Page 24 of Guitars and Cages

“Hey, Rory,” I said, my eyes still on the gleaning stars, and the red moving light of a plane.

“Yeah?” he muttered. He needed to go to sleep; the poor kid sounded tired, and tomorrow we had a long walk to go get groceries.

“When you’re done wishing, make a wish for me?” I said with a chuckle.

“Really?” he asked, looking over at me.

“Yeah,” I said, glancing from him to the stars.

I closed my eyes then, and reminded myself that unlike the animals in the cages we’d stared at all afternoon, I had the ability to break free from my cage. I could take all that I had denied myself for the past year and a half, and I could start turning it around in a single incredible night. Here, inside the crumbling, false enclosure I’d sequestered myself in, I could pace, I could rage, and I could cuss about all I believed the fates had taken from me, or I could continue to gaze up at the stars. I could remember the longing I once had to be as great as those I admired. I could remember the wishes I used to make when I whispered the rhyme my nephew had used minutes before, and I could take the dreams of the past and mold them into the reality of the future.

Chapter Ten

Sun-baked trash and fresh-baked bread, the two scents mingling to create a unique and pungent aroma. It filled in the spaces between buildings, lingered and clung to the skin and hair; it drifted along with the car exhaust, carried down the street by the movement of the masses until there was no place you could stand and not be forced to inhale it. I’d lived here long enough that the scent didn’t bother me anymore, kinda like how I ignored the pigeons fighting the rats for the bits of trash left littering the sidewalk. Rory, on the other hand, walked with his nose scrunched and wrinkled, his hand held tightly in mine every time we needed to cross the street.

“Why is it so dirty here?” he asked.

“’Cause no one cares to keep it clean,” I told him with a shrug. “The city thinks the people don’t care and the people think the city don’t care, so it all just stays the same.”

“That sucks,” Rory said, wrinkling his nose even more as we passed an alley with several leaking dumpsters, the kind with reddish-gray ooze festering in puddles beneath them.

“Yeah, it does.”

“Do you think Montreal is the same?” he asked, looking around at the unkempt buildings, the potholes that dotted the road, the layers and layers of grime and filth that aged the street we walked down.

“Naw, kid. I know it ain’t the same; least it wasn’t the last time I was up there.”

“You were in Canada?”

“Don’t sound so surprised, kid. I’ve been a ton of places. I get too bored to stay anywhere for long.”

“Is seeing so many places fun?” he asked.

“Oh yeah, kid, you better believe it.”

Thinking about some of those places and the people I’d known was enough to make me smile a little. Rory walked along quietly for a while, taking the occasional drink from the juice I’d gotten him. He glanced at an old woman sitting on her stoop in her bathrobe, furry gray slippers peeking out from beneath the hem. An old transistor radio sat on a wobbling stand beside her, blaring gospel music as she smoked an unfiltered cigarette with a gnarled and yellow-stained hand. I looked away from the old woman, attention suddenly locking on an entirely different woman, or rather, the rear of her bent over on the stoop of our apartment complex, hastily fixing the buckle on her shoe.

That was one amazing-looking ass, I thought as I continued to stare, letting my eyes drift over the curve of it, down to the firm, supple thighs. The clinging skirt left little to the imagination; long enough to be decent, while still short enough to be enticing. I watched as the woman stood up straight, showing off some pretty nice curves as long strawberry-blond hair streaked with crimson fell in cascading waves down her back. We crossed the street toward the apartment and the woman heading up the steps. I took a long drink of my soda, hoping to cool down the sudden flood of interest that had hit me like a ton of bricks. Just as I was trying to think of a way to go about getting her number, and maybe a late-night date after Rory was sound asleep, she turned and, mid-drink of my soda, I choked as our eyes met.

And choked.

And choked.

And choked.

For damn near a full minute I coughed and sputtered and gasped and dribbled soda from the corner of my mouth as lines of it dripped in sticky-sweet ribbons from my nose. Rory clutched my hand tightly, the little boy even trying to pat me on the back, and all the while all I could think was,what the fuck?

A firmer hand smacked my back then, several times, and I sputtered and jerked away violently, damn near tripping over my own feet in my haste. I looked down into concerned hazel eyes and all I could do was shake my head in disbelief.

“That wasn’t quite the welcome I was hoping for.”

“Alex....”

“Yeah, you’ve only been blowing up my phone for the past month, and it’s Alexia now,” my brother responded, his voice the same and yet different—like the rest of him, in that dress that clung in places it shouldn’t have clung, in places my brother shouldn’t have had.

I took a step back, pulling Rory with me, wanting to put as much distance between my brother and me as I could possibly get.

A car honked, loudly, and it was only then that I realized I’d dragged Rory with me into the street. Even then I couldn’t make my feet move forward again, couldn’t close the gap of safety that now existed between us and my brother. I stood like an idiot, mouth agape, staring at the fact that my brother now had breasts and curves and a full-on woman’s figure, and I sure as hell didn’t wanna know what else Alex had now that he shouldn’t have. As soon as that thought came, I was reminded of the fact that only moments before I’d been admiring the shapely rear end that had been bent over for the world to see, admiring my brother’s ass for fuck’s sake; what kind of sick fucking freak was I?

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