He held up the joint, squinted at it. “Gotta light?” he asked.
Johnny Parker pulled a zippo from his pocket, handed it over. Henry sparked it up, took a drag, lay back. “Fucking amazing music, this stuff,” he said. “Got any of those cookies?”
It was late afternoon when Henry remembered the changes he had waiting for him back at James and Emily's. “Shit, dude,” he said to Johnny Parker. “I gotta go. I got a bunch of stuff to do today, and it's getting late.”
“Gig tomorrow night, remember,” Johnny Parker said, unperturbed. “Wanna go out later?”
“Yeah, later. Give me a call or something,” Henry said. He brushed the crumbs off James's pants, grabbed his jacket and lit out across the Common. Shit. He'd forgotten about that gig tomorrow night. He was totally behind.
It rippled the bird's feathers, and parted Nathan's hair. People hurried in and out of the building, mostly out. It was getting late, and the sky was starting to darken. Soon, Nathan knew, the library would close, and things would quiet down. Already, the steps looked inviting again. He was tired of pacing, and the wind was making it all the harder.
“Come on,” he said to the bird. He nodded his head toward the library steps. “Let's take a break.”
The bird sailed across the library lawn at Nathan's knee height, then perched on the steps, waiting for Nathan to catch up. They sat
together, and waited, a task at which Nathan was becoming very good.
“There you are,” the parka-clad kid called as he raced along the path. “Thought I'd fucked it up. I totally forgot about you today.”
Nathan shrugged. It wasn't the first time. He was surprised, though, that the kid was speaking to him. Why today of all days? And had they meant to meet? He couldn't remember. If they had arranged a meeting, it was news to him. Still, he stood up and extended his hand toward the kid, but the kid went right past him and picked up the bird. Of course, Nathan thought, the bird.
The parka kid grasped the bird's plump body in both his hands and said, “What happened here? Thing is all bashed up.” He removed the little pink dog from the bird's leg. It had become even more tattered in the time the bird had spent pecking in the snow, and its little torso was beginning to unfurl. Nathan peered over the kid's shoulder.
There was something inside the little dog. Words written inside it. Nathan felt nervous, his mouth went dry.
“Hey!” the kid said. “What's all this?” He unfolded the animal and smoothed out the creases. “Damn,” the kid said. Nathan leaned in closer for a look.
A feeling of relief,
the pencilled words read,
in the quiet room. The heat subsides.
Well what the hell did that mean? Nathan sat back on his heels. Was it for him? He had no idea.
“What the hell,” the kid said. He looked at the bird. “Are they all like that?” The bird cocked its head to the right and opened its beak, as if to answer. The parka kid scrambled to his feet and said, “Wait here.”
Nathan hugged himself. He felt excited and scared. He wondered who the message was for, himself or the kid. He wished he could ask, but the kid clearly didn't want to talk to Nathan. He didn't even look at him.
Putting the scrap of paper carefully in his pocket, the kid sprinted to the bushes where he'd hidden the others. He hauled them out and took them back to the library step. “Are they all the same?” he asked the bird. “Do they all have messages inside?” He started to unwrap each one, carefully.
They reminded Nathan of fortune cookies, and of the first time he'd used chopsticks. Leah had come to visit him in Ottawa, and they'd gone out for dim sum on Sunday morning. He'd had trouble manoeuvring the food from his plate to his mouth, he'd get it precariously balanced between the ends of the chopsticks, but halfway to his mouth, it'd burst out and fall into his lap or back to the plate. Finally, halfway through the meal, when he was almost insane with hunger and frustration, Leah had noticed that he was holding the chopsticks the wrong way around.
“You're eating with the handles,” she'd said, gesturing with her own sticks. “You want to use the thinner ends for picking stuff up, dude.” He watched her use the slender points of her chopsticks to snag a dumpling from the bamboo steamer that sat between them, and expertly pilot it to her waiting tongue.
“Huh,” he'd said, and tried it her way. She had been right.
