Larque on the Wing Read Online Free Page A

behind his eyes. Sex with one of his own kind—it was potent and hidden and holy. But something even more potent and hidden and holy would happen to him tonight for the very first time.

TWO
    T HE MORNING AFTER S KY KICKED HOLES IN MOO COWS AND ran away, Larque reported to her studio as usual, to work. Maybe if she painted a few hours longer each day, she could regain some of the lost income the doppelganger child had inflicted.
    With this objective in mind, she chose a largish piece of cold press, soaked it, and stretched it on her favorite board. As she waited for it to damp dry, she stood back—her slippers felt thin and frail on the uncompromising floor—and tried to plan what image she would produce on it. Grazing geese again? Covered bridge? Rustic mill? Somehow none of her usual standbys seemed worth doing for any amount of money. Cowboy? No. Wouldn’t sell.
    The white, white paper confronted her like the back of God’s nightgown. If she touched it, God would turn around, and then she would know the truth about herself.
    Eight hours later it still faced her, blank and white.
    â€œIt’s gone,” she told Hoot, nearly blubbering, when he got home. His supper wasn’t ready. Too bad. He had to understand, it had not been a really good day. Make that the last couple of days. They sucked. “It’s just plain gone.”
    â€œWhat now, dog gone?” Hoot tried to joke. The night before it had been paintings gone, destroyed by a runaway doppelganger. She could do more paintings, Hoot had gently reminded her after sympathizing. As for the doppelganger, they always disappeared sooner or later, didn’t they? Sooner was better. Good riddance. Larque had agreed.
    But now she glared at him. “It’s gone, I’m telling you! It went with her.”
    â€œ What’s gone?”
    â€œMy—whatever you want to call it! Stupidity. Weirdness. Whatever it is that lets me paint. It went out the door with her. Read my lips, it’s gone, I mean all the way gone. I can’t do a thing.”
    Hoot gave her a hug, his cure-all. He was big and solid and a good hugger, but hugging wasn’t going to give back what Larque had lost.
    â€œHey, Mom-dude,” said Jason, the teenager, who had sized up the supper situation with the eyes of a pragmatist and was boiling water for boxed macaroni and cheese. “What’s the big deal? You just go out and get a real job like a normal person. No prob.”
    â€œIt’s not that simple.” Turned loose by Hoot, Larque slumped at the table, sniffling. “I want to paint.” Upstairs was a big canvas which for years had been standing in its corner, waiting for her to get done with rustic spring-houses and sheep on a hillside so she could fill it with the important work she was going to do someday. Now it was violated, and her soul was lying in a white, white emergency room, and her need was urgent but it would just have to wait—the doctors were all busy with somebody else. “It’s awful,” she elaborated. “I’m screaming inside. It’s like not being able to come.”
    â€œMom!” protested Jeremy, the prude.
    â€œCome where?” Rodd, the youngster, wanted to know.
    Jason was glad to explain the term to him in slightly inaccurate detail that Larque didn’t bother to correct, feeling too wretched even to talk about sex. “Honey, hey!” Hoot sat by her, patting her balled hands. “It’ll pass. It’s just a dry spell.”
    She got up and left the room, her sense of humor gone with Sky, too.
    That night she lay awake, and for once Hoot stayed awake also, holding her until the kids were silent, then making love to her as if that magical act could transfer some sort of vital essence to her from him, as if it could solve her problem. In his stolid Germanic way he really cared. He even did a lot of the down-and-dirty stuff he usually skipped. And Larque