Becoming Chloe Read online

  It takes a long time to catch up with him, but I follow him around, and he’s getting tired. Wearing down. Finally I manage to get him into a corner, and I pick him up with my hand firmly around his body, holding down his wings. It’s extra hard because I can’t really use my left hand much. I can’t even move those fingers right now because it pulls into the muscles in my arm and hurts like hell. But I try not to make a big thing of that around Chloe. She feels bad enough as it is. When I get the bird, I put him up under my shirt and then tuck it in again. I think he’ll run around and scratch me, but something about that dark, confined space calms him. He holds still.

  We climb up out of the cellar window, which, believe me, isn’t easy. Not with a pigeon in your shirt and only one working hand. But then I make it and we’re out into the night, which feels cool and open. It feels like being free.

  I can feel the bird against my belly. Feel his soft feathers. He has his little talons wrapped around the waistband of my jeans. For some reason this makes me feel close to him. Like he really is my pet now. Like we finally fit together, just as we’re about to come apart.

  We cross the street and Chloe says, “Not here.”

  “Okay,” I say, though I don’t know why. Ten blocks later I ask, “Where are we going?”

  “The park.”

  In a way it makes sense. In another way it doesn’t.

  “But if we let him off here . . . wouldn’t he pretty much fly to the park anyway?”

  “Maybe,” she says. “But he might bump into a building on the way. He’s just sort of still getting his wings back.”

  We stand together in the park and I look around and breathe more consciously than usual.

  “Do you feel bad?” Chloe asks.

  “No. I feel good. Why?”

  “Well. He’s your pet.”

  “But it’s not like something bad was happening to him. This is a good thing for him.”

  “And it’s not like he’s not going to be yours. He’s just going to be yours out there instead of in the cellar. You might not see him anymore, but wherever he is, he’s still yours.”

  “I agree,” I say.

  I take him out from under my shirt. He looks around at the night much the way I’ve been doing. I turn him around, open my hands. He doesn’t move.

  He just sits there on my two open hands, facing out into the world.

  Then he unfolds those wings but he still doesn’t fly away. It’s almost like he’s trying to believe he really can. The right wing still looks a little on the droopy side. Maybe it always will. Maybe he’ll never be exactly as good as new again, but at least he can fly with it. That seems like the main thing. His wingspan looks so big to me, across my open hands. A foot, maybe. Or nearly. Big, capable, only slightly damaged wings.

  I feel him push against my hands as he lifts away. I can feel the downdraft of his wings, the pressure of the evening air against my palms. He flaps almost horizontally toward a tree, gaining only a little bit of altitude. He sits on the branch for a while.

  “Maybe he feels bad leaving you.”

  “Maybe he’s tired from running into the cellar windows all day.”

  I turn my head to look at a man with a big yellow dog, and when I turn back, my first and only bird has flown away.

  * * *

  On the way back to the cellar, Chloe says, “Thanks for the new name. It’s like that other person whose name I’m not even saying is just gone.”

  “Don’t you want another one?”

  “No. Chloe is good.”

  “I don’t mean instead of Chloe. I mean a last name.”

  “No. I don’t even need one. Chloe is such a good name I don’t even need another one.”

  I find it touching, almost enviable, that a person with so little feels she has all she needs.

  TWO

  * * *

  THE CELLAR KING

  Chloe says, “Wow. Raymond lives here?”

  “Yeah, Chlo. Right up there.”

  We’re standing with our backs to Central Park, looking up at his building.

  “Raymond is rich,” she says.

  “No,” I say. “Not rich. Just regular.”

  “Who’s richer?”

  “Lots of people, Chlo.”

  “Do we know them?”

  “No,” I say. “No, we don’t know them.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Too bad.”

  Raymond comes to the door in that paisley silk smoking jacket and those skinny pale legs sticking out underneath. He’s not a skinny guy, Raymond, not by a long shot. But he seems to have special places for holding fat, and his legs aren’t one of them. He is a lovely man. Just not on the outside. Just not in a very attractive package.

