Bird After Bird

by Leslea Tash

He shrugged. “You want eggs?”

  “I’d love some. Can I help?”

  He handed me a bowl and threw two eggs into it so hard the shells cracked.

  “Are you mad?”

  He sighed. “Not mad. Just…feeling exposed.”

  “So you never meant for them to be read.”

  He shrugged. “I guess if it were that important to me to hide them, I wouldn’t have set them loose in the world.” He smiled and I felt like I could breathe again. “I just never dreamed it would be someone like you who’d find them.”

  “Well, I saw one on Pinterest, too.”

  “What?”

  “Online.”

  “Show me.”

  The bacon was burning now and I rescued it while he booted up his laptop. I fried the scrambled eggs quickly in the bacon grease and found plates in his cabinet while he searched the site.

  “Here, trade me,” I said, offering him a plate and taking over his computer. “I started a board called Bird After Bird and I know I pinned it there.”

  He froze mid-bite of bacon and his eyes widened as he saw the pin. “How many people have seen this?”

  “Um…” I glanced at the screen. The pin was of a collage: the main photo was the inside of Laurie’s letter, and other photos in the collage were of the bird before it was opened, and a pencil sketch of a robin inside. “Looks like 1542 pins.”

  “Is that a lot?”

  “I’m no social media expert, but I think it is.”

  He laughed.

  “You’re taking this well, anyway.”

  He shrugged. “Looks like there are more.” In a few clicks, he uncovered a dozen other pins, eventually leading back to a tumblr blog devoted to piecing the story of the birds together. He pressed his eyes closed and shut the laptop.

  “You know why I did these? Why I started?”

  I finished the last bite of my breakfast and took both our plates to his sink. “Tell me.”

  “I had an art teacher once who told me if you could fold one thousand paper cranes overnight, you’d get your wish in the morning. Or maybe she said you could do it over the course of a year, I don’t know. I liked the lesson, though. I never forgot.”

  “I get it,” I said.

  “Do you?”

  “You were wishing for Sylvia.”

  He smiled, put the laptop down, and stood to take me in his arms. “I was wishing for something.” He kissed me, and I knew deep down in my soul that we’d been wishing for the same things.

  “Laurie, when I connected the dots between you and those letters, they only made me love you more. You know that? I bet you didn’t know this, either—we have the same name.”

  “Yeah, you’re a wren and I’m a Byrd,” he said.

  “More than that. My dad used to call me Birdy. He called me Princess Birdzilla and a whole lot of other nicknames. So when I read those letters, in a way I couldn’t help but put myself in your shoes. They did, in a way, feel like something I could have written. It wasn’t my loss, but it was a loss I could feel, deeply.”

  He held me tighter. “Touch me,” he said. He drew my hands to his chest, and then placed them beneath his shirt.

  I slipped my hands around to his back, and when it warmed, I moved on to his chest. He pulled his shirt off and took both my hands in his as he pressed them against his heart. “This is yours now. Do you feel it beat for you?”

  I kissed him, and he let go of my hands to pull my tee off.

  “I don’t want any secrets between us,” he said as he pulled me back into his embrace. “You fill this heart.”

  He held my face in his hands, matching his breath to my own.

  “Come with me today to art class,” he said. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Laurie

  With Hap between us, Wren and I climbed into my pickup and set out.

  I wasn’t sure how to tell her about the studio where I taught classes. I figured it was best if I just showed her. I had a Sunday night painting class, and it wouldn’t hurt to get there a few hours early to set up.

  When I unlocked the space, Wren’s eyes lit up. “Is this where you teach?” Her voice had jumped an octave, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Yeah, this is the place. You want a lesson?”

  She reached for an old soup can we’d recycled as a paint brush cup, and rattled the brushes inside. She chose a brush, then used it to trace a path up my arm, skipping my shirt sleeve and reconnecting with my neck.

  “That brush better be clean,” I said.

  “Let’s paint each other.”

