Here's a sampling of what I've been up to lately.
CONVERSATIONS WITH RAY
by Jean Marie Cousins
1.
"Are you going to eat that?"
Amy Catterson lowered her book and looked around. Her bench was empty, save for her and the large black bird perched on the opposite end, a black hole in a galaxy of pigeons sprinkling the square like so much space dust. They outnumbered the lunchtime stragglers at least a dozen to one. Across the fountain a man in rolled up shirtsleeves loosened his tie, stretched his neck and blew a geyser of cigarette smoke up at the sky. Some people clad in business casual trickled out of the diners and coffee shops on their way back to the daily grind. None of them had spoken to her. None of them even seemed to notice her. Not that they ever did.
Half a block down, a panhandler held out his hand to a man wearing the official Casual Friday uniform of Polo and Dockers. Nothing casual about the way the guy hurried away from the homeless man, though. It must have been him that she heard asking for food. Half a block down and she'd heard him plain as day, as though he were sitting right next to her. Weird.
Amy gnawed her bottom lip and flipped a page in her book. It wasn't really that weird, she supposed. In a movie theater halfway across town, one of the huge ones where she could go by herself and not stand out too much, there was one seat in which you could hear every conversation going on in the theater as clearly as if it were happening right beside you. It was her favorite seat, at least until the movie started. Just a few blocks down, too, was a spot where you could stand and speak, and to your own ears it sounded like you were talking into a tin can. To everybody else, meanwhile, your voice sounded perfectly normal. An acoustical anomaly, they called it. That's all it was. An anomaly. Satisfied, Amy scooted down a few inches on her bench so that it wouldn't bother her again. She just wanted to read in peace.
That was why she always took her lunch late, to avoid the usual workaday crowd. She liked the sound the fountain made without a multitude of voices drowning it in chit chat. She also liked the way the sun cleared all the buildings to shine down on the square, filtering through the dogwood trees and Japanese maples that lined the sidewalks to create a dappled, lazy afternoon effect that Amy found relaxing. It smelled fresh here, too, and sounded quiet, almost quiet enough to convince her for an hour that she was out in the countryside and not in the middle of the smog-and-noise-polluted city.
It was a perfect place to sit and read and escape. She'd discovered it about two years ago, a week after starting her internal auditing job, her first real corporate job in her first real corporate downtown setting. Every day at one o'clock, weather permitting, she would take her book and her homemade sandwich (or sometimes soup) and walk three blocks to this very bench to eat and read and pretend that she didn't spend the bulk of her days poring over policy and procedure manuals.
A rustling of feathers at the other end of the bench drew her attention away from her book. "I asked if you're going to eat that."
Amy blinked at the black bird. It had hopped down from the arm of the bench to the seat, and was eyeballing the half of sandwich beside her that she had yet to eat. It sounded for all the world like the question had come from the bird. Amy snerked at the idea and looked around. There was nobody here but the pigeons. And the man across the fountain, still working on his cigarette.
On the bench, the bird puffed up its chest and deflated slowly as though heaving a weary sigh. Then it looked at her. It looked right at her, blinking up at her with its beady little black bird eyes. "Look, don't mean to be pushy," it seemed to say. The voice she heard was male, with a distinct lower class London accent. "It's just that I've flown so far, and I'm bloody exhausted. And I'm hungry enough to make a go at one of those pigeons. Wouldn't consider that cannibalism. Bloody rats with wings, they are. Filthy bastards."
"Um," said Amy. Then she looked over at the smoking man across the fountain, and got it.
Ha ha, she thought, her inner voice dripping with irate sarcasm.
It is to laugh. As a rule, she didn't talk to people. Not to strangers, not outside of a business setting. Usually, she couldn't think of anything to say, and when she could, she doubted they really wanted to hear it. But the rule sometimes warranted exceptions, and this was one of those times. One in which she had plenty to say, and he had it coming, whether he wanted to hear it or not. She wouldn't be taken for a fool.
"That's a neat trick," Amy called, careful to keep her voice cordial. Her job gave her a lot of practice at staying cordial in the face of irritation.
He took his cigarette out of his mouth and looked around to see who had spoken. Finally his gaze settled on her. "What?" he called back. He didn't sound English. He sounded straight up Sooner born and Sooner bred. He hadn't even bothered to polish the twang out of his voice like most of the other overeducated and corporatized natives around here. Must be part of his act.
"How'd you learn to do that? Throw your voice like that, I mean." He stared at her like she'd started speaking in tongues. "And with a cigarette in your mouth, too. That's impressive."
The man stared at her a moment more. Then he dropped his cigarette on the ground, crushed it under his shoe, and headed back to wherever he belonged. Amy allowed herself a small smirk as she went back to her book, glad to have that nonsense over with and also proud of the way she'd handled it. He'd mistaken her for just another pigeon, but she'd set him straight. He'd have to find another mark on which to practice his act. She reached for her sandwich and got a peck on the back of her hand.
"Hey!" She jerked her hand away and rubbed it, glaring at the bird. It had helped itself to the rest of her lunch while she'd been distracted. She waved her arms at it. "Shoo!"
The bird swallowed a beakful of tuna and looked up at her. "Well that's what you get, innit? I tried asking, didn't I? You're going to be so rude as to ignore me, I'm not going to be so courteous as to ask again."
