Peregrine

by William Bayer

  WHEN I DO I SHALL PRETEND IT’S YOURS. PEREGRINE

  She was sweating wildly as she climbed the stairs, felt sticky as she unlocked her door. She didn’t call Jay; she called Janek instead. Then she sat down on her couch and read the note again.

  She didn’t feel like sex anymore, or even thinking about Carl.

  Her home mailbox—this time she was scared.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Halloween, a balmy, almost sultry October thirty-first. Something wild in the air—”Peregrine fever” they called it on Channel 8. Hollander tuned into the news at six o’clock, watched Pam Barrett announce that the police were deluged with reports of bird attacks.

  She looked worried, as well she should, he thought, now that she’d received his note. She hadn’t announced it, probably afraid to cause a panic, but he liked the look of her when she was riled and disturbed, an edgy skittish look. “Just pranks,” she said of the calls to the police; “the falcon has always attacked out of the sun.” Hollander nodded; he was going to break that pattern, attack this evening out of the night.

  As soon as it was dark, he went out to take a preliminary look. He must be careful. Peregrine wasn’t as strong as she’d been before. She’d recovered from her wounds, but her new feathers, the ones he’d imped in, weren’t as perfect as the old. There was some question whether she could fly as true and strongly as she had, but he had to try her, give her exercise, fulfill his prophecy, keep his promise to Pambird.

  He paused out on the street, decided to walk west to Times Square, as much attracted as repelled by its flashing neon signs, its cavernous cafeterias filled with old men, its oversized billboards advertising jeans stretched tight across rear ends.

  As he walked up Seventh Avenue, then back down Broadway, he saw evidence of “Peregrine fever,” a ghoulishness that pleased him, Gotham reflecting his vision back. The hawkers were out, since the night was warm, selling bird masks to passersby.

  Some of these were elaborate, made of feathers with enormous eyes and beaks. Placed upon a person’s head, they would make him a falcon above the neck. There were cheaper models made of paper and plastic with polyester feathers that would molt as soon as the mask was worn. And there was a man selling T-shirts to women; “Bird Bait” was the slogan printed on their fronts.

  He was approached by trick-or-treating costumed “falcons.” “Aik, aik, aik,” they shrieked, thrusting out their begging bowls, howling at him with exaggerated mirth. He saw a curious incident: One vendor instructed his friends to attack the “falcons” across the street. A fistfight broke out. Bird masks were knocked askew. Feathers fell. Falcons squealed. Finally the police moved in to break it up.

  It wasn’t long before Hollander saw what he was looking for, a place to bring his bird. A movie theater on Forty-Second Street, capitalizing on Peregrine, was showing a double feature, The Maltese Falcon and Hitchcock’s The Birds. The marquee mocked his terror. It was as if everything he had done, the miracle he’d created, was turned now into trash. Commerce had invaded his masterpiece. The vendors, the trick-or-treaters, the rock-and-roll songwriters, now the film exhibitors—all were using his work of art to make themselves a buck.

  He would show them, put an end to their mockery. He hurried back to the aerie, grabbed up his orange cap and his mirrored sunglasses, and solemnly faced Peregrine. She was excited, knew she was going out to kill, but was mystified by the fact that it was night.

  “No matter,” he whispered. “No need to fear the dark. There is light where we are going, neon, colors. You will be able to see yet remain unseen.”

  He opened the triangular window, let the Indian-summer breeze blow across her face. Her eyes glistened. She was eager. She would try out her wings, test her abilities. He prodded her gently, detached her jesses from the leash. She turned back once to look at him. He nodded. She flew out.

  As he walked west again on Forty-second, he could not be sure she flew above. Would she wait-on when he stopped, or would the night air send her home confused? There was no way to know; he must trust her training. She should be flying now from building to building, always keeping him in sight.

  He walked near the streetlights so she could see his cap, and then he felt her presence, didn’t know how or why. Perhaps a shadow was broken or he heard the flutter of her wings. But that was impossible—there was no sun to create a shadow; she flew too high, too silently to be heard. No, he thought. I know by instinct. We communicate telepathically.

