The Encyclopedia of Exes Page 24

  Winston’s movement had caused the cage to roll quietly against a pile of jackets in the kitchen doorway. He had left his trapeze perch, which was upside-down, and he was clutching the bottom of the cage. He looked miffed.

  “Do you have an extra hook? We could hang the cage right in the corner of the living room,” I suggested.

  “What about the kitchen? That might be nice. Then I could talk to him when I cook,” she said.

  “Well—”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think that’s quite what you want to do.”

  “I have a hanging basket for onions. I could take that down, and use the same hook.”

  “But it’s the kitchen. Doesn’t the bird, um . . . have smells?”

  She looked at me like I’d plucked Winston and was spit-roasting him. “Winston is extremely clean.”

  My radio crackled. A transmission came through.

  “You on there, Lew?” It was Stanley.

  I held up a finger of apology to Dayna, then clicked the talk button, like a pro. “Gotcha, Stanley,” I said.

  “Where are you?” Stanley asked.

  “Out the Sligo Road. Helping that client with her parakeet.”

  “You buy some finches today?” he asked.

  I looked at Dayna while resting my finger gently on the talk button.

  Stanley came through again. “Lew?”

  Then I pushed down the button. “I’m not reading you, Stanley. Come again?”

  “Finches. You buy some finches at Winkman’s earlier today?”

  “Finches. Yes, I did. I picked up a few finches earlier today. At Winkman’s.”

  “What’s going on, Lew?” asked Stanley.

  “Well, Stanley, I’m with a client now. I’m in her kitchen, to tell you the truth. Doing an installation. Putting a cage up. I’ll call you back shortly. Over and out.”

  “In the kitchen?” Stanley asked, but I didn’t click back again. “You call me, Lew,” he said. “When you’re done. Over and out.”

  “Now I’m curious,” said Dayna. She walked to the living room, so I picked up Winston’s cage and followed her. She sat on the arm of the couch, and I was towering over her in my coveralls with the cage in my arms.

  “Where are they?” she asked.

  “They?”

  “The finches.”

  “They’re out in the truck,” I said. I had always wished to be a better liar, especially with people I was attracted to. It made things easier, it seemed, if you could bend the truth in a smooth and natural way. The problem was, I actually didn’t know what I was doing with the finches. I wasn’t sure why I’d bought them. I was at Winkman’s, picking up a case of cat toys for Stanley, when I’d seen the birds—the kind that sit on telephone wires—Winkman had a new walk-in cage full of them. Winkman’s is this dark place, lit mostly by neon fish tanks, but I could see the birds clearly, they were the size of those large marshmallow peanuts, and they were fluttering their wings against each other, angry about their predicament, somewhat confused. Edgy. Jerking their swivel heads at notched increments, as though in constant disbelief. They made me nervous.

  “Hey, hey! It’s Stan the Animal Man,” Winkman had said. The guy was an asshole. He was a hippie, but for no better reason than that it allowed him to be careless and lazy. He had a mangy beard and kept a boa constrictor draped over his shoulders. He called the snake Bootsie.

  “Lew,” I said. “It’s Lew, not Stan.”

  “You’re gonna be a vet, though, right Lewie? Lewie the Animal Man? You’ll take over when Stan’s done?”

  “No,” I said. We’d been through this before. “I need some cat toys.”

  Winkman stroked the snake. Yes, Winkman seemed to say, I have a twelve-foot killer wrapped around my neck, and the killer is my friend, and I can kiss it and call it Bootsie. I didn’t care. He always spoke to me in the chipper voice of a game-show host. I was sure the snake hated Winkman, too, wanted to eat him, and I wished for that.

  “Well, we’ve got squeakers, fuzz balls, rubber mice, furry mice, fuzzy dice, and the Kitty Kong,” said Winkman.

  “Get me what Stanley usually gets,” I said.

  “The usual,” said Winkman.

  The snake raised its head and snapped out its flashy red tongue three times.

  “Bootsie,” said Winkman. “You gorgeous, gorgeous, beautiful devil. You smell me? Is that what you smell?”

  I tried to look as bored as possible.

  “Oh, Bootsie,” Winkman continued. “My beauty. You’re hungry for birds, aren’t you? You love those finches so much, don’t you, Boots?” The snake’s head rested on the counter. Its skin didn’t look shiny enough. I could tell Bootsie thought the both of us were fools.

