All Our Pretty Songs Part 5

"Good thing I always wear black." I steer her to the car. It's better than it could have been. She can almost walk on her own. I roll down the window on her side. "Puke outside the car," I tell her, getting into the driver's seat.

"Outside the car," she repeats. "I love you so much."

"I love you, too."

"I'm such a f.u.c.kup."

"I know."

"No more speed."

"No more speed."

"I promise."

"Okay," I say.

"Are you mad?"

"I'm not mad."

"You're mad."

"Aurora. I'm not mad."

"You think I'm going to take him."

"I don't think that."

"You do. I would never do that."

"It's not always up to you."

"You are the first thing to me. Always. You."

"You, too."

"You love him more than you love me," she says.

"Aurora. Never."

"You do."

"I don't love anyone more than I love you. I promise."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

"Promise again."

"I promise."

"One more time."

"I promise."

"I love you," she says again. I reach over and put my hand over the wadded-up s.h.i.+rt.

"I'll always come get you," I say. "No matter what."

Jack is teaching me how to play guitar, and it's not going well. We're sitting on his porch, his long legs folded around me, his hands over my hands, the guitar in my lap. The sun's heavy and low in the sky. The smell of his skin is driving me to distraction. "Here," he says, shaping my fingers over the strings. "That's G major. No, no, you have to keep your middle two fingers-" I knock his hand away in a fit of temper. The whuff of his breath ruffles my hair.

"I don't like it," I tell him.

"How can you not like it? I showed you two chords."

"I don't like either of them."

He rests his chin on the top of my head. "I should've known the guitar would be too hard for you. You need to pick a beginner's instrument."

"You f.u.c.ker! It is not too hard!" Immediately I put my hands back on the strings, bite my bottom lip, try to remember where my fingers go. Behind me Jack chuckles.

"Let no one ever tell you that you are anything other than predictable," he says.

"I am not predictable!" But he only laughs harder and kisses the place behind my ear that sends me straight into a desperate swoon. "I am not," I mumble.

"You are."

"Maybe a little."

"A lot."

"You're a d.i.c.k."

"Mmmm." He takes the guitar away from me and I scoot over. He strums an aimless melody, a carefree traveler strolling by a river, water singing over stones. Leaves turning in the summer air. I can see the flash of a fish jumping, the mercury buzz of a dragonfly moving across the water. The river's so real I can dip my feet in the cool clear water. The breeze he's conjured plays across my skin. Jack's arms are alight with b.u.t.terflies, their wings moving softly. Caught, as I am, in his spell. He stops, and I can feel the loss of it like a sob rising in my throat. Wherever he took me, I want to go back. He smiles at me, gentle now, puts his arms around me. He takes the tip of my earlobe in his teeth, and I s.h.i.+ver.

"I can't play like you," I whisper. "No one can play like you."

"Play like yourself, then. Want to learn another chord?"

"No. Maybe. Fine."

"You can't wear pants when you play this one," he says, and undoes the top b.u.t.ton of my jeans.

Later, he makes me beans and rice and we eat cross-legged on his floor. The sun's set, but it's still warm. Neither of us is wearing much. Jack peels a mango, and I lie back with my head in his lap as he feeds it to me piece by piece. I'm full in a way that's unfathomable, alive in my animal skin. I want to tear off all my clothes and go running through the forest, catch something and rip it to pieces while it's still warm, grow fur and climb trees and howl at the moon. My skin feels as translucent and bruisable as rose petals, my whole body brand new. "Tell me a story about your family," he says.

"I never knew my dad. I don't think my mom did, either. She's a witch." He raises an eyebrow. "Really." I touch the amulet around my neck. I'd stopped Jack earlier when he tried to take it off. "She reads tarot cards for people and makes them amulets and spells. She can do star charts. Horoscopes."

"Are you a witch, too?"

"Not a very good one."

"Can you read tarot?"

"Sure."

"Will you read mine?" I sit up, steal the last piece of mango, and see that he's serious.

"Okay," I say. "Do you have a candle?"