  Just to feel her there was enough; he was confident she would obey when he ordered her to strike.

  The night city was filled with sounds: distant sirens cut through the babble of trick-or-treaters and the clatter of traffic streaming through midtown. Streetlamps burned a sulphurous yellow. Every so often the air was pierced by shrieks. People in cars honked horns. A convertible passed, filled with revelers in masks laughing as they guzzled beer from cans. Steam belched out of cavities in the street and searchlights crisscrossed as they played upon the sky.

  As he approached the block of theaters between Broadway and Eighth, he was enraged by the degradation all around. Was this night’s revelry an omen of decline, or merely the playful outlet of people pent up all day and now released? His feelings alternated rapidly. He felt pity, and, a moment later, was filled with scorn. A gang of children masked like birds whooped toward him whirling their arms. They split into two just before they reached him, laughed at his anger, then ran on to scare someone else. An old wino in tattered clothing scoured the gutter for corn candy, which he munched. A lady in gypsy clothes walked her Dalmatian, the two of them masked like hawks.

  Standing now across the street from the movie theater, Hollander began to search for prey. The line outside was filled with revelers: young men and women in tight-fitting leather garments; old people whose mouths were thin and bitter; black youths in sneakers, their faces crazed, clicking their fingers, jive-talking, bebopping as they stood in place.

  Hollander reached into his pocket, extracted his sunglasses. He realized that with them and his orange tam-o’shanter he must appear as strange as any of the rest. He stood beneath a flashing sign (“Sex Theater-Bizarre”), tried to catch the light and reflect it upward to signal Peregrine. He tried it a few times and then he saw her. She’d misread him, thought he’d selected a quarry. She was swooping down now, heading straight for the movie line.

  A fiasco! She swept above them like a fighter plane buzzing a line of trees.

  The people in line screamed and ducked. Some fell to the sidewalk, covered up their heads. He watched, helpless, as Peregrine faltered, soared back upward into the inky sky. She had failed. For the first time, she had failed. He rushed back to the aerie feeling weak and sick at heart.

  Why had she done it, plunged without permission; even worse, faltered in her strike? He blamed himself. He was wrong to have flown her. Her feathers weren’t right, would not be right until they grew in again in spring. But when he reached the aerie, he found her waiting, her eyes full of gloom and shame. Her bloodlust had deserted her, and now she was confused. She beseeched him for an explanation: Why could she not fly as she had before? He stroked her feathers, whispered encouragement, fed her—her reward for having tried. She was slow at first to take the food, but finally she did.

  Then she ate ravenously. He watched her with delight. The warm flesh of the quails, their hot blood in her throat— though she had not killed, she ate as eagerly as if she had.

  He, unfortunately, could not forget his failure. It depressed him. It was over now—his plan to intensify his attacks. He should not have taken her out tonight, should have waited until she could fly by day. He had been too eager, had pushed Peregrine too far. And he knew that by promising a kill to Pamela Barrett, he had now made himself vulnerable to her scorn.

  Watching the falcon eat, caressing her, he considered what to do. He felt gnawed by a need to release his tension, untie the tormenting knot inside. He closed his eyes, dreamed of a kill, a swoop down,
a slam, cutting off a quarry’s wild screams. The dream excited him. He had to act. He could not let this Halloween go by.

  The girl lived above an Italian restaurant on East Fifty-first. The name beside her doorbell read “Sasha West”—not her real name, Hollander guessed, though he did not know or care.

  He’d been to her several times, though not in the past six months, had seen her advertisement in a sex magazine, where she’d offered herself as a partner in “kinky scenes.” There was something he’d liked about the sound of her voice on the phone, a hint of hysteria, a suggestion that she was fearless and enjoyed her work. When he met her the first time, he was disappointed—she was more sluttish than he’d hoped, less poised, not the career-girl type he liked. But she had gone along with his suggestions and had played her role quite well. He’d returned whenever his tension built up.

