Christopher Buehlman - The Lesser Dead

I looked at the books and records formerly owned by Mr. Combs: science stuff, physics. Some of it in German. Yawnsville. This guy would have gotten along great with Cvetko. Novels, mostly arty-smarty: Günter Grass, Herman Hesse, The Little Prince . I liked The Little Prince . The music was better. Jazz, mostly—Miles Davis, Charlie Parker. I took the Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain , slipped it under my arm. It was a pretty cover.

Of course I went through his drawers and got some cash, a tie pin with a diamond, a silver ring with three pieces of onyx; he wasn’t going to need any of that.

I noticed his bed was made. He was a bed-maker. Made sense, the place was cluttered but clean. His mommy taught him right.

I was about to leave. I had fed the bird, filled my pockets, gotten a snootful of a dead man’s scent and now I had a bad case of the what’s-it-all-fors. My hand was on the knob.

“Want to groove on Miles?” the bird said. Then, more excitedly, “Miles Davis!” And it clicked and whistled its ass off.

One thing about carrying a birdcage on the subway, everybody looks at you. Saturday night, the 6 train. Everybody was on their way out to a movie or a late dinner or just to get good and schnockered at some Midtown watering hole. Too many people to charm more than mildly; hiding my fangs was as good as it was going to get.

“What kinda bird is that?” said a cowboy-looking guy, good and loud and twangy, doing that thing hicks from the sticks do when they want to show they’re more sociable than New Yorkers.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

I shrugged, looking at him.

“Well, what’s his name?”

“Why, you want his phone number?”

“Nice kid,” he said to everybody and nobody, laughing like, See, I knew you were all a-holes here.

Maybe we are.

“Hello?” Mrs. Baker said from inside her apartment.

“It’s me,” I said, grinning a shit-eating grin at the little round peephole, holding the cage while Gonzalo said, “Are you cold? Do you want the heater? Are you cold?”

I laughed.

The bird laughed, too, but like somebody else, probably his master.

I heard her draw the chain out of the latch and open the door. I stepped in quick. Little Baker was at his post in the recliner, eating a bowl of ice cream with M&M’s on top, pouring Coke in. Well, he wasn’t keeping that ass on him with baby carrots.

“Who is it, Mom?” he said, sounding annoyed. “The commercial’s almost over.”

“Just me,” I said, and he looked up and started drooling.

“It’s an African gray parrot,” his mom said absently, also drooling a bit.

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, his name’s Gonzalo, and you’re all going to be very happy together. He eats this stuff.”

I handed over the bag of sunflower seeds plus a box of macaw feed. At the sound of the bag, the bird went back and forth on his bar.

“They like fresh fruit, too. And nuts,” she said.

Gonzalo clicked and bobbed his head.

“How do you know this stuff?”

“My sister’s ex-husband owned a pet store. He threw himself under a bus. Right in front of her. I didn’t care for him.”

“That’s nice. Where’s Pops?”

“Out.”

This was a problem. I’d have to charm him, too, or he might dump the bird.

“Out where?”

“Felix’s. On the corner. It’s the only bar on the block.”

Problem solved.

Back in television land, the commercial ended.

“MO-om!” little Baker said.

“MO-om!” the bird said, exactly imitating the kid’s bratty, entitled whine.

I laughed and Gonzalo said, “Live from New York, it’s Saaaaturday night!”

Damned if it wasn’t, too.

I loved that bird.

I walked into the corner bar, Felix the Cat’s, one of those old-guy places that smelled like weak beer and Kool cigarettes, a shitty television over the bar next to a little team of Clydesdales pulling their beer wagon around in circles under a glass dome. The only guy in the place with long hair was swearing at that stupid game where you slide the disc down the plank.

Mr. Baker was bellied up to the bar, watching himself get old in the long, dirty mirror. He said “Hi” mildly when I slid up next to him.

“Who’s the kid?” the bartender said.

“My son.”

“I thought I met your son.”

“My other son.”

Howard Cosell was talking away on the television. Someone threw a peanut at him, earning him a finger wag from the barman, but it was a good throw, would have hit Howard right in the eye, might have made him jerk his head and knock his lousy toupee crooked.

I told Mr. Baker that he and his family were the proud owners of a new bird. “What kind?” he drooled. I mopped his lip with a napkin before the barman saw.

“African. It’s gray.”

“A bird? A real, honest-to-goodness bird ?”

“Well, yeah.”

“I always wanted a bird. I have to go meet him! Is it a him?”

“I didn’t look. But I think so.”

“Him,” he said. “I have to! I…”

“What?”

His eyes started to moisten. Then he grabbed my shoulder hard.

“Good-bye.”

He got up in a spasm.

He was so enthusiastic about his new bird that he stuffed his pockets with peanuts and left immediately, forgetting to pay. The bartender called after him; he held up the I’ll-be-back-in-a-minute index finger and kept going, but he wasn’t going to be back in a minute. I paid for his three Budweisers. I had already said my good-byes to Gonzalo, but they were really so-longs. I had to find Cvetko and tell him what I saw, but first I had to make sure I got to see that bird again. It was a really cool goddamn bird.

“And they just let you go?” Cvetko said. The old woman walked up to me with a tea tray for the third time in ten minutes.

“He does not care for tea,” Cvetko said again, but he wasn’t particularly good at charming. I was.

“No tea,” I said. “Now knit or something.” But I shouldn’t have said “now” because she dropped the whole tea set with a crash-bang and went hobbling off for her needles and yarn. The whole rest of the talk with Cvetko she just sat there, bleeding and knitting; she must have been on some anticoagulant. Cvetko wiped at her neck with a cloth so she didn’t mess up her nightgown. Kind of a saucy nightgown for an old bird, like satin or something; she must have really been looking forward to her visit.

“Of course they let me go, they’re just little kids.”

“I should loan you a book about ‘just little kids’ on a desert island.”

“Is it like Gilligan’s Island ?” I said, fucking with him.

He sighed.

A little white paw flicked out under the bathroom door. The light was on in there.

I asked Cvetko, “Why do all old ladies have cats?”

“I enjoy cats,” the old lady said. “They sit on your lap and purr when it’s cold. It’s a great relief to loneliness. Do you have any idea what it’s like to know that you are unlikely to live more than a decade? To have survived all those who were familiar to you so that everyone is a stranger? To feel that you’re tedious to these strangers? But really, it’s the nearness of death, especially for a secular person. Cats help with that.” She went on smiling, knitting, drooling, bleeding. Cvetko dabbed at her. She mouthed a silent Thank you .

“Are you done here?” I said. “Can we go talk somewhere? Maybe Old City Hall?”

In the same way that I had Chloë to go to when I wanted some peace, Cvetko had the Old City Hall station. I’m the one who showed it to him. The first time he saw it I thought he was going to cry at its vaulted ceilings and chandeliers, the beautiful brickwork. He even loved the blacked-out windows on the roof that used to be stained glass, used to let filtered sunlight in. It was magnificent. This was the place they had built to knock the socks off anybody who visited America back in the day, like “we’re so rich this is the stuff we stick underground.” Only problem was it was too small for how long the new trains were, just like 18th Street, only worse because this was a loop, not a straight line, so it would be impossible to fix. There was no way to let passengers on and off all the cars; some would still be in the tunnel. So this big, beautiful station got closed in ’45 and empty trains go through without stopping. Mostly empty. Citizens who want to peek at Old City Hall can still ride the 6 to the end of the line and just not get off before it starts up again. They’re not supposed to. But most people do what they’re not supposed to, as long as it’s fun, and sometimes even if it isn’t.