Mr. Columbidae

 

The pigeons coo him awake.

Henry shifts beneath the sheets, reaches for the metal blind, and taps gently against the sun-warmed glass.

Nothing.

Not even a stir.

For one brief, blessed moment, the room is quiet.

He settles back onto the pillow and reaches toward the emptiness beside him. His fingers find only cool sheet. The last edge of sleep pulls at him, soft and twitching, the kind of drifting that usually means he has a few more minutes before the day finds him.

Then the cooing starts again.

He opens his eyes.

The sound comes from the window.

Henry sits up, grabs the spindle wand, and twists the blinds open with more force than necessary. Pale morning light cuts across the bedroom in narrow slats.

Outside, on the oversized sill, a cluster of pigeons pecks and shuffles. Plump little bodies. Quick orange eyes. Heads bobbing with mechanical certainty. A red-billed pouter unfolds its wings and puffs itself larger, claiming space, claiming rank, claiming the whole damn morning.

Henry leans closer.

He looks beyond the sill to the rooflines, chimney pots, and gables of the neighboring brownstones. He sees no other birds gathered anywhere else. No roof party. No ledge convention. No reason for this particular group to press itself against his particular window.

Why here?

Why now?

He gives the glass a sharper knuckle-knock.

The pigeons do not fly away. If anything, the sound seems to offend them. One lifts its head and stares at him with a bead-black eye.

Henry stretches for the cord and yanks the blinds up. The city opens beyond the window in pale brick, fire escapes, water towers, and the long drop to the street below. Between him and the birds, only the double-pane glass remains.

The largest pigeon steps forward.

Nearly eyeball to eyeball now, Henry stares at it.

The bird stares back.

“Great,” Henry mutters. “Wonderful.”

He falls back onto the bed and tries to ignore them. Sleep, however, has already left the room. Since the breakup, Henry finds mornings difficult. The silence comes first, then the empty side of the bed, then the little humiliations of beginning another day alone.

He watches the pigeons instead.

Their movements are slow, deliberate, almost ceremonial. One fans its tail feathers with ridiculous confidence. Another struts in a tight circle. The red-billed one shifts its swollen chest forward and glimmers green and purple at the throat.

Henry thinks, briefly, of Darwin.

Darwin cared about pigeons.

Henry remembers that much from some half-forgotten article, or documentary, or late-night rabbit hole he fell into when sleep refused to cooperate. Pigeons and variation. Breeding. Selection. Control.

The thought irritates him.

Wonderment over, he grabs the soft, floaty pillow beneath his head and hurls it full force at the window.

The impact makes a dull slap.

The largest pigeon steps back, tilts sideways, and drops into effortless flight.

The others stay.

Henry showers, dresses, and wanders through his apartment with the uneasy sense of being watched. Whenever he passes the window, the pigeons move with him. Their tiny heads rise and twitch. Their bodies turn. Their eyes follow.

Always.

Shalene left him for the simple reasons that end most relationships. Stagnation. Sudden incompatibility. Too much effort in the wrong places and not enough in the right ones.

Henry doesn’t like to be alone.

That is the ugliest truth.

He is needy, and worse, he knows it. He is resolved, firmly and desperately, to have constant companionship. Someone nearby. Someone breathing in another room. Someone to say good morning to, even if the morning is terrible and doesn’t deserve manners.

“Love yourself,” Shalene told him.

“Get acquainted with you,” she said, standing by the door with the last of her things in a canvas bag.

Like always, Henry listened.

And like always, listening was as far as he got.

At breakfast, he sits at the small table for two and watches the red-billed bird strut along the ledge.

Its throat is grooved and strange. Its nostrils sit above the fleshy wax covering at the base of the upper beak. The cere. Henry knows the word somehow. He hates that he knows it. He hates the bird more for making him remember.

He shouts at it.

“Go away. Get the fuck outta here!”

The bird blinks.

The pigeons resume their pecking. Their curved hatred for mankind taps against the glass.

Henry looks down at his cereal.

Then he looks back at the birds.

“Fine,” he says.

He reaches into the box and pulls out a fistful of Rice Krispies.

“If I give you this, will you go away?”

The birds watch.

Henry slides up the lower sash with his left hand, just enough to create a narrow gap. With his right, he prepares to toss the cereal out. But the thought of all those beaks, all those quick little heads, makes him hesitate.

Instead of throwing the cereal, he pushes it through the thinnest opening.

The pigeons move as one.

A gentle kreeing sound rises from them, unfamiliar and soft, far from the relentless cooing that drags him out of sleep.

“You like that?” Henry asks. “Satisfied, ya little bastards?”

He closes the window and returns to his breakfast.

Safe behind the double-pane glass, he leans forward and watches them feed. Smaller birds crowd close while the larger ones stand guard, breastplates pushed out, iridescent necks glistening in the morning sun. White feces streak the ledge in glossy layers.

Henry stops eating.

By midday, he convinces himself the whole thing is stupid.

Birds gather. Birds eat. Birds shit. Birds leave.

That is the entire mystery.

He shoulders his backpack and heads out for an appointment across town, choosing the park route because it is faster and because avoiding pigeons means admitting pigeons have become something to avoid.

A silver-winged bird sweeps low past him near the entrance.

Henry flinches.

Another pigeon, white-feathered and direct as a thrown stone, homes in and strikes his backpack. The impact pushes him forward half a step.

“What the hell?”

A third bird circles overhead.

The red-billed one.

It zips over his hat.

Henry throws up his arms. His cap flies backward and lands on the path. Then the worst of his fears arrives warm and wet against his exposed scalp.

A white, putty-thick substance strikes the crown of his head and spreads. It runs down his temple, slips toward his ear, and keeps going.