The best part, though, was always the fortune cookies. Breaking them open, reading the messages inside, feeling thrilled at their accuracy or intrigued by their mystery. He regarded the paper menagerie spread out on the library step. His fingers itched to open them himself, but the kid had them all lined up.
What order had they arrived in? The kid couldn't remember now. He knew the blue one had come just before this latest pink one, so he unfolded that one first. It was a message about machines. But the others? He couldn't remember their order. Green, orange, gold, red. He unfolded them willy nilly and laid them out on the steps.
A long flight, only sorrow at the end,
one said.
A gathering storm, you kept time with your breath,
another pointed out.
The bell in the night calls us and we come.
The tether slips, you slide, you soar.
Well those didn't make any sense either, Nathan thought angrily.
“What the fuck is all this,” the kid exclaimed. So he didn't know either, Nathan thought. The kid moved the slips of paper around, changed their order, but it didn't help. The wind winkled their corners, threatened to lift them, but the kid protected them with his body, made a shield against the coming storm.
Nathan leaned further over the kid's shoulder, and read the messages over and over. They reminded him of something though, there was a memory just outside his memory, of what these could mean. Was it just the fortune cookies he was thinking of, or was there something else as well? His memory had become so holey lately. He could barely remember his own name.
He sat on the steps in the wind, tucked right up against the parka kid, and together they read the messages again and again. The kid moved them around on the step, as if some new combination and permutation might cause the seismic shift that would unlock their secrets. Nathan's mind skipped over and around the phrases,
The tether slips, you slide, you soar
. He rolled it around in his mind. And finally, he remembered what it reminded him of. And he knew what he had to do.
* * *
Leah finished typing and sat back. It was so hard to get started lately, but so satisfying to finish, to have done more in a day than, well, than what she'd been doing lately. Lying on the couch, reading magazines and fretting. The wind was becoming more intense, shaking her little study and hammering at its single-glaze windows. She stretched and thought about soup. It seemed like a lot of work to make it just for herself. But maybe she could get a jump on her recipe work for the next issue. She stretched her arms up over her head. It had been a long afternoon of hunching over the laptop.
“Alright, time to get this stuff off,” she said, to no one in particular. She typed a quick email to her editor and attached the document, and as she was about to press send, the lights went out.
“Shit,” she said, as the darkness of the very late afternoon settled around her. She waited a beat. The lights went out pretty regularly, especially when the weather was rough. But just as often, they came on again after a minute or two. This time, though, the darkness persisted.
“Oh for crying out loud,” she said. The gloom of the afternoon was gathering quickly, but she could still see to navigate past the bookcase without stubbing her toe, and past Nathan's guitar without knocking it over. She made her way down the stairs and stood in the
dim front hall, wondering where the flashlight was. In the basement, maybe. In which case, that's where it would stay. The basement made Leah nervous at the best of times, even with all the lights on. In the darkness? There was no way. Candles would have to do. She moved to the mantle, which was crowded with candles of various heights and sizes. She pawed along the mantle till her hand brushed a book of matches. She lit each of the candles she found, then moved on to the kitchen and lit what candles she could find in there, too.
The phone rang. Charlotte. “The power out there, too?” Charlotte asked.
“Yep, I just finished lighting all the candles. It's actually kind of nice.”
“How was your day?” Charlotte asked.
“Better,” Leah said. “I worked, all day. Got stuff done. It felt really good.”
“That's great,” Charlotte said. “They're letting us out early. No power here, no work, you know?”
“Yeah,” Leah said. “You should come by. We can eat cold soufflé if the power doesn't come back on.”
“You got it,” Charlotte said. “I'll be there in a flash.”
Leah hugged herself and rubbed her upper arms with her opposite hands. The house would start to feel chilly soon, and if the power stayed out for long, she was going to need blankets and extra socks.
