The Falconer's Tale (11 page)

Piat, Irene, and Hackbutt were silently eating their way
through a curry with some shreds of lamb, Irene's first attempt
to add meat to their diet. The food was simple but good. The
conversation was nonexistent. So far, Piat had managed only
three kinds of interaction: silence, a harangue from Hackbutt
about falconry, and a harangue from Irene about overwork.

Piat kept eating. Irene looked at Hackbutt for a few seconds,
flashed him a smile, and went back to her food.

“You're both
picking on me
.”

Piat smiled. “Nope. This is training. Listen up, Digger. First,
a pep talk. Okay? We'll get one shot at this guy. Think about
that. We're going to spend a
fuck
of a lot of money and time
to get you near this guy
one time
. You're going to have to get
through to him. One time. In about fifteen seconds. Okay?
It might be at dinner. It might be in a parking garage. It
might be a line at an airport. One time. Okay?”

“I can't!” Hackbutt's voice had a whiney tone that Piat
realized had been absent on the hillside with the birds, but
it was familiar from the old days.

“You can. Okay? Now, a demonstration. Irene, may I have
some wine?”

Irene picked up the bottle, a French white, and filled Piat's
glass.

“Thanks. Pretty good wine.”

“Better than anything we ever saw in the States,” Hackbutt
replied.

“It's the European Union,” said Piat. “In Greece, in Scotland,
wherever—French wines, German wines, Greek wines even.
Look at that little store in Salen—the whole thing is smaller
than a corner store in Manhattan, and it has a selection of
wine you'd have to go to some ritzy liquor store to buy.”

“At French prices, too,” Irene said.

Piat turned to Hackbutt. “I could branch out now. I could
easily turn my bottle of wine into a rant against the agricultural
policies of the EU. Or in favor of the no-borders policies
of the EU. A rant against the Bush administration. A
harangue about wine. A dissertation on grape cultivation.
Those are all monologues—sometimes good to start a conversation,
but not really social—not nice. So what I really want
to do is pimp you guys to talk. So I say—to Irene.” Piat
turned away from Hackbutt. “Have you been to France?”

“I was at the fucking Sorbonne,” she said. She smiled
bitterly. “For a little while, anyway.”

Piat wondered what they talked about when he wasn't
there. “The Sorbonne?” he asked. “Where's the Sorbonne?”

“It's a university in Paris. I studied art—Medieval art,
modern art. You've never heard of the Sorbonne?” Irene's
eyes narrowed as she realized that Piat was mocking her.
“Fuck you.”

“No—no, really.” Piat laughed and shook his head. “Digger,
it's better to ask questions than to know the answers. It
makes for better conversation. Okay? You see?”

Irene's hands were in her lap—she looked angry, and
Hackbutt's eyes were on her, worried and annoyed.

Hackbutt said, “Yeah, I see that you're making connections.
With whatever she says. Whatever. Except you're
pissing Irene off, which pisses me off.”

Piat decided that he had drunk too much wine and was
trying to move too fast.

He leaned forward. “It's a game, Digger—but it's a game
you play with the other people, not against them. You have
to
listen
to play. It's not about dominance. Not about winning.
Just about being there.”

Hackbutt nodded without understanding. “Sure,” he said.

Piat ran a hand through his hair. Irene was sullen, as if
she'd been wounded by a single shot. A stupid mistake on
his part. “Digger, do you feel different when you're with your
birds?” he asked.

“Sure,” Hackbutt replied. The “sure” had a whole different
content.

“Maybe you should treat us as if we're birds,” Piat said.

Him and his birds. Maybe he'll do better when we get to London,
away from the goddam birds and all this gloom
. He saw that he'd
made a mistake by not taking them to London as soon as
they'd signed on. New clothes, a haircut, a new environment,
and Hackbutt would see a new self.

But Irene's “art,” which should have solved a problem by
pleasing her, became a problem because it took so much of
her time. Because she
made
it take so much her time.

