Plumage

by Nancy Springer

  Finally she told the hardest part: how she had sat Frederick down and asked him whether he loved her. He hadn’t answered. She’d asked him whether he was in love with Binky. He’d said, “That has nothing to do with this.” Then he had said that he hadn’t loved Sassy in years. Years. He had just been pretending so he wouldn’t “hurt her.” And then he had said, “I got to go. Listen, Sassy, if Binky calls, tell her I’m at work, would you?”

  “What an Oedipus,” said Racquel.

  “Huh?”

  “Think about it. What a jellosnarf,” Racquel said with feeling. “I don’t believe this guy. What a clueless asshole. You poor thing. First twenty-seven years of him, and then a bird poops on you.”

  “Speak of the devil,” Sassy said, “there it goes.” A green-and-yellow flit wafted past their balcony like a figment, like a spark of light landing in a treetop. Perched, it settled its sleek green wings and turned its yellow head toward her. Sassy stiffened.

  “The damn thing tried to attack me earlier today,” she said.

  “It did?”

  “Well … it tried to land on me. I fended it off.”

  “It must like you,” Racquel said. “I haven’t heard of it trying to sit on anybody else.”

  The parakeet still perched quietly in its tree like a yellow-headed spirit. Sassy felt like it was watching her.

  “You just stay there,” she told it between her teeth.

  Racquel nodded. “Hotel management wants to get rid of it,” she said. “It hasn’t pooped on anybody other than you that I know of, but it poops plenty. Did you know a bird poops on the average every fifteen minutes?”

  Sassy contemplated this. She knew from somewhere that horses pooped forty-five pounds a day. If birds were the size of horses … it did not bear contemplation. She shied from the poop stats and backtracked to Racquel’s previous statement. “Get rid of it how?”

  “Well, they can’t exactly shoot it in here. Trap it, I guess. Or maybe poison it.”

  There began to grow in Sassy a queasy sense of unease. She could tell Racquel all about Frederick, which was a relief, but certainly she could not tell her—no. She could not tell anyone about the bizarre budgie that faced her in the mirror every day. They would think she was insane.

  And maybe she was. The idea that they might poison the parakeet troubled her. Okay, she wanted it to leave her alone, but—did they have to kill it? Also—she hadn’t quite admitted the connection until this moment, preferring to think that sequence did not necessarily indicate cause and effect, but still … it sure looked as if that parakeet had made her start seeing birds instead of people in mirrors. Maybe some sort of weird virus in its poop had instantaneously soaked through her skull into her brain. And if they killed that bird, she might never find the cure.

  “They can’t do that,” Sassy blurted.

  Racquel leaned forward, her dark eyes large and friendly, like a puppy’s. “You a bird lover?”

  “Not hardly.” But it began to look as if she was going to have to start acting like one. Reluctantly Sassy admitted to herself that she hadn’t been thinking. Damn, she needed that bird.

  And it had tried to land on her, she could have grabbed it, but she had driven it away.

  “I am an idiot,” she said to Racquel.

  “What, honey? Why?”

  “I just am.” Sassy scrambled up, thanked Racquel for the raspberry-flavored espresso, and scuttled out.

  The next day around lunchtime, Racquel ambled out on the mezzanine to get away from the bookkeeping and noticed Sassy in her white-and-green uniform sitting at a café table. Racquel peered across the atrium with interest, because this was a violation of hotel rules; uniformed maids were supposed to be seen only when at work, taking their breaks and meals down below. Sassy must have some sass in her after all. Something about the little woman tugged at Racquel’s heart, and she wondered what it was. Sassy made her wince with thoughts of what it must be like to be quite so relentlessly middle-aged—but that wasn’t it. Pity was boring, and Sassy was not; Sassy was—Sassy was a bit of a mystery.

  Sassy sat bold as gold at that café table scanning a large book. A stack of books squatted at her elbow.

  Leaving PLUMAGE to the mercies of her employees, Racquel headed over there, her slit grosgrain skirt snapping as she walked, her feather-fringed sash swishing.

