A pigeon landed on him, digging its claws into the shoulder of his polo shirt. Because if you stand still in St. Mark’s Square long enough, the pigeons will mistake you for a statue and consider you theirs. Absently, he shook it away, but another came right behind it, and another, until he was slapping at them with both hands, rushing to get away from them. They cooed and flapped and shivered around him, but finally they left him alone. The whole square smelled of feathers and gasoline.
For all the tourists crowding Venice this time of year, he felt invisible. No one seemed to see him. No one noticed the little tragedy that had played out here. Street vendors shouted, gondoliers sang, bells tolled, as they had for centuries.
The only ones watching him were pigeons. Dozens of them, hundreds, looking at him, heads cocked, eyes—black, red, or orange—shining like beads. As if they were actually interested. As if they knew, and gathered around him to see what he would do next.
He resisted an urge to kick one, which would have been childish. But he was curious about whether it would get out of his way.
He sold the ring, called his office to say he wasn’t coming back, and set out to backpack across Europe, as he should have done in college but hadn’t because he’d been responsible. He’d done the right thing, finished his degree, gotten the good job, worked hard, climbed the
ladder, met the girl of his dreams. The white picket fence and two point five kids would follow, and wasn’t there a certain kind of happiness in that life?
So much for all that.
Eight months later, he hit bottom.
Bottom was a pair of holey jeans that needed washing, combat boots that didn’t fit, five layers of shirts and sweaters, and a canvas jacket that made him too warm during the day, but the nights got cold so he didn’t dare lose anything. He’d bartered bits and pieces of his corporate uniform and yuppie tourist gear along the way for his new disguise, the homeless rags that made people look away, that made him invisible.
But God, he’d seen Europe. Walked the streets in all the capitals, seen the monuments, the museums. He’d also spent whole afternoons sitting in parks watching children play, listening to parents call out to them in foreign languages. He’d shopped in local grocery stores, strolled through quiet neighborhoods. Seen things the guidebooks never talked about. He went everywhere, rode trains, ate great food, and stayed in hotels until his credit card maxed out. He kept going because he wasn’t finished yet, wasn’t ready to go home. The longer he stayed away, the less likely he would go home, simply because picking up the pieces would be too hard. The last of his cash brought him to Great Britain, where he discovered a network of footpaths that let him walk through much of that country as well. He’d probably never been in such good shape. Except he hadn’t eaten well in weeks, and he was always hungry.
He sat on the steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, overlooking Trafalgar Square, and fed pigeons bits of scavenged bread. He kept thinking he ought to go home. He could call his broker, cash out what was left of his 401k—
But why? So much simpler to sit here all day, watching pigeons.
They’d followed him across Europe. Well, they hadn’t followed him. It might have seemed like it, because they were everywhere, in every city, leaving their marks on every statue and monument, building nests in every available nook, no matter how many spikes or plastic owls people put up to dissuade them. He’d spent hours watching pigeons and had become an expert on them. Their coloration—grays, white bars on wings and tails, pale underbellies; heads shimmering with iridescent bands of green, purple, blue, or white, or brown, or some hybrid mix of all of them. The way they moved, strutting, preening, cocking their heads, staring warily as if unsure he would really drop a piece of bread. In flight, they were graceful, powerful. Almost beautiful. Many were injured, and he wondered what they did that so many of them lost toes. They didn’t seem to mind; they just kept hopping, flapping, pecking, living.
Like him.
It’s a sad life, isn’t it?
they seemed to say. So much work for so little reward. He tossed another crumb, and the reddish-grayish-green bird with the white ring in its eye looked at him, blinking, before pecking at the bread and trotting away.
“It really is,” he said. Because even pigeons were suspicious of handouts.
Did you ever think you’d end up here?
“Nope.” He sighed. But it was startling, how much he wasn’t bothered by where he’d ended up. It was almost nice to be surprised.