  I laughed. “Okay.” I pulled off my shirt and Wren’s smile went into megawatt mode. You could light all of Indiana with that glow.

  “How much time do we have until your class?”

  “Enough,” I said, reaching for her shirt and lifting it over her head. If there was any sight I loved more than those beautiful freckled breasts of hers, it was a short list. A list that included her eyes, her lips, her smile, her crinkled nose…

  Hap sighed and plopped into a dog bed in the corner of the room.

  “You bring him everywhere, don’t you?”

  “Usually.” I took a brush from her can and started tracing it on her skin like she had mine. “You like that?”

  She giggled. “It tickles a little, but I like it.”

  “Want me to tickle you some more?” I kissed her. “If we paint each other, we can’t do this. It’ll ruin the art.”

  “Make it performance art, then,” she said, sighing into my ear. “I want to feel all the things with you, Laurie. Paint me.” She stepped away, holding my hands at arm’s length. “Paint me!”

  I glanced at the clock. Three hours until class. Plenty of time to get in and out of trouble before my students arrived.

  “Take off your pants,” I said, and there was something so gratifying when she complied.

  “Your turn,” she said, and I dropped trou, as well.

  “What happens if someone comes in?”

  “We’ll make a dash for the shower in the back,” I said.

  I reached into the paint cabinet and pulled out blue, orange, brown, and black. I sat them down on a table with a loud thunk.

  “Get over here, Ms. Riley.”

  I helped her onto the table. She grinned, and in a moment she became my beautiful, freckled canvas. “Take off your bra and lie down.”

  “You are so bad,” she said.

  “Me? Haven’t you ever heard of painting nudes in art class?”

  She laughed, tossing her bra aside and easing down onto the wooden table on her back. “I wasn’t an art major, but in general I think ‘painting nudes’ refers to using a nude model while you paint on a canvas.” Her voice was relaxed, playful. I considered skipping the paint altogether and just climbing atop her right there.

  “Oh, but I am using a nude model,” I said, leaning down to kiss her between her beautiful breasts, and slipping her panties off with my other hand. “This is going to be a little cold,” I warned, and then I dipped my brush in the blue paint and before Wren could recover from the kissing, I was painting her torso in vivid blue.

  “Oh! It is! It is so cold! Damn it!”

  “Don’t move, don’t move,” I laughed.

  She groaned.

  “If it’s that bad, you can go ahead and shower it off.”

  She smiled. “Naw, I’m game.”

  “You are one game bird, Ms. Wren.” I did another brush stroke and delighted both in the contrast of the blue against her creamy complexion, as well as the way she wriggled at the touch of the brush. “You’re not a wren, though.”

  “I’m not?”

  “No…no, no, no.” My brush was flying now, the texture of wings, the pattern of blues taking shape on her tummy and breasts. I didn’t paint her from the hips down—I’d only removed her underwear to keep her from getting paint on her clothes, and to see her nude again.

  “Who am I,
then?”

  “Oh, your name is Wren—and it’s a great name. I love it, really. It suits you, too. Feisty little birds, full of curiosity. Right color, too—although your hair is more red than brown.”

  She was silent, and I switched to orange paint, making tiny dabs along my painting’s mid-section.

  “No, I think you’re more like a bluebird.”

  “You ever see that Shirley Temple movie?”

  “I think so. I must have. People talk about following the bluebird of happiness, right? That’s a thing.”

  “You sure I’m not a nuthatch?” she asked.

  “No, that’s me,” I said, smiling back. I switched to brown for the shading. She was used to the temperature of the paint now, and barely flinched at the brush.

  “You’re not a nuthatch, Laurie.”

  “Oh, but I am. I’m totally upside down, very backward. But I’m okay with that.”

  She touched my arm and I stopped painting for a moment so I could kiss her.

  “But you are my beauty, you know that? I’m following you, sweet Bluebird, and we’ll see if this upside down bird can’t straighten up and fly right.”