“Oh, God. Oh, God.”

He stumbles backward, swiping at himself, making it worse. People turn to look. Someone laughs. Someone else makes a sympathetic noise that somehow feels crueler.

The pigeons wheel above him.

Henry runs.

He cuts back through the green, past benches and jogging paths and children with scooters, through what now seems to him a designated pigeon-dung unloading zone. Every morsel-pecking flyer in the park seems aware of him. Every wingbeat feels aimed.

By the time he reaches his building, his appointment is already ruined.

He reschedules it from the bathroom, one hand holding the phone, the other scrubbing his head under water hot enough to redden his skin. He washes with enriched bar soap, then with lavender shampoo Shalene left behind, which she probably bought with Jonathon, his former best friend, in some bright little store where nobody gets shit on by birds.

He scrubs until his scalp hurts.

Then he scrubs again.

Only after a thorough towel-drying does he feel complete.

Clean again.

Outside, evening moves slowly down the brownstones. The sun disappears behind the city, throwing long shadows along brick and glass. The pigeons return to the ledge, unconcerned with him now, soaking in the last of the warmth.

Henry turns off the lights.

He wants darkness.

He wants solitude.

The next morning, the routine vanishes.

No birds on the ledge.

No pecking.

No cooing.

Nothing.

Henry stands at the window and feels relief spread through him. Not happiness exactly, but something close. Absolution. Whatever caused the torment has ended. The birds have moved on. The city has swallowed them.

He eats breakfast.

He walks through the loft with serene ease.

The feathered watchers are gone.

Then he remembers his rescheduled appointment.

He curses, gathers his things, and rushes for the door. The previous day’s disaster leaves him temporarily stained, but not defeated. Not permanently. Not by pigeons.

At the entrance to his building, he stops and peers through the large glass door.

No birds.

No fluttering shapes.

No red-billed bastard waiting on the awning.

Comfortable in his own foolish bravery, Henry steps outside with a confident swagger.

The day pulses around him. Clear sky. Light breeze. Treetops swaying. Leaves rustling. Sun glancing off windows in bright, forgiving flashes.

As he walks, his mind returns to Darwin.

Pigeons.

Why pigeons?

Was it an experiment? A theory? A strategy?

He hurries toward his appointment, crossing at Third and Vine, when the memory lands. Darwin studied pigeons because of variation. Natural selection. Breeding. Crosses. Control.

Henry frowns.

To him, pigeons are nothing more than a noisome nuisance. Wretched, winged vermin. Vile little things with twitching heads and filthy feet.

He loathes them.

He questions their needed existence.

His meeting lasts forty-seven minutes and accomplishes almost nothing.

Afterward, he stands outside the building and considers taking the long way home. The previous day’s humiliation still pulses behind his ears. He can avoid the park. He should avoid the park.

But Henry has always wanted to resolve unpleasant memories by walking directly back through them.

A stupid habit.

A human one.

He turns toward the path.

The once peaceful day has changed. Wispy winds sharpen. Clouds gather overhead, gray and low, pressing closer to the earth. He passes a row of green park benches beneath a canopy of gold and crimson leaves.

On one bench sits Jonathon.

Former best friend.

Former fixture of Henry’s apartment.

Former harmless guy from dinners and board games and late-night talks.

Now, only an acquaintance.

A pigeoneer.

That is what Jonathon called himself once, smiling over beers, explaining the rooftop coop he keeps and the birds he trains. Homers, pouters, rollers, fantails. Henry only half-listened then. Shalene listened more closely.

Henry gives him a nod.

Lazy. Incomplete.

Jonathon returns it with the same lack of feeling.

The gesture means almost nothing.

Almost.

Henry keeps walking.

The clouds press lower.

Then he hears the swooshing.

Not cooing.

Not pecking.

Wings.

The contentious flapping makes their presence known before the birds appear. Pigeons rise from the edges of the park, from benches, from rooftops, from trees, from places Henry has not thought to look. What once seemed like a picture of romantic city innocence now gathers into something organized.

They flutter in unison.

They turn toward him.

Henry stops.

The red-billed bird drops from above.

He turns and increases his pace.

A blue-gray pigeon lunges near his face. Henry ducks. His backpack twists around his shoulder and throws him off balance. He stumbles, tries to catch himself, and goes down hard on the path.

For one absurd second, he lies on his stomach like a tortoise, arms pinned, backpack riding high.

Then the birds descend.

People shout.

A child screams, “Mommy! Mommy!”

Henry sees the little girl through a blur, pointing at him. He sees people running. Shielding their heads. Scattering into the trees and across the grass.

They have nothing to fear.

He knows that.

The birds have not come for them.

Henry twists onto his back.

Above him, the flock moves like weather.

Jonathon remains on the bench.

He watches in amazement or satisfaction. Henry cannot tell which. Maybe both. He does not rise. He does not shout. He does not try to help his former friend as the thunderous brood descends.

The red-billed bird lands on Henry’s chest.

Only now, close enough to see it clearly, Henry realizes the beak is not red.

Not entirely.

It is stained black at the tip.

The bird strikes.

Henry screams as the beak drives into his eye.

There is pressure first, then heat, then a pain so total it swallows the world. Wings batter his cheeks. Talons scratch bloody lines across his skin. He tries to turn away, but more bodies press him down. More wings. More feet. More sharp little sounds.

The bird pulls back.

Something wet and fibrous comes with it.

Henry’s scream breaks open.

Blood runs down his face and into his mouth. The red-billed bird flutters away with the orb clamped in its beak, pale nerves dangling like thread.

On the bench, Jonathon watches the pigeon rise.

Above the park, the flock circles once.

