GABE
Her house smelled like cookies, and her lemonade tasted almost as delicious as she did. As she prepared the General’s dinner—a rainbow assortment of fresh veggies on a beak-battered plastic plate—I took stock of her kitchen. It was bright, clean, and messy. Everything about it said home. My apartment back in California was like an IKEA showroom, and on the few nights when I’d been there that year, I had ordered in because I didn’t even have a damned pan in the cupboard. Her place, though, was exactly how a home should be. Cluttered with cookbooks and memories. From the furniture to the plates, it felt like everything in it had a story. A pan next to the sink still had the circular marks from a dozen cookies; the oven had been used and cleaned so often, the numbers on the dials had been rubbed off. On the fridge were lots of photographs of her with the little boy I’d seen on her phone. There was a big one in the middle of the freezer of him sitting on the edge of a pool in inflatable orange floaties. His chubby stomach poked out over his swim diaper. On each side of him was a tanned, sexy calf, but the top of the photo was covered by a set of pizza coupons. Like they’d been strategically placed there.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw Lily was busy slicing a carrot. Using my fingertip, I carefully shifted the coupons aside. There she was, in all her glory, wearing a pink polka-dot bikini. Sun-kissed and laughing. I ran my eyes over her soft lines. Her belly button. Her cleavage. Her thighs. Damn, damn, damn.
I replaced the sheet of coupons and moved on to the other photos. In some, she was with the little boy by herself. In others, there was another woman who looked a bit like Lily, but a little older. It had to be her sister. And I remembered the onesie that little boy had been wearing in the photo on her phone. “I’m guessing this is your nephew?”
Lily spun around with a carrot in hand. “Yes! That’s Ivan. He lives right downstairs with Daisy, my sister.” She gestured down with the carrot as a pointer. “The cutest little muffin ever. Ivan, I mean. Not my sister. Obviously. My sister doesn’t look like a muffin at all.”
Her awkwardness was adorable and somehow made me feel even more comfortable with her. She wiped off the vegetable knife on a dish towel and approached the General’s cage. He made some happy noises, and I watched her smile as she moved the cloth away and placed her fingertips on the door.
“I need you to stay in there, OK?” she said.
He warbled again and bobbed his head.
“OK?” she repeated.
“OK!” the General echoed back and landed with a thud on the floor of his cage. Lily slowly opened the door and put his plate of veggies on a small ledge on the side. She made a perch of her finger and lowered it in front of him. He hopped on and made noises that, honest to God, could only be described as pure happiness. He opened his mouth wide, like a Muppet, and Lily laughed a little. Then he did a waddling dance on her finger, releasing one foot and then the other as he swayed back and forth. Like a bird polka. She raised him up to the bar level with the food, and he hopped off. “Thank you!” he said as she closed the door.
“Love you!” he said.
“Love you too,” she answered.
And he buried his face in the veggie medley.
When she turned back toward me, I saw a warmth in her expression that I found intoxicating. A pure, nurturing joy that was irresistible. I wasn’t used to being around someone like her. I was used to women who had their careers and their yoga studios—their expensive stilettos and their watery green smoothies. She was different. A world apart, and a world I really wanted to get to know.
She washed the cutting board and dried her hands on a dish towel. “I’m just going to run and get changed. Is that OK?”
Only if I can watch. “You bet. I’m not going anywhere.”
Lily took a step into me and got up on her tiptoes. Her cheek brushed against mine, and the cool curtain of her hair swept along my bare arm. Into my ear, she whispered, “Leave the cloth over the cage and he won’t even know you’re here. Where do you want to go for dinner? That way I’ll know what to wear.”
Last night I’d told her it was her choice and my treat, and that was still the deal. “Where’s your favorite place to eat in town?” I asked, nice and low and deep in her ear.
Her laugh came on the outbreath, gentle and cool. “It’s not fancy. But it’s a little bit expensive.”
With my nose nestled in her hair, I asked, “Think that fucking matters to me?”
She leaned into me, and her breasts compressed against my chest. “I like that. The way you talk. The way you act.”
“Oh yeah?”
She pulled her face back from mine. The setting sun made her irises sparkle like fool’s gold. “Yeah.”
“So tell me where I’m taking you.”
“It’s a fondue place. I think you’ll like it.” She sounded tentative, like she wasn’t used to asking for what she wanted. But she damned well better get used to it. “Is that OK?”
She could’ve said anything—pizza and beer, wine and steaks, oysters and champagne—and my answer would’ve been the same. “Of course it is.” I pressed her up against the countertop, keeping her close with one hand just above her ass. I pulled her hair back from her face and went in for another kiss.
But before my lips could even brush against hers, the General screamed, “I said unhand her, swarthy villain!”
And Lily dissolved into giggles in my arms.
Lily topped up my lemonade and hustled down the hallway. I watched her ass the whole way and didn’t even pretend that I hadn’t been staring when she turned over her shoulder to glance back at me. She spun around and put her hand on her hip. “Were you watching me?”
Watching. Fantasizing. “Big fan of that outfit.”
She smiled, rocked back on her heels, and lifted her toes up off the floor. “Well, I’ll see if I can outdo myself, then. Be back in a jiff.”
Once she closed her bedroom door, I wandered into her living room and looked around. It seemed like she was really into knitting. I didn’t see any afghans or anything, but there were lots of just-started things that hadn’t quite taken shape yet. There was a whole hell of a lot of yarn, and on the bookshelves I saw all sorts of how-to knitting guides, as well as audio-engineering manuals and a whole shelf of books on the African gray parrot. On a table beside the old fireplace was a big glass jar with folded pieces of paper inside. I peered at them, trying to figure out what they might be. Some of the folded paper squares were slightly open, and I could see handwritten words on them like sunshine and pink and gummy bears. I glanced down the hallway to make sure the coast was clear and picked up the jar, giving it a shake. A piece of paper was taped to the inside of the bottom. Though the letters were backward, it was clear enough. Gratitude Jar!
