Nothing to Lose (11 page)

She looked closely at me. “It can be hard when you like somebody but you don't understand him,” she said. “When I started going out with Vern, I could tell right away when he'd been assigned a bad case. I could read it on his face. But I could never get him to tell me about it.” I knew exactly what she meant. My father had been the same way, according to my mother. It used to drive her crazy. It was also the number-one reason, my mother said, why cops had such a high divorce rate.

But this was different. What my father or Vern hadn't wanted to talk about were bad things that
other
people had done. But the things Nick didn't want to tell me about, well, I was pretty sure they were bad things that
he
was doing. But I couldn't tell Henri that.

“If you push too hard, they get mad and clam up tighter than ever,” she said. “But if you back off and give them some space, they eventually learn they can trust you. I can't say that Vern tells me everything, because he doesn't. But he doesn't shut me out anymore the way he used to.”

We had just finished our tea when my cell phone rang. I scrambled to answer it—I thought it might be Nick. It wasn't. It was Morgan.

“Are you back at the hospital?” she said.

“Nuh-uh. I'm at Henri's.”

“So you aren't with Nick?”

“No. We had a fight.”

“Thank goodness.” Good old Morgan. Good old
sensitive
Morgan. “You have to get over here.”

“Where are you?”

“Just down the street at the DARC office. You have to come down here right now, Robyn. You have to help me.”

“Help you with what?”

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Billy's coming,” she said. “I can't tell you right now. I'll explain when you get here. Hurry, Robyn, okay?”

What a day.

“That was Morgan,” I said to Henri after I put away my phone. “She needs me to help her with something.”

“No problem,” Henri said. She fished out a key from inside a chipped mug with a Picasso painting on it and tossed it to me. “I'm not going out,” she said. “I have to keep moving on my project. But sometimes I get so caught up that I don't hear the doorbell. When you come back, just let yourself in.”

I took the envelope of money out of my purse and stashed it under one of the pillows in the guest bedroom. Then I went to find out what Morgan's problem was.

 

 

Billy's mother is the head of public relations for one of the largest financial investment companies in the city. Billy had pestered her until she had finally arranged for him to make a presentation about DARC to some of the company's senior partners.

At the time, I told Billy he was probably wasting his breath. Why would people who were only interested in making money—which is how Billy always described them—care about little birds that crashed into their building? But Billy said it was worth a try: “You can't win if you don't play.” And—why was I surprised?—he had been persuasive. The senior partners had turned out to be more warmhearted than I'd expected. Not only did they agree to shut off their office lights at night, they also made a donation to DARC and gave the organization some office space in one of the building's subbasements. In the small office were a desk and computer, a cupboard full of equipment, and the chest freezer for storing dead birds.

The security guard at the main entrance to the office tower was sour-faced and stern when I pushed my way through a revolving door into the enormous, deserted lobby, but his face softened as soon as I mentioned DARC.

“You're looking for the bird boy,” he said. He smiled as he shook his head. “Sometimes I think that kid is crazy, but he sure does care about those birds he finds.”

That was Billy. Everybody who met him thought at first that he was slightly insane—an animal-loving, tree-hugging, fur-eschewing vegan idealist. But he always got to you. He cared so much, and knew so much about what he cared about, that he wore down almost everybody. Even people who didn't agree with him ended up with grudging respect for him.

The security guard made me sign a visitors' log. Then I took the elevator down to the DARC office. Morgan was waiting for me when the doors opened.

“It's all my fault,” she said. She was trying to keep her voice down, but she was so agitated that she didn't really succeed.

“What's wrong, Morgan?” I sniffed the air in the sub-basement. “And what's that smell?”

“I asked Billy about the Santa Claus parade.” She paused. “Okay, so what actually happened was that I made a big deal about going to the parade. I said, ‘I've been doing all the things you're interested in. When do we do the things I'm interested in?'” She glanced around and then grabbed me by the hand and pulled me away from the elevator. That was when I noticed that she was wearing disposable latex gloves.

“What's with the gloves? What's going on?”

“We had a fight,” she said. “Billy actually got mad at me.” She sounded stunned. “He called me materialistic.”

“Oh.” No surprise there. Morgan
is
materialistic. She loves to shop. In fact, I sometimes think she
lives
to shop. Morgan's idea of a great time is to score a great sweater or shoes at seventy-five percent off.

“He made me so angry that I—I called him naive.”

“Ouch.”

“And, well, we yelled at each other for a while and then, Robyn, I can't believe it, he told me he loved me.”

“He did?” I couldn't help smiling. “And?”

“And—I can't believe this, either—I started to cry. Me!” Morgan is not the sentimental type. “Then do you know what he did? He made a bunch of phone calls. He rearranged the DARC meeting tomorrow. They're going to hold it later in the day. You know why?”

I had a pretty good idea, but I decided to humor her.

“Why?”

“So that Billy can take me to the parade tomorrow.” Her eyes started to glisten. “And so here we are.”

“Where, exactly, are we? And why are you wearing those gloves?”

Morgan led me back in the direction we had just come, past the elevators and toward the hall outside the DARC office, where we found Billy and five other DARC members. I stared at them, trying to absorb what I was seeing.

Billy and the rest of DARC—most of whom were much older than Billy and all of whom were also wearing latex gloves—were hovering over a tarp spread across the floor. Nearby were two large bins. Billy and the others were reaching into the bins, pulling out plastic bags, and removing the contents. Each bag contained one or more birds.
Dead
birds. Well, that explained the smell.