  I switched to black and made my final touches.

  “I want to see it,” she said, trying to sit up.

  “Stay right there.” I dashed back to the cabinet and got out the studio’s Polaroid camera.

  “Oh, God,” she said, giggling. “This will be the end of my career, you know. Young upwardly mobile Chicago businesswoman in sexy Polaroid scandal.”

  I clicked the button and handed her the photo as it spit out of the camera.

  “I could sell this photo,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t dare.” She waved it in front of her face, waiting for the image to clear. I took another photo of her, just like that.

  “No, I wouldn’t. This one’s just for me.”

  Hap yawned and moaned in his sleep in the corner.

  Wren sat up, the bird crinkling and flying sideways on her belly now.

  “My turn to do you,” she said.

  “My darling,” I replied, “do me any way you want.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Wren

  Laurie let me paint him, but I chose to work on his back instead of his front.

  “C’mon. You could paint a Hairy Woodpecker on my chest,” he said.

  “Stop talking about your pecker and roll over.” I winked at him.

  He relaxed onto his arms and didn’t flinch a bit when the cold paints hit his skin. “Are you going to give me a hint?”

  “No. I want you to figure it out by touch.”

  I’m no artist. Not even close. Looking around the studio, it was clear to me how prolific Laurie was. His students’ paintings weren’t bad, but stacked against the walls on all sides, hung or displayed on easels were a lot of original works with the initials “LCB” in the corners.

  “What does the C stand for?” I asked, as I worked in white paint.

  “Cash.”

  “Laurence Cash Byrd?”

  “Yeah.”

  I said it again, loving the feeling of it on my tongue. “It’s lovely.”

  “Dad is a big fan of Johnny Cash.”

  “Mmmm.”

  “How’s it going back there?”

  I painted in grey for a moment, then yellow. “Almost finished. Just need a touch of black.” I dabbed on the finishing touches. “Now, where’s that camera?”

  “Can’t wait to see it.”

  “Did you figure out what it is?”

  He smiled, as the flash went off. “Well, I’m guessing it’s a crane. Probably a Sandhill, judging by all the grey you used.”

  “Did I use a lot of grey?”

  “Uh huh.”

  I handed him the photo. “Close.”

  “A Whooper?”

  “Yeah.”

  Hap scratched at the door to be let out, and Laurie slid of the table, careful not to expose himself as he let the dog out into the courtyard for a pit stop. “Thank God they never paved that.”

  He opened a mini fridge and produced two bottles of water. Handing me one, he said “Not bad, by the way. You ever take any classes?”

  I shrugged. “One or two in college, but nothing serious. I’m not talented like you are.” I gestured to the walls around us. “This is amazing, Laurie. You should open a shop.”

  “Well, there is a gallery in town where I hang a few paintings. Doesn’t get enough traffic to sell much, but it’s a great space. I’ll take you there sometime.”

  “Deal.” I kissed him. “Do you know why I chose the Whooping Crane?”

  “To remind me to keep my dog the hell away from their nest?”

  “No, silly. Because you’re not a nuthatch. You’re much more special than that.”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel more like that Snowy Owl we saw up at Goose Pond. Inexperienced and blown off course.” He grimaced as he had a swig of his water.

  “Maybe you just need something to blow you back on course,” I said, pressing my painted chest against his bare skin. I knew when I pulled away half my bird would be gone, but so be it. I wrapped my arms around him and felt the paint smear on his back, as well. I wanted him.

  “You’re screwing up our work,” he said.

  “Nothing lasts forever.” I turned and pulled him by the hand to the shower in the back of the studio. “Are there towels here?”

  Laurie reached onto a shelf and pulled down a single white towel. “Shower’s for emergencies only, so there’s just the one. We’ll have to share.”

  I fiddled with the faucet until hot water streamed down. “Mmm, great water pressure,” I said as I stepped inside. A blur of bright blue paint flooded my torso and filled the basin of the shower. Laurie stood watching, smiling.

