"He looks so life-like," the crow's rough voice said
quietly from the windowsill above my bed, but I refused to open
my eyes, refused to make any sort of acknowledgement that I'd
heard him.
"Yes," El Brujo said, her voice also coming from the
windowsill. "Not at all as pasty and unpleasant as
usual."
Jefe laughed scratchy as claws on slate. "Moping becomes
him?"
"Very much so. He's never quite as radiant as when he's
feeling sorry for himself."
"And all because of this new chica down the block?"
"Well, she's just his type, Jefe: human and female."
"Then why--?"
I groaned, stretched my left arm across my eyes, tried not
to see Deena standing on her front porch thin but not too thin,
curvy but not too curvy, tall but not too tall, her dark jagged
hair and her little round glasses and the heart-breakingly brief
smile on her oh so serious face--
'Cause once I pictured her, I knew I'd picture the scarred
mess of the needle marks along her forearm, knew I'd feel again
the dank heaviness of the air when she pulled back her sleeve to
show me, knew I'd hear the catch of her breath, the shake in her
voice, the rip of a woman I'd only met for a couple minutes one
time before baring her soul to me, showing me a part of herself
that she had to know would make me...make me--
"Oh, it's simple, Jefe. He doesn't like her now that he
knows she's not a perfect plastic angel."
"Damn it!" I couldn't help flinging the blankets down,
crooking a shaking finger up at the cat and the crow silhouetted
against the blacker black of the spring night outside, the
curtains rippling ghost-like in the breeze, catching the orange
of the streetlights around the front of the house. "Don't put
words in my mouth, Brujo! Or thoughts in my head, or anything
else anywhere else! You hear me??"
As always, I was glad yelling so animals could understand
it didn't make a sound as far as human ears were concerned, but
for all the reaction I got from the two of them, it was like I'd
done nothing at all. I jammed the mattress with my elbows,
wrenched myself over onto my side, closed my eyes again.
"Yeesh." Jefe's beak clicked. "Sensitive, isn't he?"
"It's his curse." The scorn in El Brujo's voice made the
skin tighten along the back of my neck. "He's so concerned that
his fellow humans not judge him by his twitching and his
lurching that when he observes the twitching and lurching of
others, it just cuts him right down to the bone."
"Just say it," I murmured. "Just call me a hypocrite and
get it over with, huh?"
"I, August?" It was the first time she'd used my
name in days, and it felt like a cool glass of water on a summer
day. "Why should I say it when you already have?"
"Just--" I was so tired: tired of not sleeping, tired of
dragging the weight of my thoughts around and around in my head.
"How, Brujo?" It came out as more of a whimper than I would've
liked. "She's-- I don't know what she is! And I'm--
Hell, I don't know what I am, either!"
No sound anywhere around me, not from the rest of the house
and not from the windowsill. "But whatever it is," I went on,
the pillowcase damp against the side of my face, "if you put us
on a scale, she'd be all the way at one end, and I'd be all the
way at the other. She's been out in the world in ways I can't
even begin to imagine, and I've been rolling around these
hallways and this neighborhood talking to birds and cats!" I
twisted my neck, stared up at the two silent shadows. "How can
that work, huh? How can anything like that ever work?"
"Simple." El Brujo slipped from the windowsill, landed
with a light thud on the sheets in front of me, pressed her soft
furry self into the crook of my neck. "You say 'hello.' Same
as you did that first time to me. Then you let it go from
there."
"Truth," Jefe said above us.
I wrapped my arms around El Brujo, found her ears,
scratched them till she was purring. "All right," I whispered
into her back. "All right. I will."
And the 16th one comes next.
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