Bluebird's Comb

It's like getting into a girl's pants, Jill told me.
         "First you got to work the zipper, get it down nice and easy—pinch it—cover it with them meat hooks of yours and ease it—ease it! Ease it or the sister'll be up and hollering rape before you get anywhere close to the good shit—"
         I pinched and eased, sitting on the steps next to her with concrete biting my ass and my eyes studying the other direction while my brain tried to direct my hand on its own.
         "No!" A clump of leather whapped my arm. "You don't go straight down the middle first thing—you got to make enough time to find the sweet spot." She stood up and shook her head. Her hair, short and straight and jumpy, made me think of a ragged skirt pulled down over her ears. "Dumbass."
         "Let me try again?" My whine shimmied out my mouth and hung sticky like the air was glue. Sunlight glared at everything while Jill glared at me.
         "Yeah, right." She handed the purse back to Bluebird, who'd draped herself over the stoop railing to watch as if any second a camera'd pop up and grab her in its flash. Bluebird always posed when she stood still.
         I paused when she shouldered the straps, looking way more natural with the girly trappings than my sister ever did. This a new lesson, maybe? The grab n go? Must be, my feet decided, and got in step with theirs, quiet under the clack of Bluebird's heels and the flip of Jill's flops.
         "Fuck off, kid." Jill didn't even glance back. Damn, she was good. I wilted a little.
         Bluebird looked back, though. Shot a grin that stretched her thin face into nothing but big eyes and shiny lips over her shoulder through a cloud of red hair. It made my heart squeeze shut and take a deep breath, both at the same time.
         "Jilly's just funning you, kid," she said.
         "I know." I didn't, but I should've.
         "Am not." Jill flipped me a bird, long, slender, and pale topped by blue fingernail polish the same neon as Bluebird's peepers. "Be back late."
         I watched them walk south, dodging the old tree that grew from a crack in the sidewalk. Only live green thing for miles, and it sprouted up through solid concrete, believe that? Got me every time.
***
         "Jilly."
         First time Bluebird called her that, she didn't get walloped or shot or even sneered at. That's when I knew my sister was in love. Took a couple more sweaty days to realize I might be in trouble, too.
         Jilly. Jesus.
***
         "What we get this time?"
         Jill sat criss cross on our plaid couch, fretting hems on her men's jeans with one hand and crawling through a molehill of paper dough with the other. Two wallets, emptied and defeated, flopped next to the money.
         I sneaked a hand out to snitch a billfold—I liked reading the driver's license stats, liked the bumpy weight of credit card numbers under my thumb, as if I could become Mr. Arthur P. Shaw by knowing he weighed 165 pounds and used Visa, have a whole new life from picking up someone else's—but Jill swatted my wrist before it got anywhere good.
         "Don't cause trouble," she said, her fingers still marching.
         Bluebird balanced on the couch's arm, which had been about to fall down as far back as I remembered. She leaned forward and directed those blue lasers at the money so I thought it'd start flaming any second. "Twenty, forty, forty-five, fifty one two three." She blinked, switched off the lasers. "That all? From both?"
         Scraping up the cash, Jill made the edges neat. Her pant ends looked chewed. "Yeah. From both."
         "It's not bad."
         "Can do better, though."
         "Maybe the mall," I said, surprising everybody including myself, getting hot when they both stared at me for the first time in days. Maybe ever. "I mean—got to go where the money goes, yeah? I mean—like—not on the subways, too—"
         Jill jerked her chin at the dirty pouch I had in a fist. "You jack that from some mall rat?"
         "No—" I tossed it onto the table to hide my shakes. "No—no, got it from a old puss—I mean an old broad in the park." Who dropped it halfway down the bike path. But they didn't need the whole story.
         "Hmm." My sister pulled her lips down at the edges while Bluebird unwrapped and counted. When she bent, I peeked down her shirt, then felt bad, then peeked again, then noticed Jill noticing me and screwed my eyelids shut and tried to think of Jesus.
         Bluebird said, "Almost ten bucks worth of quarters."
         Jill bit her lip. "Not bad, kid. For your first solo."
         "The kid's not bad at all." She smelled of lemons, Bluebird did, reaching over to mess my hair and smooth it back down so it hurt that much more when she settled back against my sister and let her kiss her deep and long.
***
         I knew what went on in the next room after I cut off my light. I was eleven years old; sure I knew.
         Giggle giggle. Thump. "Ooh."
         "C'mere, babe." Thump. THUMP.
         "Jilly...ah! Jilly Jilly Jilly—"
         "Oh really now?"
         "Yes. NOW!"
