LITMIR.BIZ

      Slipping into Darkness

      SHE COULDN’T GET CLOSE ENOUGH. WHEN THEY WERE together, she had to be next to him, touching him, his hand on the back of her neck, her hand on his thigh, his eyes like fingers against her skin. When they weren’t together she was waiting.

      Her routine stayed the same. She knew Stella didn’t exactly approve of Paul. They never talked about him. She was always home before Stella got home from work. Things hadn’t seemed to change. She sewed and cooked and read her books, but most days after Stella left for work, the roar of Paul’s Panhead on the gravel, or the softer sound of his little red Opel, announced his arrival. He called her his running partner. He called her his naked angel.

      Going with Paul while he dealt had been fine, at first. They were alone – traveling, talking, telling each other versions of their lives, or often not talking. He didn’t ask the usual questions about why she’d left home, and he didn’t ask or care what she’d done to survive before he came along. He understood that whatever you did to get by didn’t have to do with who you were.

      They traveled between the same low-rent houses and apartments while he dealt. She sat on dozens of couches, stained with spilled beer and bong water, watching muted TV with Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin on the stereo. The refrigerators in these places held empty condiment containers and moldy food. Encrusted dishes sat stacked in rusted sinks. Water ran tan and metallic from the taps. After hours of sitting around talking, money and dope would change hands, and they would leave for the next place. But later, alone in the car, when he reached across the seat and rubbed her thigh and she slipped her fingers through his belt loop, there was no place else she wanted to be.

      GRAY CLOUDS HUNG low in the sky. Fall had come on overnight. Janie sat at the kitchen table waiting. Stella was at work when Paul finally rolled in the back door about noon.

      “Hey, baby. Get your stuff and come with me.”

      “Where are we going?”

      “I want you to meet Betty.” China ran around Paul sniffing at him and wagging her tail. He slipped her a dog biscuit from his pocket. Paul now kept a box of dog biscuits for China in the car so she wouldn’t bark at him so much. “Betty’s kind of like a mom to me.” Paul sat down at the kitchen table and scratched China behind her ears. “I met her kids at a bar in Seattle. I stayed with them for a couple of months when I was coming down. She’s good people.”

      “Promise to bring me home before it gets too late.”

      “When are you going to stay out all night with me?”

      “When I know.”

      “Know what?”

      “Something.”

      “What if I said move in with me – ”

      “But you didn’t and you only have a trailer that smells like socks and you said you didn’t want an old lady – ”

      “Mea culpa.”

      “Drop the Catholic talk, choirboy, I’ll go with you.” Janie grabbed a jacket and locked up.

      DRIVING THROUGH A subdivision outside of Seattle, they wound their way through looping streets with names like Elm and Pine lined with nearly identical ranch-style homes. Janie looked out the window, wondering how Paul could navigate through the maze of lookalike streets. She’d depended on freeway signs for directions and hadn’t stayed in a place long enough to know it well. Eventually he turned onto a cul-de-sac and pulled into the driveway of a house with a seagull windsock floating from the porch. Janie followed him up the steps. He knocked once, and the door opened as if someone had been watching them from the window. A wrinkled little woman in cateye glasses pulled him in and hugged him. She wore a flowered scarf over her curly white hair and orange pedal-pusher pants. She grabbed Paul’s face between her hands and pulled it down, kissing both his cheeks. Her kisses were the wet noisy kind.

      “Here’s my boy! Get in here. Who’s this you’ve brought with you?”

      “This is Janie.” He stepped aside, and the little woman grabbed Janie by the face and pulled her down to eye level. She must have been four foot eleven, tops.

      “Well, so this is the Janie I’ve been hearing about. Honey, I’m Betty. You just come on in and make yourself to home.” She planted a kiss on Janie’s cheek. She smelled like Jergens’ lotion and talcum powder. “Come on back to the kitchen. I’m right in the middle of feeding my babies.”

      This house wasn’t like the places they usually went to. It was more like the kind of house Janie daydreamed about. They stepped through a swinging door into the yellow kitchen. Cages holding at least a hundred birds lined the counter. The birds began making a racket.

      “Are you hungry, babies?” Betty said. She picked up an open can of dog food and a pair of tweezers. “Make yourself useful, Paul. Start at the other end. Show Janie how.”

      Paul picked up another can from a case by the back door. He opened it and got tweezers from a chipped mug. At the opposite end of the counter he reached inside a cage containing a solitary robin. White gauze held the bird’s wing at its side. Paul gently lifted the bird out and examined the wing. “This one been here awhile?”

      “Not too long. I had some trouble setting the wing.” Betty placed chunks of dog food in a starling’s open beak.

      Paul unwrapped the bandage and straightened the robin’s wing. He blew softly, ruffling feathers for a closer inspection. “Looks pretty good.” He rewrapped the gauze and placed the bird back in the cage.

      Betty held a small brown bird in her hands. “You have a gift with the birds, Paul. You should be using it.”

      “Now, Betty – ”

      “Don’t ‘ Now, Betty’ me.”

      Janie watched as Paul picked up the tweezers. “Can I feed one?”

      “Let me show you.” With the tweezers he positioned a chunk of dog food above the robin’s beak. The beak opened wide, and Paul dropped the food in. He handed Janie the tweezers. “You should see this place in spring.”

      Betty opened the next cage. “Every little child finds some nestling on the ground. They touch it and poke at it until the parents won’t come around, and then they don’t know what to do with it. So, they bring them here to me. Right now, I’ve got mostly sick or injured birds. Some’ll winter over. I started this place after I retired for something to do – something helpful to do. I’m busier now than when I was working.”

      Janie fed bird after bird, cleaning the tweezers between each cage. “They’re so hungry.”

      Paul

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