Diana Abu-Jaber - Birds of Paradise

“No, I know. I didn’t see it either, and I feel the same — like, I absolutely should have.” Brian moves a file back onto the stack, trying to seem nonchalant, but he feels an icy chill. “Cautionary tale.”

“Thank God, eh?” Javier says with a bleak laugh. He grabs his arms. “Like check yourself for the shrapnel.”

Brian smiles at the window, its surface intermittently clear, then stippled with raining gusts. In the distance, the bay is driven with sheets of gunmetal swells and troughs. “I had this stupid idea about it — because Stanley needed money.”

“Yeah, but that was a good reason to do it.” Javier sits back, his chin sinking on his chest. “We’ll find another project — a great one, I promise.”

“No, no. That’s not what I’m…” The sky is getting so dark that Brian can see a layer of reflections there: Javier’s crossed leg, the computer screen filled with passing stars, the framed photograph. A photograph without Felice! He thinks of his mother saying, “A child splits you open.” He turns back to his desk, picks up a stray pencil, teeth marks in its blue paint, and taps it on the glass. “It’s really strange. Trying to be decent — I mean, with your kids? All I figured out is the only way to do it is to leave them. You got to go away. To work. That’s how you take care of them. That’s what I learned from my own father. But then you’re away from them and they’d don’t even care about it, because what good is it…”

“What is this?” Javier starts laughing. “You’re kidding. You’re the best father.”

Brian taps the keyboard, glances at the live tracking site, the milky pinwheel of this incoming system, Katrina, poised between the Caribbean and the peninsula. He’d forgotten to turn on his lights, the day prematurely dim, clouds rolling in, heavy as volcanic ash. “Why do you think it’s so funny?” he asks. “Am I that ridiculous?”

Javier’s laugh dwindles. “Well, no, man, of course. It’s just…” he says slowly. “My God. For one thing, I thought you were happy. Ay carajo! You of all people.”

Brian looks at Javier then, startled by the complicated uncertainty on his face. He hesitates, sensing that, in some way, Javier is able to peer into some shadow self of his. He feels a cool contraction now, pervading his skin, as if this sudden unburdening has left him feeling overexposed. He touches the wall and all hard surfaces seem to tremble for a fraction of a second, a swipe of vertigo passes through him. The lip of curvy exterior window is inches from his fingers and his attention strays: the sky trails rain-vapors over the city. “Provide, provide,” he mutters.

“What’s that?”

Brian shakes his head, touches his temples with his fingertips, as if fighting a migraine. He excuses himself. In the executive washroom, Brian splashes water across his face. He cups his palms and spills a cool handful over his head. He holds the sink and inhales deeply, regularly. Tries to focus on his eyes in the mirror.

When he emerges, his office is empty. It’s getting so dark outside the corridor light seems drained. He spots a twinkle of light in the glass wall, a glimpse of movement in Fernanda’s office. He strolls down the hall, then for some reason he wavers just outside the penumbra of her office. She must have moved, because he notices her form slip through the surface of the glass. Unable to see in clearly at that angle, Brian leans toward the glass: he realizes there are two people in the office. A soft, illicit sense like dread passes through him: he wishes he could stop himself, but it’s almost as if some force is compelling him to look. Outside, what sounds like another volley of gravel rattles the windows, rain, flung with enough force to leave tiny transparent smears on the glass for a second, like claw marks. It surges in volume, spattering, then subsides. Moving closer to the glass, he spots Javier, he’s sitting on her desk. Fernanda is sitting before him, inside the V of his legs, her hand on his knee.

His heart expands and collapses: electrical sparks speed under his skin, his limbic system fizzing and crackling. Brian moves backwards, away from the glass; a wisp of laughter escapes him. He sees her sharp, dark glance, then the corridor lighting switches off and there is only the backup generator light: white beams every ten feet; a previously invisible exit sign glaring from the end of the hall. The glass walls reveal an enormous, tumid massing of clouds, banks of black and white like a winter’s day in Alaska. Brian makes his way to the elevator: as the doors slide shut, he hears someone calling him.

HE STANDS IN THE gloom of the elevator, sees himself in a dark green glade, around him there are children and friends, tiny lights glowing on a narrow leaf. He lifts his hands, opening and closing them; he feels prehistoric. If he could just take hold of one of the lovely lights… His head tips until his forehead touches the metal of the doors. It is, he realizes, the posture of his existence: face pressed to a snow globe. How had he stepped outside of his own existence? He was jealous: he admits this to himself. But now he just feels like an idiot. The elevator car jerks to a halt on 11 and the doors slide open. Brian must make his way in the pitch black of the stairwell, clinging to the railing. It smells like paint and stale cigarettes; twice he stumbles. He believes he can hear the crackle of cockroaches on the walls, some whispering shuffle high above him. The marble plain of the lobby feels like an empty stage. Rufus is no longer at his post. When Brian opens the glass door, a wailing wind nearly wrenches it out of his hands. The row of royal palms surge, their crowns and necks bowing to the west. His hair whips sideways, his suit plastered to him, as he dashes into the garage.

Only a handful of cars remain in the garage — Brian’s SUV, Fernanda’s sedan, Javier’s Jag among them. Brian climbs shakily into the truck, then he just sits there for a while, panting, his head dripping and pressed against the steering wheel. He’d bought the thing envisioning expeditions to Sanibel and Captiva, he and his family, the back a jumble of fishing rods and tents. The only trip they’d taken had happened because one day, with no warning, Javier had pulled up into their driveway, honking, his car loaded with his own kids. Brian went but he’d spent most of the time checking voice mail and returning calls. Even out on the chartered boat, he toted along a waterproof rucksack full of applications for zoning variances.

Something hits his shoulder and clatters to the floor. A pair of sunglasses. “Hey, culo .” It’s Javier, striding, dripping, across the garage. “I call your name and you don’t even hold the freaking elevator for me? I had to walk down thirty-four fucking flights, man.”

Brian squeezes the steering wheel, as if stuck in rush-hour traffic. He looks away from Javier to the frame of the passenger window. “Really, can you just not talk to me?”

“What the hell, man? What’s your problem? You go tearing out of the building like I don’t know what…”

Brian presses his palm over his eyes. For a moment, the wind drowns all other sounds, roaring past the garage ramparts. “How long?” he croaks.

“What?”

“You and Fernanda. How long?”

Javier doesn’t say anything for a few moments and Brian turns to look at him.

“I don’t know — a couple weeks, I guess,” he says quietly.

“Weeks?”

“Man, what do you even care?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. He folds his arms along the top of the wheel. “What about her and Parkhurst?”

“ Santa Madre Virgen de Dios ,” Javier mutters. “What are you thinking, Bry? It’s all play to her. Me, Parkhurst, whatever. She’s just messing around to make her mother mad. Maybe kick herself a little higher in the company. I know that. It only goes so far. I’m not Jewish — she’s never gonna stick with some Latino Cristiano.”