“Hey,” she said. That deep, running-water voice.
I sat up too fast, bunched the sheets around for adequate coverage. Shit. “Hey,” I said. “Where do you know me, I mean. Where I live?” Shitshitshitshit.
“How many other Coach Winfield mansions do you think I tried, before this one?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Weird time to be asleep. They’ve got me on stuff that kind of licks me.”
She came around the end of the bed to where all my crap was on the night table. Picked up the pill bottles one by one and checked the labels. Then sat down on the bed facing me, with one knee and foot hitched up, the other leg dangling. Not really dressed for winter, it must have been warm out. She had little silver rings on two of her toes. “So. How bad are you broken?”
“Most of me still works. The rest I reckon will come around.”
She grinned at me. Lord, that face, like scoops of vanilla, all rounded cheeks and creamy skin. Little pixie nose. Shiny eyes, like the black middle had swallowed the rest. Her pink dress was made of something soft, a second skin, with a low, round neck smiling at me above the double scoop of her tits. I was afraid of crying if I couldn’t touch her.
“I brought you something.” She slipped the strap of her purse off her shoulder.
“You needn’t to have.”
“Oh, I did. You have no idea. It was life and death.”
I felt cottony in the mouth and brain as I sorted through my many regrets. I’d gotten lazy about showers: that was one among the many. Her dark eyes were shimmying with a question.
“What? Am I supposed to guess?”
“You’d never.”
“But if I do,” I said. “I get to ask you out.”
Help me Jesus, her smile. A tiny dent in each cheek, and her bottom lip held out a little way out from her teeth, like the juiciest smile possible. Inviting you in.
I rifled the messy mental locker. Not underwear, surely. “Is it something I need?”
“Definitely not.” She looked tickled. The dangling foot bounced.
“Okay. So not a forty of Mickey’s or my geometry homework.”
She shook her head, solemn as church.
“Am I getting close though?”
“Very.”
“A jar of pickled eggs. No, wait. A Furby.”
Her laugh bubbled up. Like a glove box popping open and candy spilling out. I said a bunch more ridiculous things, just to watch that happen. Finally she gave me a hint.
“It’s the one thing I knew you’d love. Because you told me.”
No clue. I’d barely talked to her before this, in actual life.
“That time we first met at the feed store,” she teased. “‘Cute as buttons’ . . .”
“Oh shit. No way you remembered that. Baby chickens?”
She reached in her purse and pulled out a pink Tampax box. The second she opened it the little guy started peeping. I took it from her, surprised by the strong little claws digging in. This one had real feathers, not like the day-old fuzzballs I’d handled at the store, both living and dead. I tried to calm him down, petting his walnut head. Dori watched us with that juicy smile. The foot still bouncing. Some part of her was always moving.
“Where’d you get it?”
“Where do you think?”
“Your dad’s store? In November? That makes no sense.”
“Right? Somebody special-ordered them and never picked them up. Donnamarie was shitting bricks over these dozen chicks, calling us at the house every day, so I had to go get them.”
I could feel the heartbeat through the feathers. “Won’t he miss the rest of his friends?”
“Okay, so. I told you this was life and death? This is the alive one. Sad story.”
“The rest are dead? How?”
“So. I have this dog, Jip? He’s the sweetest little thing.”
“So sweet, he offs chickens?”
“I don’t even know how it happened. I was outside letting them run around, and Dad lets Jip out the back and next thing I know he’s just hoovering the little fellas out of the grass.”
Her smile turned upside down, the saddest of sad. I wanted to kiss her more than I wanted to live. “Survivor,” I said to my little friend, giving his chest a tiny fist bump. “You and me.”
Was I giving a thought to no pets allowed, the whole ridiculousness of a chicken in the house, any of that? What do you think? The bird was in the hand.