  “Get in here, Mr. Byrd. I’ve got some course correction to perform.”

  Chapter Forty

  Wren

  We grabbed sandwiches at the diner down the street.

  As he passed me the ketchup for my fries, the words just slipped out. “Thanks,” was what I meant to say, but instead my mouth blurted, “I love you.”

  “Good.” He popped a French fry in his mouth.

  “You make me happier than a Byrd with a French fry.”

  “One of my favorite expressions,” he said. “And you make me happy. You make me want to be better.”

  “How are you bad?”

  “I’m not. But I like who I am when I’m with you.”

  “There aren’t any jobs for me in Birdseye,” I said.

  “Oh, hon, you could rule this town. Whatever you wanted to be, you could do it here.”

  “You sound like my dad.”

  He smiled. “Sorry.” He had a bite of his burger before continuing. “I heard the president of the German-American Credit Union is retiring soon. You have to be overqualified for that, right?”

  “Hmmm…president of a two-bit country savings and loan? No, thanks.”

  I didn’t mean for it to come off as rude, but it did.

  “The president of that two-bit savings and loan happens to be one of the students you’ll meet tonight, and he’s a nice man. Gives a lot of money to keep the Community Center afloat.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be insulting. It’s just that—“

  “It’s just that you’re too big for Birdseye. Okay. Got it.” He looked out the window of the diner.

  “Can you tell me why you’d want to stay, Laurie? Can you sell me on Birdseye?”

  He pushed his plate away, pulled the straw out of his glass and downed his Coke. After a moment more looking out the window, he shrugged. “It’s all I’ve ever known, Wren. I joined the Army, and I went to Iraq. I came back. I like traveling a little—up to Chicago, out to the parks—but I’ve never wanted to live anywhere else. I’d miss Billy and the boys. I’d miss my students. I’d miss some of my family.”

  “And I’d miss Chicago,” I said. It was true and we both knew it. “I love it u
p there. I love you, but you’re all that would be here for me, and I don’t ever want to hold that against you. I love my career! I love my friends in the city! I love the perks of my job and the potential of making the Forbes 30 Under 30 in the next couple of years. That’s huge, Laurie. That’s a really big deal.”

  He nodded and checked his phone for the time. “Hap’s been waiting long enough for his burger. We don’t have to decide this now. Let’s just go to art class, okay?”

  My own phone buzzed.

  -Emergency meeting 8 am-

  It was Troy.

  “Why the frown?”

  The waitress brought Laurie the check and he passed her some bills. She gave him a tin foil packet and he smiled his thanks.

  Another buzz hit my phone, this time from Darcy.

  -I know you’re out of town, but just FYI, there’s some big partnership meeting in the morning and your name is on the agenda.-

  I texted Darcy my thanks.

  “Some kind of work emergency. I might have to cut our visit short.”

  He guided me out of the booth as I tucked my phone away, and we went outside to feed the dog.

  “I wish you would stay,” he said. “I want you to meet my students, see their work.”

  “I wish I could, Laurie. I really do. Maybe another time?”

  He glanced at his phone again. “I’ve got enough time to drive you back to your car before class—or you could just stay and go home afterward.”

  I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay right there where Laurie was. If only Chicago weren’t so far away.

  “To be honest, Laurie, since we’ve been seeing each other I haven’t been that present at work. Not on my game, per se.” I could hear the Business Voice tones slipping through, and I didn’t like it, but…that was just a side of me Laurie would have to get used to if we were going to have a future together. “I feel like I need to head back now and find out what’s going on. Walking into a partnership meeting cold at 8 am isn’t a pleasant thing for me. I always have to work twice as hard as everyone else or else I don’t feel like they take me seriously.”

  “I understand,” he said, but I could tell he was hurt. He barely spoke until he kissed me goodbye in his driveway. He dropped off his dog and then kissed me again. “Gotta get to class,” he said. “Drive safely, babe.”