“Hey, Robyn,” Billy said. He had been sitting cross-legged on the floor beside one of the bins, but he stood up as soon as he saw me. He was holding a plastic bag in one hand. “Morgan told me what happened. How's Nick?”

“Well, actually . . .” I began. I would have kept going, but Morgan pinched the back of my arm—
hard
—a signal for me to shut up. It was also a signal for me to pinch her back just as hard at my earliest convenience.

“Robyn's really upset, Billy,” she said.

“Well, then, why don't you stick around?” Billy said. “You can help us. It'll take your mind off things.” While he talked, he opened the ziplock bag he was holding, reached in, and pulled out a dead bird with a yellow belly. It looked so tiny in the palm of his hand. “Kentucky warbler,” he said. “We picked up a lot of warblers this year.” He held it out to me so I could get a closer look— and an even closer smell. “Grab some gloves. There's a box of them over there.”

“Robyn wants to talk to me, Billy,” Morgan said. “We'll be back in a few minutes, okay?”

“Is there anything I can do?” Billy said. His dogooder eyes were filled with concern.

Before I could answer, Morgan grabbed me by the hand and dragged me away from the tarp and bins and dead birds in plastic baggies. We were out of sight of the DARC people before I remembered what she was wearing. I stared down at her disposable gloves.

“You better not have touched something dead with those,” I said.

Morgan looked at her hands. Her mouth formed a great big O. She yanked her hands away from me and stripped off the gloves.

“
Eeew!
” I said. “Thanks a lot!”

“There's a bathroom just down here.” She led me through a narrow corridor and pushed open a door. I raced to the bank of sinks inside and washed my hands under the hottest water I could stand.

“They're taking all of the birds out of the bags and classifying them,” she said. “Sparrows in one place, warblers in another, thrushes in this pile, hummingbirds in that, jays, ovenbirds, woodcocks, juncos. . .” I was impressed by the number of species she could name. “They're going to arrange them on a white background and take a picture. It's supposed to give everyone an instant idea of how many birds get killed every season, why more buildings should shut off their lights at night. You know, visual impact. Billy thinks he can use it to get some funding for DARC. He wants to get more people involved.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” I said. “What's the problem?”

“You saw what Billy had in his hand.” she said. “I actually touched some of them.” She gave me an agonized look. “The first one I pulled out of the freezer was a woodcock. Big. Ugly. Long, skinny beak. And this one's eyes were open. I was holding it in my hand and, I don't know, it gave me the creeps. I started shaking all over. I don't like dead things, Robyn. So then I thought, okay, maybe the smaller birds would be less creepy.”

The look of horror on her face told me that she had discovered otherwise. “But the smaller they are, the faster they thaw out. And when they thaw, they start to smell. After a while it gets to you. I've spent the past half hour trying not to throw up. Then there was this one bird—it looked like it had been partly eaten by bugs or something. I had to run to the bathroom. Now I don't know what to do. I can't touch another one of those things. But if I don't go back, Billy's going to be disappointed in me.”

Morgan isn't normally the kind of person who worries about what other people think of her. She sees herself as above that. Above everything and everyone, in fact. If you consider yourself better and smarter than everyone else, why worry about what they're thinking? But apparently Morgan cared what Billy thought of her.

“Some people faint at the sight of blood,” I said. “Some can't handle heights. It's no big deal. Just tell him the truth.”

“I can't,” she said. “I just can't.”

“Morgan, you either have to tell him the truth or you have to hold your breath, fight back the nausea, and touch more dead birds. You have no other choice.”

She looked down at her feet.
Here it comes
, I thought.
She has a plan, and it involves me.

“Thing is, Robyn, I told Billy that you called me.”

“But
you
called
me
.”

She looked up at me. “I know. But that's not what I told Billy. I told him that you called me and that you were crying hysterically—”

“Hysterically?”

“Well—”

“
Hysterically
, Morgan?”

At least she had the decency to look embarrassed. “I'm sorry,” she said. “But I couldn't tell him the truth. I love him. I don't want him to think I'm a wuss.”

“There's nothing like an open and honest relationship.”

“Billy founded DARC. He believes in it one hundred percent. He thinks it's making a difference. It
is
making a difference. Some of the office buildings down here are actually trying to keep most of their lights off at night. I can't tell him that the thing he's most proud of makes me want to throw up.”

“And your solution is?”

“I was going to tell him that you need someone to talk to right now. You know, girl talk. Billy will understand.”

“You realize that he'll be
understanding
a lie, right?”

“I have to get out of here, Robyn. I'd do the same for you.”

I knew she would. Morgan could be self-centered. She could also be annoyingly superior. But she was also a loyal friend.

“Okay,” I said. “But you owe me.”

Morgan turned out to be right. Billy said he understood how I felt, that it must have been awful to see Nick actually get hit by a car. He said that Nick had been incredibly lucky and that he was going to be just fine. Then he pulled Morgan aside. He was still wearing his rubber gloves. Morgan cringed, but she managed to hide most of her revulsion. Billy said something to her in a soft voice. Then he kissed her.

Suddenly Morgan didn't seem to care about the gloves. In fact, I don't think that she would have cared if Billy were covered head to toe in dead bird residue. She wrapped her arms around him. I thought they were never going to come up for air. Some of the other DARC members glanced at them. A middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard smiled wistfully. Finally they parted, and Billy said he would call Morgan later. As we got into the elevator, Morgan wiped a tear from her eye.