|
Photo Credit:
S. Wavrick |
One late afternoon
I decided to close early; I hadn't seen a soul in over an
hour. To air out the place before locking up, I opened the
door to the garden. I leaned in the shelter of its frame to
catch the scents of wet moss and magnolia leaves. The rain
fell hard, sluicing from our gutters onto the flagstones with
a punishing din. Sparrows huddled, fluffing their feathers
for warmth, on the perches around the feeder I had hung from
the tree. As I took in this scene (morosely likening myself
to one of those sodden immobile birds), someone spoke, just
inches from my ear. "I was beginning to think the place
abandoned." In response to the alarm on my face, my visitor
continued, "I might have pilfered a thousand dollars
in art books without your being any the wiser; perhaps you
should install one of those tinkling bells." My visitor
was (and it did nothing to improve my mood) Malachy Burns.
I smiled tersely. "Any
other advice?"
 |
"Not today," he said cheerfully.
His shoulder nearly touching mine, he turned his attention
to the garden, as if we were companions in contemplation.
"That's a splendid feeder. Very Kyoto-esque. I know exactly
where you got it and it can't have been a bargain."
I said nothing in reply to this backhanded
compliment. The birdfeeder was a Victorian pagoda whose perches
seated twenty under deep scalloped eaves. It had come from
a pricey antiques shop a few blocks away. I had justified
the splurge as a thematic accessory, writing it off as a business
expense.
Malachy Burns stepped back inside.
"Listen. I've brought someone I'd like you to meet. She's
waiting up front."
Full of sour, weary speculation,
I followed him through the aisles of books. His cranky senile
mother? A neighbor with a complaint? Another lonelyheart he
wanted to fob off on me?
Against the silver light from the
front window, I could see only that there was a sizable object
on the armchair next to my desk. Malachy Burns had draped
his mackintosh on the chair and was now bent over the object,
murmuring as if to a baby. As I came nearer, I saw that the
object was a cage. When my visitor turned around, a bright
red bird the size of a small dog was perched on his shirtsleeve.
"This is Felicity," he
said. "Felicity, this is Fenno. I think you'll like him.
He's very classy."
The bird regarded me intently. She
tilted her head in that quizzically avian way, and I heard
a faint clicking in her throat, a cantankerous tut-tut-tuttin.
She was, on closer inspection, not entirely red but had a
deep blue-violet belly and gray feet that looked as if they
were covered with crocodile skin. Her beak and eyes were the
soft black of stones pummeled smooth by the sea.
I will admit that I was half-besotted,
there and then. I had never owned a bird, though I admired
the beauty of birds in the wild, and I had never laid eyes
on a creature like this one.
© 2002 by Julia Glass
from her novel Three Junes
published by Pantheon Books
All rights reserved.
|