Then they scatter into the darkening sky.

 

The pigeons coo him awake.

Henry shifts beneath the sheets, reaches for the metal blind, and taps gently against the sun-warmed glass.

Nothing.

Not even a stir.

For one brief, blessed moment, the room is quiet.

He settles back onto the pillow and reaches toward the emptiness beside him. His fingers find only cool sheet. The last edge of sleep pulls at him, soft and twitching, the kind of drifting that usually means he has a few more minutes before the day finds him.

Then the cooing starts again.

He opens his eyes.

The sound comes from the window.

Henry sits up, grabs the spindle wand, and twists the blinds open with more force than necessary. Pale morning light cuts across the bedroom in narrow slats.

Outside, on the oversized sill, a cluster of pigeons pecks and shuffles. Plump little bodies. Quick orange eyes. Heads bobbing with mechanical certainty. A red-billed pouter unfolds its wings and puffs itself larger, claiming space, claiming rank, claiming the whole damn morning.

Henry leans closer.

He looks beyond the sill to the rooflines, chimney pots, and gables of the neighboring brownstones. He sees no other birds gathered anywhere else. No roof party. No ledge convention. No reason for this particular group to press itself against his particular window.

Why here?

Why now?

He gives the glass a sharper knuckle-knock.

The pigeons do not fly away. If anything, the sound seems to offend them. One lifts its head and stares at him with a bead-black eye.

Henry stretches for the cord and yanks the blinds up. The city opens beyond the window in pale brick, fire escapes, water towers, and the long drop to the street below. Between him and the birds, only the double-pane glass remains.

The largest pigeon steps forward.

Nearly eyeball to eyeball now, Henry stares at it.

The bird stares back.

“Great,” Henry mutters. “Wonderful.”

He falls back onto the bed and tries to ignore them. Sleep, however, has already left the room. Since the breakup, Henry finds mornings difficult. The silence comes first, then the empty side of the bed, then the little humiliations of beginning another day alone.

He watches the pigeons instead.

Their movements are slow, deliberate, almost ceremonial. One fans its tail feathers with ridiculous confidence. Another struts in a tight circle. The red-billed one shifts its swollen chest forward and glimmers green and purple at the throat.

Henry thinks, briefly, of Darwin.

Darwin cared about pigeons.

Henry remembers that much from some half-forgotten article, or documentary, or late-night rabbit hole he fell into when sleep refused to cooperate. Pigeons and variation. Breeding. Selection. Control.

The thought irritates him.

Wonderment over, he grabs the soft, floaty pillow beneath his head and hurls it full force at the window.

The impact makes a dull slap.

The largest pigeon steps back, tilts sideways, and drops into effortless flight.

The others stay.

Henry showers, dresses, and wanders through his apartment with the uneasy sense of being watched. Whenever he passes the window, the pigeons move with him. Their tiny heads rise and twitch. Their bodies turn. Their eyes follow.

Always.

Shalene left him for the simple reasons that end most relationships. Stagnation. Sudden incompatibility. Too much effort in the wrong places and not enough in the right ones.

Henry doesn’t like to be alone.

That is the ugliest truth.

He is needy, and worse, he knows it. He is resolved, firmly and desperately, to have constant companionship. Someone nearby. Someone breathing in another room. Someone to say good morning to, even if the morning is terrible and doesn’t deserve manners.

“Love yourself,” Shalene told him.

“Get acquainted with you,” she said, standing by the door with the last of her things in a canvas bag.

Like always, Henry listened.

And like always, listening was as far as he got.

At breakfast, he sits at the small table for two and watches the red-billed bird strut along the ledge.

Its throat is grooved and strange. Its nostrils sit above the fleshy wax covering at the base of the upper beak. The cere. Henry knows the word somehow. He hates that he knows it. He hates the bird more for making him remember.

He shouts at it.

“Go away. Get the fuck outta here!”

The bird blinks.

The pigeons resume their pecking. Their curved hatred for mankind taps against the glass.

Henry looks down at his cereal.

Then he looks back at the birds.

“Fine,” he says.

He reaches into the box and pulls out a fistful of Rice Krispies.

“If I give you this, will you go away?”

The birds watch.

Henry slides up the lower sash with his left hand, just enough to create a narrow gap. With his right, he prepares to toss the cereal out. But the thought of all those beaks, all those quick little heads, makes him hesitate.

Instead of throwing the cereal, he pushes it through the thinnest opening.

The pigeons move as one.

A gentle kreeing sound rises from them, unfamiliar and soft, far from the relentless cooing that drags him out of sleep.

“You like that?” Henry asks. “Satisfied, ya little bastards?”

He closes the window and returns to his breakfast.

Safe behind the double-pane glass, he leans forward and watches them feed. Smaller birds crowd close while the larger ones stand guard, breastplates pushed out, iridescent necks glistening in the morning sun. White feces streak the ledge in glossy layers.

Henry stops eating.

By midday, he convinces himself the whole thing is stupid.

Birds gather. Birds eat. Birds shit. Birds leave.

That is the entire mystery.

He shoulders his backpack and heads out for an appointment across town, choosing the park route because it is faster and because avoiding pigeons means admitting pigeons have become something to avoid.

A silver-winged bird sweeps low past him near the entrance.

Henry flinches.

Another pigeon, white-feathered and direct as a thrown stone, homes in and strikes his backpack. The impact pushes him forward half a step.

“What the hell?”

A third bird circles overhead.

The red-billed one.

It zips over his hat.

Henry throws up his arms. His cap flies backward and lands on the path. Then the worst of his fears arrives warm and wet against his exposed scalp.

A white, putty-thick substance strikes the crown of his head and spreads. It runs down his temple, slips toward his ear, and keeps going.