He gets up from the bed and looks through drawers while I flip through his records, pick out a Jeff Buckley alb.u.m, and put it on. I get my cards out of my bag. I still use the same deck Ca.s.s bought me all those years ago. It's so well-used the card edges are bent and peeling, but the images have lost none of their color or sharpness. I keep the deck wrapped in a piece of silk, which I spread out on the floor in front of him. He sits, cross-legged, solemn, and hands me a candle. I light it and set it between us. "Now, shuffle," I say, handing him the deck. "Think about your question."

"Any question?"

"Any question."

He closes his eyes and I watch as he shuffles, the dark coils of his hair framing his still features. He stops shuffling, opens his eyes. "Hallelujah," Jeff Buckley sings, "hallelujah." It's so strong, this moment, his skin, his mouth, our breath mingling. It's bigger than anything, but so precise. You think you know something about the world, and then everything changes and you are in this place, this time, and the song is so sad and so glorious and so perfect. It doesn't seem possible that one person, one stranger, could take everything you have ever felt and make it into something so true and vivid. "I used to live alone before I knew you." I know what is happening to me is naked in my eyes, and Jack smiles at me and reaches forward, puts his palms against my cheeks.

Here is my life, this life I never knew I could have, here is the whole world waiting for me, all the possible things. My future is as big as the wild night, the wine-dark sea. The smell of him, the heat of his palms on my skin, the curve of his mouth, the line of his throat, his dark hair falling around him. The last hallelujah and then it's gone and we are two people in a room again, maybe falling in love. Jack takes his hands away and I breathe in deep, let it out.

"Cut the deck," I say, "and lay out three cards."

He moves slow, serious, turns over each card like it has instructions written on the other side. The Fool. The Lovers. Death.

"Death," he says. "That's heavy."

"Not always. This is the past." I point to the Fool. "This" -the Lovers- "is the present. And the third card is the future."

"Death is the future?"

"It doesn't mean literal death. Not usually. The Fool is someone who's a dreamer, who wants big things. You've set out on a journey on a new road. You're about to discover new things. But you can't keep your head in the clouds forever. You have to make the right choice. You're fearless, but also naive."

"How will I know the right choice?"

"That's up to you. The Lovers is-"

"-Kind of obvious?" He smirks at me, and I blush.

"Not like that. I mean, it can be. It's another choice card. It means part of the choice is a temptation. You can pick the thing that is comfortable, or go somewhere that's scary but can take you to what you really want. It can mean falling in love, too." I can't quite look him in the eye.

"And Death?"

"Death is change. It's a trial, but also renewal. It means transformation, new ideas. A new opportunity."

"So I'm making a choice that will change my life."

"That's what the cards are saying."

He's quiet for a long time. "That sounds about right," he says. Here's my heart, beating out a tattoo rhythm. I could take it out and hand it over. But maybe I'm not what he's thinking about at all.

"I didn't know my father, either," he says. I wait, but he doesn't elaborate.

"Did it bother you?"

"I never knew anything else. Did it bother you?"

Aurora and I lived in a world without fathers, but full of men: musicians, our mothers' lovers, our mothers' friends. A father seems so much tamer and less interesting than the pack of wolves who raised us.

"No," I say.

"Did you know Aurora's dad?"

I think of the drummer, asking me the same question the night Aurora took me to that show. A million years ago. I was a different person then. A person without Jack. "Not really," I say. "He wasn't around long enough to count." He's silent, thoughtful.

"Do you think it makes a difference?"

"Having a dad? I don't know. Do you?" Raoul has a dad, but he never talks about him. Tracy, the normal girl whose house I used to go to, had a dad. A dad like in a movie, who came home in the evenings in a suit he changed out of. Raoul seems happy. I don't know if Tracy was. Jack tilts his head, thinking.

"It must. But then we would be different people." I wait for him to say something else, but he's done.

I know Jack's voice, and his body. I know his music. I know the way he looks at me, and I know how to make him laugh. I know the books he likes and that he doesn't drink and that he is old enough for me to be a lot younger. I know about the restaurant where he works and the crazy waitress who comes in every night shaking from too much speed and the cook who drops fifty-dollar steaks on the floor before he puts them on the plate when he doesn't like the customers. But about Jack's life before he came here, I barely know anything at all. It's like he began when I met him and before that he didn't exist. How much do you need to know to love someone? I used to think you had to know them inside and out, the way I know Aurora; that you had to know every story that went into them, every place they had been. But it turns out love is easier, and infinitely more complicated. It turns out I don't know much.

