Free Plumage by Nancy Springer Page B

with escargot heels and shook his head, making sure it was tilted at an attractive angle. Playing it as dumb-blonde as he could considering that he was six feet tall and black. “Sorry, Officer, I can’t. I have things to do here.”
    â€œYou don’t seem to understand, ma’am.” The cop lowered his head like a charging bull but spoke patiently. “I’m taking you in for questioning. Get your coat.”
    â€œI don’t have to go unless you’re arresting me, do I? And if you’re arresting me, I want a lawyer.”
    The police officer stared at him. The police officer took a long breath and let it out again. “You refuse to cooperate?”
    â€œI’m cooperating! I just told you, I have things to do, you know? I have to get the payroll together. Get some orders off. Clothes don’t just stock themselves , you know?”
    The police officer stared at him. Racquel lowered his false eyelashes to half-mast.
    â€œI’ll be back,” the cop said. He swaggered out.
    Racquel sent his employees home and locked up. Ten minutes after the cop had left, Racquel stood in front of the mirror via which Sassy had made her inexplicable exit, venting his feelings in expletives.
    â€œ Jesus jumping on the water, what a mess!”
    He clicked at the mirror with his enameled fingernails, finding it glassily unyielding. He pushed at it with his palms. He glared at his reflection, noticing that he had chewed off his lipstick and his lips looked like a hamburger bun. This was no time to worry about fixing them. “Mirror, you gotta let me in,” he said.
    He frowned, then tentatively launched himself at the mirror. His forehead impacted it painfully. He stood back, rubbing it.
    â€œMirror, come on! I gotta get her back and keep my lovin’ tuckus out of jail.”
    He tried going in hands first and broke a nail. He swore some more.
    â€œMirror, what’s the matter with you? You want the lights off, is that it?”
    He tried it with the lights off. He tried to step in, sidle in, dive in. He tried coaxing the mirror and kissing it. He tried threatening to break it, and he would have followed through on the threat except—then what?
    He passed from desperation into sweating frustration into despondency. When he reached despair he said, “Damn you,” turned his back on the unresponsive mirror, leaned against it, tilted his head back and closed his eyes to think.
    As if pushed off the edge of a swimming pool he fell backward into an alternate lucidity.
    With a lump in her throat, Sassy gazed up a misty green ravine at a waterfall so ravishing it made her think of drowning herself in its sunbow beauty. Spray bathed her face like tears.
    Then, mingled with the music of the torrent she heard another voice singing, a human voice, a tenor so sweet it brought real tears to her eyes. She shifted her gaze to the pool below the waterfall. There, swirling in the eddies and drifting toward her, floated the face and streaming hair of a handsome young man with his eyes lidded but his mouth wide open in song. Face to the sky, he lay with his head upon a sort of curlicue raft—no, it was a harp, a lyre. Sassy stood rapt in the beauty of his song, although she could not understand the words.
    At first she assumed that the rest of him was swimming below the surface. But as he drifted closer, she gasped, for she saw that there was no body.
    Still, he was the closest thing to a human being she had yet seen. She hated to interrupt the song, but—“Excuse me,” she called to him as he floated past her, “where am I?”
    His mouth closed, song cut off, and his eyes opened and gave her a lapis gaze which seemed not to understand.
    â€œWhat place is this, I mean?”
    He spoke something brief in a language which clearly was not English. His eyes closed again as he floated on downstream.
    From somewhere far, far above, echoing down as if from a distant