rosalind climbed into bed. Rosalind propped herself up on her elbow, watching the bent shape of Taryn's back. Taryn's shoulders were bowed, unlike the unconscious arrogance that normally marked her. She made no move to undress or approach her lover.

It was a distance that was new-not one born of a heated moment, not one born of pride, or anger, or a misspoken word between them. This was a distance born of something inside her that she'd never seen, a grief that stretched from her bones to her skin, but didn't pa.s.s her lips. Rosalind wondered if she ever would speak of it, without prompting. It wasn't the night for such speculation.

Grief has a life of its own and changes shape with every person that it visits. Rosalind knew that well enough. She couldn't simply reach out and expect Taryn to be able to reach back. Taryn was lost in a landscape that had no maps, no guideposts. Rosalind was left looking into the past, at a girl whose pain she wasn't able to share.

An inspiration hit her. It made no sense, and less than none, but it felt right. Rosalind went with it. She started speaking, in a low, easy voice, not commanding Taryn's attention, but coaxing it. She had no idea where she was going. She let the story take on its own life, as it began.

"Once, long ago, when the first people had left the forests for the gra.s.slands and begun to keep herds and flocks, to till the soil and grow grapes and grain, a fire came at night in the sky. Like the arrow of a G.o.d, it flashed across the darkness, dividing it. It crashed down into the land, plowing under a vineyard and a hut, scattering the flocks. The people were justly afraid, for they had never seen such a thing. They huddled in their stone houses and spoke to one another in frightened voices. 'It is a sign!' they said. 'Surely, the wrath of a G.o.d is visited upon us. We have been wicked, and we must repent.'"

The slightest twitch of muscle along Taryn's shoulder gave evidence that she was listening to the sound of Rosalind's voice. Rosalind took her strength from that, and kept going. "The idea caught hold, and the people decided to mollify the anger of whatever G.o.d they had offended by offering a sacrifice. They chose, in a hasty council, the strongest and fairest maiden of their village. 'Go and give yourself to the G.o.d, that we may live,' they said to her." Taryn s.h.i.+fted her weight, then turned, leaning down on the bed. Sleepy eyed, she leaned on her bandaged hand, not looking at Rosalind exactly, but not exactly looking away. Rosalind trusted her instinct and continued.

"So she did. She went forth from her people, huddled in their stone huts. She crossed the fields, the shattered vineyard, the rent earth, until she came to the place where the arrow of the G.o.d had touched down. The edges of the furrow were torn and smoking, the very dirt looked scorched. She trembled before it. She leaned forward, over the edge of the furrow, and..." Rosalind let the story trail off.

The silence lengthened. Taryn opened her eyes. "And?"