Bird Came Down

WHEN HE CAME HOME FROM CHURCH, Felix heard vacuuming on the other side of his door, so he wasn’t surprised to find someone cleaning. He was surprised when, instead of Joey, it was Scott.

“Heya,” Scott switched off the vacuum and stood before Felix.

“You look a hell of a lot better today.”

“Yeah, well…” Scott stretched.

“You look like you used to. Back in school.”

“I opened your windows,” Scott said.

“That was a complete non-sequitor.”

“Oh, I know,” Scott told him. “But the open windows will help the carpet dry faster and keep your apartment from smelling funny.”

“What happened you ended up here and not Joey?”

“Joey babysat me all night, and I figured this is what I could do. Besides,” Scott added, “I wanted to see you.”

“Really?”

“Is that such a surprise?”

“Given the way things ended, yes.”

“Things didn’t end,” Scott said. “They just drifted away. Can I sit?”

Felix gestured for him to take a seat, then said, “Nothing ever just drifts away.”

“I couldn’t be who you wanted.”

“Please don’t start that,” Felix said.

“Fine,” Scott shook his head. “I couldn’t be who I wanted. People always tell you to be yourself. It’s not that easy.”

Felix let Scott continue talking to himself. He would say nothing. He would not even look at Scott. All that Felix could really remember of Scott was that he was taller than him, broader in the shoulders, an ex football player. Girls loved him. He was good looking, but what that was composed of, Felix could not have said. His eyes sparkled, but what color those eyes were, Felix could not have remembered. Yesterday the sudden appearance of Scott in shirt and tie and white pants had been such a shock, and the sight of him barfing on the carpet a little bittersweet.

“In the end I did the right thing,” Scott decided.

“Really? Fucking Kim was the right thing?”

“I stayed with her when she got pregnant.”

“Oh,” Felix said with the first sick feeling he’d had since meeting Scott again. “So this wife of yours is Kim?”

Scott nodded.

“And you lived to make two babies with her. Not just one.”

“Twins,” Scott held up his fingers.

“Well,” Felix said.

“You hate me.”

“No I don’t. You’re flattering yourself.”

And I’m fucking your little brother.

“I thought about you a lot,” Scott said.

Is it possible, Felix wondered, looking at Scott’s square jaw, at the set of his shoulders, I fell for Joey because he looked like Scott?

“How old are those kids?”

“They’re six,” Scott said.

“That’s a long time to be thinking about me,” said Felix.

Scott looked at his lap, and then he looked up at Felix again and opened his mouth.

“You want to know if I think about you?” Felix said.

When Scott said nothing, Felix said, “I think of a lot of things. I think of a lot of losses.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“I wasted a lot of time on hoping for shit,” Felix told him. “So I guess my answer is no I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about you. Don’t get me wrong. I think about how nice the past was. A lot of the past. But I don’t wish for it, and I don’t spend a lot of time thinking things could have been different, or that they should have been.”

“Well, I do.”

Well, living a lie tends to do that to you.

Instead Felix said, “Well, now what’s the point in that?”

“I can’t believe you go to church.”

“Again with the non-sequitors.”

“I just didn’t see that when I met you.”

“Well, when you met me it really wasn’t something I was doing. And it wouldn’t be something I was doing now if my sister wasn’t a priest.”

“Um,” Scott murmured, “They do that, huh?”

By that Felix assumed he meant women priest, but then of course Scott was surprised. He was surprised that men came out of the closet and took each other as lovers.

“In the end I had sex with another guy,” Scott said.

Felix blinked at him. He wasn’t entirely sure if he was surprised or not.

“Well, that would be a reason for her to leave.”

“That’s not why. She had already left. She was fucking her boss.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t cause she knew you were gay?”

“I wasn’t—I’m not. I’m… bi.”

“Some would day bi is a lie.”

“I’d never been with a guy.”

“You certainly weren’t with me. You said it was too much.”

“I was honest with Kim. I was honest by her. But she found someone else. She started finding other people. And then…. I decided I would too.”

Felix ran a hand over his shaven head.

“I don’t mind telling you that sounds really miserable.”

“It was,” Scott said. Then, “It is.”

“I can’t really feel sorry for you.”

“I’m not asking you too.

“Hey,” Scott said, “Do you want me to go?”

“Not really,” Felix said. “I never thought I’d see you again, and now here you are, in my house, sweeping my floors.”

“Are you seeing anyone?”

“Scott—” Felix started, and then he said, “Yes. Yes, I am. And no you can’t just jump into my life like that.”

“I’m sorry!” Scott put up a hand. “I know. I know. I’m sorry. What about friends?” Scott held a nervous hand out. “What about that?”

“Put your hand down. You look ridiculous. Yeah, yeah. We’re friends.”

“Great!”

Scott tapped his foot on the carpet for a moment and then he said, “As a friend…?”

“Yes?”

“Can I take you to lunch?”

“I’m not really hungry.”

Scott frowned.

“How about dinner?”

“We can go to dinner separately together. I can take myself, and you can take yourself. Does that work?”

Scott thrust out his lip, and then, after reflection, decided, “Yes.”

“Oh, no!” Scott wailed. “The fountain’s off.”

