The Hummingbird and the Bear

by Nicholas Hogg

  The Jersey skyline was growing on the horizon.

  ‘I was making enough from tips, just, to cover my rent. Daytime I was getting myself back in shape, jogging, sneaking into dance classes without paying.’

  ‘It must have been hard, though.’

  ‘I didn’t mind working seven nights a week, because it kept me busy. But waking up in the morning, seeing myself in the mirror, knowing I had the day to fight off before I could hide in taking orders and arguing with the chef, that was the test.’

  Apart from exercise and reading books, when she could focus, she walked.

  ‘A lot. Hours. I’d walk the Williamsburg Bridge into the city, just drift along with the crowd.’

  She started writing letters, apologies to her mum and brother. She’d stolen from them all at some point. Lied.

  ‘I put my brother’s record collection in a bag and took it to the store. Got fifty bucks.’

  I looked over to her, wiping a gleaming cheek. ‘Hey,’ I said, reaching across, one hand on the wheel and the other on her arm.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I know they forgave me for the shit I did. Those letters were epics. My mom would write me back with her own apologies, wishing she’d been a better mother. Saying she had no idea what was happening with my stepdad.’

  Then I said that I’d listen if she wanted to tell me about it. How sorry I was to hear that someone had hurt her. How angry it made me. And that I’d guessed certain histories from the pauses in our conversations, things I hoped I’d misunderstood.

  ‘It happened all right,’ she said. ‘I nearly killed him. And my mom. I set fire to the porch one night and ran.’

  It was hard to find the right words to console, to empathize. I told her I’d spent a childhood imagining the murder of my stepfather, and a good part of my life hating my mother too.

  ‘Well, once my mom found out, she took a carving knife and put it to his throat and told him never to come back. She asked me to move home again, but I was still a construction, unfinished.’

  Then she said she wanted to move the story on, to New York. ‘I was feeling better about myself for sure, and looking better. I swear I ate nothing for two years but Baby Ruth bars and chips. A couple of months’ exercise, dance, pirogi, borscht and potatoes, and I have my body back.’

  I doubted it could have ever gone away. But she said she was a skank getting off that plane at JFK, rail thin and pale. Though come springtime her tips were up, and she was turning down dates from customers.

  ‘And not all drunken jerks, some decent guys. But I’d worked so hard to get me back I wasn’t ready to share with someone else. Though I couldn’t be a waitress for ever.’

  She was ready for a change when a man came into the restaurant who owned a few clubs in the city.

  ‘I was sceptical, sure. But his wife was part of the sales pitch.’

  I was afraid of where the story was going, another dark turn.

  ‘He writes down his number, and then his wife drops a fifty dollar tip on the bill. I left it a few days, but when I paid my rent for that month, saw I had peanuts to live on, I called him up.’

  Then she paused for a moment, took her time, looked at the houses flashing past the window, as if only just noticing the outside world.

  ‘It leaves a mark on you. Sex that young. With a man your own mother has brought into your home. A man who replaced my dad.’

  I was hoping the car would break down before we crossed the Hudson. Before I had to watch her open and close the door, step out alone.

  I took her hand and kissed her wrist, up and up, to the soft curve of her bicep.

  Hearing about Kay on her own, the rise from a tragedy in her life to here, the two of us in a car aimed at a teeming city, I wanted to be part of someone else more than I ever had. I told her so.

  ‘Tell me you mean it,’ she said.

  I told her she turned a lonely past into something shared. Because she too knew what it was to be empty of love and adrift, not only of family and company, but a very self. It was as if she was there the night I slept in the park. The day I sat under the tarpaulin with my mother’s abandoned furniture.

  She touched her palm under my jaw and kissed my cheek.

  I asked her to carry on, whatever she wanted to tell me, I wanted to know. But the present jolted. Signs for roads we didn’t want to follow. When we’d driven out of Manhattan I’d felt as light as a feather coming over the bridge. This time I felt heavy enough to buckle the steel girders. I needed the rest from her, all of it, but the sight of the skyscrapers had broken the rhythm of her story.