He did wonder if he was going insane, because he’d been talking to pigeons across Europe. He’d had no one else to talk to.That wouldn’t have been so worrying except
for how often the pigeons seemed to talk back. From Barcelona to Bern to Lyon to Amsterdam to Copenhagen, they’d watched him. He’d sit on park benches, wondering what to do next, and they’d gather. He’d started feeding them, even when he hadn’t had enough to eat, because he felt obligated. A pigeon missing a foot would hop in front him, cock its head, and seem to say,
At least you have both feet.
And he’d answer, “Well, yes, you’re right,” and dig in a trash bin for cracker crumbs to give it.
Trafalgar Square was full of pigeons. Not as many as St. Mark’s Square—apparently London had instituted a feeding ban to cut down on the pests. But the pigeons still came.
They gathered around him, lined up like an audience, as if they wanted to listen.
“If I could fly like you guys, I think I’d go back home. I think I’m ready.” He knew he’d hit bottom then, because he was ready to start crawling back up. Find another job, pay off the credit card, tell stories for the rest of his life about the months he’d spent slumming around Europe. It almost sounded romantic.
A white pigeon with flecks of gray, as if it had been spattered with paint, cocked its head.
But why? So you start all over again. For what?
He shrugged. “Because it’s the right thing to do?”
How do you know this won’t happen again?
He gave a bark of a laugh. “Because I’ll ask her if she wants to get married before I take her to Venice to give her the ring.”
Women. They’re all the same.
He winced. Had he thought that, or the pigeons?
He was comfortable, sitting here on the steps, watching the cars curve around the loop, watching tourists
crowd around the lions at the base of Nelson’s Column. He could sit here all day watching, chatting with the pigeons, who’d stay near him as long as he had something to give them. More reliable than women, for sure. Maybe he hadn’t hit bottom yet, if he wasn’t ready to move from this spot.
It’s a sad world.
“Yes, it is,” he said.
“Sir, you can’t stay here. You need to be moving on.”
He started; he’d dozed off. Someone was standing over him. A man with a funny hat, smart blue uniform, yellow safety vest. Police officer. Paul straightened and blinked up at the officer, who was stern and insistent.
It made him sad. He’d begun to think of this spot of stone as his very own.
A few pigeons still lingered, though he’d run out of crumbs a while ago. As usual, they seemed oddly interested, turning their heads to look at him, then look at the officer. He could almost hear them offering advice.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to hit him? Get yourself arrested? That would be different.
Then he definitely knew he hadn’t hit bottom yet, because he stared at the cop and thought, yeah, he
could
hit him. He could end up inside a British prison. Then at least he’d have hot meals again.
“Sir, did you hear me? You can’t stay here.”
Go on. Shove him.
“Sir—”
Paul said, “Do you ever feel like they’re watching you? The pigeons, I mean. I know they’re everywhere, they’re part of the scenery. But sometimes do you feel like they’re watching?”
Another pigeon cocked its head. The cop just looked at him.
Paul shook his head. “You probably think that’s crazy. That sounds crazy.”
After a moment, the officer said, “You’re American?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you end up here? Like this?” Here, in London, homeless, at the bottom.
He felt his mouth turn in a wry smile, his first smile in ages. “There was this girl, see.”
The officer laughed, and Paul was glad he hadn’t hit him. “Very sorry about that, sir. But I do need you to move on, right?”
Paul moved on, walking toward the river. A pigeon soared overhead.
At Ramstein Air Base in Germany, in an experimental command center situated far underground, a dozen technicians monitored computers, video displays, millions of bytes of data flowing constantly, and the satellite communications that fed the operation.
One of the techs looked up from her monitor, and the officer on duty, a male colonel in a crisp green Army uniform, walked over.
“Sergeant? What is it?”
“Sir, I have something strange going on with one of the tests,” she said. She pointed to her screen, where a dozen windows each showed a different video feed, views of streets, buildings, skies, concrete, and crowds. Clicking a couple of buttons, she brought one window to prominence, along with a list of data points.
“Subject 53872. Acquired in Venice. Initial contact showed a weakened state of mind, highly suggestible. But something’s changed. It’s like he suspects. This is the footage we’re getting.”