In the kitchen, she rooted around by candlelight in the dark refrigerator. There was soufflé. A little sunken now, and probably considerably tougher than it had been, but still, it would be tasty. And cheese and crackers, of course. And fixings for a spinach salad with strawberries and pecans she was about to work on. She pulled the food out and put it on the counter, then remembered the cookies. She took the plastic container from the freezer and set it on the table to thaw. Not a bad spread, she thought, all things considered. She began assembling the salad and contemplated what kind of dressing she could throw together for it.
In the silence of the house â no radio, no appliance hum or furnace roar, she could hear rattling. Harold coming home, or tree branches brushing windows? She glanced at the clock. It was getting late. Past time for Harold to come back, actually.
She cocked her head and listened for the happy ruffling that would mean two birds in the house, but all she heard was the rattling that sounded, she decided, more like branches on glass than birds in cages. She grabbed a candle from the kitchen and went upstairs to check, just to be sure, but there was no Harold. She made a search of the upper floor, holding the candle high, but still, no sign of the bird. She went back into the bedroom, and saw it. The candle reflected in the glass. Fuck, she'd forgotten to open the window. She put the candle down and was about to lean on the sash when the doorbell rang. Charlotte.
* * *
Nathan stared hard at the paper messages. Maybe they weren't even for him, but they didn't seem to be for the kid in the parka either. But then why did the bird wait around? Why did the kid in the parka take the animals and hide them in the bushes? And why did the bird always seek out Nathan afterward? It was time to be bold, Nathan decided. He leaned against the kid in the parka. The wind whistled over them both and knocked the kid's hood back. Nathan put his mouth close to the kid's ear.
“Write back,” Nathan said urgently. “You have to respond to those messages. Write. Back.”
The kid bent at the elbow, shoved his hand down the back of his parka and scratched a spot on his shoulder. He sat back on his heels. “This is crazy,” the kid said. “I don't make enough money for this. Nobody said anything about any messages.”
“You have to write back,” Nathan said again. He wasn't sure he was getting through to the kid, but he knew it was his only shot. “I'll tell you what to write.”
The kid looked around for the little grey brown pigeon.
“Hey,” he called, “birdie. Come on over here.” The bird looked up from its pecking, so far fruitless, and hop-flew over to the steps.
“What's your game?” he asked the bird. “What the hell?” The bird cocked its head, the way it did, and blinked. “This is stupid,” the kid said, finally. “Some kind of stupid joke. I don't need this bullshit. Haven't even
seen
my money, lately.”
He started to get up. Nathan felt panic rising in him, swirling in his chest like the wind that lifted granules of snow on the library lawn. “Sit down, sit down,” he cried. “Please, you have to listen to me.”
The kid hesitated. Nathan reached out and grabbed the ragged hem of his dirty parka. He didn't want to, but he had no choice. He pulled the boy back down to seated.
“Just write,” Nathan said. “It won't be that hard. It'll only take a minute. And once I get things figured out, I will get you some money, I promise. Just, please, please hold the pencil for me.”
“You know what,” the kid said to the bird, “two can play this game. Wait here.” He hopped up again and pulled open the heavy wooden door of the library. A minute later, he was back, with a stubby pencil punctuated with bite marks and a slip of scrap paper from the library reference desk. He sat back down on the steps and thought.
Nathan sighed with relief, adding his breath to the wind that leaped and danced and battered against the kid's parka-clad back as he hunched over the messages. “Okay,” Nathan said, right into the kid's ear. “Here's what you write. You write,
I am here, where are you?
”
The kid put the end of the pencil in his mouth, added to the bite marks already there. He said to the bird, “I should just write back something like,
oh, very funny. Where's my money?
Hey, that rhymes!”
The bird made a sharp, scolding sound in its throat, and closed its eyes for a moment. Then it hopped closer to the kid and stretched its beak toward the pencil.
“Hey,” the kid said, lifting the pencil up. “Get lost.”
Nathan leaned in again. “Listen to me,” he said patiently, and with all the persuasiveness he would once have needed in a court of law, had things gone that way. “You must listen. You cannot believe how important this is. This is what you write. You write
I am here, where are you?
That's it, that's all you have to do. Write it. Just write it.”