Bird Came Down

“Smoking is hazardous to your health,” Joey pointed out.

Because he had no lighter, and Joey certainly didn’t, Felix climbed out of the bed naked and brown, and went into the kitchen where he lit his cigarette off the stove. Puppylike Joey followed him in, and Felix said, “You had to shave your facial hair.”

“I didn’t have to.” He shrugged.

“Now you really do look illegal,” Felix said moving past him while he heard Joey open the refrigerator door, and the boy came back in with a juice container that had been emptied a week earlier and filled with chilled water.

“You want some?” Joey said, chugging the water.

Felix reached for it and after taking a puff from his cigarette, exhaled and took a long swig of the water.

Felix watched the naked white boy squat on his hams and examine the windows. That was the best part of what came after sex, the Adam and Eve-ness of it, the lack of self consciousness or shame. He wasn’t hot and young and naked. Well, he was all of those things, but right now he was looking at the air conditioners in the windows and saying, “I could put those in so much better for you.”

“Well you are the maintenance man,” Felix said. “And technically that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.”

With what he hoped was a sly grin, Joey said, “I thought I was doing the maintenance. Laying the pipe.”

At the look on Felix’s face he instantly colored and said, “I was just playing. I mean…”

Felix shook his head and said, “You are the very opposite of a player.”

He sank into bed while the young man looked over him.

“I like looking at you,” Joey said, earnestly.

“I like looking at you too.”

“I liked it when I met you. You’re the first Black guy I’ve ever been with.”

“I’m one of the only guys you’ve ever been with.”

Felix rolled over and reached for an ashtray.

“Well, now that’s true,” Joey said earnestly.

“You are NOT the first white guy I’ve ever been with,” Felix told him. “If that’s what you wanted to know.”

“I didn’t,” Joey brushed that aside. “You’ve probably been with lots and lots of guys.”

“Well wait a minute, goddamnit, not lots and lots.”

“I just meant you have experience.”

“True.”

“I was with girls for the most part before you,” Joey continued. Then he said, “Can I have a puff of that?”

“No.”

“I wanna try it.”

Felix held the cigarette away from him. “You just said you don’t like them.”

“I said they’re bad for your health.”

“Well, if they’re bad for my health, they’re certainly bad for yours.”

“Please.”

“You’re wearisome.”

While Felix passed Joey the cigarette, the dark haired, deeply tanned boy smiled triumphantly, and then he retched on the smoke and doubled over.

“That’s—” but he was coughing on his words, “awful!”

“That’s why they say smoking kills.”

Joey turned to him with wide eyes and Felix said, “You know it won’t really kill you.”

“No, that’s not it,” Joey said. “I gotta pick up my brother at the airport.”

“You mean the Fisher Price.”

“What?”

Felix brushed it aside. “Never mind. What time you gotta be there?”

“Four o’ clock.”

“Well,” Felix looked at his clock, “you better get a move on cause it’s three thirty.”

Felix was folding the bed back into a futon when there was a rap at the door and he shouted, “Hold on!”

“Don’t make me hold on too long. It’s hot as fuck out here.”

Felix grunted and pushed the mattress over the laid out futon until it laid flat against the wall, the tapestry half draped over it, he pulled down and then he shut up the futon and came to the door.

“If you didn’t open that door in about five seconds,” Rule said, walking in, “I was about to shout out that I had that good weed you liked so much.”

Felix closed the door behind him and said, “Then we’d both be evicted.”

“You’d be embarrassed,” Rule said, “but no one would be evicted. Shit I got high with the building manager’s son.”

“Not the new one.”

“No that old crazy bitch who stole money from the landlord and then disappeared.”

“You know,” Felix said, tossing sofa cushions onto the futon, “they’re going to find her at the bottom of a river one day.”

“Not anytime soon,” Rule took out a cigarette from his pocket. “By the time they get to her all that’ll be left is two feet in cement blocks. Really, it’ll just be two cement blocks. It’ll take a while for people to know they’re looking at footbones. Feetbones? Footbones.”

Crashing onto the sofa, Felix ignored Rule’s search for the right word and put his hands on his knees, looking at his neighbor.

“Didn’t they arrest the manager’s son?”

“They arrest every manager’s son. Right after they fire the manager. You’d think he’d get it together and learn a thing or two. This one went to jail for robbing a Fazoli’s with a spork.”

Felix mouthed: “With a spork.”

There was a knock on the door and Rule tittered, “Good thing I didn’t take out the weed.”

Felix pushed himself off of the couch, touching the glass coffee table they’d gotten from someone’s front yard last year, and crossed the room to open the door.

“Joey.”

“Fuck, Felix, my car is stalled. You don’t have a car,” Joey said. “But do you know someone who does?”

Joey stopped, looking at Rule who was grinning at him.

“I actually don’t,” Felix said.

“I do,” Rule said.

They looked at him.

“I mean,” Rule continued, “I have a car. Until eight o’clock.”

“Do I want to know how you got a car that’s yours until eight?” Felix said.

“No,” Rule shook his head, crushing out his cigarette. “You don’t.”

Felix and Rule sang:

“One day you'll look to see I've gone

For tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun

Some day you'll know I was the one

But tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun!”

As the red convertible veered from one side of the road to the other.