  “Jordan,” he says. “Oh. I see you brought your friend.” He looks from me to Chloe, who curtsies. Chloe is having one of her princess days.

  “She won’t be any trouble at all, Raymond, I promise.” I take Chloe’s hand and we sweep past him into his living room before he can say no. “Chloe is going to stay out of our way completely. Chloe is going to take a nice hot bubble bath fit for a princess and not come in the bedroom once the whole time.” I shuffle her off into Raymond’s big master bath. “Did you bring clean underwear?” I say this last quietly, for only her to hear. I start the water running.

  “You didn’t say to.”

  “Damn it, Chlo, I did say to. I told you to.”

  “Don’t be mad at me, Jordy. Maybe I wasn’t listening. I’m sorry.”

  Chloe stands in the middle of Raymond’s big bathroom, looking all around and above her, the way people do in art museums and cathedrals. I should know. We spend a lot of time in art museums and cathedrals. Meanwhile, she’s taking off her jeans. I help her by pulling her big red sweatshirt inside out over the top of her head.

  “Take your panties off and put them to soak in the sink,” I say, and then I go into Raymond’s bedroom to get a pair of his Jockey shorts.

  He’s facing away from me, looking out the window, removing the smoking jacket. I like it better when he’s all tucked under the covers when I get in. He glances over his shoulder, watches me take a pair of light-blue Jockeys out of his underwear drawer, but says nothing.

  Chloe is naked, dipping her toe in the water, when I get back to her.

  “Wait for the bubbles,” I say.

  I find the bubble bath under the sink and squirt about three baths’ worth into her water. Bubbles roar up out of nowhere. Threaten to take over the world.

  “Jordy? Do princesses ever take baths with no bubbles?”

  “Oh, I doubt that. Put these on when you’re done,” I say, and hold up the Jockeys for her to see. I turn off the water, purposely leaving the bath a little low in case Chloe splashes.

  She reaches out and puts her hand through the fly opening. “Jordy, what would I use this for?”

  “You won’t. But they’re clean. Now I want you to stay in here the whole time, and not come in the bedroom once. Not for any reason. And I want you to sing the whole time. That way I’ll know where you are.”

  “What should I sing?”

  “Anything you want. You pick something. Have a nice bubble bath, Chlo.”

  As I join Raymond in bed I hear her sing the first few lines of “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”

  We’re naked under the covers together. “She has a lovely voice,” Raymond says. This is the first I realize that we’re both listening to Chloe’s song. I can hear Chloe get to the end of that long song and start over again at the beginning. That same song again. Chloe never chooses two different things both on the same day. “I know she’s your girlfriend, but it’s okay.”

  “She’s not, though, Raymond. It’s not like that with us.”

  “Either way, it’s okay.”

  Raymond doesn’t believe I’m really gay, because of Chloe. I don’t work too hard to convince him. If he knew I really was, then he’d know it really was just him. I mean, he’s fifty-something to my seventeen, for Christ�
��s sake. It’s not Raymond’s fault he’s fifty. It’s not my fault I can’t feel much for him. We’re all just running around being exactly what we are.

  Then silence. No “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” I wait two beats, three. I’m just about to jump out of bed when I hear the first couple of random chords on Raymond’s big grand piano. Chloe has a flair for almost all creative things, like singing. But in this case she’s curious about the piano. Not trying to make music so much as noise. Playing it the way a small dog would if you put him up there to tramp around on the keys.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Raymond asks. Then right away I know he can feel my body tighten up, and he pulls back to his own side of the bed a ways. “I’m sorry, I just meant—” Raymond is a little bit afraid of me. The way it should be.

  “Nothing is wrong with her. Why would you say a thing like that?”

  “I just meant . . . She just seems . . . childlike.”

  “So? What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “Nothing at all.”

