She pulled a square of royal blue paper from the pack of origami sheets on the counter. She licked the end of the pencil as she'd seen it done in old movies. She didn't notice if it had any effect on the graphite, but she'd grown to like the ritual, and, a little bit, she'd grown to like the taste. She thought for a moment, elbows leaning on the countertop, her butt sticking out and swaying gently, absently. Finally, her hand began to move over the square of paper.
After midnight
, she wrote,
in the silence, intensive, the machines turned away discreetly, as if to grant you privacy at last
. She stopped writing, looked over at the cat, who sat back from his bowl and licked his paw. She looked back at what she'd written, hesitated for a moment and then nodded. “Okay,” she said out loud. “Alright. Okay.”
She folded it into a little frog and, cradling it in the palm of her hand, climbed the stairs once more to her bedroom where the birds waited, one trusting, and one impatient, for her to return.
* * *
In the house next door, Henry sat in his boxer shorts; his guitar perched on his knee, one hand around its neck. A joint burned in the saucer on the floor, and Henry scratched his belly absently with his free hand. There was a lot going on, that was for sure, but he knew he had to try to stay on schedule. He looked again at the song list taped to the side of his guitar, to its shapely hip. He shook his hair out behind him, thinking it might help to clear his head. He strummed a few experimental chords, cleared his throat, gazed out the window. Waited to feel that the moment was upon him, waited to feel like it was time to get to it. And get to it he must. If he didn't practise, he couldn't play, and if he didn't play, he'd never get a record deal. And without a record deal he'd be just another dirty hippie working at the juice bar forever. Or selling hemp bracelets on the street, playing hacky sack between customers. Oh god, how he did not want that for his life. He was projecting big things for himself, big things. But projecting wasn't enough. He had to actually produce. He looked at the joint still smoking in the saucer. Part of the problem, he wondered, or part of the solution? He wasn't going to figure it out today, that was for sure. He was already too high for that. He plucked it out of the saucer, took one more drag and pinched it out. Time to stop fucking around, he thought. What's first on the list? He strummed again, A,
then G. And then he was away, at last and thank fuck, he thought. Here we go. He put his whole body into it, closed his eyes a little and leaned toward his instrument as if it were a beautiful girl he couldn't get enough of.
* * *
Leah stopped mid-climb on the stairs. There it was again, that song. She froze, thinking of Nathan, thinking of what Psychic Sue had said. “When you hear that song,” she said Nathan was saying, “it's me singing it for you.” Leah leaned her head against the cool, smooth plaster of the wall that joined her house to the house next door and wished that were so. If only she were climbing the stairs to find her brother sitting on the chair in the study, lovely blond guitar on his lap, his hands moving over the strings, his voice not quite doing justice to the tune. If only the strains of that song were coming from her kitchen, her backyard, from the living or dining room. If only Nathan were here in the shower singing, knocking her down the way he did when they were kids, putting his knees on her arms and pinning her to the floor, typing the words out on her chest. If only it were he singing the words that always made her cry, then teasing her about being a crybaby. If only that. She clutched the royal blue paper frog between her fingers. If only she had some assurance that the project was the right one, that it stood any chance of working. She took a deep breath and tapped her head once, a little harder than gently, against the wall. Sandy was whirting and cooing like crazy now. Leah sighed and started her climb anew.