I shook it again and saw Daisy and Ivan and rain. I really dug that idea, the thought of taking the time to be grateful for something each day. To write it down. To have that ritual. I gave the jar another shake to see if I could see anything else, but the General interrupted my snooping with a “Tsk-tsk-tsk.”
Setting the jar down, I turned toward his cage. It sat on a small table near the window. Of course, the right thing to do would be to leave him alone. But the little dude fascinated me, and I couldn’t resist a peek. I approached the cage quietly and lifted the edge of the tablecloth. It was like he’d been waiting for me, like he’d known where I’d pick up the cover. He stared at me with a piece of raw corn in his beak. When he saw me, he dropped the corn and began a low, menacing growl. Like a pit bull. Or a jaguar. Or a Komodo dragon.
“Hey there,” I said.
The growl quieted down. He tilted his head to the side, scratching his chest feathers with his prehistoric foot.
There was something about him that was spooky-intense. Right up my alley. He was mostly gray, with a reddish plume of feathers at the bottom of his tail. For all the urban legends and crazy shit I’d chased around in my day, I’d never come face-to-face with an animal that could actually talk back to me.
So here goes nothing. “I’m Gabe.”
He hopped up one more bar. He cocked his head the other way and leaned down to pick up a piece of carrot without breaking my stare.
“Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you,” he responded, in exactly my same voice. And then he asked, “Where are you from?”
Whoa. He wasn’t just parroting what I was saying; he was having thoughts of his own. He was actually steering the conversation. Holy shit.
When I didn’t answer right away, he asked again, “Where are you from?”
It should’ve been an easy one for me to answer, but it wasn’t. Being the son of a career army man meant we’d moved more than we’d ever stayed still. The General was waiting for an answer, though, bug-eyed and open-beaked. So I picked the place that I’d gotten to know best. “New York, upstate.”
“Yankee!”
Yeah, he was the coolest. I couldn’t even imagine what it was like to have a pet like him. I’d never leave the house. But judging from the way he was watching me, it seemed I had some work to do before I got into his good graces. The thing to do, I figured, was offer him some sort of olive branch, so I went for the nearest thing at hand—I took a thin slice of lemon from my glass. I bit off the sour pulp and offered him the rind.
He leaned back like he was offended. Then he leaned in slightly. “Potato?” he asked.
“Lemon.”
Again with the head cock.
“Lehhh-mon,” I repeated.
“Potaaaaay-to,” he said, like I was the one who needed to learn a new word.
I tried a piece of the rind myself and made some exaggerated eating sounds so he’d know I wasn’t trying to poison him or something. “Better than a potato.”
He poked his dark beak out from between the bars. It reminded me of a mussel shell—black and bony. Very cautiously, he took a nibble of the rind. It seemed like he liked it, so I offered him a little more.
Progress, man. Progress.
But as soon as he seemed to warm up to me, he leaned back again. It reminded me of the way someone nearsighted would lean back from a book or a phone. “Suitor?” he asked.
I laughed a little, caught totally off guard by the question. Was I a suitor? If I wasn’t, I definitely wanted to be. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
He drew his head back and ruffled up his chest feathers. Then opened his mouth wide . . .
And shit got crazy.
He let loose with a sound unlike anything I had ever heard in my life—part yell, part scream, part siren. It went up and it went down, a god-awful, deafening shriek that made my glass of lemonade shiver in my hand. One floor below, I heard Lily’s nephew start screaming, followed by the menacing thump-thump-thump of a mop or broom handle on the ceiling below. “You’re blowing my cover, man! Easy! Easy!” I said, ducking down.
The bastard stared me in the eye and upped the ante, screeching even louder. It was a yodel from the gates of hell, so fucking loud that it gave me vertigo. “Christ!”
Lily’s footsteps cut through the racket, and in an instant, she was standing beside me. She wore a pink dress that she hadn’t even gotten all the way zipped up. “General!” she boomed. “General! I have a message from Lee! Stand down! Union forces are in full retreat!”
Instantly, and I mean instantly, the noise stopped. The change in decibels made my ears ring, like I’d stepped out of a dance club onto a silent street at midnight. As if nothing had happened, the General went back to eating his veggie medley. I stared at him in total astonishment. “How the hell can something so small be so loud?”
Lily held the front of her dress up with her palm and repositioned the cover of the cage. She lifted her eyebrow at me. “Couldn’t resist?” she asked.
“What was that?” I whispered.
“I have absolutely no idea. I call it the Noise. All I do know is that the only way to get him to stop is to tell him that the U-n-i-o-n is in s-u-r-r-e-n-d-e-r.” Lily sighed. “He’s wonderful. But he’s a bit complicated. Anyway! Would you mind?” She twirled around. “I can never get this dress on by myself.”
With one hand she held the sides of the open zipper together. Just beneath her hand I could see the lacy edge of her bra. Below that was the small of her bare back. And below that was the very, very top of her panties, black with red accents, and the silky lingerie tag poking out from beneath. “Jesus,” I growled.
She inhaled and gasped, like she’d only just realized what she was doing to me. She straightened her shoulders and tightened her grip on the gap between the sides of the zipper. “What was I thinking? I’ll have my sister do it.”
Fuck that. “No you won’t.” I took the delicate zipper between my fingers and drew it up, up, up, hiding all that magnificent skin and making her bra disappear. It made me ache to see it vanish. And ache even harder to think what that zipper would sound like when it was coming back down.