         One time I heard a growly moan rumble up to an opera shriek—what I thought was opera, anyway, loud and high and full—that really made my wang stand up.
         "She don't like you," I told it. "You got nothing she wants."
         It didn't listen—it never did—so I laid there in the dark and sudden quiet petting it until it cried. I cried, too.
***
         Bluebird was just so damn nice to me, called me kid like Jill did but without the capital letters so I could've had a real name. A normal name.
         "Here, kid," she'd say and let me have the diet soda she never took more than two sips of. "I don't want it anymore."
         My tongue'd search for lemon on the straw, but if it was ever there it was washed out by bitter plastic fizz. "Thanks."
         She got a kick out of that. "Thanks!"
         "He heard something I told him, anyway," Jill said.
         "What'd you ever tell the kid he needs to hear?"
         "Be nice to pretty women." At this point Jill'd slip an arm around Bluebird's waist, lean over and lick her neck while Bluebird'd squirm in a smiley giggly way that meant she loved every second.
         I couldn't watch them. I watched the people go by instead. I watched the train times click through the big automatic chalkboard; I watched the sun struggle through a ceiling that might as well've been the sky. I watched loads of fancy shit we couldn't afford being arranged in windows as we walked by.
         "No business," Jill said. Business was her dressed-up word for jacking anybody's wallet. "Lights're too bright, cops're too close, and stores're too small."
         Train station trips stayed a spectator sport until I saw the comb.
         "You want any Meat on a Stick?" Jill tethered Bluebird, holding hands strung out towards the food cart.
         "No," I said.
         "Sounds like he's coming up straight." Tearing a bite off her corndog, Bluebird grinned so I could see bits of mashed wiener flicking her teeth.
         "Yeah, well. Don't promise him nothing." My sister handed me a five—my share that week, picked up from the bike trail only I said from an old biddy who looked way richer. "Go and keep out of stupid."
         I pocketed the green and walked in the first direction I thought of. Left.
         Around the corner, a funny-shaped piece of metal threw reflection daggers into my eyes. I stopped, squinted.
         It was three little metal prongs, like a fork without a handle, in a flashy sort of reddish bronze that made me think of Bluebird's hair—I wondered how the sparkly bits would wink in hot sunlight behind wavy depths, pinning them up so the whole world could see her neck. I wondered how the bird painted blue on the wide part would look nested over an ear. I wondered how much a chance like this cost.
         Too much, 'course, for a dumbass would-be pickpocket, but I pretended anyway. Cradled it in my hand, brought it way up close to my eyes like I was looking for more, touched the flat blue enamel and rough shiny spots.
         Shoved it into my front pocket like it was just another dollar and slid right back out of the shop.
***
         Jill found the damn thing a day later, before I even got a chance to stash it.
         "Where'd you get this?" She asked so calm and quiet for a second I thought she really was just curious.
         But when I didn't say anything for a second, she let the snarl out and held Bluebird's comb so I noticed how sharp the points were. "Where. The fuck. Did you GET this?"
         "I—I—"
         "You didn't." Wasn't a question.
         I nodded. Thought a minute—shook my head.
         "Stole it."
         Nodded.
         "Not from a bag lady at the park, neither."
         Inspiration! "Yeah yeah, this mama in a fur stole—" outside in mid-July...
         Smack. My jaw hurt but still wanted to rip and swallow the not cancelled sale sticker showing on the other side of the bluebird. "Shut the fuck up."
         I did and tried very hard not to piss myself while my sister decided if I was worth the effort of another slap. Her hand stayed in the air, arm tensed, face scarier'n any man I'd ever seen, stayed up so long I forgot there was anything else in the world.
         Finally she grabbed my chin and hauled my face close close close to hers. This is what Bluebird must see, I thought dimly.
         "You're a dumbass," she said, and I smelled lemons on her breath. "If you're not careful, someone'll kill you and I won't stop them."
         Her fingers spread wide, dropping my chin onto my collarbone with a click I felt echo down my ribs, and she stomped out.
***
         I saw them through my window—I saw her take out the comb and hand it to Bluebird like it was nothing— "just a little thing I thought you might fancy—" and I saw Bluebird light up like a fucking Christmas tree— "oh Jilly! Jilly, oh—" saw her melty smile and her arms fling around Jill's neck and her lips tell her thanks without saying anything and then I saw Bluebird retreat a little and hand back the comb.
         Hope—brief but there—but no.
         Bluebird stood still as Jill scraped the comb up and pushed it down to rest in a red cloud of hair. It glowed, exactly like I had imagined.
         Mine. Mine, goddammit, that was MINE and my sister stole it and I won't get it back.
         She's just too fucking good.

THE END