“I'm not allowed in there,” Hackbutt said one day, nodding
toward the closed door of the room she called her studio.
He gave a perfunctory guffaw for machismo's sake, but the
truth was that he adored Irene and thought her creative life
was an overawing mystery. “Something I couldn't do in a
million years, Jack! And all out of her head. Like a frequency
she hears and I don't.”

“Do you understand the stuff she does?”

“Understand? Oh, no. Well, not really. I don't have the—
I'm not artistic.”

Then one day Piat let himself in the front door and walked
through the house, expecting Hackbutt but not finding him.
For the first time, Irene's door was open, a sound like a
blender coming from it. Piat moved down the corridor on
tiptoe (why? was he afraid of her?) and peeked in.

She was drilling holes with a battery-powered drill. She
had on a man's cargo pants and a checked flannel shirt and
a tool belt, and she was leaning into the drill to push it
through a sheet of metal held in a big vice on a workbench
that took up the whole end of what had once been the
cottage's parlor.

Piat looked the room over. No furniture. The wall above
the bench was hung with tools on nails and hooks; another
wall had a dozen sketches taped to it; the floor was littered
with heterogeneous junk, although even a glance suggested
that some sort of order might be possible. He saw animal
bones, a dead seagull, part of a baby carriage, greasy parts
of what had once been a car engine. A puddle of what looked
at first to be dog turds, then finally made sense as condoms,
not necessarily unused. In the midst of this, a bulbous something
heaved up from the floor like a mound of jelly, shining,
repellent, monstrous. He focused on it and saw that it was
fiberglass, the stuff they make boats out of.

At that point, she became aware of him. She pushed a
clear plastic face guard up on her forehead. “Can't you see
I'm working?”

“Yes, I— Yes, of course.” It was humiliating to be flustered
by her. How had she put him in the wrong? “I didn't know.”

“Now you do. This room is off-limits, Jack. I got so fucking
hot I had to open the door. It's not an invitation.”

“I'm sorry. Really.”

She came toward him, still carrying the drill. She brushed
hair away with the back of her left hand, blew air out in a
way that made her lips bulge and shake. “Fucking hot.” She
looked around the room. “Yes, this is mine. This is it.
Surprised?”

“I didn't know what to expect.”

“You expected to find me in here reading magazines and
eating chocolates, right?” She breathed out again, then began
pumping the front of her shirt in and out to make a breeze.
He saw parts of a no-nonsense brassiere. “That fucking Paris
agent got me a date for a show that's
months
ahead of what
I told her, Jesus Christ, I'm running around in here like a
chicken with its head cut off trying to make stuff.”

“Hey, that's great! A real show?”

“Yeah, a real show. If you call a two-bit gallery in a two-
bit French town a show. She promised me Paris, she delivers
a provincial burg called Arras. But the truth is, I either take
what I can get or I give it up. It's no secret I'm not exactly
a household name, right? You looked at the website? I
thought you would. Not too impressive. I need them more
than they need me. But Jesus Christ, she's got me on a
schedule that's a real bitch.”

Piat said nothing. He didn't know what to say. He wasn't
sure whether he was impressed or repulsed—or what his
reaction was. He could tell she wanted one. And that it was
important to her.

“Don't think this all happened because of your money,
either. Don't flatter yourself.” She walked into the middle of
the room and looked down at the plastic mound. “This is
fiberglass,” she said. “It's going to take me weeks to finish,
no matter what.” She looked at him. “What do you think
art is, Jack?” The question wasn't flirtatious, but at the same
time it was a question, a prolonging of his being there, so
he knew she wanted him to stay. Then he knew that she
was as divided as he—wanting him, just as he wanted her,
but held back, she by Hackbutt, he by the operation.

“The creation of beauty,” he said slowly, knowing it was
the wrong answer. Irene, of course, knew nothing of his other
life as a dealer in antiquities, and he wasn't going to tell her.