  ‘Shit,’ she swore. ‘I should turn my phone on.’

  Driving into Phoenicia we’d made vows not to even look at them till we got back. As Kay delved in her bag, I slipped mine from my pocket and brought it to life. Both our phones buzzed and bleeped with messages waiting.

  ‘I don’t have to ask who called you,’ said Kay.

  I put the phone to my ear and listened to the answer messages, jolted at a voice. ‘Probably the same man who rang you.’

  ‘What?’ She was shocked, scared. ‘Why’s he calling you?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘The first one is Jenni.’

  Hey there missing person. You’re either somewhere with no reception, lost your phone, or switched it off because you’re working too hard. Give me a ring when you can. Love you.

  The sound of her voice in my ear seemed to put her right there in the car. My stomach tightened. I still had Segur to listen to.

  Sam man. What’s up? Tried you a few times and nothing. You back in the Cotswolds with my wife, because she’s out of range or something, too. I’m busting your balls. Just calling to remind you of the Giants game tomorrow. Call me when you get this.

  ‘What’s he want?’ she asked again, anxious.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I reassured her. ‘He’s reminding me about the football tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s going to be weird.’

  I nodded, turned on to the parkway. ‘I could think of weirder things.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Hearing his voice, knowing she was going back to him, I trembled with a jealous rage, gripped the steering wheel till my knuckles whitened.

  ‘What do you mean?’ repeated Kay. ‘Weirder things?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. Two blocks till I dropped her outside 86th Street station.

  ‘Don’t end the trip like this,’ she pleaded.

  ‘How do we end it, then?’

  ‘It?’ she asked. ‘Or the trip?’

  The light changed to green. I pulled across 87th down to 86th Street.

  ‘Everything,’ I said. ‘And everybody. The whole fucking mess of It.’

  I wanted to talk more, say something that would make both of us feel better, but within seconds of stopping a traffic cop came banging on the roof. ‘Move along, move along.’

  ‘You better go.’

  The traffic cop turned to the window. ‘I said move along.’

  Kay snatched her bag off the back seat. I grabbed her wrist, hard. ‘I want you,’ I said. ‘You do know that?’

  She stopped, clasped my chin, then kissed me goodbye. In the rear view mirror I watched her go down the steps into the subway.

  WHILE ON THE PHONE to Jenni I could smell Kay on my hands. ‘What happened to your mobile?’ she asked. ‘I couldn’t get a ringtone all yesterday.’

  I was back at my apartment, my open suitcase, clothes strewn around the room.

  ‘I thought you might have lost it.’

  I apologized, called her sweetheart. ‘I went out with some of the guys from work and didn’t even see the battery was dead till this morning.’

  ‘A big night out with the boys?’

  It was a lie she believed, but wasn’t impressed with. ‘Not what you think,’ I said. ‘Few too many drinks, usual bullshit guy talk.’

  ‘Another strip club?’

  ‘No.�
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  ‘What time did you get in?’

  ‘Around two, maybe later. I only got up an hour ago.’

  And how easily the words fell from my mouth. Not a rehearsed lie, shamefully, but a natural one.

  ‘I want a Saturday with you, Sam. Take a walk on the Heath.’

  ‘You can still do that,’ I said, my heart sinking.

  ‘Wandering around Parliament Hill pretending I have a dog. Sounds like fun.’

  ‘Only another week.’

  ‘The bed’s so empty without you.’

  When she said this I had my hand to my mouth, inhaling Kay. I looked at the bed I hadn’t slept in and told her mine was empty, too.

  ‘Well I’m glad you feel the same. You know, I couldn’t stop touching myself last night, thinking about you.’

  ‘Hey.’ I cut her off. ‘You know what I’ll end up doing if you keep that up. I’ll be lacklustre all day.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she snapped, annoyed. ‘Once upon a time we’d make each other come just by talking on the phone.’