“Oh, God. Oh, God.”

He stumbles backward, swiping at himself, making it worse. People turn to look. Someone laughs. Someone else makes a sympathetic noise that somehow feels crueler.

The pigeons wheel above him.

Henry runs.

He cuts back through the green, past benches and jogging paths and children with scooters, through what now seems to him a designated pigeon-dung unloading zone. Every morsel-pecking flyer in the park seems aware of him. Every wingbeat feels aimed.

By the time he reaches his building, his appointment is already ruined.

He reschedules it from the bathroom, one hand holding the phone, the other scrubbing his head under water hot enough to redden his skin. He washes with enriched bar soap, then with lavender shampoo Shalene left behind, which she probably bought with Jonathon, his former best friend, in some bright little store where nobody gets shit on by birds.

He scrubs until his scalp hurts.

Then he scrubs again.

Only after a thorough towel-drying does he feel complete.

Clean again.

Outside, evening moves slowly down the brownstones. The sun disappears behind the city, throwing long shadows along brick and glass. The pigeons return to the ledge, unconcerned with him now, soaking in the last of the warmth.

Henry turns off the lights.

He wants darkness.

He wants solitude.

The next morning, the routine vanishes.

No birds on the ledge.

No pecking.

No cooing.

Nothing.

Henry stands at the window and feels relief spread through him. Not happiness exactly, but something close. Absolution. Whatever caused the torment has ended. The birds have moved on. The city has swallowed them.

He eats breakfast.

He walks through the loft with serene ease.

The feathered watchers are gone.

Then he remembers his rescheduled appointment.

He curses, gathers his things, and rushes for the door. The previous day’s disaster leaves him temporarily stained, but not defeated. Not permanently. Not by pigeons.

At the entrance to his building, he stops and peers through the large glass door.

No birds.

No fluttering shapes.

No red-billed bastard waiting on the awning.

Comfortable in his own foolish bravery, Henry steps outside with a confident swagger.

The day pulses around him. Clear sky. Light breeze. Treetops swaying. Leaves rustling. Sun glancing off windows in bright, forgiving flashes.

As he walks, his mind returns to Darwin.

Pigeons.

Why pigeons?

Was it an experiment? A theory? A strategy?

He hurries toward his appointment, crossing at Third and Vine, when the memory lands. Darwin studied pigeons because of variation. Natural selection. Breeding. Crosses. Control.

Henry frowns.

To him, pigeons are nothing more than a noisome nuisance. Wretched, winged vermin. Vile little things with twitching heads and filthy feet.

He loathes them.

He questions their needed existence.

His meeting lasts forty-seven minutes and accomplishes almost nothing.

Afterward, he stands outside the building and considers taking the long way home. The previous day’s humiliation still pulses behind his ears. He can avoid the park. He should avoid the park.

But Henry has always wanted to resolve unpleasant memories by walking directly back through them.

A stupid habit.

A human one.

He turns toward the path.

The once peaceful day has changed. Wispy winds sharpen. Clouds gather overhead, gray and low, pressing closer to the earth. He passes a row of green park benches beneath a canopy of gold and crimson leaves.

On one bench sits Jonathon.

Former best friend.

Former fixture of Henry’s apartment.

Former harmless guy from dinners and board games and late-night talks.

Now, only an acquaintance.

A pigeoneer.

That is what Jonathon called himself once, smiling over beers, explaining the rooftop coop he keeps and the birds he trains. Homers, pouters, rollers, fantails. Henry only half-listened then. Shalene listened more closely.

Henry gives him a nod.

Lazy. Incomplete.

Jonathon returns it with the same lack of feeling.

The gesture means almost nothing.

Almost.

Henry keeps walking.

The clouds press lower.

Then he hears the swooshing.

Not cooing.

Not pecking.

Wings.

The contentious flapping makes their presence known before the birds appear. Pigeons rise from the edges of the park, from benches, from rooftops, from trees, from places Henry has not thought to look. What once seemed like a picture of romantic city innocence now gathers into something organized.

They flutter in unison.

They turn toward him.

Henry stops.

The red-billed bird drops from above.

He turns and increases his pace.

A blue-gray pigeon lunges near his face. Henry ducks. His backpack twists around his shoulder and throws him off balance. He stumbles, tries to catch himself, and goes down hard on the path.

For one absurd second, he lies on his stomach like a tortoise, arms pinned, backpack riding high.

Then the birds descend.

People shout.

A child screams, “Mommy! Mommy!”

Henry sees the little girl through a blur, pointing at him. He sees people running. Shielding their heads. Scattering into the trees and across the grass.

They have nothing to fear.

He knows that.

The birds have not come for them.

Henry twists onto his back.

Above him, the flock moves like weather.

Jonathon remains on the bench.

He watches in amazement or satisfaction. Henry cannot tell which. Maybe both. He does not rise. He does not shout. He does not try to help his former friend as the thunderous brood descends.

The red-billed bird lands on Henry’s chest.

Only now, close enough to see it clearly, Henry realizes the beak is not red.

Not entirely.

It is stained black at the tip.

The bird strikes.

Henry screams as the beak drives into his eye.

There is pressure first, then heat, then a pain so total it swallows the world. Wings batter his cheeks. Talons scratch bloody lines across his skin. He tries to turn away, but more bodies press him down. More wings. More feet. More sharp little sounds.

The bird pulls back.

Something wet and fibrous comes with it.

Henry’s scream breaks open.

Blood runs down his face and into his mouth. The red-billed bird flutters away with the orb clamped in its beak, pale nerves dangling like thread.

On the bench, Jonathon watches the pigeon rise.

Above the park, the flock circles once.

Then they scatter into the darkening sky.