Amy slowly lowered her arms to her lap. She stared as the bird pecked ravenously at the remains of her sandwich. Eventually she realized that her mouth gaped open, and with a certain amount of effort she managed to shut it. Then she opened it again to say, "Huh."
"What?" the bird--there was nobody it could be but the bird--mumbled, its beak full. "Don't tell me you've never heard of a talking bird."
"Of course I have," snapped Amy. The bird's voice held a certain tone that rankled her out of her shock. She didn't like being condescended to, not even by figments of her imagination. "When I was a little girl I had a budgie that said 'pretty bird' every time it saw a mirror."
The bird snorted. "Hardly the same thing, is it?"
"No. I guess not." Amy bit her lip and thought hard, grasping for a precedent that meant she wasn't losing her mind. "African Grays," she said at last. "I saw a nature special about them once. They're really intelligent. They can even count."
"Pfft. Pea brains, the lot of 'em. Here, I can count. Watch me count pigeons." It seemed to point with its beak as it said, "One pigeon, two pigeons, three pigeons, four pigeons, five fucking
billion pigeons, the whole lot of which ought to be exterminated, and I'm already bored with this." It took another bite of her sandwich.
Amy stared and watched it eat. Finally she said, "I don't see how your brain could be much bigger."
"Not bigger," mumbled the bird around a piece of bread crust. "Just more evolved."
"Right." Amy stared some more. Then she looked away from the bird and rubbed her forehead. "Am I really sitting here having a conversation with a crow?"
The bird sputtered, nearly choking on its crust. "Excuse me? A
crow? A ruddy corn-fed slack-jaw, is that what you take me for?"
"Sorry," said Amy, feeling genuinely bad for hurting the little thing's feelings. Then she remembered the absurdity of the situation and got over it. "So then, what are you?"
With a sigh, the bird abandoned her sandwich and flitted up to perch on the back of the bench. It strutted back and forth as it spoke. "Note the large, regal stature, if you will. The proud black beak. The tuft of feathers atop my head that resembles the royal crown. I, madam, am nothing less than a pure bred raven. Royal stock, I might add."
"Oh." Amy nodded. "Good for you."
"Bloody right," it said, then muttered, "Crow." It shook its head. "So now we've established that, I s'pose it's not such a shock, me talking to you and all."
Amy offered a nervous giggle, and then looked down at her lap. "It's not a shock," she said. "I can't be shocked by something that's not real. I've obviously fallen asleep and started dreaming. I should probably wake myself up and go back to work." She waited a moment before poking herself in the arm. "Wake up, Amy!"
But the bird kept talking. "Oh, come on! Surely you've read tale of talking ravens. We're all over your literature."
"I have," she admitted. "In stories. Fantasies.
Fiction."
The bird harrumphed. "You calling the Bible a work of fiction?"
Amy narrowed her eyes. "I haven't decided yet. There are talking crows in the Bible?"
"
Ravens. Sure there are. Ecclesiastes ten verse twenty: 'For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.' Had to be talking about a raven. Couldn't be nothing else."
"Right." Amy nodded like she always did when people quoted scripture at her.
"'Course, it also has a talking bush and a talking ass, but those are both actually God. They don't count."
"Right," she said again. Then a very frightening thought occurred to her. She leaned closer to the bird and asked, confidentially, "So, you're not, you know...
God, are you?"
"Well that's flattering, innit? But my ego's not quite huge enough to let me answer in the affirmative."
She leaned away again, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. "Are you the devil?"
The raven cocked its head to one side. Amy could swear she saw a mischievous glint in its eyes. "Would I admit it if I was? Much more fun to keep you guessing, I'd think."
"Oh God." Amy put her face in her hands.
"Already established you're wrong on that count."
"Shut up! Oh God. Am I losing my mind?"
"I'm no Sigmund Freud, neither," said the bird, "so I wouldn't know. But I'm not God, and I'm not the devil, and I'm not some voice in your head. I'm just me. Not my fault none of my brethren ever saw fit to open their beaks around you before."
Amy let this sink in, trying to draw comfort from it. She lowered her hands and looked at the bird. "So you're telling me that ravens really talk?
All of them?"
"Not
all. Got a cousin never picked up the knack, but we don't talk about him in mixed company."
"So ravens talk," repeated Amy. "
And they're literate, apparently."
"Yeah. Being raised mostly in cathedrals and libraries, that was bound to happen. I'm a library bird, m'self. Though my great-grandfather was bred at the Tower."
"The tower?"
"Yeah. Tower of London?"
"Okay." Amy nodded. Then she clutched her book and stood up. "Well. It's been, um... it's been a real experience. But I've got to get back to work." Nice, safe work, where normalcy ruled and the only talking animals were of the human jackass variety.
"'Course," said the bird. "Thanks for the grub. Don't suppose you'll be back tomorrow with another? I'm quite fond of cucumber."
She would. She always came here. But she shouldn't tell him that. She should hope he'd fly away and she'd never have to think about talking birds again. "Cucumber," she said instead. "Got it."
"Ta," said the raven. "See you then."
"Yeah. See you." As she walked back to her office, Amy mourned the loss of her routine. She was going to have to find somewhere else to take her lunch.