  ‘I know. That’s what I’m afraid of. I need a workout to get rid of this hangover.’

  ‘I’m being rejected for a set of barbells.’

  ‘Let’s talk later, when you’re in bed.’

  ‘That sounds like a better idea.’

  I told her I couldn’t think about her till then. ‘I’ll lose my verve.’

  ‘Well, have a run and sweat out the booze. Pour a bucket of cold water on yourself. Isn’t that supposed to do the trick?’

  It would’ve taken more than cold water to bring me to my senses. More than a workout shifting steel and pounding the digital mile. Not that the calories burned helped me sleep that evening.

  Because it was that night, after the call. When I lay awake twenty storeys in the sky above New York, hovered with the half-dream, half-thought that I owned a gun. A sleek black pistol I pulled from the dresser. A cold barrel that I lifted to my temple and pressed against my skin and then, with the most precious and terrifying movement, as if the bidden acolyte in the final, complete act of supplication, pulled the trigger.

  A dream so real I was surprised to find myself alive in the morning.

  I MET SEGUR OUTSIDE Madison Square Garden. He wore a Giants cap, a navy blue bomber jacket and jeans. Interchangeable with the other red and blue fans making their way to Penn Station. A man in a crowd, as was I. The difference being that the two of us were joined by a woman.

  ‘At least you didn’t wear red.’

  We shook hands.

  ‘I was worried you were going to turn up looking like a 49ers fan and make me sit next to you in the nosebleeds.’

  ‘Nosebleeds?’

  ‘Bad news about the box. I promised it to some Canadian clients in town. We got seats in the upper tier, where the air’s so thin you get nosebleeds.’

  I laughed. Not the first time that day I’d have to manufacture a reaction.

  ‘Right, we got a train to catch.’

  We went under the Gardens into Penn Station. Segur walked and talked. Economy, Obama, Sarah Palin. ‘Was an act of fucking suicide picking her, I tell you.’

  Segur paid for my ticket. When I offered the money he said, ‘Get outta here.’

  On the train, carriages jammed with fans wearing blue, numbered shirts over the top of ski jackets and hooded tops, thickset men and a sprinkling of keen girlfriends, Segur and I talked football. He was curious how I got interested in the sport.

  ‘Remember when the Bears won the Super Bowl? William “the Refrigerator” Perry splashing over for that touchdown?’

  ‘Nineteen eighty-six.’

  ‘American football had quite a following in the UK. Teams popped up everywhere. I was already playing rugby, and more sport running with a ball and tackling was perfect.’

  ‘You like the rough stuff, huh?’

  When I said I did, I knew where the conversation was heading, the conversation I’d told myself as a budding rugby star that I’d never have. The war stories. The game reports of ex-players that can only be embellished by time and telling. And I was just as guilty. Segur and I swapped tales of match-saving scores, bone-crunching tackles and last-minute acts of heroism. Part fiction, part fact, events from years ago that had fallen into private legend.

  ‘Wanted to go on defence,’ replied Segur when I asked what position he’d played. ‘But I had a natural arm, and I was good at leading people, so I played quarterback.’

  Captain of the ship, the team. I could see him in charge. Not because he was a man others would naturally follow, more that he seemed a man who wouldn’t take instructions from another.

  ‘Got to college on a scholarship, but a dog of a linebacker fucked up my knee.’

  Beyond the huff and puff of our conversation, the macho give and take of sports talk, I sensed a prying, a test of who I was. What else was I beyond the man who’d given his wife a lift to the airport?

  ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said, ‘rugby is a hell of a game, but you’re not going to convince me it’s better than football. And when I say football I don’t mean some faggoty kids kicking a soccer ball, I mean football.’

  ‘Rugby. Football. Arguing which is better is like arguing about a favourite colour.’

  ‘Two shades of blue, at that.’

  ‘They’re both evolution of a caveman hunting party.’

  Segur laughed. ‘Spearing that sabre-toothed tiger.’

  ‘Men in shorts fighting over a scrap of leather. That’s rugby.’