“The fountain’s been off,” Felix said, pulling him across the little street in front of the Auditorium. The lights were still on over the marquis, but the fountain across the little lane from it was a series of empty pools.

“They used to leave this on all the time,” Scott remembered, climbing onto the lip of the many terraced fountain and then climbing in.

“It ain’t what it used to be.”

Scott turned around and said, “I ain’t what I used to be either.”

“Meaning?”

“I’m not afraid anymore. When I was young I was afraid all the time. I’m done being afraid.”

“Can I tell you something?” Felix leaned against the fountain.

“You can tell me anything, Felix.”

“I did think about you. When I couldn’t remember your face I looked for you online. I looked on your Facebook.”

“You should have friended me.”

“You wouldn’t have accepted my request.”

“Sure I would have,” Scott said. And then he thought, sighed, and said, “Maybe you’re right.”

“Anyway, I would go through your pictures. To remember you. And to see a part of you I never knew. And then one day your account was gone.”

“For work.”

Felix nodded.

“So I just typed in your name, and I found you. In the Calverton Cavemen. Your high school football picture. Quarterback. You looked so fearless.”

The park in front of the auditorium descended to Durrow Parkway, and beneath them an eighteen wheeler pulled tiredly through town.

“I have never been fearless,” Scott said, simply. “But right now I am as fearless as I’ve ever been. As happy as I’ve ever been.”

Felix nodded, and then Scott said, “You wanna walk through the rest of downtown?”

“Yes.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“It used to be a hotel.”

“How did you know?”

“When I first moved here I would go to the library and look through archives. It used to be a luxury hotel with restaurants and a ball room, and now all it is is an empty building with little stickers on the windows.”

Scott squinted and read one that said, “I want to be a grocery store.”

“What?” Felix murmured.

“I want to be a Target. I want to be a coffee shop.”

Felix looked at all the stickers. They surrounded one that said, “What would you like to see this building be?”

“I’d love for it to be a grocery store,” Felix said. “But it will probably be condos.”

“What’s that way?” Scott pointed down the street to a rope of white Christmas lights arch over its far end.

“Just all the businesses on Main Street,” Felix said. “Very pretty. I go walking here all the time. At night.”

“Like now? After midnight?”

“It’s the best time,” Felix assured him. “There was a time when I became very lonely, and I used to walk up and down the streets and then go back to my apartment. And be alone. It was hard to learn to be alone. It hurt a lot. But eventually it became a happy thing and now I love to walk by myself.”

“That’s sad.”

“No, it isn’t, Scott.”

“I mean being lonely. That you had to be sad and lonely.”

“I used to think so too. When I was younger I thought I would be with someone. I thought we would be happy together. Just the two of us. I thought if you wanted something real bad then he had to come eventually. But that’s not the way it turned out. The way it turned out was me having to make peace with that, and the truth is loneliness is just a part of life. There’s nothing sad about it. What’s sad is choosing the first person who shows up because you think he’s the only person, or she’s the only person, and you’re so afraid of being alone that you’ll take anyone and anything and listen to any noise to drown out the quiet. That’s most people, and that’s why when I walk at night it’s no one but me and the occasional bum on the bench, and that’s what’s sad really.”

Felix thought he was finished speaking, but there was more and he continued:

“I’ve felt that all my life. When I’m alone. When I’m sitting alone or reading, or walking at night, or through the trees I feel like it’s so beautiful! It’s so big, this being alone thing, it’s like being out on the open sea and people are so afraid of it! And they’re so fucking… afraid of being free, of being themselves, of being alone. And it makes me sad. I wish they’d just come out and play. And stop being afraid.”

“You don’t get afraid?”

“Of course I do!” Felix said. “I am afraid every day. But I don’t let fear rule me. I won’t.”

He walked ahead of Scott, crossing Lasalle and heading up Main Street. Though he was the shorter man, Scott had to catch up.

He suddenly slipped his hand in Felix’s.

“Is that alright?” Scott said. “Do you mind?”

Scott’s hand was dry and warm, and strange because Felix never held anyone’s hand. They had actually passed the Indian antique store and the Jamba Juice before Felix said, “No, I don’t.”

On the corner Scott said, “Can I kiss you?”

“No,” Felix said. “I waited for that too long, and learned to live without it too long.

“But you can walk me home.”

“I like this building,” Scott said.

“Maybe you should move in.”

In the hallway, Felix, put his key to the door said, “What I meant is, a lot of people live in it and there are a lot of apartment buildings downtown so… Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Scott said, nodding.

They stood looking at each other a while, and then Felix said, “Well, I better go inside.”

“Right.”

“Thanks for walking me up.”

Felix opened the door, flicked on the light.

“What…. The fuck?”

Scott, who had been about to walk away, came in behind him and, eyes roving, muttered, “Oh my God!”

Every book case had been thrown down and books and clothing, cushions and chairs were scattered all over the apartment.

Felix moved around the apartment, looking for valuables, and Scott said, “We gotta call the police.”

“Nothing’s stolen,” Felix reported, coming back from the kitchen. “It’s just trashed.”

Scott frowned and looked around.

“Why? What the hell does this mean?”

Felix’s first thought was of a jealous Joey, but that instantly disappeared.

What he said was:

“It means Ben is back.”