From the backseat Joey leaned forward and said, “I… I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to do that.”

Rule reached under his seat and pulled out a beer, taking a sip.

“Or that,” Joey continued.

"And now the time has come

And so my love I must go

And though I lose a friend

In the end you will know, oooh

One day you'll find that I have gone"

Felix turned around and said of Rule, “The trick is to pay it no attention. If it gets caught it gets arrested and this man’s car gets impounded and for us… Well, it’s just an adventure.”

“But my brother—”

“We know!” Rule sang back, suddenly jerking the Thunderbird so Joey fell on his side, “We can’t be late for your brother!”

After a little longer on the country road, they saw a modern and unappealing looking hotel, and made a right turn before entering. The road curved in and out and on itself and they passed metal sculptures that were the city’s attempt at modern art. At last arriving at:

“Fisher Price!”

“Why the hell do you call it that?” Rule demanded it.

“Oh!” Joey grinned and clapped his hands together. “I get it. Like the toy airport.”

“Exactly,” Felix said, pointing to the small terminal where not only plains came, but the train to Chicago stopped, and the Greyhound buses took off. “Because this is sure in the hell not a real airport.”

As they came into the crowded parking lot with its cracked and ashen asphalt, Felix declared, “I could swear I just saw a giant six year old taxi that plane onto the tarmac. If you see the pilot get out and he doesn’t have legs, don’t be surprised.

“Where are we supposed to meet him?”

“At the first bus stop near the terminal entrance.”

Felix nodded and unnecessarily signaled for Rule where to go.

“Is that him?” Rule said.

“Sorry Scott!” Joey shouted as they swerved in to park in the bus stop.

“He is fine as hell,” Rule noted.

But then he looked at Felix.

“What?” he murmured. “I know he’s hot, but—”

There was a young man who looked like he worked in an insurance office and was proud of it, and he was coming forward with two suitcases when he blinked, looked back at his brother and then up at Felix.”

“Felix Owens?”

“Scott Flowers.”

“You know each other?” Joey looked from his brother to his…. Felix.

Scott gave a manly smile and nod, then said, “Indeed we do. It’s been a long time, Felix.”

“This is my friend Rule, who offered Joey a ride after his car broke down.”

Rule had been waiting patiently to be acknowledged and when Scott said, “Sorry about that man,” Rule nodded and said, It’s all good, in a tone that meant he’d already dismissed Scott. But he had manners so he got out and opened the trunk.

“Just put em in there, and we’re off.”

“SO YOU ALL WENT to school together,” Joey said, looking from Scott to Felix.

“Yeah,” Scott said. “Felix was the coolest.”

“That has been said before,” Rule drawled while Felix stabbed him with a sharp finger.

“He used to make the whole class laugh. Remember Doctor Isabel’s? That was like a year before I graduated. What were you studying?”

“I was a graduate student, and I wanted to take a history class,” Felix said. “It was the shittiest English program in the world and I wanted to know if I might want to study history.”

“And did you?”

“I did,” Felix said.

“How’s that going for you?”

“It isn’t. But that’s the thing. History doesn’t go. It’s already gone.”

Scott thought about this for a moment, and then burst out laughing, and looking from Joey to Scott, Rule murmured, “Damn, they really are related.”

“So how do you all know each other?” Scott, in the backseat with his brother moved his hand in a circle.

While Joey pondered an appropriate answer, Felix said, “Joey is our junior maintenance man. Rule lives on the other bend of the U of our building.”

Scott nodded.

“How’d you guys meet?” Scott asked.

“Fucking,” Rule said, while Felix gagged on his cigarette and threw it out the window.

Rule blasted up the radio, and bamming on the red wheel of the Thunderbird he shouted along:

"Do you wake up on your own

And wonder where you are?

You live with all your faults

I wanna wake up where you are

I won't say anything at all

So why don't you slide!"

Then, laughing he said, “I’m just fucking around. I never fucked this guy,” he gripped Felix’s shoulder and shook it.

“Well you’re cute, Rule,” Felix admitted, “but you’re crazy.”

Rule burst out laughing while Scott, in his linen pants and blue shirt leaned forward and said, earnestly, “So it’s correct to assume you are in a homosexual lifestyle?”

At this Felix and Rule looked at each other, and then burst into more laughter.

“Sucking cock and taking names!” Rule shouted. “Now where do you all want to go?”

“I am in no hurry,” Scott said, hitting his knee with each word and announcing each word with absolute clarity. “I’m with my brother, and an old friend. And a new friend!”

“And you don’t want to see Mom and Dad either,” Joey added.

“I’ll see them enough,” Scott brushed it aside, for the first time sounding less that chipper.

“Oh, shit, ‘Island in the Sun!’ Weezer!” Rule shouted.

“Please don’t,” Felix begged.

Ignoring his friend, Rule swung into the roade, took out his beer, swigged and then shouted:

"Hip hip

Hip hip

When you're on a holiday

You can't find the words to say

All the things that come to you

And I wanna feel it too!"

He turned around and announced, “We’re getting tacos at that ghetto place where all the Mexicans get shot, and then we’re bringing them back to Felix’s apartment—”

“My apartment?”

“And getting crunk!”

“Getting crunk on tacos?” Felix raised an eyebrow.

“No, bitch, getting crunk on skunk.”