  Winkman passed me a cardboard box. “Will that be all?”

  “And twenty finches,” I said. “Put them on Stanley’s account.” For some reason I just needed to get them out of that store.

  And now, at Dayna’s, I pictured the finches in the truck: they’d calmed down, they’d found places to perch and rest, they were waiting in the dark, preening, rustling their wings.

  Winston was clinging to the side of the cage, agitated. He pecked at the zipper of my coveralls.

  “Winston! Be nice,” said Dayna.

  “Winston, Winston,” said Winston. Then he went back at it.

  Dayna walked to the kitchen and returned with a large screw-in hook and a pair of pliers.

  “Let’s put it in here,” she said. “You’re probably right about the kitchen.” She kicked us a path to the corner of the room, clearing aside stray sneakers and coffee-stained Styrofoam cups.

  She carried two chairs to the corner, and I stood on one with the cage in my arms and she stood on the other, installing the hook.

  With her arms reaching above her head, I looked at her breasts, and she glanced down and caught me looking, and I looked up at the hook. We both looked at the hook. When it was ready, sunk deep in the ceiling, I steadied my feet on the chair, and lifted the cage from my chest to eye level. As Dayna used the pliers to try to catch the cage’s handle on the hook, Winston was staring me down.

  “Hurry,” I said.

  “I’m trying,” she said.

  I looked at Dayna through the bars of the cage. She held a stubborn, determined look while working to get the handle in place; her eyes narrowed.

  Winston was making his unsteady way toward me, clutching a horizontal bar in one claw and a vertical one in the other, shuddering his wings for balance. His beak approached my nose.

  “Oh . . . shit . . .” I said.

  “Almost there,” she said.

  Winston cocked his head to the side, then came at me. I turned my cheek to the bird, and his beak bumped against it. I was holding my breath.

  “Got it,” she said, and I let go, pushing away from Winston and losing my footing. One of my ankles turned and I landed on my ass. Dayna looked down, confused, and there was a beat of silence, then the cage, and Winston, were moving quickly toward me. I took it hard on the chest.

  “Oh!” cried Dayna.

  Winston and I didn’t speak. The hook had ripped through the plaster. Winston was flying as best he could inside the sphere. He flapped and flapped, furious. The cage had knocked the wind from me.

  “Jeez, I’m sorry,” she said.

  There was a pain in my ribs when I took a breath and I felt a burn on my chin, but I tried to motion that I was okay.

  “No, really, you must be hurt,” she said. “Oh, man, you’re bleeding.” She looked genuinely upset as she climbed down and ran to the bathroom.

  It’s funny: I take the fondness I remember, the good feelings I have about her, and I think about walking into her kitchen then, the wind knocked out of me, looking for a glass of water. I remember the empty box of instant spuds on her electric range, the sink full of crusty plates, every cabinet and drawer open. I have a general, queasy feeling of regret when I think of it now, not for the particulars—I couldn’t find
a clean cup, didn’t want to rummage further, so I moved quietly back out to the living room—but for the whole thing, falling in love with her, the beginning, the end. The end.

  She taped an oversized gauze pad to my chin, and she propped Winston’s cage on the ground in the corner, with a bag of bird food wedged against it so it wouldn’t roll.

  “Little beast,” I said.

  “Winston, Winston, Winston, Winston,” said Winston. I imagined the bird on the shoulder of a pirate, chatting away like that while I walked the plank.

  Dayna took an armload of laundry off her couch for me, and she sat against the wall, on a pile of magazines.

  “How did you get this job?” she asked.

  “You know how things are around here,” I said.

  “No, I don’t,” she said.

  “Everyone knows everyone,” I said. “Stanley thought I was the right one for the job.” In the corner of my eye, I saw a squirrel, which I thought at first was a cat—its gray tail rose from behind a stack of World Books. “Look,” I said.

  Dayna turned around. “Christ,” she said. She shifted her weight, and the magazines loosened beneath her, spilling over on both sides.

  It froze and looked at us. I felt my stomach chill. I reached inside my breast pocket for my tape measure, which I cocked back in my throwing hand, and looked at Dayna. “Okay?” I asked her. She said nothing, but she nodded, grimly. I fired the tape measure at the squirrel. It thudded against the far wall, leaving a cracked pockmark in the plaster, and the squirrel flinched but held its ground.