Jack blows out the candle. The cards scatter beneath us like leaves. He runs his hands along my bare thighs, slides a thumb under the elastic of my underwear. Where he kisses me, my skin turns to fire. We do not talk about fathers after that.

AUGUST.

The three of us are in my room. Jack is sprawled on the floor, long legs everywhere, too big for the small s.p.a.ce. I'm curled up in a corner, drawing Aurora. She's sitting on my bed, smoking, with her knees drawn up to her chin. Long bony arms, long fingers, beautiful bird-sharp face. The cuts on her knuckles have healed to faint red lines. You wouldn't think they'd both be so hard for me to draw, considering how much I look at them. We're planning her birthday party. Our made-up world is animated on the opposite wall, the evening light playing tricks. The dragon flies over a choppy sea. Aurora reaches over and stubs out the cigarette in a candle. "What's for dinner?" she says, yawning.

"Ca.s.s said there was stuff for stir-fry." I put down my sketchbook. "Story of my life." Ca.s.s is out doing a reading for a client, told us to eat without her. Ca.s.s hates Jack with an intensity that is as palpable as it is irrational, but she tolerates his presence in the house.

"You poor deprived thing. I'll buy you takeout." Aurora waves a hand over my protest. "It's a salary. I'm putting you to work. We have to figure out the guest list and the decorations and the menu and the bands. And what caterer to use. And how much food we should get. And what we're going to wear. And we should design the invitations if we want to get them printed. Don't you think we should have them printed? I think that would be extra cla.s.sy. Printed invitations."

"Aurora, your birthday is in a week and a half."

"Then we'll have to plan efficiently."

We order a feast from my favorite Chinese restaurant and eat it in the kitchen. Mu shoo pork, six kinds of dumplings, noodles slippery with sesame oil and tossed with scallions and prawns. Aurora bosses us around, makes me unearth three sets of almost-matching silverware and put out cloth placemats and napkins. She lights candles, turns out the lamps. In the gentle glow we are even more beautiful. We fill our plates over and over again until Aurora wails aloud and pushes herself away from the table. "I'm going to die," she cries, "if I eat any more." Jack leans forward and steals a prawn off her plate and she smacks the back of his hand with her fork. They smirk at each other, the air hopping with electricity. I look away. "I want you to play at my party," she says.

"I'd be honored." The warm light falls across his dark skin, his shoulders, the sharply defined muscles of his forearms that flex and tense as he gathers up the plates and carries them to the sink. I imagine the two of them together, her white hair tangled with his black, their long limbs entwined. They belong with each other more I than I belong with either one of them. The thought creeps in like poison from a sting. I shove back my chair and get up, measure milk and honey and herbs into three mugs. When the tea is ready we take it into the living room. I put on New Order and Jack sits close to me on the battered couch. Aurora sits on the floor with a pen and a page torn out of one of my sketchbooks, going on about decorations and c.o.c.ktails and the different kinds of food she should order, and should there be a costume theme-"Masks," Jack says, his breath warm against my ear. Aurora likes that and writes it down.

"Masks," she repeats, tapping the pen against her lower lip. Jack's hands are on my belly, fingers winnowing under the waistband of my jeans. I want to throw Aurora out of the room and arch my hips to meet them. I close my eyes. "I wonder if we could get hummingbirds somewhere," Aurora says. "Wouldn't that be cool? A flock of hummingbirds?" If anyone could get a flock of hummingbirds for her birthday party, it would be Aurora.

Later, in my room, after Aurora goes home, he unb.u.t.tons my jeans and tugs them off my hips, pulls my s.h.i.+rt over my head as gently as if he is undressing a child. Touches the amulet but leaves it there. "Which one of us do you like best," I ask, and he hushes me.

"You silly thing. How could you even ask me that?" He kisses his way down my throat, pausing in the hollow at the base of my neck. What is happening to me?

"I love you," I say, but so soft I don't know if he hears me, and I don't want to say it again in case he did. His skin tastes of honey. He whispers my name, over and over, and when I begin to cry he does not ask why, only kisses the salt tracks the tears leave on my skin until I fall asleep in the circle of his arms.