Fata Morgana by William Kotzwinkle

groveling, as usual, or wanting to clip her on the jaw. Better not to suffer that again; don’t look in her heart too long.
    He felt the flopping in his stomach, where she had gained a hold on him, where he was helpless and already loving her. A helpless pig about love, he understood himself too well.
    He found his undershirt. If we’re lucky we’ll never meet again. He glanced back and saw the look in her eyes. Young girls sometimes fall quickly too. But not for long. In two weeks she’d be using my head for a soup bowl. Clear out, Picard, while you still can. Where are my shorts?
    She knelt at the edge of the bed, ran her fingers up his leg, to his groin, fondling him there. “Your jewel, dear Fanjoy,” she said, touching his battered, half-hidden nut. “What happened to it?”
    “Did you know St. Gervais, the bodyguard of David Orleans? He hung out in this neighborhood.”
    “Did he...?”
    “He kicked me in the jewel.”
    “Men are so stupid.” She helped him close the buttons on his pants. “And you, what did you do to him?”  
    “He was buried with his rib cage torn out.”  
    “How disgusting...”
    “But necessary, for he certainly would have torn out mine.” He went to the mirror, adjusted his tie. Within the glass he watched her return to bed. She lay down and placed the pearl in her belly button, staring at it, smiling faintly.
    “The perfect setting,” he said, turning back to her. It was all right now, the danger had passed. He felt his freedom, and hers, and just now they were two swift birds of the night.
    “Will it pay my rent?” she asked.
    “It will.”
    “You’re a gentleman, Monsieur Fanjoy.”
    “No,” he said, “I’m a fool.” He looked away from her again, for they could easily lose their wings, especially if she gave him any sort of compliment. A pig with women, a simple and incurable pig.
    “Perhaps I’m the fool,” she said, “believing this is real.” She toyed with the pearl, setting it between her breasts. “Perhaps you’re just a liar...”
    “Tomorrow, when you find an honest jeweler...”
    She looked up, smiling. “But even if you’re a liar, Fanjoy, I don’t care. Come back to bed with me. Give me some more of that.” She closed her eyes, and squeezed her thighs together.
    He fastened his cape, found his cane and hat. In less than a week with this one. In three days I would be enslaved.
    He opened the door, turned toward her as he stepped
    into the hall. She was seated on the bed, looking at him, raising her hair up over her head.
    I am already enslaved. Fly, Picard, fly!
    He went quickly down the creaking stairs, past the broken bottles, into the street. What a wonderful girl. Don’t look back for the address—but I know her building, could pick it out of a million others.
    A winged pig of love, flying over the gutter.
    He walked slowly through the darkness of the late hour. Café dancers stood in the shadows of a doorway, smoking, speaking low, apparitions in the smoke.
    He stopped in front of the Hôtel Royal. Its restaurant was still open, couples seated by candlelight in the windows. And in the dark wreath that surrounded the building there floated a memory, of Abdul the Bird.
    Picard walked beside the fence of the hotel, tapping his cane lightly on the iron spikes. That one down there, I marked it with my pocketknife.
    He found the spike, with the notch cut in it, and sighted over it, to the rooftop, into the eyes of a grinning gargoyle, who’d been grinning the night he and the Arab had wrestled on the ledge. His dagger in my ribs up there. But my bootheel in his face, and over the edge he went, Abdul the Bird, unable to fly, after all, impaling himself on this spike.
    Picard rubbed the spike for luck. Little superstitions, yes. Small ceremonies to preserve one’s confidence.
    He tapped along the rest of the fence, felt his cane pass through the last spike, as if it were made of smoke, then saw that in fact there was no spike at all, he’d