  Even when Racquel was not conscious of her own secret, it rode in her like the mythic jewel in the head of a toad. Was it the weight of her own secret, Racquel wondered, that made her think that Sassy had a secret?

  “Hey, woman,” she greeted Sassy.

  Sassy glanced up at her with the glassy, unsmiling look of one who has been interrupted. “Oh, hi,” Sassy said, coming to after a moment, but without putting down her book. A bright yellow budgie greeted Racquel from its cover.

  “The Complete Book of Parakeets,” Racquel read aloud, sitting down. The other books, she saw, were Budgies As Pets, The Fact Finder Book of Parrots and Parakeets, Parakeets: A Pet Owner’s Manual, and so on down the stack.

  Sassy said, “You would not believe how many colors of parakeet there are.” She flipped through her book, reciting. “Green. Yellow. Blue. Aquamarine, violet, pastel, albino, pied.” She was growing round-eyed, her small hands clawing at the pages. “Shell markings. No shell markings. Lacewing. Lutino. Opaline, fallow, greywing, cinnamon, crested. And not one of them—” Sassy slapped the book shut and slammed it down. “Not one of them looks the least bit like that one.” Her forefinger stabbed the air.

  Racquel turned and looked where Sassy was pointing. On a tree limb not far away, the hotel’s parakeet-in-residence perched, watching.

  Racquel felt her own eyebrows pucker, puzzled. “You need to know what kind it is?” she asked.

  A pause. Then, “I guess not really,” Sassy mumbled. Racquel turned back to look at her; Sassy looked sheepish. “I guess I kind of got sidetracked into that.”

  Racquel scanned the stack of books and grinned. “You’re obsessed,” she said. “I like that in a person.”

  “I, uh, I was really trying to find out—”

  “Does this happen often?” Racquel pursued her teasing. “Do you indulge, like, an obsession of the week?”

  Finally Sassy smiled. “The people at the library probably think so.”

  “Why? What else you been reading?”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Art history, folklore, trees, Tasmania, whatever. I just sort of browse one section at a time.”

  Racquel sat back, impressed. “You’re educated,” she said.

  “No, I’m not.” Sassy blinked at her, eyes pallid behind her glasses; Sassy needed to start using mascara. Even with the gray hair, she wouldn’t look half so plain if she put on some makeup. “I got married right out of high school.”

  “You don’t call twenty-seven years of reading everything in sight an education?”

  “I, uh, no, not really …” Sassy blinked harder and changed the subject. “What I was trying to find out was how to catch that parakeet. But all it says is wait until night, turn off all the lights, and sneak up on it with a flashlight. That’s not going to work.”

  Racquel made a show of studying the parakeet perched seventy feet in the air. “Not unless you got wings,” she said.

  “In which case it would be no problem anyway. I’d just out-fly it. Hey.” Sassy brightened. “Maybe I could hire a falcon.”

  “What do you want to catch it for?”

  “Uh …” All of a sudden Sassy jumped up, scraping her books together. “I got to get back to work,” Sassy muttered, not looking at Racquel. Sassy fled.

  “Huh!” Peering after Sassy, Racquel noticed that the parakeet also was following the little woman with its gaze.

  Reporting to work a couple of days later, Sassy carried in each apron pocket a Peterson Field Guide, one for the Eastern United States and one for the Rocky Mountain States. If she’d had more pockets she probably would have brought along Central America
too.

  Servicing hotel rooms, spreading clean sheets, she yawned and wanted to lie down on the beds, because she had sat up late studying Birds of the World; she had gotten only four hours of sleep. Oddly, this made her feel mellow, as if she were swimming in a heated pool. She had never before stayed up so late just because she wanted to. Always before, Frederick had wanted her to go to bed when he did, although not usually for any enjoyable purpose.

  Because Sassy had stayed up late in disobedience to her training, she felt druggy and free. When she should have been fetching towels, she stood looking over the balcony, watching the mirrors on the far side of the atrium and promising herself a small pair of binoculars when she got her next paycheck. If she got it. “Whatcha doing, Sassy?” another maid wanted to know.