  I sit up on the edge of his bed and begin to dress. “I’ll bring the underwear back. Clean.”

  “Don’t bother,” Raymond says. “It’s okay. So. Listen. Are you doing okay this week? Financially, I mean. Are you having an okay week financially?”

  “Well, not really, Raymond, no. Frankly, things are tight. Frankly, if you could help out a little, that would be great.”

  “You know I never mind helping out.”

  “You know you’re never obligated.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Raymond says.

  We go through this same little dance every week. Just so we both know that we both know that all the rules are still in place. Just to keep making sure all those loose ends lie down exactly the way they’re supposed to.

  He gives me four clean twenties. “I hope this will help your situation,” he says.

  “Very much, Raymond. You’re a dear to help out.”

  I kiss him on the lips and he sighs.

  I’m pulling her down the street by her hand. We’re walking fast, crossing against the lights. Stopping traffic. “What do you want to eat, Chlo?”

  “Something good.”

  “Well, of course,” I say. “We all want to eat something good. What I’m asking is, what kind of food do you think would be good right now?”

  “Hmm,” she says. “Hmm. Maybe strawberry waffles with whipped cream.”

  “It’s four in the afternoon, Chlo.”

  “So? Don’t they make them at four?”

  “Maybe somewhere, but I don’t know where. Most places make them at breakfast.”

  “I didn’t get breakfast.”

  “I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.” It was Raymond day, and we were a little strapped.

  “I think a princess always gets breakfast.” When she says this she lets her hand slip out of mine and I lose her in a crowd.

  I poke around and find her standing in front of a shop window, looking in. “Never let go of my hand on the street, Chlo, you know that.” Hand-holding avoids two major problems. Chloe getting lost. Even lost for a minute is bad. One day I left her at the Chock full o’Nuts drinking coffee with six sugars while I saw Raymond; she was supposed to sit right there but it took us five hours to connect up again. I haven’t figured out how to fix those big losts, so I work on holding her hand so she won’t get lost for even a minute. And also, even though I don’t look like someone who’d be straight, people figure I must be anyway, and I almost never get bashed anymore.

  It’s a leather store she’s standing in front of. “Wow, Jordy, look at that leather coat.”

  I don’t know yet that my life will turn out differently if I don’t.

  It’s a duster coat, like mine. Only a million times nicer. Really long, almost full length, with a split up the back like those great Australian riding coats.

  My own duster coat has seen better decades. It’s a tweedy fabric, going a little threadbare, but still sharp in a battered sort of way. But the lining is starting to fall apart. Chloe sews it, all the time. I lifted a little sewing kit from the drugstore, and every time a piece of lining hangs down under the hem, she sews it. It’s a thing that can’t go on indefinitely.

  Without my duster coat I’d be nothing.

  The coat we’re looking at is black leather, with slash pockets. Not even really shiny, more a matte black. When I look at it, I make that sound Raymond always wishes I could make with him. I remember what it feels like to want something. If I had that coat, I’d be magic. Men would cross the city to fall down at my feet. I’d turn the collar up, roll the sleeves back two turns, push them up a little toward my elbows. Everybody who saw me would want me, and I’d understand why. It would seem natural to be all that to someone. To everyone.

  “We can’t afford that coat,” I say.

  “You didn’t even ask what it costs yet.”

  “Trust me on this,” I say. The guy in the store—the clerk—is this young skinhead guy, and he’s watching us like he has a gun under the counter and maybe it’s time to get it.

  “Hey, mister,” Chloe calls out. “How much is that coat?”

  “Five seventy-five,” he says, comfortably smug in knowing this will make us go away.

  We go away.

  “You would look great in that coat, Jordy.”

  “Stop talking about it,” I say. It hurts to talk about it. Like sitting around talking about what a great guy that was who just dumped you, how good-looking he was, and how great he was in bed. I’ve lost something I couldn’t afford to lose. “What do you want to eat, Chlo? Have you decided yet?”