 

The pigeons coo him awake.

Henry shifts beneath the sheets, reaches for the metal blind, and taps gently against the sun-warmed glass.

Nothing.

Not even a stir.

For one brief, blessed moment, the room is quiet.

He settles back onto the pillow and reaches toward the emptiness beside him. His fingers find only cool sheet. The last edge of sleep pulls at him, soft and twitching, the kind of drifting that usually means he has a few more minutes before the day finds him.

Then the cooing starts again.

He opens his eyes.

The sound comes from the window.

Henry sits up, grabs the spindle wand, and twists the blinds open with more force than necessary. Pale morning light cuts across the bedroom in narrow slats.

Outside, on the oversized sill, a cluster of pigeons pecks and shuffles. Plump little bodies. Quick orange eyes. Heads bobbing with mechanical certainty. A red-billed pouter unfolds its wings and puffs itself larger, claiming space, claiming rank, claiming the whole damn morning.

Henry leans closer.

He looks beyond the sill to the rooflines, chimney pots, and gables of the neighboring brownstones. He sees no other birds gathered anywhere else. No roof party. No ledge convention. No reason for this particular group to press itself against his particular window.

Why here?

Why now?

He gives the glass a sharper knuckle-knock.

The pigeons do not fly away. If anything, the sound seems to offend them. One lifts its head and stares at him with a bead-black eye.

Henry stretches for the cord and yanks the blinds up. The city opens beyond the window in pale brick, fire escapes, water towers, and the long drop to the street below. Between him and the birds, only the double-pane glass remains.

The largest pigeon steps forward.

Nearly eyeball to eyeball now, Henry stares at it.

The bird stares back.

“Great,” Henry mutters. “Wonderful.”

He falls back onto the bed and tries to ignore them. Sleep, however, has already left the room. Since the breakup, Henry finds mornings difficult. The silence comes first, then the empty side of the bed, then the little humiliations of beginning another day alone.

He watches the pigeons instead.

Their movements are slow, deliberate, almost ceremonial. One fans its tail feathers with ridiculous confidence. Another struts in a tight circle. The red-billed one shifts its swollen chest forward and glimmers green and purple at the throat.

Henry thinks, briefly, of Darwin.

Darwin cared about pigeons.

Henry remembers that much from some half-forgotten article, or documentary, or late-night rabbit hole he fell into when sleep refused to cooperate. Pigeons and variation. Breeding. Selection. Control.

The thought irritates him.

Wonderment over, he grabs the soft, floaty pillow beneath his head and hurls it full force at the window.

The impact makes a dull slap.

The largest pigeon steps back, tilts sideways, and drops into effortless flight.

The others stay.

Henry showers, dresses, and wanders through his apartment with the uneasy sense of being watched. Whenever he passes the window, the pigeons move with him. Their tiny heads rise and twitch. Their bodies turn. Their eyes follow.

Always.

Shalene left him for the simple reasons that end most relationships. Stagnation. Sudden incompatibility. Too much effort in the wrong places and not enough in the right ones.

Henry doesn’t like to be alone.

That is the ugliest truth.

He is needy, and worse, he knows it. He is resolved, firmly and desperately, to have constant companionship. Someone nearby. Someone breathing in another room. Someone to say good morning to, even if the morning is terrible and doesn’t deserve manners.

“Love yourself,” Shalene told him.

“Get acquainted with you,” she said, standing by the door with the last of her things in a canvas bag.

Like always, Henry listened.

And like always, listening was as far as he got.

At breakfast, he sits at the small table for two and watches the red-billed bird strut along the ledge.

Its throat is grooved and strange. Its nostrils sit above the fleshy wax covering at the base of the upper beak. The cere. Henry knows the word somehow. He hates that he knows it. He hates the bird more for making him remember.

He shouts at it.

“Go away. Get the fuck outta here!”

The bird blinks.

The pigeons resume their pecking. Their curved hatred for mankind taps against the glass.

Henry looks down at his cereal.

Then he looks back at the birds.

“Fine,” he says.

He reaches into the box and pulls out a fistful of Rice Krispies.

“If I give you this, will you go away?”

The birds watch.

Henry slides up the lower sash with his left hand, just enough to create a narrow gap. With his right, he prepares to toss the cereal out. But the thought of all those beaks, all those quick little heads, makes him hesitate.

Instead of throwing the cereal, he pushes it through the thinnest opening.

The pigeons move as one.

A gentle kreeing sound rises from them, unfamiliar and soft, far from the relentless cooing that drags him out of sleep.

“You like that?” Henry asks. “Satisfied, ya little bastards?”

He closes the window and returns to his breakfast.

Safe behind the double-pane glass, he leans forward and watches them feed. Smaller birds crowd close while the larger ones stand guard, breastplates pushed out, iridescent necks glistening in the morning sun. White feces streak the ledge in glossy layers.

Henry stops eating.

By midday, he convinces himself the whole thing is stupid.

Birds gather. Birds eat. Birds shit. Birds leave.

That is the entire mystery.

He shoulders his backpack and heads out for an appointment across town, choosing the park route because it is faster and because avoiding pigeons means admitting pigeons have become something to avoid.

A silver-winged bird sweeps low past him near the entrance.

Henry flinches.

Another pigeon, white-feathered and direct as a thrown stone, homes in and strikes his backpack. The impact pushes him forward half a step.

“What the hell?”

A third bird circles overhead.

The red-billed one.

It zips over his hat.

Henry throws up his arms. His cap flies backward and lands on the path. Then the worst of his fears arrives warm and wet against his exposed scalp.

A white, putty-thick substance strikes the crown of his head and spreads. It runs down his temple, slips toward his ear, and keeps going.

