“I love you, Bird boy.”
Birdie stretched full length against my leg.
“As for you, you loathsome son of a bitch. Yes, you’ve gotten to me, but one day we may have a reckoning.”
I was talking aloud over the gentle purring.
I awoke with a sense that something was wrong. Not full memory, just a nagging from the lower centers.
Then recollection.
I opened my eyes. Sunlight sparkled from flecks on the carpet and dresser top.
Birdie was gone. Through my partially open door I could hear a radio.
I found Anne drinking coffee in the kitchen, working a crossword and humming David Bowie.
Hearing me, she sang out aloud.
“Ch- ch- ch—changes!”
“Is that a suggestion?” I asked.
Anne glanced at my hair over the pink and green floral frames of her reading glasses, one of a dozen pairs she purchases each year at Steinmart.
“That do’s gotta go.”
“You’re not exactly the Suave girl, yourself.”
Anne’s hair was twisted upward and clipped with a barrette. A spray winged from her head like the crown on Katy’s cockatiel.
“I considered more tidying, but wasn’t sure how much I should touch.” Anne stood, dug a mug from a cabinet, filled, and handed it to me.
“Thanks.”
“What’s on the rail for the lizard?”
Anne had many expressions deriving from her Mississippi childhood. This was one I hadn’t heard before.
“Translation?”
“What are your plans for today?”
“I have a date with the last of those pizza basement skeletons. Yours?”
“Contemporary Art Museum. That’s the Place-des-Arts metro stop, right?”
“Correct.”
I poured cream into my coffee, then dropped two halves of an English muffin into the toaster.
“Did you know that twenty-five hundred morons bared their fat asses in the rain for a Spencer Tunick photo in that plaza?”
“How do you know they were all rump heavy?”
“Ever been to a nude beach?”
Anne had a point. Those who shouldn’t are often those who most willingly flaunt it.
“Then St-Denise for lunch and shopping,” she went on.
“Alone?” I asked, remembering the hunk in 3C.
“Yes, Mom. Alone.”
“Annie, do you suppose that man could have broken in here?”
“Why in the world would he do that? He probably doesn’t know you, and that is no way to impress me. Why would he do something so totally crazy?”
“Someone did.”
“I don’t think it could be him, really I don’t. The guy looked perfectly normal. But…” Her voice trailed off. “I’m sorry, Tempe. It was stupid.”
I was spreading blackberry jam when Anne spoke again.
“What’s a seven-letter word for ‘insensitive’?”
“Hurtful.”
“Beginning with C.”
“Claudel.”
Anne’s eyes rolled up over the flowery frames.
“I think I’ll go with ‘callous,’” she said.
Anne refocused on her puzzle. I settled opposite her and listened to the news. A fire in St-Leonard. Another Habs loss. More snow on the way.
