Wild Birds

I expect nothing.  The sun is hot, the light ugly.  I walk, when I can,
in the shade of shopfronts.  My face is tight.  I hope for nothing.  I
see women whose money has made them old.  Bright scarves shame their
skin, creamy powder clogs their eyes’ fine wrinkles, heavy earrings,
chokers, bend down their necks.  Sweat drips from my fingers, and am I
like them?  I see men whose eyes make me old.  Taut, vicious boys in
suits glance at me once, but not again.  Slow, dreamy blacks with
deep-creased hands hold my gaze, and their faces don’t change at all. 
When shoulders brush my shoulders I feel bruised.  The lunch hour crowd
returning from work in its good, painful shoes nearly crushes me, could
have trampled me on the pavement.  Assholes with ponytails and
twittering shopgirls clatter up behind me and past, busy, sexless and
quick.  I stop walking.  I didn’t see him.  Sure, who would want to? 
Filthy bum. Smiling.  Things in his mustache.  Why look at a thing like
that?  Why look at a thing like me?

“Lady?  Find the Lady?”  “No.”     “Three chances to find the Lady,
lady.  Double your money.  Little money down.”  “No.”  I’m still
standing there.  He’s reaching up.  The cracks in his fingers are
black, his fingers are yellow.  Filth-yellow.  Gray-yellow.  Dirtier
than money.  I put money in them, smooth money too old to rustle.  It’s
gone like that.  He’s all business, now, he doesn’t smile.

“Three cards, lady.”  He lays them out.  “Which one’s the Lady?  Which
one’s the Queen of Joy?”    I point, not with my hand.  My small foot,
five white piggies, crushed to a point, points at the middle card.  My
blue shoe, my blue-green office shoe points for me.  It matches my
scarf, my bag.  “No, lady, not the deuce, we want to find the the Lady.
Show me my pretty Lady, I know I lost her somewhere here.”  I haven’t
looked, my eyes are just above his head, it could be any card.  He
doesn’t have to cheat to fool me.  I point again, twitch to the left.

“No, my lady, we want something softer than diamonds.  Not the seven. 
Find the Lady.  Try, lady.”  I look.  He’s looking back.  His lost eyes
only show their blackness, white and iris gone in folds of old skin. 
He’s sweating, same as me, same as everyone, water glinting in his
ruined cheeks, his neck.  He’s not all that old.  Maybe forty?  Less?

“I guess it must be the third card.  That one.”  “You, lose, lady, not
there, not that one.  So much for double your money.  Too bad.  Thought
you were a lucky lady.”  I’m still standing there.  I wanted to see
her.  He shuffles up the cards, glances up the street, forgets me.  “I
want to play again.”  “How’s that?”  “I’ll play again.”  I hold out
money.  “Three chances.  Double my money.  I’ll play.”

“Tell you what.”  The money’s gone. “I like you, lady.  Why don’t I
show you where she lives.”  Impossible to look at that face, or look
away.  Gray, street color, and the inside of the mouth like a wound,
like a flayed thing.  The wet stone eyes again, lost, unreachable;
broken, unfixable. And the body.  Squat, smashed.  The fat, blunt
fingers, clever at small things, tricky. The swollen legs and shapeless
trunk.  “I like you, lady.”  “Show me the Queen.”  It doesn’t surprise
me.  The instant before, I know exactly what I asked for, what I’m
getting, and his hand is on my shin.  My leg jerks, but not away.  His
fingers are like smooth wood.  They catch on my panty hose.  He
strokes, lightly.    “There’s the Lady.  There’s the Queen.”  My own
face twists.  Water breaks from my eyes like glass chips.  What could
make me want this?  What, ever?  There are people in the street, am I
this lost?  Am I this far from safety, from cleanness, white sheets?  I
hope he will reach higher.  I hope his thick thumb finds my dirty,
wrinkled part.  I hope he presses softly in, past the labia’s weak
protest, deep.  My shoulders shake, desperate, and I gasp and choke. 
He strokes, still gentle, up, under my pretty skirt’s stiff rim.  

“That’s my pretty Queen of Joy.”  Desperate, I stare up the street.  If
one face sees me I will become sane, will know I am being groped by a
bum and lose myself in disgust.  But no one looks.  I realise I am
completely safe.  No decent eye will see this ugliness of the street. 
By this mad act I have become the city’s filth, as invisible as my
starving attacker.  He tugs down my cotton panties, twiddles with my
hair.  I could dare to moan.  I moan.  The louder I am, the deafer the
walkers become.  Only prurient tourists hear.  I sink to my knees, and
he finds the open place.  Filth.  His fingernail leaves traces of
contagion in my softest flesh.  Vile.  He slides all the way out, shows
me a bunch of three fingers, shoves that in.  He has his own cock out
now, and his stroke with himself is faster, more casual than with me. 
It looks exactly like the last cock I saw, dark-headed, small, twisting
a little away from him.  I am so full now that I feel my body is half
his.  His fingers move independently inside me, rubbing against each
other like a clutch of brother snakes.  Then the fourth slides in.  Its
nail catches, a little stab.  My teeth grind, the water on my face is
half tears, half spittle.  I cry out as if for childbirth or death.

After I come I stay, with him inside me.  I watch him, and he looks
down at himself, at the site of his own pleasure.  He leaves his hand
sunk in me, moving a little, and pumps up and down on himself.  I look.
I want to see this act when desire is finished.  I try to know exactly
what grossness I have done.  I try to relearn disgust.  I can’t.  When
his semen flies, two drops land on my skirt.  I touch one.  His cries
are strained and quiet, and he slumps against the grey wall, then looks
up at me.  Now he smiles, and, God, I see his browning, narrow teeth. 
“You’re quite a lady, Lady.”  He takes his hand out of me, but I still
don’t stand for a while.  I raise the hand that touched his semen to my
mouth.  My damp hand shakes.  No one walks past.  Though no one looked
at us, still we have cleared the street.  I struggle up, survey the
ruin of my hose.

“Well, Lady, I sure hope to see you.  Hey?”

I go.  I leave my purse.  My face is wet and red, my feet stagger.  I
try smiling at a lady I pass. The invisibility’s still working.  I’m
inhuman for the duration.  The sun hits my body, the stink of trash
fills my lungs, and I walk faster and faster.  At the corner I turn,
and I must know this street but it looks different.  I put my head down
and watch my blue-green shoes click on the pavement.  I turn another
way, half run, half drag.  I can’t say where I’m headed.  How could I
possibly go back to work?  How could I possibly hope to find home?