“Oh, God. Oh, God.”

He stumbles backward, swiping at himself, making it worse. People turn to look. Someone laughs. Someone else makes a sympathetic noise that somehow feels crueler.

The pigeons wheel above him.

Henry runs.

He cuts back through the green, past benches and jogging paths and children with scooters, through what now seems to him a designated pigeon-dung unloading zone. Every morsel-pecking flyer in the park seems aware of him. Every wingbeat feels aimed.

By the time he reaches his building, his appointment is already ruined.

He reschedules it from the bathroom, one hand holding the phone, the other scrubbing his head under water hot enough to redden his skin. He washes with enriched bar soap, then with lavender shampoo Shalene left behind, which she probably bought with Jonathon, his former best friend, in some bright little store where nobody gets shit on by birds.

He scrubs until his scalp hurts.

Then he scrubs again.

Only after a thorough towel-drying does he feel complete.

Clean again.

Outside, evening moves slowly down the brownstones. The sun disappears behind the city, throwing long shadows along brick and glass. The pigeons return to the ledge, unconcerned with him now, soaking in the last of the warmth.

Henry turns off the lights.

He wants darkness.

He wants solitude.

The next morning, the routine vanishes.

No birds on the ledge.

No pecking.

No cooing.

Nothing.

Henry stands at the window and feels relief spread through him. Not happiness exactly, but something close. Absolution. Whatever caused the torment has ended. The birds have moved on. The city has swallowed them.

He eats breakfast.

He walks through the loft with serene ease.

The feathered watchers are gone.

Then he remembers his rescheduled appointment.

He curses, gathers his things, and rushes for the door. The previous day’s disaster leaves him temporarily stained, but not defeated. Not permanently. Not by pigeons.

At the entrance to his building, he stops and peers through the large glass door.

No birds.

No fluttering shapes.

No red-billed bastard waiting on the awning.

Comfortable in his own foolish bravery, Henry steps outside with a confident swagger.

The day pulses around him. Clear sky. Light breeze. Treetops swaying. Leaves rustling. Sun glancing off windows in bright, forgiving flashes.

As he walks, his mind returns to Darwin.

Pigeons.

Why pigeons?

Was it an experiment? A theory? A strategy?

He hurries toward his appointment, crossing at Third and Vine, when the memory lands. Darwin studied pigeons because of variation. Natural selection. Breeding. Crosses. Control.

Henry frowns.

To him, pigeons are nothing more than a noisome nuisance. Wretched, winged vermin. Vile little things with twitching heads and filthy feet.

He loathes them.

He questions their needed existence.

His meeting lasts forty-seven minutes and accomplishes almost nothing.

Afterward, he stands outside the building and considers taking the long way home. The previous day’s humiliation still pulses behind his ears. He can avoid the park. He should avoid the park.

But Henry has always wanted to resolve unpleasant memories by walking directly back through them.

A stupid habit.

A human one.

He turns toward the path.

The once peaceful day has changed. Wispy winds sharpen. Clouds gather overhead, gray and low, pressing closer to the earth. He passes a row of green park benches beneath a canopy of gold and crimson leaves.

On one bench sits Jonathon.

Former best friend.

Former fixture of Henry’s apartment.

Former harmless guy from dinners and board games and late-night talks.

Now, only an acquaintance.

A pigeoneer.

That is what Jonathon called himself once, smiling over beers, explaining the rooftop coop he keeps and the birds he trains. Homers, pouters, rollers, fantails. Henry only half-listened then. Shalene listened more closely.

Henry gives him a nod.

Lazy. Incomplete.

Jonathon returns it with the same lack of feeling.

The gesture means almost nothing.

Almost.

Henry keeps walking.

The clouds press lower.

Then he hears the swooshing.

Not cooing.

Not pecking.

Wings.

The contentious flapping makes their presence known before the birds appear. Pigeons rise from the edges of the park, from benches, from rooftops, from trees, from places Henry has not thought to look. What once seemed like a picture of romantic city innocence now gathers into something organized.

They flutter in unison.

They turn toward him.

Henry stops.

The red-billed bird drops from above.

He turns and increases his pace.

A blue-gray pigeon lunges near his face. Henry ducks. His backpack twists around his shoulder and throws him off balance. He stumbles, tries to catch himself, and goes down hard on the path.

For one absurd second, he lies on his stomach like a tortoise, arms pinned, backpack riding high.

Then the birds descend.

People shout.

A child screams, “Mommy! Mommy!”

Henry sees the little girl through a blur, pointing at him. He sees people running. Shielding their heads. Scattering into the trees and across the grass.

They have nothing to fear.

He knows that.

The birds have not come for them.

Henry twists onto his back.

Above him, the flock moves like weather.

Jonathon remains on the bench.

He watches in amazement or satisfaction. Henry cannot tell which. Maybe both. He does not rise. He does not shout. He does not try to help his former friend as the thunderous brood descends.

The red-billed bird lands on Henry’s chest.

Only now, close enough to see it clearly, Henry realizes the beak is not red.

Not entirely.

It is stained black at the tip.

The bird strikes.

Henry screams as the beak drives into his eye.

There is pressure first, then heat, then a pain so total it swallows the world. Wings batter his cheeks. Talons scratch bloody lines across his skin. He tries to turn away, but more bodies press him down. More wings. More feet. More sharp little sounds.

The bird pulls back.

Something wet and fibrous comes with it.

Henry’s scream breaks open.

Blood runs down his face and into his mouth. The red-billed bird flutters away with the orb clamped in its beak, pale nerves dangling like thread.

On the bench, Jonathon watches the pigeon rise.

Above the park, the flock circles once.

Then they scatter into the darkening sky.