“Bullshit. Art has nothing to do with beauty.” Irene smiled,
as if the apparent ignorance of his answer satisfied her. She
looked around. “This is art. This is the bust-your-ass part of
art.” She gave him the same look. “You think art's some kind
of fake, don't you, Jack? You think it's a way of gaming life—
right? Art is some woman pouring a can of beans over her
naked ass, right? Art is some weirdo wrapping Canary Wharf
in pink plastic, right? It's all bullshit and hype, stuff that fags
and women make up because they can't cut it in the real
world, right?” She aimed the drill at him and pulled the
trigger, got an angry whir.

Piat raised an eyebrow. “No,” he said.

She glared at him and pulled the trigger on the drill again.
“No? Just no?”

Piat took a deep breath and let it out. She wanted a quarrel.
And behind that was something else—maybe sex, maybe
something deeper or older, some kind of scar. Something
about art.

Piat knew something about bullshit and hype and art, but
he kept his mouth shut. After a moment that went on too
long, he said, “Just plain no.”

Irene snorted. “Next time, try to remember that not every
open door is an invitation.” She came back, put her free
hand on the knob. “I'll come out in a few hours and be nice
Irene and play Miss Manners with you and Edgar.” She leaned
in to him, making closing the door part of the motion. “But
I'm feeling a lot of pressure, and you're part of it.”

And she closed the door.

The dog was a relief after that.

Then there were the sessions when he and Hackbutt reversed
roles and Hackbutt tried to train him—about the birds.

“Don't flinch like that, Jack. Sheila, stop!” Hackbutt reached
over the head of the angry bird he called Sheila and stroked
her plumes, despite the fact that she had just taken a few
grams of skin from Piat's arm and looked mad as hell.
Hackbutt's tone was imperative.

Piat tried to support the weight of the bird on his fist and
remain nonchalant while watching a stream of blood flow
down his arm. He
had
flinched—no point in denying it. And
at another level, he marveled at the Hackbutt he had just
seen—Hackbutt the commander of birds and men.

Patiently, Hackbutt stroked her, fed her a morsel of red
meat from his pocket. “She knows you're afraid, Jack.” He
smiled out at the endless rolling gray beyond the dripping
moor. “I was afraid myself. Sometimes I still am. Can't let
them see it, okay? It'll take time. Just get used to her—the
weight of her, the smell.” His voice was gentle, soothing—
not like his usual voice at all. “Here, pass her over. That's a
good bird. What a pretty lady. See? She's back in the zone,
Jack. Just like that. Now you take her again.”

Sheila had hopped on Hackbutt's hand quite willingly, but
no amount of Hackbutt's moving and rolling his wrist would
get her to step back to Piat's glove; in fact, she clung to
Hackbutt, constantly reorienting herself on the moving
comfort of his wrist and arm.

“Jack!” Hackbutt said carefully. “You have to participate!
Put your fist next to mine. Now push the bones of your wrist
against her feet.
Don't flinch
. There.
There
. Well done.”

Once again, Piat had the weight of the heavy falcon on
his arm. He took a deep breath. Sheila raised her wings a
few inches, rocked her head back and forth.
Yeah, I don't like
it any more than you do,
honey. Piat let out his breath, realized
that he was full of adrenaline.

“Just walk around, Jack. Just walk over to the wall and
back a few times. I'm going to get the other haggards. Okay?
Just walk.” Hackbutt turned and walked down the hill toward
the farm.

Piat started to walk. The bird had a hood on, but somehow
she still managed to track Hackbutt's retreat. Suddenly she
raised her wings to almost full extension and gave a scream.

Piat kept walking. The bracken had been knocked back
here by generations of human feet and some cattle, and the
grass was as short as a lawn and far finer. Just beyond the
wall of loose stones a stream poured water down the hillside
and a white rush to the loch at the bottom of the hill.
Piat concentrated on the middle distance and walked. Sheila
folded her wings and sat.

He turned at the wall and started back, the weight of the
bird tugging at his arm. She was starting to preen, her wings
safely in. His pulse slowed. He could just see losing one of
Hackbutt's precious birds—he
said
they wouldn't fly while
they wore a hood and jesses, but Piat wasn't sure—and then
he found that he'd made another circuit and she was still
preening.

“Pretty lady,” he said.

He decided it was time to get them all to London and see
if that would work.