* * *
Nathan paced. It felt like all he knew how to do anymore. And it made him feel better to take the library lawn in lengths, his fists balled to keep him from flapping his arms the way he had as a child. It helped him to think. He paced endlessly, arms straight, fists balled, bottom lip pulled in. It was a nice place to pace, actually. A wide sidewalk cut into the lawn diagonally, from Spring Garden Road on one side, to Grafton on the other. If he was feeling like a change, he could pace the shorter path from the library steps to Brunswick Street. He tried to do this only during the day, though. The route took him a
bit behind the old stone building, away from people. It made him nervous to be away like that, to be out of sight, and to have passersby and strangers hidden to him. He preferred the busyness of the longer path and stuck mainly to it. Also, it was close to the statue of Winston Churchill and when he could stand to have his arms folded behind him instead of straight at his sides, Nathan liked occasionally to walk like the great man, though he didn't find it changed the quality of his thoughts at all. When he got tired, he sat on the steps, and they were fine steps for sitting. Now and again he would slip into the library when someone else pulled open its heavy wooden doors. Inside, he'd browse the aisles of fiction, looking for murder mysteries he hadn't read and running his long thin fingers over the spines of first editions and Faulkner books he'd loved. He didn't read much these days though. Titles, mostly, and now and again the book reviews pinned to the bulletin board. He just didn't have the patience for reading, he found. Besides he didn't have a library card and the service at the main branch was terrible. The sulky teens with their cystic acne, their multiple piercings, their unhappiness. He couldn't get them to focus on him long enough to tell him he'd need two pieces of ID to get a library card, and anyway, he didn't know what had happened to his ID, so it wasn't worth it. He would only come into the library for a change of scenery or for company if there wasn't much happening out on the paths or the steps. Besides, he didn't want to miss a delivery, and as far as he knew, the bird wouldn't try to come inside. Someone would have to open the door for it anyhow, and then once it was in, how would he get it out? It was too much to think about. He'd just spend most of his time outside, waiting for them. It was okay. It didn't bother him. And the bird mostly arrived around the same time every day, so he could just make sure he was out there at the right time and it'd be no problem.
It was a little warmer today, so the chip trucks were out, lining Spring Garden Road, along with the hippies and the homeless kids â harder and harder to tell them apart these days, they were equally grubby and foul-tempered, even the hippies were kind of mean, which didn't seem right somehow, but what the hell did Nathan know? He'd always been ridiculously straight, though those who loved him found it an endearing quality.
“It's against the law,” Rebecca used to say to him. “That's your mantra: It's against the law. So straight, my sweet straight boy.” It was true Nathan had a healthy respect for the law. He had even studied it for a little while, though he suspected, even when he was going to class, that he loved police procedurals and lawyer movies more than he actually loved the law. It seemed like a slender thing to base a career on, especially given how hard law school was proving to be and how many lives might depend on his success were he to practise as a defence lawyer. Or even as a prosecutor. The whole thing was frankly ridiculous. He loved to argue and debate, that was one thing. And he was freakishly logical, that was another. Plus, he was done his math degree, and Rebecca still had several years of school left, and he wanted to be where she was, and she was at school. So, sure, law, why not?
Well, mainly because it was a hell of a profession to ease into. After a while he realised he was never going to be a lawyer and he just went to the classes because he was interested. It made things a lot more fun for him, and for Rebecca too. He mellowed right out and let her be the stressed out one. He stopped caring about his homework and just listened compassionately when she bitched about hers. He read a lot and played his guitar and thought about asking her to marry him, even though they fought like children. There was something about the way she ran her hand over his collarbone, the way she seemed to memorise the sweep of his skeleton that made the little door in his heart swing open whenever she was around. Oh, god, Rebecca. He didn't know when he would see her again. It was like a hole in his heart to be away from her like this. To be away from everybody. He staggered to a stop in his pacing, his arms wrapped around his chest. He closed his eyes tight and pulled both lips inside his mouth, head bowed to the ground. It hurt, it hurt. People jostled him as they went by, but he barely felt it. He stood there in front of the Spring Garden Road library near the statue of Winston Churchill and he wept.
* * *
“I'm coming, I'm coming,” she snarked as she got to the top of the stairs. “Don't get your feathers in a... flap. Heh. Oh god. Now I'm making puns to the pigeons. This is getting out of hand.” She strode
into the bedroom and took Sandy's cage down from the bookcase.
“Fine, fine,” she said. “I will set you free.” She attached the small paper frog to Sandy's left leg and carried her over to the window.
“Happy now?” she asked. The bird gave her a baleful glance. “Jesus,” she muttered. “This cannot go on.”
