Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 22 Read Online Free Page A

pure compulsion.
    The little outboard motor puttered. I asked the Englishman if he had been to Paris. “Years ago,” he said. “Back in the seventies. When I was a student, before I came to the States. Disco and all that."
    I wondered why they could fly. I wished I could fly. I had had flying dreams. I had met them coming down the street in the early early morning and the crisp woman had asked me if I knew someone who could take them out to sea. They were empty-handed, except that the crisp woman had a fanny pack. The autistic one was wearing a long red dress, burgundy really, the hem dirty. She had those soft, naturally red lips that some children have. The kind that make me feel that perhaps there is too much saliva involved.
    I asked them why they needed to go out to sea and the crisp woman said they needed a head start on their crossing. They didn't hide that they could fly. I thought they were tired of hiding and traveling to get to the ocean and, now that it was so near, they were just shedding things, to become their own essential selves and their compulsion. They showed me how they flew, the woman leaning her head back and spreading her arms a little away from her sides and then just rising. She went up about five feet and then dropped back down to land on the sidewalk, next to the neighbor's wall which was covered with bougainvillea, now bright red in the pale and slanted morning light.
    "How are you going to cross the Atlantic?” I asked.
    They just shrugged. “We don't know,” the Englishman admitted.
    What was I going to do, call the police? So I walked down to the beach with them and then they climbed into my little aluminum skiff, the Englishman sitting slightly hunched in the prow. I gave him an aspirin and a granola bar and gave the other two granola bars, too. They were nice in a distracted sort of way. I felt as if I were smuggling refugees, maybe off a Caribbean island in the dawn of an insurrection, a bloody revolution that would rise up against anyone perceived as a colonial. It was a funny little fantasy.
    When we had gone out about a mile I saw some other boats, clustering. The Englishman, the crisp woman and I saw them and we headed for them. They bobbed a bit, clustered together, all different kinds of boats but most of them bigger than mine. It turned out that there were about eighteen of the flyers, all drawn to the Atlantic and needing to fly to France. I recognized one of them—my high-school American Literature teacher, a small and very quiet woman who looked, appropriately enough, a little like Emily Dickinson and who I hadn't seen in over ten years. She was wearing a cardigan sweater and white pants and looked birdlike. She smiled at me, but in a kind of courteous way. I didn't think she recognized me. I had changed since then. A lot more than she had.
    The crisp woman cupped her hands and hulloed.
    A man from one of the other boats called back, “We're going to follow a cruise ship, so we have some place at night."
    There was a general brightening up of the three of us, excluding, of course, the autistic woman, who was looking at the other boats and humming. The Englishman still looked rueful.
    "Maybe you could go without flying yourself?” I asked. But he only shook his head.
    By then the sun was well up and the haze had burned off and they all stood up and sort of let their shoulders go back and drop, their chests rising and opening in a way that would please my yoga teacher, they began one by one to rise.
    * * * *
    Once back on land, I realized that I could go to France, too. I couldn't fly, but I could fly in an airplane. I went straight home and got on Priceline and without telling anyone, booked a ticket to Paris that afternoon. It only cost about $2,000. I put in that I would come back at the end of the month, although I didn't really know. I was delighted that I could actually get a ticket right then and there, for that day. It was like something in a movie.
    And good thing I