Charlie Anders - All the Birds in the Sky

“So does this mean I’m not going to Portland?”

“Listen harder,” was all Ernesto said from behind the book. “We do not want to send you away. Do not make us.”

“Okay.” Patricia still felt raw and desperate inside. She realized she ought to leave before Ernesto offered to make her a cocktail next door, because she did not want to get falling-upwards drunk right now.

As soon as she got out of Danger, she saw her phone was full of texts and voicemails. She called Kevin, who was worried, and she was like, “I’m fine, except I need a drink.”

Half an hour later, she leaned on Kevin’s crushed-velvet frock coat and pounded a Corona in the swampy back room of the art bar on 16th, with fresh graffiti on the wall and a DJ spinning classic hip-hop. Kevin was drinking Pimm’s with a fat cucumber slice and not asking her what that scene at dinner had been about. He looked amazing in the bar’s golden light, sideburns setting off the smooth planes of his face.

“I’m fine,” Patricia kept saying. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I’m fine. I sorted it out.”

But as her tongue greeted the lime wedge bobbing up to the lip of the bottle and tasted the pulp mixed with beer, she remembered how Kevin wouldn’t even look her in the eye when everybody else was accusing her of being a toxic loner.

“We should talk about what this is, right? You and me. What we’re doing,” she started to say, trying to make herself heard over the DJ without shouting. “I feel like we tried too hard not to label our relationship, and that became a label in itself.”

“I have something I have to tell you,” Kevin said, his eyes bigger and sadder than usual.

“I am ready to open up about my feelings. I feel…” Patricia searched for the right words. “I feel good, about us. I care about you, a lot, and I am open to—”

“I met someone else,” Kevin blurted. “Her name is Mara. She’s also a webcomics artist of some renown. She lives in the East Bay. We met only in the past fortnight, but this already shows signs of becoming serious. I was not even looking, but my Caddy pinged me with twenty-nine points of convergence between Mara and myself.” He gazed into his Pimm’s. “You and I never said we were exclusive, or even that we were dating.”

“Umm.” Patricia chewed her thumb, a habit she’d quit years ago. “I’m happy, happy. For you. I’m happy for you.”

“Patricia.” Kevin took both her hands. “You are utterly mad, but delightful. I feel so overjoyed to have gotten to know you. But I have been a fool too many times already. And I tried, I really did, to talk to you about our relationship, on five separate occasions. In the park when we were roller-skating, and also at that pizza bar…”

As Kevin listed these moments, she could see them with perfect clarity: all the missed cues and deflections, all the abortive moments of intimacy. All this time, she had been thinking of him as the one with commitment issues. Somewhere along the line, she had become an asshole.

“Thank you for being honest with me,” Patricia said. She sat and finished her drink, until it was just lime rind and bitter pulp.

Patricia wound up in Dolores Park at midnight. The heat still felt as intense as direct sunlight, and her mouth was dry. She couldn’t go home and face Deedee and Racheline. For some reason, Patricia found herself calling her sister, Roberta, whom she hadn’t talked to in months (although she’d had a couple conversations about Roberta with her parents).

“Hey, Bert.”

“Hi, Trish. How is everything going?”

“I’m okay.” Patricia took a breath, which came out staccato. She stared at the playground rocket ship and the Victorian houses with their pregnant windows. “I’m sort of okay. I just … Do you ever feel like you’re just throwing away the people in your life? Like, being so self-centered that people just fall away?”

Roberta laughed. “I have the opposite problem: I have a hard time disposing of the bodies. Ha ha. Trish, listen to me for once in your life. I know we never got along and I was partway responsible for you running away from home. But one thing I know about you is, you’re a generous person. You’re a big bleeding heart. People have fucked with you, including me — especially me — so you have a lot of defense mechanisms. But you always put yourself on the line for other people. You don’t push people away — you try to do everything for people, and then they don’t get to do anything for you. Please don’t let any idiots tell you otherwise, okay?”

Patricia was bawling, even worse than before, right there in the park. She felt it pour down her face, and she was full of a sense that everything was broken and full of sweetness. She had never realized her sister thought that way about her.

“If anybody tries to tell you that you’re selfish,” Roberta said, “send them to me and I’ll snap their necks for you. Okay?”

“Okay,” Patricia stammered. They talked a bit more — about Roberta’s musical-theater disasters, and her latest attempt to go straight-edge — and then at last, Patricia felt ready to go home and face her roommates, who were on the couch like always. They slid over, without comment, to let Patricia watch TV with them.

PATRICIA HAD ANOTHER one of her dreams about being lost in the woods, this time running with a pack of deer, a barbarian yell in her throat and the scent of tree sap in her nostrils. She ran with her elbows and her stomach and her knees, until she couldn’t breathe. Patricia stumbled and fell onto her hands, gasping, laughing. She looked up and there was that big bird-shaped Tree again, with the mindful gaze coming through its branches. Patricia walked up and touched it with her palms against its ropey bark, feeling the power rising and churning inside of it. Touching that weird Tree from her childhood fancies, Patricia felt as though she could heal an entire army with a single breath. Air rushed through the Tree, like it was drawing breath to speak to her in its stentorian whoosh … then she woke up. She’d overslept, in spite of her alarm.

PATRICIA WAS FIXING Reginald’s sink, which had one of those glitchy new valves that were supposed to shut off the water after a couple minutes, and she found herself talking about her breakup with Kevin. “I mean, I guess it’s for the best, since it was never going to work. But it’s a symptom of the larger problem, that I never have time for anybody, and I keep isolating myself, and I’m basically doomed to wind up alone forever. Right?”

She expected Reginald to offer some bromides about how she just needed to be herself, but instead he said, “Get. A. Caddy.”

“What?” She nearly bonked her head on the sink.

“Get a Caddy. It will change your life, I am not kidding. At all. You become totally connected to all the people in your life. Not like regular social networking, either. It’s uncanny: You will just run into people you know, in person, when you most need to see them. I could barely afford one on my fixed income, but it turned out to be the best investment I ever made.”

“I always thought they were just for Mission hipsters,” Patricia said. “Anyway, it sounds creepy.”

“Seriously, no. It’s not creepy, and it’s so easy to use. It doesn’t spy on you, or tell you to stalk your friends. I’ve never felt like it was invading my privacy. It just … makes serendipity happen more often. It’s unobtrusive, and doesn’t give you a bunch of alerts. But you’ll always know what’s the one party you shouldn’t miss. I was feeling isolated, even with your much-appreciated visits. And then I got this Caddy, and I feel as though I’m back in my own life again.”