The Prettiest Feathers

by John Philpin

  But I could also see that my hands were moving the blade of the knife—unfolding it and locking it open.

  Mother grabbed me from behind, of course, before I could bring the blade down into the flesh of his neck. But I had drawn the blood that trickled down the wall, the blood that seeped into the fabric of his overstuffed chair, the blood that pooled on the pine floor. There was another beating. He called the police. And I had my first encounter with the mental health industry.

  A large woman wearing thick glasses said, “Your parents told me what happened. I’d like to hear your side of things.”

  I think the chair was made of real leather, and there was a hump in the middle of the seat. Each time I hoisted myself up, I slid forward again. I had to grip the arms to hold myself in place.

  “This isn’t comfortable,” I said.

  “Some things are hard to talk about,” she said, nodding.

  “The chair,” I muttered.

  “What were you going to do with that knife?” she asked.

  “Kill him,” I said.

  “But why?”

  “I couldn’t very well kill her.”

  They all agreed that I should be put away somewhere.

  The state had places for people like me. I was no good. I would hurt somebody someday.

  They were right.

  I left the subway at Houston and walked to Emily and Others. I wanted to approach the place on foot, get a feel for the neighborhood, and to avoid the unofficial parking attendant I had encountered on my first visit.

  Emily and Others is in a demilitarized zone that’s surrounded by Puerto Ricans, blacks, elderly Jews, and poor, white Irish. I walked the length of the street resisting the urge to cover my nose and mouth with a handkerchief against the stench of waste, and all the dust that hadn’t yet settled from last night’s wars.

  I made the brass bell ring, then walked to the New Directions shelf and found a copy of Rimbaud’s Drunken Boat, the Varèse translation.

  “Emily isn’t here,” Sarah said from behind me. “She’s at lunch with the others.”

  Today she wore a navy skirt with a white blouse that was open at her throat. There was color in her face and definite humor in her voice.

  “That brings us directly to why I’m here,” I said.

  “Which? Emily, lunch, or the others?”

  “You,” I said, and smiled my most engaging smile.

  “I think we better start over.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather have lunch? We could start over with a Caesar salad and some iced tea.”

  “I can’t,” she said, looking genuinely disappointed. “There’s a girl who usually covers for me, but she isn’t here today. Harry, the owner, doesn’t like the place to be closed.”

  “What about after work? We could go for coffee.”

  She hesitated.

  “My name may be Wolf,” I said, “but I’m not one.”

  Sarah smiled. “There’s a little place down the block. I get off at five.”

  “Five is fine,” I said. “But I’d like to choose the place, if you don’t mind. I’m very particular about my coffee.”

  Again she hesitated, then finally shrugged. “I always thought coffee was coffee, but sure.”

  I bought the Rimbaud and left.

  Five hours later Sarah was waiting for me outside the bookstore when I pulled to the curb. The ebony guardian of the bricks was in place, hiding behind hooded eyes. I detest complications, and that particular piece of human debris had made himself one.

  “Where are we going?” Sarah asked as she got into my car.

  “Uptown,” I said. “There’s a place I like called Fast Eddie’s.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  Fast Eddie’s may not be well known, but Eddie takes pride in his coffee and dessert menu. The name is derived from Eddie’s having seen The Hustler too many times.

  After settling down at the table Eddie had saved for us in a quiet corner, I recommended that Sarah try my favorite blend—half Colombian supreme, half French roast—with a piece of Eddie’s cheesecake.

  “But I haven’t had dinner,” she said.

  “Who ever said we have to eat our food in a certain order?” I asked. “Rules are made to be broken.”

  She laughed. I looked at her hairline, forehead, eyebrows, the bridge of her nose, her eyes, her mouth—so that her face would become a picture in my mind, one I could conjure up at any time. And, of course, there was the uncorrupted scent of her soap. Finally, I had her to hold for as long as I wished.

  “Who are you really?” she asked.

  “I grew up on the coast of Maine, preacher’s kid. Went to college in the Boston area, made a few decent business deals in the seventies, a few better ones in the gluttonous eighties, and now I can afford to indulge my passion for literature, music, and excellent coffee. What about you?”

  Sarah frowned. “I wouldn’t know where to start. I went to college for a while, but it was kind of a waste.”

  She was struggling. I didn’t want that, but it did give me an opportunity to accomplish one of the purposes of the trip. I reached out and covered her hand with mine.

  “We can share biographies another time,” I said. “Try the coffee.”

  I didn’t let the moment drag on, become awkward. It’s always enough for me to touch a woman’s hand for just an instant. I learn what I need to know, and move on.

  “This is good,” she said.

  “Coffee isn’t just coffee.”

  “No. I mean, I know.”

  How pathetically pliant she was, instantly becoming whatever she thought I wished her to be.

  We talked about the bookstore, the man named Harry who owned it, the types of customers it served, the fact that she loved to read but never did at work. It was enough for a beginning.

  When I drove her home I accomplished the second goal of my mission: to find out where she lives. Sarah rents the upstairs apartment in a brick duplex opposite a small park on the west side of the city.