  Dayna and I looked at the squirrel, and the squirrel returned our gaze, fiercely, with its black marble eyes. Dayna had her back against the foot of the couch now. We stared in silence. I was sitting on the couch, with my hands on my knees, and her shoulder was just inches from me. I lifted my hand and pressed the back of it against her arm, trying to get her attention, but she didn’t turn around, she was watching the squirrel. I thought this was very weird, that she wasn’t turning around, and that I wasn’t taking my hand away.

  “Hey,” I said, and the squirrel left its post, returning to the kitchen. “Do you want to go for a ride in the truck?”

  She turned and scrunched her eyebrows at me. “Not so much. Why?”

  “I was thinking I could show you around,” I said.

  “Why did you buy those birds, anyway?” she asked. “Really.”

  “You go to Winkman’s, then you’ll know. The guy’s a criminal.”

  “Are you going to keep them at your house?” she asked.

  “Probably,” I said. But I needed a cage, and I didn’t really want them around. I just hadn’t liked the idea of Winkman’s snake eating them. It’s not as though I was saving them—who knows if I could treat them any better—I was just acting on a strong urge to get them the fuck out of Winkman’s reach.

  “Well, I can’t go now, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said.

  “Have you been over to Soper Island?” I asked.

  “Nope,” she said.

  “Well, you’ve got to go,” I said.

  “Do I? Why’s that?” she asked.

  “Well,” I said. “It’s worth it. I promise.”

  “I’d need to be back by seven,” she said.

  “No problem. We’ll do a quick loop,” I said.

  It seemed to be a really tough decision for her. “All right,” she said, finally.

  I radioed Stanley.

  “Hey boss,” I said.

  “Where are you?” asked Stanley.

  “I’ve got to run a quick errand, then I’ll be back. Go ahead home, if you want. I’m off the clock.”

  “I want to talk to you, Lew,” he said.

  “See you tomorrow, Stanley,” I said, and I clicked off the radio.

  My problem has always been anticipation. I expect the best, and I expect the worst. The bad part is the expecting. Even then, as I radioed Stanley, I looked at Dayna—a real beauty, the kind that makes you hurt, makes you want to apologize—and I saw my future. Attachment. Pain. Things being thrown at me in a motel room at four in the morning.

  Later, on the Point Skyler Bridge, facing north toward the cliffs near Soper Island, I glanced at Dayna in the passenger seat, and I watched her as she stared at the view. What she was looking at was the best vista in all of Point Allison. I was proud she liked it. The light at that time of day was perfect, so I put on my hazards, slowed to a stop and snapped the air brakes. From that vantage point you could see the water white against the rocks on Soper, then the green shallows, then the deep black water, in the middle of the channel. And of course everywhere else, spruce and pine trees. The air was cool but the sun was still warm. The cars behind me honked, and a pickup truck clipped by us and its driver told me to fuck myself. I asked Dayna to come with me to the rear of the truck, and there I clicked open the padlock, hopped on the bumper and grabbed the nylon strap to pull open the door. I hesitated. Then I looked at Dayna. She stood tentatively with her arms folded, no smile. But this fact remained: she was there, with me, waiting. After pulling open the door, I jumped from the bumper, landing beside her, and put my hand on her arm, and when I kissed her, the gauze pad brushed her chin. Her lips didn’t move and she frowned. “Hey,” she said. “The finches.”

  The sun was just below the trees on Point Skyler. Wind blew from the south, whistling by the bridge towers. Cars sped around us on the left. The interior of the truck was in shadows; we couldn’t see a thing. Nothing burst from the truck. We looked in silence.

  Then they came, all of them, in uneven rows—much tinier, it seemed, than when I’d bought them—they hopped from the darkness to the bumper. One after the next they dropped in a brief free fall from the truck, caught the updraft, and vanished through the suspension cables. They dipped under the bridge, or shot north up the bay, too quick to see.

  I wanted another chance to watch them, but it was over, they had all flown away.

  A year after we broke up, I attended a wedding in Bangor and Dayna was there. I’d never seen her in heels. She was nearly as tall as I was, and not having seen her for all that time—well, she looked perfect. She was wearing glasses, and her eyes were cold.

