gold tooth winked in her mouth like a jovial exclamation point to her smile.
Cary spun around and noticed several other patrons. Blue jeans. Red shirts. White shirts with blue pin-stripes. Paisley. Mauve, chartreuse, indigo, puce, taupe, purple and a hundred other colors he'd only recently discovered bombarded him from every corner of the room. His was no longer a world of monochromatic monotony. He'd been transformed and changed whole by the miracle of The Swan's Sorrow.
Cary Grant spun back around on his stool and regarded Momma Desta with a wink and a grin. He was all smiles as he gestured for her to fill his glass again. This time when he drank, he laughed heartily.
***
He remembered his first time.
"How you know you aren't seeing things now?" Momma Desta chuckled.
"Cause this feels real. Not like a dream." He felt the stickiness of the bar. He smelled the stench of a longshoreman slipping off the stool beside him. Cary ran his hand over the battered edge of the wood. A splinter drew blood. He regarded the drop that welled up for a moment, then dipped it into the red liquid of the glass as if it were filled with his own blood. "No, this is real."
"So whas the matter?"
"I need to figure out how it works. The Swan's Sorrow you say. I must understand it."
"Is just a liquor."
"No. Never just a liquor. Listen. I wasn't kidding when I told you I couldn't see any color. This liquor. You tell me it's red. I've never seen red before. Hell, I've never seen any color before. You could tell me it's blue or yellow or orange. Whatever you tell me I'd have to believe. Don't you see? Other than black white and a million shades of gray, I haven't seen anything."
"A whole new world open to you."
"No kidding. But how?"
"Swan's Sorrow is very special thing. She made from swans."
"Swans? As in the bird?"
"Of course. Heart's blood, distilled into brandy. Is very special and can make things happen."
"Swan's blood?" He'd never imagined it. "How do they get the blood?"
"How do you think? They keep the swans in cages, then remove the heart for...how you say...distilling."
"Fuck but that's cruel."
Might be cruel, but is magic."
"Yeah. Right," Cary scoffed.
"You don't believe? Then tell Momma Desta how you see. Hmmm?" She leaned forward and poked a long-nailed finger towards his face. "Just because you don't believe doesn't make it not real."
***
He'd had ample opportunity to prove that this last month. From blue-assed primates to the brilliant tail feathers of the male peacock at the zoo, he'd seen things he'd never believed possible. At the Getty Center he'd seen art that had made his heart break with its beauty and the realization that he'd spent a lifetime not knowing. He'd spent hours wandering through Del Amo Mall, aghast at the universe that had been denied him, staring openly at a thousand things he'd taken for granted, wondering how a person could decide what to wear everyday with such an assortment of colors. Finally, confused and tired, he'd found himself in the toy aisle of the Super K–Mart in Carson. Sitting on the bench of a child's plastic picnic table, he wept as he examined and re-examined a box of 64 reasons to hate God, coloring in a book made for children.
There he met Miranda.
She came to him as he sat crying. Placing a hand on his back she whispered, "What makes a man cry like this?" Her voice lilted softly with a Mexican accent. "Who has broken your heart so?"
He sat up then and stared into her face. His heart stopped as the emerald orbs captured him. They were so rich and deep, he'd never known eyes could be like that. She had a childlike permanence to her beauty that made him want to reach out and touch her. She hadn’t flinched as his hand cupped her porcelain-fine cheek. Unable to answer, he stared into her eyes, those emerald eyes, mesmerized for a moment.
Then, feeling like he’d gone too far, he stuffed both hands under his arms and rocked back and forth. "Sorry," he'd said. "I can't believe I touched you like that."
She sat down across the tiny table then, squeezing into the small bench until their knees had touched. She didn't put her arms around him, nothing that familiar. Instead, she simply folded her hands together on the table in front of her and waited for his tears to subside. Finally he was able to introduce himself. "My name