  ‘And football.’ Segur was excited by the primal metaphor. ‘Shit, we should go over and see the guys in the lot, usually have a tailgate party, few beers. We might get a game of touch going afterwards, get to see you make some moves.’

  Meadowlands stadium sat like a concrete bowl on a tarmac table, streams of coaches disgorging fans into the parking lot. It was a bright blue sky with a biting wind, fans bundled up from the cold wearing sunglasses. We walked from the shuttle bus, Segur and I, buddies for the day at a football game.

  ‘You want a hot dog?’ he asked as we passed the smoking barbecue carts. ‘A burger?’

  We had a quarter pounder each, both of us squirting in extra mustard. ‘Fuck,’ said Segur, chewing a mouthful of beef. ‘I’ve been hanging in my executive box too long. This is better than any fucking canapé.’

  We ate and walked. A gang of drunken men played touch football with a roast chicken carcass.

  ‘Told you about fighting over dead animals.’

  The quarterback threw deep and the carcass disintegrated in the wide receiver’s hands, shining his jacket with grease and chicken skin. Segur shouted, ‘Plaxico would have put that in a sandwich then run in the touchdown.’

  The guys laughed at Segur’s joke. A watching security guard high-fived him. ‘You got that right.’

  Segur turned to me. ‘Plaxico’s the star receiver. Lot of talent, but the guy’s an asshole.’

  Once patted down by the ticket inspectors – ‘None of this shit before 9/11,’ Segur had added – we rode the escalators to the upper tiers. He took the step ahead of me, and looked down from a height as we talked. He loomed above, asked questions about what I’d been up to in New York, work, Jenni. ‘And I bet you’re missing her,’ he said, smiling. ‘She’s quite a catch.’

  ‘She certainly is,’ I replied, wondering for a moment if he’d looked at me that bit harder when he mentioned her.

  ‘So is Kay,’ he said in return, just as the escalator turned back on itself and dropped us at the top.

  ‘We’re having a beer?’ I said, quickly changing the subject.

  ‘Make that singular a plural,’ he answered, pointing to a drinks stand. ‘Two Millers,’ he called out. The barman pulled the bottles from the ice and snapped the tops off. ‘The Giants,’ toasted Segur.

  ‘To all sports with odd-shaped balls,’ I added.

  We weaved through the crowds, more fans in ski jackets and hats, dads carrying beers with sons clutching sodas.


  ‘Five minutes to kick-off,’ said Segur, checking his watch. Just as we exited the tunnel into the stadium a thunderous boom cracked the clear skies and two F-16s roared overhead. Men whooped and cheered, beat the air with their fists.

  ‘Gonna be some game,’ Segur shouted over the sonic booms.

  Four rows from the top of the stadium, the lip of the concrete bowl, were two empty seats on a full row.

  ‘Take a breath,’ said Segur. ‘Atmosphere gets pretty thin this high.’

  By the time we’d shuffled to the seats it was time to stand for the Stars and Stripes. The entire crowd rose in silence, put their hands on their hearts and listened. No one cheered or whistled. No one sang along. No one said a word until the singer had sung and the fireworks fountained a gateway of sparks for the Giants to come running through.

  ‘Yeaaaah,’ screamed the man in the baseball cap beside me. ‘Go the fucking Giants.’ Miller slopped on my sleeve when he raised his bottle. Segur apologized on his behalf.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said, brushing the beer off my jacket.

  ‘This is where the real fans sit. Hope they don’t scare you.’

  I laughed. ‘We invented the hooligan.’

  ‘Can get pretty wild up here. Winning and losing. Some men just can’t handle it.’

  We sat and watched the kick-off, one team running into another, head on tackles and crunching blocks. The whack of body on body could be heard even at the height I was with Segur, already on his feet when the kick returner nearly burst into open field.

  ‘Fuck,’ he bellowed before sitting again. ‘That was a touchdown if he’d broken that tackle.’

  ‘He’s fast.’