  In The Hustler, Piper Laurie is the foil for all the male posturing. She lives in a walk-up flat, reads serious books, but can’t stay sober. She walks with a limp.

  Sarah reminds me of Piper Laurie. She doesn’t walk with a limp, she thinks with one. When I dropped her off, I told her that I would see her again. She thanked me, nodded, and smiled—but looked preoccupied. I half expected her to limp up the front steps.

  Sarah

  Everything fell into place. My car was in the shop for an oil change. I’d taken the train to work, so when John Wolf said he’d pick me up, it was perfect. I ran upstairs to the massage parlor and borrowed a blazer from Sheila, the woman who worked up there. She was reluctant to part with it—she’d just gotten it back from the cleaners—but when I explained about my date, she understood right away.

  I took John’s invitation as an omen. A sign. The notion of predestination appeals to me. But my feelings for him seemed to shift by the moment. I ricocheted from fear to fearsome attraction, and back again. That’s why, when we left Fast Eddie’s, I directed him away from the street where I lived, to one nearby. I pointed to a house that had been converted into a duplex, with a wooden stairway built onto its side—leading to an upstairs door that must have once opened onto a sun porch.

  John’s good breeding was evident in his manners. He insisted on seeing me to my door, but I was just as determined to say our good-byes right there, in the car. When I got out, he remained at the curb, watching me make my way up the steps. At the top, I turned and waved—and was relieved to see him pull away. If he had stayed, I would have had to invent some story about having lost my keys.

  I paused before starting back down the steps. I wanted to make certain that he was truly gone. It was then that the apartment door behind me opened and an elderly woman asked what I wanted.

  I turned and smiled. “Hello,” I said. “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. You know—the Watchtower people?”

  She slammed the door.
r />   The house where I live is comfortable: a century old this year. My parents used to live here, and so did I, as a child. I left when I married Robert, and did not return until both Mother and Father were gone and the will had traveled through probate. By then my divorce was final, but incomplete. Robert kept inventing reasons to see me. One day after he had stopped by, I found his jacket on a chair. That was the beginning of his moving back in. His clothing accumulated over time, with the whole process taking less than a month. I didn’t even realize it was happening until it was complete.

  I gave him a room that we considered “his.” It used to be the only bedroom on the first floor. By building shelves along three walls, we turned it into a place where he could keep all his guns and magazines. He had a telephone in there, too, because he never knew when he’d get a call and have to leave. Robert was (and is) a cop. Homicide.

  He used to spend a lot of time in his room, reading or working on his reports. There were whole days when he wasn’t in the house at all. Cops don’t live like real people; sometimes they work around the clock and into the following day.

  My reunion with Robert turned out to be as pointless as our marriage. Although there was nothing like love between us, I did like having him in the house. I didn’t want to be in the same room with him, but a room away was fine. I felt safer with him there. He was the only continuing thread in my life, the only person who had ever seemed reluctant to be without me. But then one day I went out to run some errands. When I returned, I noticed that Robert’s house key was lying on the kitchen counter. That struck me as odd because I knew that he kept it on a chain with all his other keys.

  Then I went into the bathroom—his toothbrush was missing from the holder on the wall. I knew then that he had returned to Lane. I pitied her; I hated him.

  Robert’s parents are dead. His sister died in a car accident when they were children. Even his best friend took a bullet in the heart two days before his thirtieth birthday. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when, one drunken night, he turned to me and said, “I’m going to walk in here sometime and find you dead.”

  Toward the end of our time together, I was afraid to be alone in the house with Robert. There seemed to be violence boiling beneath the carpet—bubbling from room to room, following us wherever we stepped. Sometimes when I walked toward him, to hand him his mail or a can of beer, I expected there to be an explosion, sudden and thorough. Armageddon. But there was nothing, not even shouting.

  Now it is John Wolf that I fear, but in a different way.

  That night, after our coffee date, I found it impossible to sleep. His face was right there in front of me, even when my eyes were closed. His hands and his lips were everywhere, reminding me of all those things about my body that I had worked so long and so hard to forget.

  I hated him. I never wanted to see him again. Yet, the next day, I opened the phone book, looking for his number.

  Luckily, I didn’t find it.

  I was safe again.

  John

  Sarah lied.

  This morning I sat at my computer and accessed city records. Helen Zane, eighty-three, owns and resides upstairs in the building where I dropped Sarah off. She rents the lower floor to a local school for storage of old records. All the taxes and fees due the city from Mrs. Zane, are paid.

  Curious. Sarah doesn’t want me to know where she lives. No doubt she is afraid. But she’s not afraid of John Wolf. She fears something inside herself that has been awakened by his arrival in her life—some wanted, yet unwanted, excitement that disturbs the familiarity and comfort of her tedium. The details really don’t matter. She can share those with her shrink in the time she has left.

  Her routine is to drive to Emily and Others, then home. On Thursday, I followed her to Dr. Street’s office. Fifty minutes. Then she stopped at a grocery for a few items. Then home. Friday she was back on schedule.