  “Bird-watching.”

  The woman gave her an odd look and hurried off. Sassy laughed. She actually laughed out loud. That hadn’t happened in a while.

  She had already identified many of the birds she had seen the day before: a magpie, a quetzel, a great blue heron, a frog-mouth, a hoopoe. The names of the birds in her books amused Sassy as much as anything else that was happening: ouzel, brant, limpkin, crake, dowitcher, willet, whimbrel, widgeon, quank. She couldn’t wait until she spotted a quank. Racquel was right; she was obsessed. She was going to get her own Peterson, all the Petersons, and record the species she saw on the Systematic Checklist. She was going to join an ornithology club. Her life was a huge joke.

  Rats. She had to go to the bathroom.

  The Sylvan Tower rest rooms were ultra clean, and Sassy had read somewhere that there were a bazillion more germs on the average dishcloth than on the average toilet seat, but she couldn’t help herself; she checked for toilet paper and spread some on the seat, as trained. As she sat, a large pair of ebony feet in strappy gold-stone heels walked into the stall next to hers.

  “Hi, Racquel,” Sassy called. One of the differences between men and women, she understood from her sociological reading, was that men wouldn’t dream of talking to the man squatting in the next booth in the rest room. Too bad for men. In Sassy’s experience, some of life’s best conversations took place in the shared yet separated intimacy of the john. The stall walls made the place like a confessional, bringing forth confidences, secrets.

  “Sassy?” Racquel seemed to be taking some time to get her panty hose down. Struggling with the damn things.

  “Right.”

  “Hey, woman.” Racquel’s throaty voice wafted warm and comfortable to Sassy as she turned and assumed the customary straddle position. The odor of her bared privates wafted similarly. “How’s it hangin’?”

  That meant how was it going, Sassy guessed. “Better.” Until she said it, Sassy didn’t know this was the case. Up until then, when people had asked her how she was, she had said in tepid tones, “Okay.”

  Racquel said, “Hey, that’s good. Is it that your mother’s better, or your love life is better, or you’ve figured out some way to kick Frederick’s lying ass?”

  Sassy laughed. “My mother’s the same, nobody loves me, and Frederick is living it up with his Binky-poo. I don’t know why—I just feel better.”

  “Nobody loves you?”

  “Not really.” Obviously Frederick didn’t. “We never had kids.” Maybe things would have been different somehow if they had had kids. But that was an old, old heartache. Let it alone. “My brothers don’t call me from one year to the next. My mother doesn’t even know who I am.”

  “God, that’s a pisser.”

  Much surprised at herself, Sassy laughed again, because, by the sound emanating from the next stall, pissing was what Racquel was doing.

  “Literally,” Sassy said.

  “Damn straight.” Apparently, Racquel didn’t get it. “But don’t you have friends?”

  Sassy thought about it. “All the people Frederick and I saw were couples,” she said slowly. “I thought they were friends.”

  But apparently they had been more of a social convenience. Now that she wasn’t the female half of a couple anymore, she didn’t hear from them.

  Racquel seemed to understand. “Bummer,” she said.

  And Sassy laughed yet some more.

  Her brittle happiness lasted until she got herself together, exited the stall and reached the sink, where a mirror confronted her.

  Oh Lord.

  She had tried to reason with herself: it wasn’t like seeing a cute little blue parakeet in the mirror was life-threatening. It wasn’t even a terrible inconvenience. Not for her. It had been years since she had bothered to fuss with makeup, and her hair just lay there no matter what she did with it. On a scale of one to ten, she had told herself, her parakeet problem rated a one, maximum.

  But, oh Lord, she wanted to look in the mirror and see her own homely face. Even though she’d never particularly liked it, she wanted it now; with irrational intensity she yearned for her own reflection. She had lost her mother, her marriage, her home, her dreams—had she lost her self too?

