“I thought I may have said something.”
“If you said something,” he said, “I didn’t hear it. I am definitely at least half deaf in one ear.”
“I probably didn’t say it then,” she said carefully, wondering if he was going to rob her or if he was just crazy. “Are you looking for a lift?”
“Not me.” He stood back from the window so she could see his white overalls with their big Kennecott insignia. He was tall and thin like a renegade basketball player. “This,” he gestured laconically to include the whole area of car park, administration building, docking platforms and dry parched earth, “This is my home. So,” he paused for a moment as if what he had said had made him inexplicably sad, “so I don’t need a lift, thank you.”
“Any jobs in there?”
“Let’s say there are an awful lot of people in there waiting to be told no.”
Lilly nodded. “Yeah, well…”
“You want to see something?”
“Well that depends what it is.”
He walked smoothly back to a little white cleaner’s trolley he had left marooned a few yards from the car and trundled it back whistling like one who carries rare gifts.
“If anyone comes,” he whispered, “you’re asking me directions, OK?”
“OK.”
“This,” he reached a large hand into the white cart, “is really something special.”
He was not exaggerating. For what he now pushed through the window and on to her lap was the most beautiful bird that Lilly Danko had ever dreamed might be possible, more exquisite and delightful than a bird of paradise, a flamingo, or any of the rare and beautiful species she had ever gazed at in picture books. It was not a large bird, about the size of a very big pigeon, but with a long supple neck and a sleek handsome head from which emerged a strong beak that looked just like mother of pearl. Yet such was the splendour of the bird that she hardly noticed the opaline beauty of the beak, or the remarkable eyes which seemed to have all the colours of the rainbow tucked into a matrix of soft brown. It was the bird’s colouring that elicited from her an involuntary cry. For the feathers that ran from its smooth head to its graceful tail were of every blue possibly imaginable. Proud Prussian blue at the head then, beneath a necklace of emerald green, ultramarine and sapphire which gave way to dramatic tail feathers of peacock blue. Its powerful chest revealed viridian hidden like precious jewels in an aquamarine sea.
When she felt the first pulse of pure pleasure she imagined that it originated from the colours themselves and later when she tried to explain this first feeling to Mort she would use the word “swoon,” savouring the round smooth strangeness of the word.
“Don’t it feel nice when you touch it?”
“Oh, yes.”
And even as she answered she realized that it was not the colours that gave such pleasure, but that the feeling was associated with stroking the bird itself. “It’s like having your back rubbed.”
“Better.”
“Yes,” she said, “better. It gets you right at the base of the neck.”
“It gets you just about everywhere.” And something about the way he said it made her realize that he wasn’t showing her this bird out of idle interest, but that he was going to offer it for sale. It was an exotic, of course, and had probably been smuggled in by some poor miner looking for an extra buck. If the crew-cut Protestants who had begun the push into space with such obsessive caution had seen the laxness of the space companies with quarantine matters they would have shrieked with horror. But NASA had wilted away and no terrible catastrophe had hit the earth. There were exotic shrubs which needed to be fed extra-terrestrial trace elements to keep them alive, a few dozen strange new weeds of no particular distinction, and a poor small lizardish creature raised for its hallucinogenic skin.
But there had been nothing as strange and beautiful as this and she calculated its value in thousands of dollars. When she was invited to make an offer she reluctantly handed it back, or tried to, because as she held it up to the man he simply backed away.
“You’ve got to make an offer. You can’t not make an offer.”
She put the bird, so placid she thought it must be drugged, back on her lap and stroked sadly. “OK, I’ll be the bunny. How much do you want?”
He held up two hands.
“Ten dollars?”
“Is that cheap or is it cheap?”
“It’s cheap, but I can’t.”
“You should have made an offer.”
“I can’t,” she said hopelessly, thinking of Mort and what he would say. God knows the world pressed in on him heavily enough. Yet the thrilling thought that she could own such a marvel, that she need never hand it back, crept into her mind and lodged there, snug and comfortable as a child sleeping beneath a soft blanket.
“I can only offer five,” she said, thinking that she couldn’t offer five at all.
“Done.”
“Oh, shit.”
“You don’t want it?”
“Oh yes, I want it,” she said dryly, “you know I want it.” She put the bird down on the seat, where it sat waiting for nothing more than to be picked up again, and took five of their precious dollars from her handbag. “Well,” she said, handing over the money, “I guess we can always eat it.” Then, seeing the shocked look on the wild young face: “Just joking.”
“If you don’t want it…”
“I want it. I want it. What does it eat? Breakfast cereal and warm milk?”
“I’ve got feed for it, so don’t sweat.”
“And the feed is extra, right?”
“My dear Dolores,” he said, “where this bird comes from, the stuff it eats grows on trees. If you’d be nice enough to open the boot I’ll give you a bag of it and our transaction, as they say, will be finito.”
She opened the boot and he wheeled round his cleaner’s trolley and hoisted a polythene sack into the car.
“What do I do when it’s eaten all this?”
But he was already gliding across the car park towards the administration building. “Well
The giggling carried across the hot tarmac and got lost in the heat haze.
Lillian went back to the car and was still stroking the bird when Mort came back.
Through pale veils of pleasure she saw him walking back across the blistering car park and she knew, before he arrived at the car, exactly what his eyes would look like. She had seen those eyes more and more recently, like doors to comfortable and familiar rooms that suddenly open to reveal lift wells full of broken cables. She should have taken him in her arms then and held him, stroked his neck until the lights came back on in those poor defeated eyes, eyes which had once looked at the world with innocent certainty, which had sought nothing more than the contentment of being a good gardener, calm eyes without fear and ambition. She should have taken him in her arms, but she had the bird and she sat there, stroking it stupidly, like someone who won’t leave a hot shower until the water goes cold.
He came and sat behind the wheel, not looking at her.
“Take off your coat, honey,” she said gently, putting a hand on his. “Come on, take it off.”
It was then that he saw the bird.
“What’s that?”
Her left hand was still stroking it. She ran a finger down its opaline bill, across its exquisitely smooth head and down its glowing blue back. “It’s a bird. Stroke it.” She tugged his hand, a hand which each day had become smoother and softer, towards the bird, and the bird, as if understanding, craned its supple neck towards him. “It’ll make you feel better.”
But Mort put both hands on the steering wheel and she saw his knuckles whiten. She was frightened then. He was a dark well she had only thought of as calm and still, but that was in the easy confidence of employment, in