The colonel watched for a few minutes. The video
showed a man, a ragged homeless bum, rough brown beard on a gaunt face, tangled hair pressed down by a torn knit cap, soiled canvas jacket with a collar sticking up. The man stared directly into the camera, and his expression was pensive. His brow furrowed, his gaze was searching. The sound was off, but he seemed to be talking as if the camera would answer him.
It happened sometimes. Paranoia could push test subjects over the edge.
“How much data do we have on this one?”
“Eight months’ worth, sir. It follows the usual pattern.”
Satisfied, the colonel nodded. “Then it looks like it’s time to close this one out.”
“Yes, sir.”
The sergeant moved aside so the colonel could type in his authorization code to conclude the test. The technician took care of the rest, entering a code to transmit a preprogrammed message that shut down Subject 53872 and logging the results in the appropriate Psychological Warfare Test Group file: Experiment 87, Subsonic Hypnotic Suggestion Transmitted via Remote Integrated Cybernetics.
The colonel moved on, walking past a dozen screens that showed hundreds of images, some of them static, some of them turning, whirling, as if the camera were falling off a building. In many of the images crowds of birds gathered around, a tapestry of grays and purples.
Paul climbed over the guardrail halfway to the first tower on Tower Bridge and sat on a precarious ledge, his feet dangling. He watched the Thames flow under him. It was a long way down.
You might as well end it now.
The despairing thought had followed him all the way
from Trafalgar Square. It might have started when he didn’t have the guts to hit the cop. That would have been more interesting than this. But this time, the voice was probably right. He didn’t want to go on.
It’s too hard. It’ll be too hard to keep going.
“That’s right,” Paul murmured. It was all just too hard.
Even here, pigeons followed him, strutting along the ledge, cooing. One—was it the same mottled one who’d looked at him so pointedly back at Trafalgar Square? Hard to tell. Probably not, with billions of the aerial rats flapping around.
You should just end it now.
The thing was looking at him. They’d always been looking at him. They’d been following him, begging from him, bothering him. Ever since Venice, where this whole escapade started. What had gotten into him? He really was crazy—not because he thought pigeons were spying on him, but because no one acted this badly when a woman dumped him. That was the crazy part, letting the whole thing get to him like that.
But what if . . . What the hell, he thought. He was sitting on the edge of Tower Bridge getting ready to jump. It wasn’t like he had anything to lose.
He waited, very calmly, very quietly, barely breathing. The mottled pigeon didn’t move. It just watched him, head cocked, peering out of one eye, which shone like glass. Paul counted slowly to three—then grabbed it. Whipped out his hand and clamped it hard over its neck.
“Gotcha!” He clutched the thing in both hands and slammed it against the steel ledge. He pounded it over and over again, until its skull burst, its skin split, until blood and bits of flesh splattered out, until he was sobbing
with despair and exhaustion. Because it really was just a pigeon, and he really was crazy.
But no—he spread the bird’s remains in front of him, picking away bone and feather, peeling back skin, pulling apart its head. He found wires inside, a few coils of copper. A couple of microchips. Thin tubes where its eyes should have been—tubes with rounded glass ends. Camera lenses.
He wasn’t crazy.
He looked around. A dozen more pigeons walked, strutted, flapped their wings. And how many of them had cameras for eyes? How many of them were spying on him? On everyone? It was brilliant—pigeons were ubiquitous, found in every city in the world. They could go anywhere, completely inconspicuous. No one would ever suspect.
“I should tell someone,” he said. Oh, God—this was some kind of conspiracy. Who was behind this? Some government? Or worse—terrorists? Was that how they did it? They could go anywhere—“I have to tell someone!”
Rushing, he wiped his bloody hands on his coat, scrambled to his feet, reaching for handholds to pull himself back to the road. That cop, the one that had actually stopped to talk to him, where was he? Paul could tell him, he’d tell everyone, sell his story and make millions, he could start over again—