 

The pigeons coo him awake.

Henry shifts beneath the sheets, reaches for the metal blind, and taps gently against the sun-warmed glass.

Nothing.

Not even a stir.

For one brief, blessed moment, the room is quiet.

He settles back onto the pillow and reaches toward the emptiness beside him. His fingers find only cool sheet. The last edge of sleep pulls at him, soft and twitching, the kind of drifting that usually means he has a few more minutes before the day finds him.

Then the cooing starts again.

He opens his eyes.

The sound comes from the window.

Henry sits up, grabs the spindle wand, and twists the blinds open with more force than necessary. Pale morning light cuts across the bedroom in narrow slats.

Outside, on the oversized sill, a cluster of pigeons pecks and shuffles. Plump little bodies. Quick orange eyes. Heads bobbing with mechanical certainty. A red-billed pouter unfolds its wings and puffs itself larger, claiming space, claiming rank, claiming the whole damn morning.

Henry leans closer.

He looks beyond the sill to the rooflines, chimney pots, and gables of the neighboring brownstones. He sees no other birds gathered anywhere else. No roof party. No ledge convention. No reason for this particular group to press itself against his particular window.

Why here?

Why now?

He gives the glass a sharper knuckle-knock.

The pigeons do not fly away. If anything, the sound seems to offend them. One lifts its head and stares at him with a bead-black eye.

Henry stretches for the cord and yanks the blinds up. The city opens beyond the window in pale brick, fire escapes, water towers, and the long drop to the street below. Between him and the birds, only the double-pane glass remains.

The largest pigeon steps forward.

Nearly eyeball to eyeball now, Henry stares at it.

The bird stares back.

“Great,” Henry mutters. “Wonderful.”

He falls back onto the bed and tries to ignore them. Sleep, however, has already left the room. Since the breakup, Henry finds mornings difficult. The silence comes first, then the empty side of the bed, then the little humiliations of beginning another day alone.

He watches the pigeons instead.

Their movements are slow, deliberate, almost ceremonial. One fans its tail feathers with ridiculous confidence. Another struts in a tight circle. The red-billed one shifts its swollen chest forward and glimmers green and purple at the throat.

Henry thinks, briefly, of Darwin.

Darwin cared about pigeons.

Henry remembers that much from some half-forgotten article, or documentary, or late-night rabbit hole he fell into when sleep refused to cooperate. Pigeons and variation. Breeding. Selection. Control.

The thought irritates him.

Wonderment over, he grabs the soft, floaty pillow beneath his head and hurls it full force at the window.

The impact makes a dull slap.

The largest pigeon steps back, tilts sideways, and drops into effortless flight.

The others stay.

Henry showers, dresses, and wanders through his apartment with the uneasy sense of being watched. Whenever he passes the window, the pigeons move with him. Their tiny heads rise and twitch. Their bodies turn. Their eyes follow.

Always.

Shalene left him for the simple reasons that end most relationships. Stagnation. Sudden incompatibility. Too much effort in the wrong places and not enough in the right ones.

Henry doesn’t like to be alone.

That is the ugliest truth.

He is needy, and worse, he knows it. He is resolved, firmly and desperately, to have constant companionship. Someone nearby. Someone breathing in another room. Someone to say good morning to, even if the morning is terrible and doesn’t deserve manners.

“Love yourself,” Shalene told him.

“Get acquainted with you,” she said, standing by the door with the last of her things in a canvas bag.

Like always, Henry listened.

And like always, listening was as far as he got.

At breakfast, he sits at the small table for two and watches the red-billed bird strut along the ledge.

Its throat is grooved and strange. Its nostrils sit above the fleshy wax covering at the base of the upper beak. The cere. Henry knows the word somehow. He hates that he knows it. He hates the bird more for making him remember.

He shouts at it.

“Go away. Get the fuck outta here!”

The bird blinks.

The pigeons resume their pecking. Their curved hatred for mankind taps against the glass.

Henry looks down at his cereal.

Then he looks back at the birds.

“Fine,” he says.

He reaches into the box and pulls out a fistful of Rice Krispies.

“If I give you this, will you go away?”

The birds watch.

Henry slides up the lower sash with his left hand, just enough to create a narrow gap. With his right, he prepares to toss the cereal out. But the thought of all those beaks, all those quick little heads, makes him hesitate.

Instead of throwing the cereal, he pushes it through the thinnest opening.

The pigeons move as one.

A gentle kreeing sound rises from them, unfamiliar and soft, far from the relentless cooing that drags him out of sleep.

“You like that?” Henry asks. “Satisfied, ya little bastards?”

He closes the window and returns to his breakfast.

Safe behind the double-pane glass, he leans forward and watches them feed. Smaller birds crowd close while the larger ones stand guard, breastplates pushed out, iridescent necks glistening in the morning sun. White feces streak the ledge in glossy layers.

Henry stops eating.

By midday, he convinces himself the whole thing is stupid.

Birds gather. Birds eat. Birds shit. Birds leave.

That is the entire mystery.

He shoulders his backpack and heads out for an appointment across town, choosing the park route because it is faster and because avoiding pigeons means admitting pigeons have become something to avoid.

A silver-winged bird sweeps low past him near the entrance.

Henry flinches.

Another pigeon, white-feathered and direct as a thrown stone, homes in and strikes his backpack. The impact pushes him forward half a step.

“What the hell?”

A third bird circles overhead.

The red-billed one.

It zips over his hat.

Henry throws up his arms. His cap flies backward and lands on the path. Then the worst of his fears arrives warm and wet against his exposed scalp.

A white, putty-thick substance strikes the crown of his head and spreads. It runs down his temple, slips toward his ear, and keeps going.