  I approached her after three glasses of beer. She was sitting on a white plastic chair at the edge of the tent, alone, having a cigarette away from the crowd.

  “Hiya,” I said.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Great band, huh?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  You see, I’d been the one to cut things off, which is to say I’m fairly brain-dead when it comes to staying happy. With a good enough ramp, just about anyone can jump twelve buses on a motorcycle. Sticking the landing, though—that’s something else entirely.

  I said, “Listen, Dayna, we both know I’m the one who messed it all up—”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “I could apologize. I have apologized, and it’s crap. I know,” I said.

  “Lew, are you drunk?” she asked.

  “The thing is, we were so close.”

  “Yes, we were.”

  “And I haven’t even talked to you in a year.”

  “Nope.”

  “Isn’t it crazy? We have two years together, we’re together almost every day, and then zilch. Nothing. Total strangers. What I mean is—”

  “What?”

  “I miss knowing you.”

  She scrunched up her nose. “Why should that matter?”

  I thought about that one. The best part of our relationship had been the beginning, when everything was unknown. I wasn’t proud of that. “How’s Winston?” I asked.

  “Winston? He’s gone. I released him off the bridge,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “No, you dope. Not really.”

  “Winston’s still around?”

  “Yes.” She was smirking; she seemed pleased with herself.

  “Can we dance?”

  “Jesus,” she said and shook her head.

>   “Well, come on. Just a dance.”

  “As long as you shut up. No more talking.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  People were filtering out of the tent to smoke cigarettes and look at the stars. It was a warm night with a breeze. Dayna really looked fantastic. We didn’t hold hands. We faced each other, not dancing, just swaying there, sometimes bumping into other dancers. She looked over my shoulder, and I couldn’t read her eyes at all. When the song ended, I touched her arm and had a flash of hope, thinking we’d get back together, but it must have just been the feeling of not knowing her at all.

  XANAX

  Marc Spitz

  (’zan-’’aks) n 1: an antianxiety agent (trade name Xanax) of the benzodiazepine class; used as tranquilizer, sedative, or muscle relaxant. Chronic use can lead to dependency

  It’s my fault. I’ve done this to myself. I don’t really believe she’s haunting me. She’s just earning a living like she did before. She couldn’t possibly know I hear them. There’s no way she appeciates what they do to me. Those spots.

  CHILD: Mommy, it’s veh-wee hot!

  MOTHER: (laughs warmly) I think I’ve got something that’ll do the trick.

  CHILD: Mommy! Mmmmm! (giggles blissfully)

  We’ve been split up for five years. Couple of months, too. I don’t speak to her anymore. But she speaks to me all the time. When I’m in a cab on my way to work. On the checkout line at the Strawberry Fields market with my healthy vegetables and tofu and bottled water. Between the classic rock blocks on my own radio. Or in the overhead speakers at the CVS while I’m waiting for my prescription drugs. Sedatives. Always.

  MOTHER: Ha ha ha. (aside) Nothing says summertime like heat. And there’s nothing better for beating the heat than a cool ice cream treat from Seashell Farms.

  Most of the time I do the ritual. But if I’m out when she creeps up on me, when I get that shudder, I don’t even wait till I get home. I take the little white pill immediately. Wash it down with my own spit. Until it unfolds in my belly and starts calming me down, I’m useless. A guilt-tripping wreck-boy. The tiny hairs on the nape of my neck rise and shake. My toes curl in. My hands ball up. My pulse triples. My forehead sweats. And yet, my blood seems to chill ten degrees. I feel sick. With remorse. With anger. With ice cream treats. I think about how I was then. When we were together. I’m not like that anymore. I swear. Self-destructive. Immoral. Cynical. Unfaithful. Manipulative. Opportunistic. Just bad. I’m better now. I would never do any of the things I did to her to my current girlfriend. This job, the one I got the day I left. I still have it. It’s the longest one I’ve ever held. I pay my bills on time. I belong to a gym and don’t steal towels or pee in the lap pool. I quit smoking, except for one or two when I hear the calling. I’ve been fattening an adopted cat for some months now. It’s healthy, too. Could have been cold or hungry. I’ve given back a little of what I took. A little.