  He hadn’t seen her since he’d started flying Peregrine; in the bird, he’d found a better release. Now, as he rang her bell and waited for her to answer, he felt his tension rising again. If Peregrine would not kill for him, then he would have to do what he had done before. He rang again, impatiently. Sasha finally opened up.

  “How are you?” she said, examining him carefully. “Don’t know if I should let you in, my dear. You’ve stayed away too long.”

  Hollander smiled. He knew she liked to taunt. “Yes, divine Sasha,” he mocked her back. “It has been much too long.”

  She grinned, detached her chain lock, examined him again as he stepped inside. “Brought your bag, as usual.” She clicked her teeth. “Brought your bag of toys.”

  He nodded, smiled. “How are things?”

  “Things are more or less the same. It’s the economy that’s got me down.”

  She rambled on, confiding her difficulties: high rent, the escalating costs of food and clothes. He looked around her room, at the pairs of spiked high-heeled boots lined up against the wall, at the vinyl garments and exotic garter belts hanging neatly from hooks attached to the back of the open closet door. There was a faint smell of perfume, not cheap or overpowering, as on the prostitute in Bryant Park, but not fine or elegant either, not the sort of scent Pambird would use. He looked at Sasha. Her hair was longer, dyed a different shade of brown. She was gazing at him, curious, amused.

  “Same scene?” she asked. He nodded. “Well,” she said. “Then I guess the price will be the same.”

  He reached for his wallet. She liked to be paid in advance. He handed her a hundred-dollar bill. She kissed it. “C-note,” she whispered. Then she went into the other room to hide it, beneath a cushion, he supposed, or perhaps inside a shoe.

  He unzipped his bag, took out his equipment, spread the various items on the bed. When Sasha came back, she leaned against the wall and smoked a cigarette. He glanced at her. Hers was the look that said she had seen it all, that whatever they would do would not be strange to her, that it would be a night’s work and nothing more.

  She dimmed the lights, slowly undressed, then stood naked in the center of the room. Slowly, carefully, ritualistically, he adorned her, first kneeling to tie the jesses about her ankles, then attaching falcons’ bells to the jesses, lovingly tying them on. He added clips and a swivel, and then a leash, which he wrapped about his hand. All his ties were made with the “falconer’s knot.”

  “Kind of au courant, isn’t it?” she said. “I mean with this falcon killing people in the parks.”

  “Shhhh,” he whispered.

  She nodded. She knew better than to talk. He picked up the leather hood. She turned and knelt. He slipped it on. It covered her upper face and eyes, left her nose and mouth exposed. A plume rose from it—it was an enlarged version of the Dutch hood of falconry. He tightened the traces so the hood was secured firmly about her neck.

  More and more excited as he transformed her into a falcon, he brought out his cape and clasped it just below the neckline of the hood. This cape was made of black velour stitched with silver thread. The silver outlined feathers and wings. It was a costume he sometimes wore himself.

  When she was clothed in it, he motioned for her to stand, then stood back to admire his work. Yes—she was now his falcongirl. He felt a strong tension rising in his loins.

  He squinted at her. Pambird, he thought. Pambird could be like her. He placed his hand gently against Sasha’s cheek, lightly caressed her skin. She breathed so he could hear her, let out with soft murmurings, then sounds from deep within her throat.

  He remembered the first time he’d come to her, how he’d instructed her in the sounds he wished to hear. She hadn’t laughed, was curious and tantalized. She’d tried different sounds, and he’d corrected her. Now she knew what he wanted and hadn’t forgotten.

  Well trained, he thought with pride.

  She giggled. He knew she regarded him as harmless, that she enjoyed her clients’ strange rituals and tastes. “A way into their craziness,” she’d told him once, but her giggling annoyed him and she must have sensed that it did, for she quickly cut it off.

  He ran his finger slowly across her lips, first the lower, then the upper, then the lower again. She stood still, absolutely silent and straight as he desired. She took her instructions from his caresses. They would not speak now that they’d begun the scene. He conveyed what he wanted from her by subtle gestures, and it was her duty, he’d instructed her, to do exactly as he wished. She was more than his actress—she was his object now, his falcongirl, who must fulfill her role.