  “Something good,” she says.

  While Chloe is eating the last of her curly fries, I tell her, “I have to run to the bank before it closes. And you have to wait right here. Right here. The whole time. I’m going to bring you back a present. If you don’t wait right here, you don’t get it, though.”

  “What happens to my present if I don’t wait right here?”

  “You don’t get it.”

  “Where does it go, though? It doesn’t just disappear.”

  “Back to the store,” I say. “It goes right back to the store for a refund if you’re not here when I get back.”

  I don’t literally run to the bank, because I don’t look dignified running. No one does. I look like a sneak thief when I run. I stride to the bank. I put two of Raymond’s twenties in our savings account. Now we have $210 in the bank. So after dinner and Chloe’s present—if I can find something cheap—we’ll have maybe $30 to last the whole week. Or better yet, I’ll hustle up some more. The more I stash in the bank, I figure the more likely I am to hustle up some more.

  I stop at the drugstore and buy Chloe a pad of construction paper and a set of six colored markers. This I figure will keep her out of my hair for hours.

  When I get back, some guy is sitting with Chloe, trying to pick her up. She’s laughing that flirty little laugh and flipping her hair around with first one hand, then the other. That long blond hair. She’s just about the whitest white girl who ever walked. She is eighteen years old and slim and blond and pretty and doesn’t even know all the reasons why to say no. She might as well wear a sign on her back that says get some here. She might as well walk down the street with a freaking bull’s-eye painted on her ass.

  I pull the guy out of the booth by his arm. Trouble is, he stands up to be a lot taller than me. But I don’t care. He’s about twice my age, plus he looks like he works out daily. But I don’t care. “Goodbye,” I say.

  “You her boyfriend?”

  “Goodbye.”

  We stand frozen while he decides. We don’t break each other’s gaze. Classic dogfight stance. Two mutts circling for territory, only one mutt is fighting for more. I’m fighting to protect a loved one. He just wants to get laid. Watch out for the mutt with more on the line.

  He looks down at Chloe, like to decide if she’s worth the hassle. Then he tugs at the collar of his jacket an
d I know it’s over. “Yeah, whatever,” he says as he walks away.

  I sit down across from Chloe, who still hasn’t finished her curly fries. They must be really cold by now.

  “I don’t know what you’re mad about,” she says. “I waited right here.”

  On the way back to the cellar we stop in that all-night restaurant and use their bathrooms. Last thing, always. Hopefully we won’t have to tramp down there again in the middle of the night.

  We put a new little lock on the window with the broken one. Every morning we climb out through it and leave it unlocked. Then we lock it after ourselves when we get in, so nobody else can get the bright idea to sleep down there. Someday we may show up and find out somebody else went in and locked it behind them, beating us out for the night. Trapping in all our stuff. Not that all our stuff is much. But it hasn’t happened yet.

  When we get in and locked up, I go through the nightly ritual. There are mattresses up against a wall. I take the outside one and let it down onto the floor. Then I get our box. It’s in with a bunch of other boxes, where I can’t imagine anybody is going to notice it by day. We leave it different places, under other things, in the middle of piles, so it won’t attract attention. In it are our blankets. We have two, but maybe when winter sets in again for real we can get a third. Who knows? And then some things we don’t use every day, like the sewing kit and the scissors Chloe uses to cut my hair. And her pictures, and the tape. I have to tape the pictures up on the wall beside the bed, every night, or she’ll never get any sleep and so neither will I.

  I kneel on the mattress and tape them up one by one. They’re all houses. Cut or torn from newspapers and magazines. And they all have green lawns and bushes or trees.

  Meanwhile, Chloe is like a cat in the dark. She can see in all kinds of blackness. She’s sitting in the tiniest bit of light, a ray of it that washes through the street-side window, from the corner street lamp. She’s drawing something with her markers.