  This voyeuristic toying with the life of another isn’t essential. But it is enjoyable. Sarah requires every ounce of skill I possess. I wouldn’t have been ready for her earlier in my career. She’s so cautious, so repressed, she seems only half alive. I want to see her fully alive before I make her fully dead.

  Via the computer, I learned that if she owned or rented property, it wasn’t in the name of Sarah Sinclair. I decided that she wouldn’t have inconvenienced herself by having me drop her too far from where she lives. So I checked a map, examined the area within five blocks of the good Mrs. Zane, and returned to city listings.

  Four blocks to the west I discovered a telephone listing for a gentleman named Robert Sinclair.

  I called. Four rings, then the tape began: “Hi, I can’t come to the phone right now …” I hung up. It was her voice.

  Sarah is no longer married. She just didn’t bother to change her name after the divorce. The building is owned by Sarah Farnum. All taxes and fees due the city have been paid.

  Court records revealed that a Sarah Farnum and a Robert Sinclair were married and divorced. She inherited the house from her parents. From the taxes she pays, and the car she drives, it’s clear that the bookstore isn’t her only source of income. Mom and Dad have been good to daughter Sarah.

  I don’t know why I checked for birth records, but I did. On October 11, 1987, Robert and Sarah Sinclair became the proud parents of a baby girl. Is the daughter why Sarah doesn’t want to bring a man home?

  Bank files are more difficult to access, but far from impossible. Sarah receives a quarterly check from a moderate-size trust account. She isn’t wealthy, but she isn’t poor.

  Even though I was able to obtain his date of birth from the marriage license, Robert Sinclair proved to be more elusive than Sarah. It’s as if he doesn’t want anyone to know who, or where, he is. But I need to know everything about this man. He is connected to Sarah, therefore he is relevant.

  Another reason why I must know the who, what, why, when, and where of Robert Sinclair has to do with survival. I need to protect myself. City records show seven different firearm registrations in his name. Perhaps he was the cop in Sarah’s life.

  I intend to learn every detail of her wretched little life, even the peripheral ones like discarded husbands. Only by knowing her will I be able to refine my technique enough to elevate it from mere workmanship to craftsmanship. I want this one to be a masterpiece. My defining work.

  Once, years ago, I walked through the business district of a city with a young woman who had picked me up in a bar. I had been sipping an early evening beer when she approached me and said, “You seem preoccupied.”

  She was a nursing student whose home was a farm in Vermont. She was flawed, as so many of the early ones were—speaking with self-assurance about things she didn’t understand.

  The bar was a college hangout, a place for pairing off. “Want to talk about what’s bothering you?” she asked.

  “Nothing bothers me,” I said.

  “Then what are you thinking about?”

  “Taking a walk,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “Downtown.”

  “Okay,” she said, and swallowed down half her drink.

  As we walked, we exchanged the usual pleasantries—what she did, what I was doing. It was all very mechanical.

  “You seem so cold,” she said.

  I shrugged.

  “Don’t you like people? Don’t you like meeting new people?”

  “I can take it or leave it.” I stopped walking. “Come here,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because we all love the sea.”

  “What?”

  “Because I want to kiss you.”

  “Why?”

  “Would you rather I stand under your balcony and recite poetry?” I asked.

  “I don’t have a balcony.”

  “And I don’t have any poetry. But maybe I could climb a tree and sit outside your fourth-floor window and read from the phone book.”

  “How do you know I live on the fourth floor?”


  “I’m psychic,” I said.

  She believed me, but, in truth, I’d been following her to her classes for several days. I had memorized her schedule, sifted through her mail in the foyer of her dorm, and opened enough of her letters to learn that she was from Vermont. She never knew that I had seen her in the bar many times before, ordering the same drink, using the same line with other young men who were sitting alone.

  She moved closer, pushing herself against me. “Why do you want to kiss me?”

  “I like to kiss attractive women,” I said.

  “You’re supposed to say, ‘Because you’re you.’ That’s the right answer.”

  “You failed to include me in the riddle.”

  I did hold her. I did do that. But no act of mine is without meaning. There is always a next event to illuminate the first, and to lend direction to the one that follows.

  “Let’s walk,” she said, and took my hand, tugging me along with her.

  We talked about our classes (hers in nursing, mine in premed), about home, about what it was like for us as kids.

  “I want to know who you are,” she said. “What you care about, what you want out of life.”

  “Nothing,” I said. “It’s getting cold. There’s some wind.”

  “Have you ever been in love?” she asked.

  “Have you seen the swallows?” I asked, ignoring her.

  “Swallows?”

  “Up among the buildings along Washington Street. You can still hear them and see them, even at dusk.”

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  As we turned the corner, entering a street of shadows, she stopped walking. “Do you hear them? The swallows,” she asked.

  I listened to the swarm of small birds, their chatter of “Quick, quick, quick,” their occasional higher-pitched notes of anxiety.