  He signaled for her to move, and she obeyed, walking slowly, artificially, back and forth across the room, stepping high with her knees, replacing her feet carefully upon the floor, moving so that the cape swayed with the motions of her body and revealed flashes of her nakedness beneath. The cape was open at the front so that as she pranced, quicker now, quicker, as he drummed out the rhythm with flicks of the leash, her pubic hair was exposed and the inner curves of her breasts. He walked beside her as she strode so she would not become tangled in the leash. The bells on her jesses tingled. They were set a tone apart. These falcons’ bells had a purpose—if she flew away, he could always find her and lure her back to his wrist.

  He stopped moving the leash and she stopped walking, froze with her feet together so that he could approach and caress her feathers and wings. His hand moved lightly upon the surface of the cape, probed it so he could stroke her chest and abdomen and pubes. She stood still through all of this, but every so often she raised her arms as if she wanted to fly. When she did this, he added pressure to his caresses, and when he did, she breathed hard and began to purl. Murmurs of pleasure arose from her. He placed his hand against her neck, felt the throb of her pulse. He stood back from her. She held her head very high. He looked at her and he was pleased.

  He made a swallowing noise and she imitated him. He came closer, touched her, felt the contraction and expansion of her throat. She hummed and he felt the vibrations of her larynx. He pulled gently at the leash. She felt the pull on her ankles and began to walk again.

  He guided her to the bed, touched her so that she would know to squat down upon it. He sat beside her, reached for her feet, felt the ridges of her toenails, the sharpness of them against his fingertips. He pushed her head down so that her buttocks were raised in the air. He unleashed her ankles, removed the swivel, pushed her legs apart so that they spread, and then pulled up her cape so that her rear was exposed and her mount was open and visible, ready to be entered if he wished.

  He studied this area of her body, touched her crevice, reached up to stroke her pubic hairs. Then he felt the long brown hair of her head that curled down from beneath her hood. He compared the thickness and textures of these adorning substances, then he undressed and closed his eyes. She no longer existed as Sasha—she was his falcon; he was her falconer. But a moment later he was no longer that. In an instant he transformed himself into a tiercel, her mate. He caressed her again, this time sensually, grasping portions of the flesh of her flanks, squeezing them gently between his fingers,
then releasing them, exploring her skin, those portions of her body that were hard and those that were soft, intimate zones, the pits of her arms and the fine silky flesh of her inner thighs.

  And always his hand brushed back and forth across her pubic hair.

  As a tiercel, he imagined himself engaging in courtship display. He flew loops for her; she followed him with her eyes as she sat upon the top branch of a tree. He spun and turned. He lured her from her branch to the cliff he had chosen for their nest. She flew after him, and then he doubled back and chased her, calling out, pleading, tempting and vexing her while she flew above, listening to his cries. She watched his movements, was attracted by the excellence of his flight. He flew out to hunt for her, killed a baby rabbit, brought back a piece of it, passed close with it so she could grab it from him with her mouth. Then, when she had eaten, she flew out to meet him in the air and they performed dazzling spirals together, aerial designs which resulted in occasional brushings of the tips of their wings. These brushings sent great vibrations coursing through his body, filling him with desire, causing his organ to harden and enlarge.

  They were both excited. Their courtship flight had aroused them to a frenzy, and now instinct told him to alight upon her, push himself upon her as he hovered above her back. He flapped his wings. His body throbbed.

  He cried out, rasped and chirped. Lost in his rapture, he drove himself into her, again and again in time to the beat, beat, beating of his wings. And she imitated his sounds. They rasped and chirped together, screamed together, and then collapsed in mutual fatigue.

  They remained like that, welded. He was still lost within her, dreaming of more courtship, more mating, more screaming and release. Then he heard her voice: “Hurry … I got another session ….” He opened his eyes. She was breaking the spell. He placed his hand over her mouth to stifle her; he wanted to remain with her on the cliffs.

  She tried to squirm away. He held her mouth shut and pushed down on her neck. She bit his hand. He felt a sharp pain. Her bite jerked him from his fantasy.