  “Panty hose must have been invented by a man.” Racquel emerged from her stall, twitching at the irksome waistband under her emerald dress, resplendent under a green-gold peacock boa. Looming on spike heels, Racquel strode over to wash her hands.

  With relief Sassy focused on Racquel’s reflection, concerning which Birds of the World had set her straight. “You’re not a toucan after all,” she told Racquel. “You’re a hornbill.”

  “Huh?” Washing her hands, Racquel did not look up.

  “You’re a hornbill.” Sassy knew she sounded inane at best and more likely insane, but she didn’t care. If she was going to be a bird, she’d be a bird. It occurred to her only belatedly that Racquel might be offended by being called a hornbill, and she amended hastily, “Hornbills are much classier than toucans.” If you considered projectile pooping classy. Which it was, in a way; it kept the nest clean. Hornbills nested in tree hollows and were therefore upper-crust birds. Sassy truly admired Racquel’s reflection, a turkey-sized, boldly marked black-and-white bird with a long, heavy down-curved beak, a rather disheveled golden crest, patches of bright red bare skin around its golden eyes, and brilliant cobalt-blue neck wattles. It was a barbaric-looking fowl, yet rendered appealing by long, thickly curling black eyelashes that would have been a credit to any mascara ad. The trademark bill was mostly black, surmounted by an enormous decorative extrusion called a casque—

  Sassy caught a quick, astonished breath, her glance darting to Racquel to Racquel’s reflection then back again. “Your bird is male,” Sassy blurted.

  Racquel froze over the sink with the soap still on her hands. Racquel’s face went—not pale, certainly, but a different shade of dark. Gray. Slowly she turned her handsome head to stare at Sassy.

  “Male,” Sassy babbled. “Your, uh, your bird.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Racquel spun away, wiped her soapy hands on a paper towel with shaky haste, and strode out.

  “Oh, just great,” Sassy whispered to herself. Now Racquel was mad.

  But—great, that was the one, the Great Madagascar Horn-bill. Sassy distinctly remembered from Birds of the World—

  Sassy returned to work with a mind even more preoccupied than before. During her next break, she trotted out to her car and checked the hefty book she had left on her passenger seat. Yes. The casque of the Great Madagascar Hornbill was unmistakably characteristic of the male.

  Male. Racquel’s reflection was male.

  Bird-watching in mirrors for the rest of the day, Sassy focused on gender. Her own little mirrored parakeet was female, she knew—it had a cute pink cere (the leathery part above the beak where the nostrils were) just like the books said it was supposed to. When a woman in red walked by, the cardinal flapping in the mirror beside her was female, a subtle pinkish olive color. When the boss man Sassy knew to be self-deluded loitered on the mezzanine, the lyrebird loitering in the mirror was definitely male. Some species you couldn’t tell, the males and the
females looked the same—but otherwise, Sassy saw, all the men had male birds and all the women had female ones.

  Except Racquel.

  Well. Goodness.

  Sassy contemplated Racquel. Tall. Handsome. Straight shoulders. Deepish voice. Large, strictly conical breasts that never seemed to bounce. Always something—a scarf, a high ruffled collar, a feather boa—concealing the Adam’s apple area of the neck.

  Good gravy.

  “I feel awful,” Sassy told the maid she was working with at the time.

  “You do? Why?”

  “I found out something I’m not supposed to know.”

  “Oh, really?” The woman turned to her with beady-eyed interest.

  Sassy knew at once that it had been a mistake to say a word. This maid was a catbird. Meow, meow. Sassy turned away and scrubbed hard at a brass ashtray to keep herself from saying any more. But she did feel awful, her chest clotted with a churning cakemix of emotions, mad sad I’ve-been-had, and she badly wanted to talk to somebody she could trust.

  Not Racquel. Lord. She felt hurt remembering that she and Racquel had sipped cappuccino and talked like friends. She felt queasy just thinking about Racquel sitting in the bathroom stall next to her—sitting, mind you—and peeing. The last person on earth she ever wanted to see again was Racquel. Well, put Racquel second in line after Frederick.