“Oh, God. Oh, God.”

He stumbles backward, swiping at himself, making it worse. People turn to look. Someone laughs. Someone else makes a sympathetic noise that somehow feels crueler.

The pigeons wheel above him.

Henry runs.

He cuts back through the green, past benches and jogging paths and children with scooters, through what now seems to him a designated pigeon-dung unloading zone. Every morsel-pecking flyer in the park seems aware of him. Every wingbeat feels aimed.

By the time he reaches his building, his appointment is already ruined.

He reschedules it from the bathroom, one hand holding the phone, the other scrubbing his head under water hot enough to redden his skin. He washes with enriched bar soap, then with lavender shampoo Shalene left behind, which she probably bought with Jonathon, his former best friend, in some bright little store where nobody gets shit on by birds.

He scrubs until his scalp hurts.

Then he scrubs again.

Only after a thorough towel-drying does he feel complete.

Clean again.

Outside, evening moves slowly down the brownstones. The sun disappears behind the city, throwing long shadows along brick and glass. The pigeons return to the ledge, unconcerned with him now, soaking in the last of the warmth.

Henry turns off the lights.

He wants darkness.

He wants solitude.

The next morning, the routine vanishes.

No birds on the ledge.

No pecking.

No cooing.

Nothing.

Henry stands at the window and feels relief spread through him. Not happiness exactly, but something close. Absolution. Whatever caused the torment has ended. The birds have moved on. The city has swallowed them.

He eats breakfast.

He walks through the loft with serene ease.

The feathered watchers are gone.

Then he remembers his rescheduled appointment.

He curses, gathers his things, and rushes for the door. The previous day’s disaster leaves him temporarily stained, but not defeated. Not permanently. Not by pigeons.

At the entrance to his building, he stops and peers through the large glass door.

No birds.

No fluttering shapes.

No red-billed bastard waiting on the awning.

Comfortable in his own foolish bravery, Henry steps outside with a confident swagger.

The day pulses around him. Clear sky. Light breeze. Treetops swaying. Leaves rustling. Sun glancing off windows in bright, forgiving flashes.

As he walks, his mind returns to Darwin.

Pigeons.

Why pigeons?

Was it an experiment? A theory? A strategy?

He hurries toward his appointment, crossing at Third and Vine, when the memory lands. Darwin studied pigeons because of variation. Natural selection. Breeding. Crosses. Control.

Henry frowns.

To him, pigeons are nothing more than a noisome nuisance. Wretched, winged vermin. Vile little things with twitching heads and filthy feet.

He loathes them.

He questions their needed existence.

His meeting lasts forty-seven minutes and accomplishes almost nothing.

Afterward, he stands outside the building and considers taking the long way home. The previous day’s humiliation still pulses behind his ears. He can avoid the park. He should avoid the park.

But Henry has always wanted to resolve unpleasant memories by walking directly back through them.

A stupid habit.

A human one.

He turns toward the path.

The once peaceful day has changed. Wispy winds sharpen. Clouds gather overhead, gray and low, pressing closer to the earth. He passes a row of green park benches beneath a canopy of gold and crimson leaves.

On one bench sits Jonathon.

Former best friend.

Former fixture of Henry’s apartment.

Former harmless guy from dinners and board games and late-night talks.

Now, only an acquaintance.

A pigeoneer.

That is what Jonathon called himself once, smiling over beers, explaining the rooftop coop he keeps and the birds he trains. Homers, pouters, rollers, fantails. Henry only half-listened then. Shalene listened more closely.

Henry gives him a nod.

Lazy. Incomplete.

Jonathon returns it with the same lack of feeling.

The gesture means almost nothing.

Almost.

Henry keeps walking.

The clouds press lower.

Then he hears the swooshing.

Not cooing.

Not pecking.

Wings.

The contentious flapping makes their presence known before the birds appear. Pigeons rise from the edges of the park, from benches, from rooftops, from trees, from places Henry has not thought to look. What once seemed like a picture of romantic city innocence now gathers into something organized.

They flutter in unison.

They turn toward him.

Henry stops.

The red-billed bird drops from above.

He turns and increases his pace.

A blue-gray pigeon lunges near his face. Henry ducks. His backpack twists around his shoulder and throws him off balance. He stumbles, tries to catch himself, and goes down hard on the path.

For one absurd second, he lies on his stomach like a tortoise, arms pinned, backpack riding high.

Then the birds descend.

People shout.

A child screams, “Mommy! Mommy!”

Henry sees the little girl through a blur, pointing at him. He sees people running. Shielding their heads. Scattering into the trees and across the grass.

They have nothing to fear.

He knows that.

The birds have not come for them.

Henry twists onto his back.

Above him, the flock moves like weather.

Jonathon remains on the bench.

He watches in amazement or satisfaction. Henry cannot tell which. Maybe both. He does not rise. He does not shout. He does not try to help his former friend as the thunderous brood descends.

The red-billed bird lands on Henry’s chest.

Only now, close enough to see it clearly, Henry realizes the beak is not red.

Not entirely.

It is stained black at the tip.

The bird strikes.

Henry screams as the beak drives into his eye.

There is pressure first, then heat, then a pain so total it swallows the world. Wings batter his cheeks. Talons scratch bloody lines across his skin. He tries to turn away, but more bodies press him down. More wings. More feet. More sharp little sounds.

The bird pulls back.

Something wet and fibrous comes with it.

Henry’s scream breaks open.

Blood runs down his face and into his mouth. The red-billed bird flutters away with the orb clamped in its beak, pale nerves dangling like thread.

On the bench, Jonathon watches the pigeon rise.

Above the park, the flock circles once.

Then they scatter into the darkening sky.