She gave Sandy's plump body a little squeeze, swallowing the revulsion that arose in her throat. She pulled up the sash and leaned her head out the window. The air smelled like snow, which made Leah's heart sink. Surely it was almost spring. Surely to christ this winter would end sometime. Sandy made a little
birt
sound and wriggled in Leah's hand.
“Yes, yes,” Leah said, “I hear you.” She extended her arm out the window and thrust her hand quickly upward, freeing the pigeon as she did.
“Godspeed,” she muttered as the bird took flight, its greyish-brown wings stretching out over the neighbourhood, the tiny blue frog attached to her leg marking her. Leah watched her go, feeling a little admiration for the bird's fine form in spite of herself. “Godspeed,” she said again, then drew in her head and pulled the window closed. In his cage, Harold sat looking sad but resigned.
“It's just for a few hours,” Leah said guiltily. “You know she'll be right back.” Harold clucked forlornly and turned to face the wall. “Oh for chrissakes,” she said. “You're just a bird.” But she knew it was much more than that, and that bird or not, there was a bond between Harold and Sandy. Indeed, this was what made them so valuable to Leah, what made it possible for her to do what she needed to, in the way she needed to. It was what made it okay that she hadn't been outside in almost two weeks. Well, maybe not okay exactly, certainly not if you asked Charlotte, which Leah purposefully did not. But Charlotte being Charlotte, she was only too happy to step up and tell Leah straight out that she did not think it was okay that Leah was holed up, living in her bathrobe and eating nothing but goat cheese and crackers. She did not think it was okay for an instant. Yes, she had helped Leah obtain the birds, but she'd only done it because Leah had been so insistent, and if she'd known what the result was going to be, if she'd known Leah was going to stop washing her hair, and refuse to even go downtown for one little drink after Charlotte's most trying
day at work ever, she never would have agreed to help. And she hoped â no, expected â that Leah would put a stop to her foolishness soon. And it was foolishness, Charlotte didn't mind saying. Charlotte never minded saying, which was one of the things Leah found so appealing about her. But these days, more and more, Leah found she wished Charlotte felt some compunction to keep her thoughts to herself, even just a little. Leah was finding it hard enough just to get up in the morning and write the notes, she certainly didn't need to be harangued about her hair or whatever was setting Charlotte off on any given day. She did, however, need Charlotte to bring her fresh supplies of goat cheese and crackers, and things for her recipes, and Charlotte did have a nice way of including a bottle of vodka or scotch on the grocery list, and though she was also a little creeped out by the birds, Charlotte was good about hanging out for a bit, mixing a drink or two and sticking around for a chat. Leah knew she wasn't much company these days; it was just that she was focused on her project. And she knew she was lucky to have a friend like Charlotte who just took Leah's latest weirdness in stride. Yes, she rolled her eyes a lot, but at least she rolled them to Leah's face. And that meant something.
Leah didn't know why, exactly, she'd stopped being able to go outside. She'd felt a kind of wide-open vertigo once she realised Nathan had gotten loose. And all she could think afterward was, gotta get home, gotta get home. She hurried along North Park Street in front of the Armoury, its old stone walls perpetually held up by scaffolding. She hurried in front of the new condos on the corner, their new stone walls perpetually defaced by graffiti. Along Moran Street her back prickled as she pulled her keys from her pocket. She fumbled urgently with the lock, threw open the door and dashed inside, slamming the door behind her.
The panic still tingled in her veins, and she whipped through the house, turning on lights, even though it was barely four o'clock, and muttering aloud. She cast a glance into each corner of the house, as if to give a warning to whatever might dwell there. I'm not unaware, those glances seemed to say, this is me putting you on alert. She didn't think about it, she just did it. She had to. And later, when the panic had subsided, she pretended there hadn't been any panic at all. That Nathan wasn't loose â it was too ridiculous to even think
about â Nathan was dead. Her imagination was overactive. She'd seen him because she'd wanted to see him, and now she wasn't seeing him because; well, because he was dead. That was all.